MoMA/AGWA Series concludes... early.

So in a move that shatters that small amount of wow factor that the Art Gallery of WA had managed to build up since the ensconcing of gifted head curator, Stefano Carboni, AGWA has released a statement, seen here, that the monstrously successful MoMA lent series of exhibitions will be stopping with the current exhibition rather than completing its intended number of exhibtions. To put it into perspective; Dr Carboni is the former head curator of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and emigrated to Dullsville in order to take up a real challenge - he took over as head of the Art Gallery of WA in Perth. It would be kind of like P!nk deciding that she is tired of the glam and decides to focus on karaoke venues in Northbridge.
The culprit? Well that would depend on who you asked. The state government may be digging an $800 million hole in the river foreshore, but dear reader, it was unassailably YOUR fault, because you didn't go and see the exhibition enough times. Actually that is crap, because a bucket of people DID go and see it and apparently loved it and went and saw it a bucket more times. What has relegated AGWA back to the 'one good painting on show at a time' situation of pre-Carboni is that the state government has still got to pay for the aforementioned hole in the river bank and can't rely on the federal government to make up the shortfall and discontinuing all contracted workers in the state government wasn't enough, so they cut the budget of AGWA too. Think on that for a mo; AGWA is now so cash strapped tha they can no longer afford a SUCCESSFUL international show. I pity us all the next few years of this shit.

Remembrance Day - Lest We Forget

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
"Dulce et Decorum Est "

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.