Latest news with #NationalGalleryofVictoria
The Advertiser
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
6 top travel deals of the week: save up to $2000 per person on tours in Asia
NOW Check out creations by Martin Grant - one of Australia's most successful fashion designers and dresser of Hollywood stars such as Cate Blanchett and Emma Stone - at the eponymous exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. WHEN: Until January 26; COMING UP More than 35 events will be part of Meet the Makers South Coast Festival, which will take place in and around Milton in country NSW. Highlights include an afternoon event featuring canapes by 10 "makers", and a wine-blending workshop and lunch at Cupitt's Estate Winery. WHEN: Every weekend in September; LATER Bands such as the Preatures, Cat Empire, the Waifs, King Stingray, Little Birdy and Cosmic Psychos will perform at Queenscliff Music Festival in Victoria alongside solo talent like Thelma Plum. WHEN: November 28-30;
Canberra Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Canberra Times
6 top travel deals of the week: save up to $2000 per person on tours in Asia
NOW Check out creations by Martin Grant - one of Australia's most successful fashion designers and dresser of Hollywood stars such as Cate Blanchett and Emma Stone - at the eponymous exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. WHEN: Until January 26; COMING UP More than 35 events will be part of Meet the Makers South Coast Festival, which will take place in and around Milton in country NSW. Highlights include an afternoon event featuring canapes by 10 "makers", and a wine-blending workshop and lunch at Cupitt's Estate Winery. WHEN: Every weekend in September; LATER Bands such as the Preatures, Cat Empire, the Waifs, King Stingray, Little Birdy and Cosmic Psychos will perform at Queenscliff Music Festival in Victoria alongside solo talent like Thelma Plum. WHEN: November 28-30;
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Janet Dawson was told to ‘stick to one' thing. Instead, she broke all the rules
The first thing that strikes you about Janet Dawson is her voice, deep and resonant, a voice from another era. But the artist, aged 90, is not at all stuffy. 'I'm a lucky old bat,' she says by way of introduction when we meet at her home on a sprawling bush property in Ocean Grove on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. Dawson lives in a low-slung, 1970s modernist home with exposed brick walls and long rows of large windows that look onto eucalypts, shrubs and lawn. Her studio, or 'pod' as she likes to call it, is in a sheltered corner of the garden. Clad in corrugated iron, the studio is crammed with paintings and drawings, some finished, some not, Dawson's art books, and remnants of her former life in rural New South Wales. Above the creative clutter rises an incongruously giant white sculpture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse that Dawson bought from a nearby furniture warehouse. 'We've got to find a home for Mickey and Minnie because I love them so much,' Dawson says, her intensely brown eyes flashing with a hint of mischief, just like the photos of her as a younger artist. I can tell this will be fun. But the interview almost didn't happen. Dawson was in hospital recently after a fall. She's recovered remarkably well and sits comfortably in her armchair, ready to chat about her six-decade-plus career as an artist, print-maker and organic farmer ahead of her times. I visit her on a sunny winter's morning ahead of the first major retrospective of her work, opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on July 19, a recognition long overdue. Dawson made her name in the 1960s as a superstar of abstraction, one of only three women included in the National Gallery of Victoria's landmark 1968 exhibition The Field. One of the key works in that exhibition, Rollascape 2, will be shown in the AGNSW retrospective. It's big, bold and yellow, a series of exuberant curves that unfurl for three luscious metres. 'That's one of my favourite paintings,' Dawson says as I show her an image of it on my laptop. 'I think it works very well, and the fact that it means absolutely nothing is terrific.' Dawson doesn't play by the rules, never has. As a younger artist, she'd often be pressed by critics to explain the 'meaning' of her abstract works. She'd patiently respond, in her cultivated tones, that 'meaning' didn't reside in the story a painting told, but in a painting's shapes and colours, and the emotions and sensations it provoked. When Rollascape 2 was exhibited again at the NGV in The Field Revisited in 2018, Dawson described it as 'an expression of a painting trying to escape from the prison of the square'. That splendidly vigorous image could equally apply to the artist herself. Dawson has escaped categorisation, followed her own artistic instinct, regardless of fashion. When American critic Clement Greenberg visited Australia in the 1960s, he told her to 'stick to one' thing. She ignored the advice. 