EC-Rider Travels

After our early walk this morning, Amanda kindly drove me to Wild Life Sogo to meet Adam who was to cut my hair! My lovely hairdresser Andre, had recommended him and indeed he was very charming, and gave me a nice ‘economical’ haircut …. I will not need one for a while!

In the afternoon we went to the recently opened second building of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the middle of the botanical gardens. It is still to be named but is currently known as the Sydney Modern Project. It took ten years to come to fruition and finally opened in December. Again it offers the most incredible space and pieces of art are generously spread around. It is another eclectic collection of contemporary work from all over the world including a beautifully curated collection of indigenous art. The galleries are all white and spacious with lots of glass which makes a stark contrast to the pitch-black ‘Tank’ which lies beneath, in a former war-time oil bunker. The oil-stained cavern shows an unusual but impressive installation by Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas apparently …. ‘exploring the conditions of a humanity at risk …..’ Indeed most of of the works throughout the gallery seemed to have strong/provocative underlying themes, addressing today’s world problems.

The most amazing piece was charmingly called Guts by a young American artist, Samara Golden. Conceived during lockdown, it is mirrored layers of a building depicting ‘layers of a society in crisis’. It was very clever. We were swept out with the crumbs!

That evening, Amanda’s beautiful 6ft+,‘almost’ daughter-in-law, Nic returned from visiting her family in Brisbane. She had been modelling here in Oz and was now en route back to New York where she lives with Amanda’s number two, Hugo. A lovely friend of Nic’s called Nina popped round for supper, so it was obviously time for another cheese soufflé! Not my best this time, but we had a great evening, drinking Hugo’s Bollinger and rather too much wine!