Yesterday I went to the Lume exhibition at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. I booked tickets a couple of nights ago and in all honesty, was a bit half hearted about it.
The reason was that I’m an art lover. I love to go to art galleries and see the paintings. I love learning about the artist, what inspired them to paint and what the paintings represent. I thought a sound and light show was not art per se, it was exact that, a show.
How can you appreciate art if you are immersed into someone else’s representation of it? The designer who adds animation to the static art works: birds, trains, falling leaves and sparking reflections in the water all come alive.
Well I was wrong.
The exhibit welcomes you with a bit of background on the installation itself and I read why it was created.
Also there’s the story of the artist’s life. The intention of the installation was to bring movement and sound into the arts because younger generations want to be immersed into an experience of sorts.
Once you go through the doors, you face a large room with gigantic walls on which are displayed the artworks of Van Gogh through different time periods. The music is curated beautifully to show the dark sombre moods of his time in Amsterdam and the light and bright colours of his time in France. The music is moving and along with the immersive experience looking up at the paintings, you cannot help be awe inspired by it all.
What intrigued me were his brush strokes. You could see them up close, in different colours and yet when you stand back, you see one colour. Up close you see the specks of red, cream, blue along with the texture of the canvas. I was utterly mesmerised.
I was brought to tears twice in the show because of the quotes that were on the big screen, the music and the colour. Every brush strike seemed to have been felt by his emotion whether he was happy, sad or mad at the time.
All related to creativity and the need to express this in life, work and art. The quotes were in fact, the right signs giving me prods in the direction I must take in my own life.
They had some rooms off the main room which were a bit of fun too. I’m not one to stand around the back with all the adults just watching children play and use the activities. I get right in there to try them myself. There was a room full of Montmarte easels on which we could draw. I drew a picture for my friend Fiona (White_Owly on Twitter). Another room for the Instagrammers full of sunflowers and mirrors.
Overall an excellent light show and I’m now glad I went.
Later….
I donned some nicer evening clothes and headed off to a “Ladies Night” at the Palace Cinemas in Brighton. They were putting on champagne and canapés and the movie as part of the French Film Festival. It was sponsored by Blue Illusion, a fashion shop so it was nice to sit there with food as I hadn’t eaten all day and I was famished. I took a seat well away from the crowd so I could remove my face mask (yep, still using it indoors).
The movie I saw was Les Jeunes Amants (the Young Lovers). It was a romance but a sad albeit fantastical one (as it would never happen in real life but I appreciated that on screen we saw a female actor who was over 25 as being the love interest) was about a 41 year old man who leaves his wife for a 70 year old woman with Parkinson’s.
Coming out of the cinema though, I had a little accident which could have been a lot worse and knocked my confidence a bit. My shoe got caught in the tread of a step on the stairs and I toppled over. I was lucky I was on the second last step and I managed to save myself by gripping the rail and preventing face first onto the floor. If I was on the top of the stairs…..anyway, I got away with it with my ego bruised a bit feeling embarrassed it more. I think it was awake up call to just take things slowly and hold the rail of any stairs going down or up.
Here’s the video of Lume I made.
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