'One of the great strengths of her work is that she didn't conform,' says exhibition curator Denise Mimmocchi, the AGNSW's acting head of Australian art. That it has taken so long for a state gallery to stage a retrospective of her work may have something to do with Dawson's resistance to neat definition. Her gender, and eventual retreat from the centres of art in Sydney and Melbourne may also have played a part, Mimmocchi says. After coming to prominence as a pioneer of abstraction, Dawson faded from the limelight as she moved towards realism in works inspired by the natural world. The shift coincided with her move to Binalong in regional New South Wales in the 1970s with her late husband Michael Boddy, a Yorkshire-born actor and playwright. Out bush, Dawson didn't for a moment miss the art cliques of Melbourne and Sydney. 'Oh, they were awful,' Dawson tells me, pulling a face. 'It's nothing to do with artists, it's all to do with …' She completes the sentence with a series of comical gestures that indicate the tedious snobbishness of it all, sending me into fits of laughter. We're sitting in a small back room of the rambling house that she shares with her extended family – niece Penny, Penny's partner Lee, and Dawson's sister-in-law Jill, wife of Dawson's late brother Cameron. He'd be pleased to see them all here listening in as Dawson tells stories about her adventure-filled life. It was Cameron's vision to build a house with enough rooms for several generations to live comfortably together. Dawson's works are scattered throughout. In the room where we sit, there's a buoyant still life of a leafy, broken-off branch of a loquat tree brimming with velvety-yellow fruit that spill across a bustling domestic table. At the bottom right of the composition, we glimpse the artist's hand capturing the moment. The pastel work was created at Binalong, at Dawson and Boddy's rural property, Scribble Rock, where the couple lived for almost 40 years. In style, the loquat painting couldn't be more different to Rollascape 2, and yet both works share a sense of energy, motion and light. Mimmocchi tells me that even when Dawson was 'meant to be doing colour field painting, which was all about the flat surface, she instilled elements of light and painterliness into her aesthetic'. Featuring more than 80 works, the AGNSW retrospective reveals an artist of versatility, skill, and moods, unafraid to range across artistic styles, from the cascading abstraction of Rollascape 2, to the meditative realism of Moon at dawn through a telescope (2000), to glorious still lifes such as Scribble Rock pomegranates (1999). What first inspired Dawson to take up art? 'Very simply, my mother,' Dawson tells me. 'She was gifted. When she was a young girl she thought that she would be an artist, but then of course she met my father and became a wife instead.' Dawson was born in Sydney in 1935, to parents Olga and Kingsley. Before she had children, Olga had attended Julian Ashton's esteemed Sydney Art School, whose alumni include William Dobell and Joshua Smith. With her knowledge of art, Olga recognised her daughter's unusual talent and encouraged it. She even sought the advice of state gallery directors, including then AGNSW head Will Ashton who recommended supplying the child with paper and pencils – 'no rulers, no rubbers, no copying' – and leaving her be. 'I loved drawing,' Dawson says. 'I drew and drew and drew. She used to give me big papers and charcoals. It was normal in our house that I always lay on the floor and drew, and this, I think, was intended to give me confidence right at the beginning. All my gift comes from my mother.' They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. When the family moved to Melbourne in 1940, Dawson began Saturday morning art classes with the realist painter Harold Septimus Power, at his studio on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins Street. Dawson was the only child in the class, aged 11. 'He was a lovely, funny old fella,' Dawson says. 'He was a very good artist, wonderful training. To me, his studio was the beginning of my art work. There was this little easel – it was really funny – the other big artists all around me. I just remember it being very comical. They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. No, I shouldn't be rude. They respected that a child was to be taught early.' Dawson went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. A tonalist self-portrait created in the early 1950s while she was a student there, depicts a poised, beautiful young woman, silk scarf knotted around her neck, confidently meeting the viewer's gaze. (Dawson would later model for Italian-born fashion photographer Bruno Benini in a series of studio portraits and shoots in Melbourne.) In 1956, Dawson won the NGV Travelling Scholarship, another significant step in her career. She studied at London's Slade School of Fine Art, where, frustrated with her attempts at painting, she began to explore lithography and printmaking. Her passion for painting was reignited when she saw The New American Painting exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1959, on tour from New York's Museum of Modern Art, and featuring the work of abstractionists including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Adolph Gottlieb. At Slade, Dawson won another scholarship, which funded further travel through Europe, including a six-month stay in the small village of Anticoli Corrado, north of Rome. The area's picturesque valleys, hills and rolling clouds spurred Dawson's first significant series of abstract landscapes. 