Hello, my name is Stuart Crawford, and I am a blogger.
I find personal blogs to be somewhat narcissistic, so please don't expect 'journalistic gold' about my travels in Hobart and Australia; rather, I think this thing could provide people who are interested an overall glimpse of what I am doing down here. IF people are interested that is, if not then there's no point in me doing this I guess. If I were you I wouldn't bother checking the blog every week to see if I posted something, just read it all when you bored one night in say... six or seven months from now. Alright, how is that for a dramatic introduction?
Today's post is brought to you by the School Of Art in Hobart Tasmania Australia. Here are the quick facts about the school:
-Something like 400 students attend
-Part of the 4th oldest Univeristy in Australia
-I am told it is one of, if not the, best art schools in the country
-The building is really old and they have kept a lot of the old machinery and wooden beam structure from the original inside.
-It has 2 galleries which I know of. One off the street, and a much larger one near that silvery metal art structure in the photo above. The larger one I would say is like 2.5X bigger then TRU's gallery in Old Main.
-Courses include: painting, photography, printmaking, drawing, visual communication, e-media, sculpture, furniture design, design in wood, ceramics and polytechnic. and it has its own library seperate from the uni.
-The studios are MASSIVE. It is a 4 story building, and each floor is nearly as big as the whole art wing at TRU. The Sculpture studio alone has 7 mig/tig welders and heaps of metal to use. Drool worthy.
And now for some stuffed dead baby emperor penguins:
Cute.
More on the University later I am sure. So far the coolest thing I have done is gone to the MONA, which just opened up here in Hobart about a month ago. MONA is the Museum of Old and New Art; and it litterally blew my mind away. I don't have any pictures because I forgot my camera, but check it out online where I am sure they have a website. While there I got to see some artworks I thought i would never see in my entire life; stuff which you learn about in art school and think its stuck in a private collection never to be shown to the world. BUT ITS HERE IN BLOODY HOBART :) Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chris Ofili (The Holy Virgin Mary! I got to sit in the royal throne), Mat Collishaw (Bullethole), the guy who made the machine which eats and digests and poops, and loads more, plus ancient egyptian art and messapotamian stuff. Pretty dam awesome. I shall go back and take loads of photos.
