I really thought it was Monday

that's what long weekends and going to the cinema on Monday afternoon will do to a person's head. 
I thought I might try a different lotto ticket, one that is drawn on Tuesdays.  "Oh," I thought today as I walked up the main road, "I can get that tomorrow"
no you can't. tomorrow is Wednesday.
I was going to write and post a long blog about how we are attending the German Film Festival (hence the going to the cinema in the daytime) but I visited a good friend for a cuppa & it went into cup 3, as it would when the conversation is so interesting - good thing I remembered it was Tuesday and looked in my diary.
So, instead of images, links and a youtube clip, here's another Still Life at Midnight shot from a little series I'm doing:

la la ladels at midnight

Sunday walk

Autumn is a good time to take a walk down the road a bit to Black Wattle Bay.  I like a working harbour rather than a plastic marina for expensive floaties (those flash yachts were there, just to the right of this photo but there's no need to spoil the view)

© 2010 Anne Bentley

the new plastic surgery

I had a dream last night that you could change your appearence by using the clone tool in Photoshop - or any other computer program that does the same thing.
In my dream I had images of a profile & drew in a big nose - like Nicole Kidman's over-done prosthetic nose playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours (I am yet to get the nerve to watch this film due to all the carryon about her being 'brave' & a 'fabulous actor' to take on a role that made her 'look plain' - kind of detracts from the exceptional mind of V Woolf, don't you think - so for the moment I would only be seeing a prosthetic nose).
I heard voices - there were more people around in my dream as this new body image morph tool got big in discussion circles, as it would. 
Then a voice said, "but you know, if you move on from the area you've been altering, the step back button (undo) doesn't work."
Oh!
so maybe Nicole Kidman could end up with a big nose!  And, I thought in my dream, maybe there's a heap of people walking around with blemish-free but with strange skin & brush-stroked blurred expressions on their faces... 

or worse:

(image I've doctored is part of Ivan Albright's painting commissioned for the 1945 movie, The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Hurt Hatfield, Angela Lansbury and George Sanders - the later, GS, I thought spoilt the film by over-acting & speaking his lines way to fast and messing up all that lovely banter Oscar Willde wrote so well).

Get out of the house... get out

I'm saying it aloud this last hour in a poor impersonation of the voice from The Amityville Horror (the original film that is, I just noticed there's a 2005 remake - think my brain was elsewhere that year) but I still seem to be stuck in this chair...

Above: OUT - Leichhardt (Sydney) March 2010 © Anne Bentley

I'd been looking at this sign for years telling myself I really should grab a shot of it before they clean it or its illumination goes and I finally remembered to a couple of weeks ago.

If you look at it long enough, the writing appears to be back to front - except it's not

Long Weekend in your headspace

couch on an awning above a shop, King Street, Newtown

© Anne Bentley

AH & I haven't been total couch potatoes this weekend... We are yet to view the end of Sunday Bloody Sunday that I hired for Thursday night (someone who worked hard all week fell asleep with 15 minutes to go & it wasn't me - I fall into night owl mode often - I stayed up after 2am last night watching an only OK film because it had Isabella Rosselini in it...)
It's been weekend of local arts - AH & I have checked out both visual art group shows for Sheilafest - the first we saw was in Newtown - a mixed lot with a really cool video work by Hanna Buck
Yesterday we met* (*AH needs to ride her bicycle or she goes feral - I meandered over on foot) at Kudos gallery for Women In Piracy photography by the Kingpins, Penelope Benton and Tina Fiveash - all excellent & we really enjoyed the short films by Vicki Papageorgopoulos & Elizabeth Reidy and the doco/performance of Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris is very funny indeed. 
It's running until 10th April so drop by: Kudos Gallery 6 Napier St. Paddington 11am – 6pm Wed to Fri,  11am – 4pm Sat.
And, while in Paddington, it was a short walk to the Australian Centre for Photography to take in the excellent Amy Stein's latest works and the added surprise in the back gallery was Zed Nelson's Love Me - "a collection of images documenting how far people will go for the quest for physical perfection. Negotiating the boundaries of art and documentary photography, this series reflects a world we have created where enormous social, psychological and economic rewards and penalties are attached to the way we look..."  Everything from a jar of the results of liposuction to a beauty contest amongst inmates at a Brazilian women's prison - along with some carefully chosen quotes, presents a careful and provocative show.
Sadly, we ran out of time (and the sky fell in) to get to Blender Gallery.

Then it was art for dinner - fresh asparagus cooked in olive oil with fresh chilli, garlic, zucchini & rocket over organic wholemeal pasta with grana padano - yumarama
Today a photo collective show down the road and tomorrow we will be taking in the MCA's latest - I'm looking forward to The Gift of Ann Lewis

Between all this, I am slowly working on 2 new collage images: A Spanish Interior & The Scottsmen - tells you nothing I know but I am enjoying seeing the images in my head, which will probably look nothing like the finished picture - stay tuned.
Oh, and I have also just updated my 2 other blogs (links just to the right of this page)