'A painter can live here without anyone thinking him queer or bohemian – I'm a farmer – I'm a painter – same thing,' she wrote home to her family while living in Anticoli Corrado. In her catalogue essay, Mimmocchi notes that these thoughts 'had a prescient correspondence' to the life that Dawson later found at Binalong. In 1961, Dawson returned to Melbourne and had her first solo exhibition at the innovative Gallery A, in Flinders Street, founded by designer Max Hutchinson and sculptor Clement Meadmore to promote modern art and design. When Gallery A moved to a larger space in South Yarra, Dawson established a print workshop there and became the manager and master printer. In the following years Dawson also worked on props and sets for the experimental Emerald Hill Theatre company in South Melbourne, and in 1965 met her future husband, Michael Boddy, there. 'He wasn't fat then. He had a lovely face, really. I thought he was beautiful, actually beautiful, that's all,' Dawson says. 'I certainly rejoiced in his presence, and looked forward to his presence, and made sure that when I knew he was coming to the gallery, I'd be there, all that sort of thing.' In a living room in another part of the house hangs Dawson's 1973 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Boddy. It was her first Archibald entry, and she became the third woman to win the prize in its 52-year history. She depicts Boddy as a gentle giant in a lilac t-shirt and worn hat, fingers clasped on his generous belly as he reads. Behind him fans, a rake and a spade, symbols of their rural existence. The painting won't be in the retrospective, nor will another blazingly good portrait, Summer 1986, in which the older Boddy – tall, fleshy, bespectacled, grumpy – lies naked, bar slippers and socks, in a pose reminiscent of Monet's Olympia. Boddy said he much preferred it the Archibald-winning portrait. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works. The 1973 portrait has just been returned to Dawson after being on tour for several years in the Archie 100 exhibition. Mimmocchi had originally included Summer 1986 in her loan requests (it's in the National Portrait Gallery collection), but after much thought, decided it didn't 'fit' the retrospective, 'both physically within the space but also given its overpowering presence.' In a more subtle tribute to the significant men in Dawson's life, Mimmocchi has included a smaller pencil portrait of Boddy, and one of Cameron. Dawson and Boddy married in 1968, the same year that Dawson's abstract works would be celebrated in The Field. In 1974, the couple moved to Binalong, and three years later ensconced themselves even further in the bush, buying the property they named Scribble Rock. Boddy famously remarked: 'Our marriage is one long conversation. We moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.' 'That was absolutely true,' Dawson confirms. 'Yes, we just rattled on together for years.' She describes the move to Scribble Rock as the 'absolute coming together' of her work. The natural world was a fount of inspiration, and so too the bounty that she and Boddy grew. Cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, onions, sprouting potatoes and more inhabit Dawson's wondrous still lifes. Dead animals feature too – a kookaburra, a young wedge-tailed eagle, a hare, a tawny frogmouth – all rendered with exquisite care, homages to the transience of life, and evocative of 17th century Dutch still lifes. Dawson tells me that Boddy would often bring the dead creatures in for her to paint. 'He'd say 'there's a dead bird down there, I think you'd like it, go and get it or I'll go and get it for you if you like'. So he would bring it up for me, or I'd go and get it, and then we'd talk about it, and he might even write something about it.' At Scribble Rock, Dawson and Boddy immersed themselves in the local community and produced a newsletter, Kitchen Talk, which Boddy would write, and Dawson illustrate, promoting the principles of organic farming. We look at one of the abstract landscapes Dawson created in Binalong, Balgalal series 5 – Sunday Morning (1975), named for the creek that ran through Scribble Rock, a vast triptych that stretches for almost four metres. 'Well, they're not really abstract,' Dawson corrects me. 'They're trees,' she says. 'They're living things, and you actually see that – that's out here and that's behind it, and that one's there, and that's next to it and coming that way,' she says. 'So when you start looking you see that they're actual solid tree shapes, but they're just simplified.' Loading After Boddy's death in 2014, Dawson moved back to the Binalong township before relocating to Ocean Grove in 2016 to be with family. Her recent fall has kept her from the studio of late, but she's keen to go back. 'When everything settles, I'd love to go and work in the pod,' Dawson says. 'I feel I'm sort of ungracious by not working in it. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works,' she says, emphasising the sentiment with a theatrical growl. What will the works be about? 'I don't know,' she says, and makes another long, low, growling sound, as though summoning ideas. 'But it's coming.'
