Spinning tops, chimpanzees, inflatable ceramics, plastered six packs, and multiple layered films…

Well hello there, I’m Jess Cally, the newest addition to the Gaffa family. I’ve been asked to write a few blog entries… Think I’ll do the first one about Thursday night’s opening.

6:35pm.

Arrived at Gaffa’s. Said a quick hello to the lovely girlies downstairs. The conversation turned to lost jewelry and something called ‘Rag and Bucket’. (Must make a note to chase up that touted zine.)

6:40pm

Grabbed a bevy and made my way up stairs where a room filled with spinning tops greeted me. Whimsical, fanciful, and brightly coloured spinning tops! Oh my! The inner child in me couldn’t resist and I headed straight for the kiddie’s table, to practice my spin.

There really should be more interactive works in galleries don’t you think?

Shirley Cho, the artist behind these joyful creations, crafted their design based on… let’s say blueprints… of the perfect top sent to her via postcard from family and friends afar. What a fun idea! Most, It seemed, attempted to make things rather difficult for Shirley, like the two-headed Star Wars fan spinning top or my personal favourite, The albino alpaca spinning top complete with synthetic grass.

Her interpretations were amazingly exact. Colours, materials, each and every tiny detail was painstaking reproduced, and in many cases even improved upon.

Straight away I began brainstorming random objects I could draw and post to Shirley in the hope of her bringing them to life. What about a book that turns into a backpack… that’s also a phone! Shirley I’ll supply the postcards you supply the magic.

7:00pm

On to the Chimpanzees.

Now who doesn’t like Chimps?? I mean, Really, I’m sure Michael Jackson would have backed me up here… (R.I.P to both him and Bubbles) Beautiful yet cheeky oil paintings by Megan Jones explored the juxtaposition of man made future and inescapable distant past surrounded us.

While my boyfriend gorged on communal cheese and crackers in the middle of the room (is that polite? I thought art cheese was just for show), I took in the paintings.

It was an entire study of spacemen and chimps living in some not so perfect future. It struck me as appropriate that no human faces were visible behind the space helmets. In fact the only hint we get is a single painting at the far end of the room where a chimps face looks back at one of the spacemen from the mirror.

We can try to hide it all we want, but deep down we're all just glorified primates. The truth of this was highlighted

just moments later when I had to swipe my boy friend’s hand away from the inflatable ceramics in gallery three. “But they look like balloons!” he cried

Indeed they did.

7:15PM

Inflatable ceramics.

My boyfriend was nearly drooling over the works of Meng-Shu You and Petra Svoboda. Inflatable cats and dogs cast into ceramic molds. Really very cool, but their likeness to balloon animals was so uncanny that I imagined they wouldn’t last two minutes in a roomful of children. I could see my boyfriend dying to pick them up and toss them around like toys.

Along with the foux-inflatables were other more cast everyday items. Artistically reproduced grocery items for each day of the week. A crate of peaches, a pallet of eggs, a six pack of beer. All very clever. Like in the spinning top room before I yearned to start handing the artists items to be cast. Would ceramic shoes be comfortable?

7:30PM

On our way to the final exhibition of the night, we passed by the upstairs desk. Behind it were some familiar faces. I tried to wave at co-worker Kelly, but she was deep in conversation with a man who seemed quite passionate about bathroom soap. On we pushed. (Our wine glasses now nearly empty)

7:32PM

It was my turn to play chimp.

Daniel Kirkwood and Ruby Taylor’s film exhibition was a strange piece of magic for a technical bogan like myself. Somehow they’d managed to get two films playing out of one projector on the same screen. One side was an active outdoor scene, the other someone’s bedroom. If you stood on one side of the room you saw only the outdoors, on the other side only the bedroom.

“How did they do that?” I asked, walking up to poke at the screen.

My boyfriend pulled me back. There were other people in the room watching the movie, and apparently it wasn’t as gripping when viewed off the back of my dress.

7:47PM

We decided on one more glass of wine, and one more loop around the gallery. My boyfriend went to get the wine, and when he returned he found me talking to some young men about their naked illustrations. He moved on to view the chimps again, and I stayed talking until a glass broke in the distance and I wandered off trying to find it in a half-hearted attempt to fulfill off day intern duties.

8:00PM

Time to head home. As always, a lovely opening at Gaffa. Can’t wait to spin those tops when I’m back to work next Monday!