Finding inspiration on the other side of the world

Going to make up for my radio silence since July with a bumper post from my recent trip to Australia. This was for a beautiful beachside family wedding with my sister, but we also snuck in a decent amount of gallery-ing.

The first point of call was in Sydney, or between Bondi and Tamarama Beach, at their annual Sculpture by the Sea:

Also picked up this early Christmas card for myself in a vintage shop. It's by Luka Va.

At the other end of our trip, we chanced upon the 2018 Melbourne Ceramics Market, then a day later, visited the c3 contemporary art space at Abbotsford Convent. This was where we found these thorny ombre delights by Adam Stone:

Here, too, are further down-under-discoveries from the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia:

Frederick McCubbin - Mary (1891)

Tom Roberts - Mrs L. A. Abrahams (1881)

Arthur Loreiro - The spirit of the new moon (1888)

Charles Blackman - The Exchange (1952)

John Brack - Nude with Dressing Gown (1967)

Time for some coworking

I've been working from home and/or the homes of others since I started with GitHub.

Losing the commute has been a win, but to regain some work-related-social-ings, I've signed up to co-work from the magnificent Duke Studios for the next few weeks.

The space is attached to Sheaf Street, which I already loved, and it opens up inside like Mary Poppins' bag, housing it's considered collection of creatives, alongside a multi-tiered event space and a pictureskew hidden yarden. 

I'm sure there's lots for me yet to discover, but I'm particularly excited about making use of their breakout spaces with LEGO and having my very own Duke mug - It's got my name all over it. For reals. 

Snaps will follow...

Cock-a-doodle-drew

We're almost on the longest day of the year, and I've been in Portugal, making use of the extra daylight house by crafting the curves of my very own Portuguese rooster:

I learnt there's a whole legend behind these familiar frangos.. or 'galos', if I translate 'roosters' correctly. Cocorocó!  🌅 🐓

See you later, WordPress 👋

I wasn’t best pleased to discover that the mobile version of lauriewoodruff.com has been taken over by adverts:

I’m therefore in the process of applying some skills learnt here along with some new learning tools available here to construct a shiny new site here -> https://lauriehfw.github.io/

🎉 

What Sundays are made for..

Indulged in a full day of gallery-ing yesterday at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Was particularly enchanted by the setting, with multi-tiered windows and playful gardens. 

Was refreshing to see a whole load of work by predominantly Portuguese artists that I'm not too familiar with. Highlights include:

- Revelo-colagem by Manuel Baptista (1973) 

- The undulating (and perfectly positioned) La Mer by René Bertholo (1971)

- You know when you try and flatten out some chocolate foil? And it's really satisfying? Well, there's that. And then there's this - Sombras e chocolates (joaninha) by Lourdes Castro (1965)

- I also couldn't resist this - Life Class B by (the admittedly British) Allen Jones (1968) - which really wouldn't look out of place in Oliver Bonas.

Just yes to it all.

NOLA

At the very beginning of this month, I found some pretty prints of New Orleans architecture by Magda Boreysza in a teeny shop next door to our hip hotel. Here's an beaut example that really captures the character and soul of one particular home:

Made me nostalgic about the Kiwi houses I tried to draw here and determined to get drawing back into my routine. 

Museu das Artes de Sintra

Have been doing a lot of travelling this month, between Leeds, Lisbon, Magoito, Madrid, Miami and New Orleans, but managed to sneak in a visit to Museu das Artes de Sintra.

Found this cement rucksack that sums up how heavy my bags have been feeling: 

Also saw this lovely (badly photographed) complimentary set up:

And this sculptural piece, which was reminiscent of the nearby gardens at Quinta da Regaleira:

They love the laughter and they love the living..

Made it to the Moomin Tove Jansson exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery this month. It was a gorgeous retrospective of her work (not just the mooooomins), full of humour in the face of despair and respect toward nature and diversity. I loved finding her integrity evident in her choice of commissions, such as this Christmas card for Unicef (1981) 💛

Here’s a few illegal photos I managed to snap before being told off. I may or may not have missed the ❌ 📷 signs..

After Party (1941) 👇 - The range of emotions reminded me of Munch's The Dance of Life (1925) (seen at SFMOMA last Sept)

 

Self Portrait (1975) 👇 - Her last ever painting, loaded with pained wisdom and starkly contrasting with earlier fresh-faced and determined self portraits.

Sketch for The Last Dragon In The World (1962) 👇

And a familiar summertime scene.. 👇