The Age
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Janet Dawson was told to ‘stick to one' thing. Instead, she broke all the rules
The first thing that strikes you about Janet Dawson is her voice, deep and resonant, a voice from another era. But the artist, aged 90, is not at all stuffy. 'I'm a lucky old bat,' she says by way of introduction when we meet at her home on a sprawling bush property in Ocean Grove on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. Dawson lives in a low-slung, 1970s modernist home with exposed brick walls and long rows of large windows that look onto eucalypts, shrubs and lawn. Her studio, or 'pod' as she likes to call it, is in a sheltered corner of the garden. Clad in corrugated iron, the studio is crammed with paintings and drawings, some finished, some not, Dawson's art books, and remnants of her former life in rural New South Wales. Above the creative clutter rises an incongruously giant white sculpture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse that Dawson bought from a nearby furniture warehouse. 'We've got to find a home for Mickey and Minnie because I love them so much,' Dawson says, her intensely brown eyes flashing with a hint of mischief, just like the photos of her as a younger artist. I can tell this will be fun. But the interview almost didn't happen. Dawson was in hospital recently after a fall. She's recovered remarkably well and sits comfortably in her armchair, ready to chat about her six-decade-plus career as an artist, print-maker and organic farmer ahead of her times. I visit her on a sunny winter's morning ahead of the first major retrospective of her work, opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on July 19, a recognition long overdue. Dawson made her name in the 1960s as a superstar of abstraction, one of only three women included in the National Gallery of Victoria's landmark 1968 exhibition The Field. One of the key works in that exhibition, Rollascape 2, will be shown in the AGNSW retrospective. It's big, bold and yellow, a series of exuberant curves that unfurl for three luscious metres. 'That's one of my favourite paintings,' Dawson says as I show her an image of it on my laptop. 'I think it works very well, and the fact that it means absolutely nothing is terrific.' Dawson doesn't play by the rules, never has. As a younger artist, she'd often be pressed by critics to explain the 'meaning' of her abstract works. She'd patiently respond, in her cultivated tones, that 'meaning' didn't reside in the story a painting told, but in a painting's shapes and colours, and the emotions and sensations it provoked. When Rollascape 2 was exhibited again at the NGV in The Field Revisited in 2018, Dawson described it as 'an expression of a painting trying to escape from the prison of the square'. That splendidly vigorous image could equally apply to the artist herself. Dawson has escaped categorisation, followed her own artistic instinct, regardless of fashion. When American critic Clement Greenberg visited Australia in the 1960s, he told her to 'stick to one' thing. She ignored the advice. 'One of the great strengths of her work is that she didn't conform,' says exhibition curator Denise Mimmocchi, the AGNSW's acting head of Australian art. That it has taken so long for a state gallery to stage a retrospective of her work may have something to do with Dawson's resistance to neat definition. Her gender, and eventual retreat from the centres of art in Sydney and Melbourne may also have played a part, Mimmocchi says. After coming to prominence as a pioneer of abstraction, Dawson faded from the limelight as she moved towards realism in works inspired by the natural world. The shift coincided with her move to Binalong in regional New South Wales in the 1970s with her late husband Michael Boddy, a Yorkshire-born actor and playwright. Out bush, Dawson didn't for a moment miss the art cliques of Melbourne and Sydney. 'Oh, they were awful,' Dawson tells me, pulling a face. 