Queanbeyan: THE Centre for art on the riverbank

I set off for a run in Queanbeyan today and as seems to be a developing tradition - yes, I know the Committee has to rule on that, but if people go off on overseas trips .. - met some great art under the Queens Bridge.  This is part of a Festival put on by the Council each year.

Fantasmagoricavian Feast by Deidre Oliver: illustrating diversity.
 Effects of Climate Change by Mia Glenn.  Showing the effects of climate change on penguins.  I'm unclear if the stubbies are part of the work or not!
 Carpflute by Tom Buckland.  Made out of abandoned corflutes from the ACT election.  The card compares introduced Carp and introduced politicians!
 The Brolgas by Bob Teasdale with the works to upgrade the Riverside in the background.
 River Culture by Gregory Ross McLean: the two river residents are used to bring the steel to life.
 A very wordy title for a work by Stephen Harrison about literary allusions and veganism (I think).  The conclusion is that the horse-man might just be having a quiet snooze by the river.
Panacea dogs by Sian Watson.  I really like the work, and the admonishment to not sit on the dogs, but couldn't make much sense out of the artist statement.  According to Canberra Times coverage this won the prize.  It was interesting to see that Tammy looked at one of the dogs and immediately went to sniff its bum: the artist clearly captured the look of dog!
This work is apparently based on the wires from champagne corks for the trap and soda bottle tops to decorate the fish!

While taking my snaps (with my phone) the duty volunteer came across and said I didn't look much like Mike Kelly.  It turns out he also worked for Mike at the last election!  I obfuscate others faces so have done the same for myself!
The inspiration for this run was a young friend's run up Mont Ventoux.  It had stretches of slope at 15.0%.  As shown here, this run had the same digits, possibly in a different order, averaging out at about 0.15%.
The following day, when  took Frances to see the sculptures, the festival was getting going with many boats about to be launched.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more