Today I met up with my lovely friend Mandie for a trip to the National Gallery of Victoria.  I haven’t seen Mandie in a while, and it was fantastic to spend the whole day with her.  I used to live with Mandie at college, and she was such fun to be around. I sometimes refer to Mandie as my ‘wife”, because at college during exam time, she used to make me dinner and we’d eat together, and then we’d watch T.V and then go to bed in separate rooms, so we were like a 1950’s husband and wife couple.

 

We had decided to go to the gallery and put on snooty voices and exclaim over all the paintings, and so I needed a posh outfit for the occasion.

 

I am wearing:

– Turquoise oriental dress (vintage)

– Leona Edminson fishnet tights

– Black patent leather heels from Nine West

– Green cocktail feather hair ornament (handmade)

– Blue lace gloves (antiques- these belonged to my great-grandmother).

– Black corset belt

– Diamante earrings from Diva.

 

It was a really fun day.  If you’ve never been to the National Gallery in Melbourne, you should totally check it out if you get the chance.  Most of the exhibits are free to the public, and there are several galleries filled with paintings, sculptures, artifacts and other exhibits.  We spent four hours there today and we still didn’t see everything.

When you first walk up to the gallery, you will notice that there is a giant wall of water that you walk past to enter.  It is a pretty breathtaking sight.

We checked out several of the galleries.  The first exhibit we looked at was a collection of the paintings of Gustave Moreau.  Moreau painted mythological and biblical creatures and characters, and he specialized in painting women and goddesses.  The collection was breathtaking, and we were practically silent the entire time we were in that gallery.  My favorite painting was one of three ladies and a unicorn, but I also loved some of the paintings of Solome dancing.

 

I couldn’t take any photos inside the gallery, but I took this photo of a poster outside which features one of Moreau’s paintings:

 

 

 

After that, we travelled up the escalator to the European gallery.  This featured three levels of European paintings, drawings, sculptures, books and decorative pieces.  It took us hours to work our way through each of the galleries.

 

We had a wonderful time.  Neither Mandie or I know anything at all about art, but we did our best to appreciate the works in the gallery.  In some of the paintings where people were pulling odd facial expressions, Mandie amused me by guessing at what noises the figures might be making.  We tried making up names for some of the paintings as well, which led to us breaking into fits of laughter and annoying some of the other patrons.  We clearly aren’t very cultured people, but we do know how to enjoy ourselves.