'It's nothing to do with artists, it's all to do with …' She completes the sentence with a series of comical gestures that indicate the tedious snobbishness of it all, sending me into fits of laughter. We're sitting in a small back room of the rambling house that she shares with her extended family – niece Penny, Penny's partner Lee, and Dawson's sister-in-law Jill, wife of Dawson's late brother Cameron. He'd be pleased to see them all here listening in as Dawson tells stories about her adventure-filled life. It was Cameron's vision to build a house with enough rooms for several generations to live comfortably together. Dawson's works are scattered throughout. In the room where we sit, there's a buoyant still life of a leafy, broken-off branch of a loquat tree brimming with velvety-yellow fruit that spill across a bustling domestic table. At the bottom right of the composition, we glimpse the artist's hand capturing the moment. The pastel work was created at Binalong, at Dawson and Boddy's rural property, Scribble Rock, where the couple lived for almost 40 years. In style, the loquat painting couldn't be more different to Rollascape 2, and yet both works share a sense of energy, motion and light. Mimmocchi tells me that even when Dawson was 'meant to be doing colour field painting, which was all about the flat surface, she instilled elements of light and painterliness into her aesthetic'. Featuring more than 80 works, the AGNSW retrospective reveals an artist of versatility, skill, and moods, unafraid to range across artistic styles, from the cascading abstraction of Rollascape 2, to the meditative realism of Moon at dawn through a telescope (2000), to glorious still lifes such as Scribble Rock pomegranates (1999). What first inspired Dawson to take up art? 'Very simply, my mother,' Dawson tells me. 'She was gifted. When she was a young girl she thought that she would be an artist, but then of course she met my father and became a wife instead.' Dawson was born in Sydney in 1935, to parents Olga and Kingsley. Before she had children, Olga had attended Julian Ashton's esteemed Sydney Art School, whose alumni include William Dobell and Joshua Smith. With her knowledge of art, Olga recognised her daughter's unusual talent and encouraged it. She even sought the advice of state gallery directors, including then AGNSW head Will Ashton who recommended supplying the child with paper and pencils – 'no rulers, no rubbers, no copying' – and leaving her be. 'I loved drawing,' Dawson says. 'I drew and drew and drew. She used to give me big papers and charcoals. It was normal in our house that I always lay on the floor and drew, and this, I think, was intended to give me confidence right at the beginning. All my gift comes from my mother.' They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. When the family moved to Melbourne in 1940, Dawson began Saturday morning art classes with the realist painter Harold Septimus Power, at his studio on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins Street. Dawson was the only child in the class, aged 11. 'He was a lovely, funny old fella,' Dawson says. 'He was a very good artist, wonderful training. To me, his studio was the beginning of my art work. There was this little easel – it was really funny – the other big artists all around me. I just remember it being very comical. They just thought I was a silly little tweet, you know, dear little thing. No, I shouldn't be rude. They respected that a child was to be taught early.' Dawson went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. A tonalist self-portrait created in the early 1950s while she was a student there, depicts a poised, beautiful young woman, silk scarf knotted around her neck, confidently meeting the viewer's gaze. (Dawson would later model for Italian-born fashion photographer Bruno Benini in a series of studio portraits and shoots in Melbourne.) In 1956, Dawson won the NGV Travelling Scholarship, another significant step in her career. She studied at London's Slade School of Fine Art, where, frustrated with her attempts at painting, she began to explore lithography and printmaking. Her passion for painting was reignited when she saw The New American Painting exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1959, on tour from New York's Museum of Modern Art, and featuring the work of abstractionists including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Adolph Gottlieb. At Slade, Dawson won another scholarship, which funded further travel through Europe, including a six-month stay in the small village of Anticoli Corrado, north of Rome. The area's picturesque valleys, hills and rolling clouds spurred Dawson's first significant series of abstract landscapes. 'A painter can live here without anyone thinking him queer or bohemian – I'm a farmer – I'm a painter – same thing,' she wrote home to her family while living in Anticoli Corrado. In her catalogue essay, Mimmocchi notes that these thoughts 'had a prescient correspondence' to the life that Dawson later found at Binalong. In 1961, Dawson returned to Melbourne and had her first solo exhibition at the innovative Gallery A, in Flinders Street, founded by designer Max Hutchinson and sculptor Clement Meadmore to promote modern art and design. When Gallery A moved to a larger space in South Yarra, Dawson established a print workshop there and became the manager and master printer. In the following years Dawson also worked on props and sets for the experimental Emerald Hill Theatre company in South Melbourne, and in 1965 met her future husband, Michael Boddy, there. 