Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

An outstanding gallery with amazing exhibitions, this time it wasRadiance: The Neo-Impressionists.  Luminious landscapes, stunning portraits in a style that at first appears to be like Monet’s impressionism style, but differs in that the paint is dabbed on the canvas instead of using brush strokes.  Up close you can see the individual ‘dabs’, further back the colours blend together.

A backlash against certain aspects of Impressionism, as well as an extension of others, Neo-Impressionism grew from the creative spark ignited by two young artists who became friends in 1884, the classically trained Georges Seurat and the self-taught Paul Signac.  The two artists shared in common the ambition to be innovators. Seurat and Signac worked together to perfect a new aesthetic language, seeking to objectively describe the modern world with the new visual expression that was best suited to it. [Resourced http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au]

Another exhibition Kings over the water, Jacobite glasses engraved with symbols which reflected their support for their  King “over the water”  – James II of England exiled in France.  It was in this exhibition that I discovered that James, my surname, is the Latinised form of Jacobus.

The Joseph Brown Collection is always worth a look – these artworks are from the private collection of the artist/art dealer Joseph Brown of mainly Australian artworks.

A lot of contemporary exhibitions in the other galleries within the NGV – while not usually a lover of contemporary, but was captivated with Zilvinas Kempinas Double O artwork.  Kempinas employs nontraditional materials to create active and dynamic exhibits.  In many of his works, the use of magnetic tape affects the viewer through various senses; visually, aurally and physically.  In this work Double O from 2008, he directs two large electric fans at two loops of magnetic tape causing them to seemingly perpetually fly and dance between the fans.