I have two new reasons why Sydney is a wonderful city to live in.
Firstly, we now have food trucks. Which meant that yesterday, when Pete and I both had the afternoon free, we were able to pick Big Boy up from uni, drive to the Eat Art Truck in Pyrmont, and lunch alfresco in the sunshine.
If you live in Sydney, there is now a free iPhone app (simply called Sydney Food Trucks) which tracks the location of the food trucks at any given time…
Big Boy had the pulled pork with special barbeque sauce, and Pete and I shared the beef brisket with kimchee and chilli. They were both delicious!
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The second reason why Sydney is so fabulous: it has the White Rabbit Gallery.
You might recall that I’ve recently discovered that I love modern art. Our dear friend Roz is very knowledgeable in this area, and she recommended that we pay White Rabbit in Chippendale a visit.
The gallery is privately funded and free to the public. It houses the contemporary Chinese art collection of Kerr and Judith Nielson, one of the largest and most significant of its kind in the world, focusing primarily on works created after 2000.
The pieces on display are magnificent, and my iPhone photos don’t come close to doing them justice. Here are some of my favourites.
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Artist Li Hongbo works with the honeycombed paper technique traditionally employed in the production of Chinese lanterns and flowers. One of his creations was displayed at the Biennale exhibit at Cockatoo Island earlier this year.
For this piece, he and his assistants stacked and glued 30,000 sheets of paper into two large blocks, which Li then sculpted with an electric saw into two identical figures. This is the first one…
…and this is the second one, stretched out to more than 30 metres in length…
It was hard to capture it all in a photo, but here’s a closeup of a foot. When the exhibition is over, the extended figure will be refolded back into (almost) its original shape…
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This piece by artist Liao Chien-Chung of Taiwan made me smile and smile. At first glance, it appears to be a motorbike…
What it is, in fact, is a pedal bicycle.
The artist explains that as a child, he had always wanted a Harley Davidson, but could never afford one. So he did the next best thing and built himself a bicycle that looks like a Harley. The video which forms part of the installation shows the artist pedaling his creation around a park…
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When we walked onto the top floor of the gallery, I noticed that a television crew were filming a dynamic exhibit at the opposite side of the room. This sculpture was superimposed with a projection of the artist speaking…
I tiptoed around the other exhibits, trying not to disturb them…
It wasn’t until Pete gave me a nudge that I realised that the film crew were wax figures, and part of the display. They were extraordinarily lifelike (and to be fair, I can be a bit thick sometimes). Artist Zhou Xiaohu seeks to highlight media fakery by faking the media.
The White Rabbit guide (there are a couple on every floor) told us that when the artwork was initially unveiled, Zhou called a news conference, and many of the media attendees didn’t even notice that they were mingling with wax dummies…
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Young Mongolian artist Gao Rong created this reproduction of the entrance to her childhood home completely from padded cloth and thread (including the pipes, doors and switch box). All the rust, peeling paint and graffiti are embroidered…
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Dust is a full room installation with 210 tiny replicas of household items, handmade by artist Cong Lingqi, strung to represent motes of dust. The light creates shadows on the wall behind it…
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Finally, these woven wire sculptures by Shi Jindian grace the ground floor of the gallery. The jeep and the side-car motorbike are the result of hours of meticulous work, created by the artist sheathing all the parts of the machine in wire, and then painstakingly extracting them, leaving just the wire shell behind. The motorbike alone took three years to complete…
The detailing on both pieces is extraordinary – even the tread of the tyres has been reproduced…
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The White Rabbit Gallery is open Thursday to Sunday, and is located at 30 Balfour Street, Chippendale NSW. The entire contents are rehung twice a year, in February and August, during which time the gallery is closed.
There is also a tea house, decorated with old posters and bird cages…
…and a fabulous shop stocking all sorts of fun and quirky bits and pieces…
If you’re ever in Sydney and have a chance to pop in for a visit, I’d highly recommend it!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 