'He wasn't fat then. He had a lovely face, really. I thought he was beautiful, actually beautiful, that's all,' Dawson says. 'I certainly rejoiced in his presence, and looked forward to his presence, and made sure that when I knew he was coming to the gallery, I'd be there, all that sort of thing.' In a living room in another part of the house hangs Dawson's 1973 Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Boddy. It was her first Archibald entry, and she became the third woman to win the prize in its 52-year history. She depicts Boddy as a gentle giant in a lilac t-shirt and worn hat, fingers clasped on his generous belly as he reads. Behind him fans, a rake and a spade, symbols of their rural existence. The painting won't be in the retrospective, nor will another blazingly good portrait, Summer 1986, in which the older Boddy – tall, fleshy, bespectacled, grumpy – lies naked, bar slippers and socks, in a pose reminiscent of Monet's Olympia. Boddy said he much preferred it the Archibald-winning portrait. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works. The 1973 portrait has just been returned to Dawson after being on tour for several years in the Archie 100 exhibition. Mimmocchi had originally included Summer 1986 in her loan requests (it's in the National Portrait Gallery collection), but after much thought, decided it didn't 'fit' the retrospective, 'both physically within the space but also given its overpowering presence.' In a more subtle tribute to the significant men in Dawson's life, Mimmocchi has included a smaller pencil portrait of Boddy, and one of Cameron. Dawson and Boddy married in 1968, the same year that Dawson's abstract works would be celebrated in The Field. In 1974, the couple moved to Binalong, and three years later ensconced themselves even further in the bush, buying the property they named Scribble Rock. Boddy famously remarked: 'Our marriage is one long conversation. We moved to the bush so we could talk to each other without so many interruptions.' 'That was absolutely true,' Dawson confirms. 'Yes, we just rattled on together for years.' She describes the move to Scribble Rock as the 'absolute coming together' of her work. The natural world was a fount of inspiration, and so too the bounty that she and Boddy grew. Cauliflowers, cabbages, turnips, onions, sprouting potatoes and more inhabit Dawson's wondrous still lifes. Dead animals feature too – a kookaburra, a young wedge-tailed eagle, a hare, a tawny frogmouth – all rendered with exquisite care, homages to the transience of life, and evocative of 17th century Dutch still lifes. Dawson tells me that Boddy would often bring the dead creatures in for her to paint. 'He'd say 'there's a dead bird down there, I think you'd like it, go and get it or I'll go and get it for you if you like'. So he would bring it up for me, or I'd go and get it, and then we'd talk about it, and he might even write something about it.' At Scribble Rock, Dawson and Boddy immersed themselves in the local community and produced a newsletter, Kitchen Talk, which Boddy would write, and Dawson illustrate, promoting the principles of organic farming. We look at one of the abstract landscapes Dawson created in Binalong, Balgalal series 5 – Sunday Morning (1975), named for the creek that ran through Scribble Rock, a vast triptych that stretches for almost four metres. 'Well, they're not really abstract,' Dawson corrects me. 'They're trees,' she says. 'They're living things, and you actually see that – that's out here and that's behind it, and that one's there, and that's next to it and coming that way,' she says. 'So when you start looking you see that they're actual solid tree shapes, but they're just simplified.' Loading After Boddy's death in 2014, Dawson moved back to the Binalong township before relocating to Ocean Grove in 2016 to be with family. Her recent fall has kept her from the studio of late, but she's keen to go back. 'When everything settles, I'd love to go and work in the pod,' Dawson says. 'I feel I'm sort of ungracious by not working in it. What I'd like to do is a really honkedy-donk-donk last set of works,' she says, emphasising the sentiment with a theatrical growl. What will the works be about? 'I don't know,' she says, and makes another long, low, growling sound, as though summoning ideas. 'But it's coming.'
The Spinoff
16-07-2025
- The Spinoff
Travel Diary: A winter weekend in Melbourne – the next best thing to European summer?
