It’s always good to meet old friends on the new books shelf, and make a few new friends as well.
The Companion: National Portrait Gallery of Australia
National Portrait Gallery, 2014
One of my favourite art galleries in Australia, the lovely National Portrait Gallery in Canberra hosts a collection that belies its relatively youthful age. Beautiful works from the 18th century through to the present day present a bewildering mosaic of Australian achievement through the faces of its great and good, and not so great and not so good, etc., etc.
My Bon Scott by Irene Thornton
Pan Macmillan Australia, 2014
This is a surprisingly charming, and bittersweet, memoir of someone who came to know Bon Scott as well as anyone ever could, and who writes about the rollercoaster of marriage to such an anarchic superstar with great honesty and humour.
Moon boots and dinner Suits, an autobiography by Jon Pertwee
Fantom Films, 2013
If you only know British actor Jon Pertwee as the third incarnation of Doctor Who then you’re in for a surprise with this candid and hilarious autobiography of his early years, including some eyebrow raising reminiscences of his time spent in the Royal Navy during World War Two! Very un-Doctor like…..
Wayne Thiebaud: curated by John Wilmerding
Rizzoli, 2012
Proving himself delightfully difficult to pigeon-hole (is he a Pop artist, is he this, is he that?), American artist Wayne Thiebaud has been producing strikingly vibrant and original work since the 1940s. His still-life images of everyday objects glow with his use of almost electric colours, while his vertiginous streetscapes and colour drenched landscapes seem to be both realistic and abstract at the same time. Marvellous stuff!
A typical day at the National Portrait Gallery; are we having fun yet?
