Gallery Saint Phalle and Lake Mungo

Paul Mason: Lake Mungo, in Gallery Saint Phalle

In the back room of the Red Wheelbarrow on Lygon Street, Catherine has set up a beautiful little gallery. It is called Gallery Saint Phalle. They moved the bookshelves out and into Paul's shop, making the front room a kind of booklovers’ maze. You can stand there and not know who is on the other side. On a winter’s day like today, the lamp from his desk and the heater cast a dim warm light.


The back room however is the complete opposite: lightness.

On the shortest day of the year, Catherine opened “Solstice”, an exhibition of drawings by Paul Mason. They are perfect for the Gallery: gray lead drawings on white paper that defy dimension and create space through lines. One of them documents an epiphany that the artist had in a particular place. And as I had a couple of weeks’ break coming up, it gave me a destination: Lake Mungo.

Break from Brunswick: East Gippsland.

With the teaching year at an end, we left Melbourne for a few days. On the way to Bairnsdale, we stopped as usual at the Art Gallery in Sale, and this time we saw a wonderful exhibition of the Donald Thomson collection of Arnhem Land bark paintings.

But here I want to write about Jacarri Cottage at Goongerah. This is about seventy kilometres north of Orbost, in a beautiful location on the edge of the Errinundra National Park. The main reason I wanted to stay there was because I am a supporter of Environment East Gippsland and I had heard so much about Jill Redwood.

Break from Brunswick: Hobart

I grew up in Tasmania, on the North West Coast, in a small town called Penguin. Then we moved to Hobart, where I attended Hobart Matriculation College for one year and then went to University of Tasmania in 1972. I completed a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in German and Political Science and then did an Honours year in German. Then I left.
Re-visiting Hobart is like exploring past times, both my own and those of the island.