Rebecca Murphy recaps her first trip overseas with her husband, and first time out of the country since the Covid-19 lockdowns. No hot girl summer for me, no sipping Chablis in France with the warm sun on my back. Instead, it was a long weekend in Melbourne to get a change of scenery. Make no mistake, she was as cold as a wintry walk on Dunedin's St Clair beach. What a weekend though – art, pints, walks and kransky hotdogs with some peak thrifting on Chapel Street. Here's the recap. Where did you go and why? We flew from Auckland to Melbourne for four days. I've only been married for two and a half years, and my husband and I have basically just been in deep with kids for what feels like forever. He had a work trip coming up, and I decided to go along. It was our first vacay out of the country, which felt really overdue. How tricky was it to get there? Easy! Although leaving our dog Albert felt heavy on our hearts, especially because we left early in the morning. My sister did swoop in to his rescue however, to dogsit. Roughly how much did you spend getting there and back? About $750 for me. Which airline did you fly with? How was the flight? We flew Air New Zealand. The flights were good although I was too polite on the way over and failed to negotiate my arm rest. What was the highlight? Without a doubt the highlight was going to the National Gallery of Victoria to see the French Impressionists exhibition. This was high on our list of things to do while we were in Melbourne as some of our favourite artists were on display. The exhibition turned out to be a bit of an emotional journey for us both. I felt a bit overwhelmed at times. My late dad loved to drag us along to galleries as kids. He had a deep appreciation for art, particularly the Impressionist movement. I saw so many paintings we had talked about over the years, and one of our favourites by Claude Monet. I felt my dad standing beside me at times and that felt so special, he would have liked to have been there. My husband's late mother also loved to paint, particularly the sky. So, for him there was also much to enjoy and reflect on with love. We took so much in, there were quotes from all of the artists. It felt like an exclusive club. One quote I loved by Eugène Boudin: 'To bathe in the depths of the sky. To express the gentleness of clouds… to set the blue of the sky alight. I can feel all this within me, poised and awaiting expression. What joy and yet what torment.' All in all, a beautiful gallery. Melburnians are lucky to have such a glorious space to enjoy. Was there a lowlight? Not really, I was just happy to be away and enjoying a city that felt a bit new with my best friend. Maybe the lowlight was that it was bloody freezing. Did you spot any cool animals? No. Cool animals in Australia? Everything kills you. I am glad I saw none. I saw some beautiful big gum trees, however, and there were also a few plant shops around where we stayed. They had lots of buzzy cacti on display which was cool. Catch any sports? We went to the pub on our last night to eat a chicken parmi and watch AFL. I don't understand the rules though, so it was a bit average. That was about it. Also, chicken parmi is mental. It's a no from me. Where did you stay? We booked an Airbnb in Prahran. In my opinion, Prahran has all you need. One end has beautiful restaurants and boutique shops. The other end has the famed Chapel Street which has ultimate Karangahape Road vibes. It's full of character, colourful people, and the best vintage shopping. I took full advantage of this and came home with some fun new things from Vinnies. The famous Prahran market is also an absolute delight. It's bursting with delicious food, flowers, cheese, there's an oyster bar – it's got bloody everything. We shopped there most days and took lots back to our apartment to snack on with huge glasses of wine. So good, cannot recommend highly enough. I love to sit and watch at places like the market. There were just so many different cultures there, families working together, it was a really beautiful insight into the lives of others. Also, I was asked countless times where I was staying and had to repeat myself. In the end I just stopped trying to pronounce 'Prahran' and said I was staying on Chapel Street. Did you meet any interesting characters? Or bump into someone you already knew? I caught up with my beautiful cousin who has been living in Melbourne for what feels like far too long. Her husband owns a cafe in Balaclava called walltwo80, hands down the best coffee we had on our trip. I had three which made me anxious, but we walked it off in St Kilda. I thought this part of town used to be a vibe, but it felt a bit rank and touristy with that sort of really bad design that so many seaside towns in Australia have (i.e. The Goldy). Anyways, bloody great coffee. Did anyone lend a hand or help you out? I helped out the woman next to me on the flight over by not complaining that she took BOTH armrests! Did you spot any celebrities? My husband saw Tim from the last season of MAFS. Haha. What was the best meal or snack you had? I had a chilli cheese kransky hotdog from Prahran Market. It was out the gate. I made my husband go and eat one when he finished work. So tasty. What items did you pack that you really needed? Long coat and wooly jerseys. It was freezing. Did you miss anything while you were away? Albert, I really missed Albert. What travel/holiday reads would you recommend for this destination? I started The Secret History by Donna Tartt which is so good. I also watched We Were Dangerous on the way over and absolutely loved it, a New Zealand film that I had wanted to see for ages. How easy was it to get around? We trammed, trained and got the Sky Bus. Getting around was very easy and quite cheap. Which was great because I wanted to spend money on things like delicious kai and not Ubers. Did you bring back any lollies or snacks? I brought back an obligatory snack range for my beautiful Spinoff colleagues. It's a tradition/rule in our office that you bring back snacks from the country you traveled to. Someone brought a bloody range of local newspapers back from the UK recently. Straight to jail. Snacks are essential.
