Green Shoots and the Biennale

The calendar says that it is officially Spring, and though it remains a wee bit chilly, I am inclined to risk grave disappointment by believing. Signs include:

1. <---- I saw one of these today.
2. Last weekend, while in the direct sunlight, I briefly de-fleeced down to a t-shirt.
3. My allergies have begun.
4. I chose coral for today's pedicure.
5. Lately, I have a lot more company on the Botanic Garden lawn at lunch.
6. I have a sudden burning desire to purchase a pair of espadrilles.

Another sign of Spring is that last weekend, we took this season's first trip to Cockatoo Island. The occasion for this trip was the Biennale of Sydney. The Biennale is an art exhibition that, as the name implies, takes place every two years. Cockatoo Island is one of a few locations around town with exhibitions, but certainly the most fun to visit.

We met up with our friends ATL Girl and ATL husband who regaled us with tales of their recent trip to Vanuatu and adventurously braved with us the sprawling, sometimes very strange world of the Biennale. Exhibits were all over the island, particularly in the old factory buildings and tunnels.

In the first building we entered, there was a quite odd collection of seemingly random objects, some on a stage, some in photographs, and some in sculptural form. On the way out, we read a sign explaining that the exhibit has something to do with puppet theatre, which began to make a bit more sense, but until then we were rather perplexed. Visitors were invited to write their thoughts on paper left on a table, and this was my favorite:

There was plenty of weird. There was also some marvelous,

Guests could pull on these delicate little threads and light up a piece of this wonderland.

...some lovely,

...some whimsical,

...some Gothic,

...some electrifying,

... and some grandiose.

We made a valiant effort, but I'm not sure that we saw everything. In fact, I know we missed at least one performance art piece that involved standing quietly in line for a long time to be admitted entry into a small building. Seeing a line, we queued up like good little sheep, not knowing what it was for. Only after a good five minutes of waiting (and whispering, as we were shushed by the cranky bag rule-abiding citizen in front of us) did we decide that the whole thing might be an study in crowd dynamics and that it was not worth our while to stick around to find out if we were in fact the spectator or subject matter of the experiment. 

ATL Girl was responsible for what I considered to by the most wryly apropos quote of the day - "it's amazing what you can do with an X-Acto knife." I really did enjoy the whole experience, but there was a bit of that feeling about parts of the exhibition. Some was wonderful and some a bit silly or unpolished, but for just the price of a ferry ticket, I'd say we more than got our day's worth of entertainment and enlightenment.

At the end of the day, we had almost an hour to kill before catching our ferry back, so we grabbed a (literal) patch of grass at the Island Bar and enjoyed a few bevvies and sunshine ... the Island Bar is my favorite harbinger of Spring approaching and, I hope, a sign of things to come.