DEL KATHRYN BARTON, LOUISE PARAMOR, CALLUM PRESTON

My favourite part of the whole show! This wall of collages was really gorgeous 

The hours that went towards all this! 

Yesterday, I spent the day with my friend Hayley looking at galleries. I guess I've always been pretty close with all matters concerning Art as I've known a lot of artists but I've never really been super, super into it as I am now since I began painting. Now, I see art in a whole new way. Other people's art is like a learning resource for me now. A way of helping me find a better way to paint or to just provide a different perspective altogether.

We were both really impressed with the things we saw. Sometimes Art can get too intellectual and boring and you can feel very ousted by the jargon and the 'in-knowledge' so when I see colour and glitter and just something fun and youthful, I really get excited. I love colourful art. I just love to be delighted visually and colour is a very fast way to delight the senses. If you're in Melbourne, then I really recommend checking out NGV Australia to see Del Kathryn Barton and Louise Paramor's exhibitions. They were both really terrific. You feel very invited into their work just by looking at it.

Del Kathryn Barton's drawings section of her exhibition

Louise Paramor's exhibit : Palace of the Republic

Louise Paramor's exhibition reminded me very much of my 'aesthetic' and taste back in 2012-13. All the toy-like, block-like figures really harked back to the kinds of colours and shapes which I liked to paint and use when I started dabbling in painting a couple of years back. The vastness of the exhibition was impressive. I mean, it was literally vast. The room stretched quite far and the artist has managed to fill a good proportion of the room with these inventive looking objects that I'm pretty sure she has found from hard rubbish and other sources she's dug up.

The toy-like atmosphere was very fun to be a part of 

I got wind of Callum Preston's Milk Bar installation via Instagram and I was glad that Hayley knew what I was going on about with regards to it. We headed over to the RVCA gallery in Collingwood to have a look and it bought back very personal memories for me. In the early 2000's my parents ran a milk bar which had everything stocked in this terrific mock version he has made.

Again, I marvelled at the hours which would've been put towards this installation piece. My favourite section was the magazines rack which I snapped a picture of which you can see below. I feel like at times, there can be a fear from some artists to create work that can seem ' child-like ' ( maybe that's just me? ) but to be honest, they are my favourite pieces of Art because they are fun. I don't think that meaningfulness is necessarily tied up with serious, grey, depressing modes of expression, subject matter or even colour. I think it's more complicated than that. Or maybe even simpler.

My favourite part of the exhibition. Who doesn't remember all those magazines that girls used to love when they were teens like Dolly and Girlfriend? I used to wait eagerly every month for the new issue. 

If you have time, I really recommend both of these exhibits. Information can be found for

NGV here and Callum Preston's milk bar here