Arty Farty at Pataka

So after church yesterday, Rochelle and I went out with a couple from Mana Corps to a little cafe in Plimmerton for lunch. SSSSSOOOOOOO delicious and if I could remember the name, I would tell you so you could try it. We ate so much we nearly had to be rolled out, and the couple invited us to go to Pataka to look at an exhibition from a NZ artist William George Baker.

We went, and man I was so glad we did. I'm all arty farty inspired now to the point I even got out my paints and began a piece myself this afternoon!

Anywhos....Here's one of the biggest, and probably main attraction, of Baker's works. It's called 'The Lion' - not too sure why. It was huge. The funny thing is that I was telling Robert (our training principal) about the exhibition this morning and it turns out that our College owns it!! Ahaha. I wondered where the big painting from the foyer had disappeared to! It's in the exhibition!!

However, while I respect the huge amount of effort and time and money that would have gone into painting that huge thing, it's not really something I would spend money on personally. I just have different art tastes. But fortunately at Pataka, there was more than one exhibition on, so we meandered around. My favourite hobby being renaming the art pieces to whatever I would have called them had I done them. And, I admit, I think some of my ideas were better than the actual ones! (ahhhhh....so modest!)

This sculpture, by Judy Darragh, absolutely fascinated Rochelle and I. Yeah, so once again, something I wouldn't have in my house (only partly due to the fact it would take over half of my house - literally, it's huge!) but was incredible to look at. Yuo couldn't help but be drawn to it. Bottles, ping pong balls, records, styrofoamy stuff, paint, cork, felt, wool ... wow. She used just about anything and it was fascinating.

This top painting, Crash by Sara Hughes, was HUGE. (The colours are much brighter in person.) Rochelle absolutely loved it. I thought it was cool until I broke artist rule number one and went right up to it to have a close up look and felt sick. Literally. I'm not kidding.

While it's not the kind of stuff I do myself, I quite like the digital/modern/whatever you call it stuff. (Ok so I'm not an art student!) I haven't yet pinpointed what it is about them but there's something I find intriguing. This one below caught my attention. Episode 0015 by Kelcy Taratoa. (Actually I thought the artist's name was pretty cool too.)

Then there was all these mixed media pieces, which I inspected closely. I've never been able to do mixed media but if this arty inspired period of my life lasts long enough, maybe I will experiment again. We'll see.

So yeah, fun afternoon. If you are in the Porirua or greater Wellington area, I fully recommend checking it out. (And best of all, it's FREE!!) Go to the website link above to find out more details.