Last things…

November 18, 2013 by brigitaozolins

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss. Rebecca Solnit, The field guide to getting lost. This is my last post on Istanbul, written from the other side of the world at my desk in Hobart, Tasmania. But it may not be the last post for the entire blog, which has recorded my journey from San Francisco across America to New York, then to London and […]

Categories: Architecture, Istanbul, Museums, Travel, Travel writing, Turkey • Tags: Bosphorus, Cesme restaurant, Cimberlatis Hamami, Hamami, Istanbul, Museum of Innocence, Museum of Science and Technology Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk, The Grand Bazaar, Turkey, Turkish baths

Romantic ruins

November 14, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Nothing endures but change. Heraclitus We stay in the Ayasofya Hotel in Istanbul, an extremely welcoming establishment run by Gaye Reeves, an Australian who has had a long-time love affair with Turkey. Our first night is spent in a rather cramped little room on the second floor, but the following day Gaye moves us to a studio apartment just around the corner from the hotel where she suggests we will be much more comfortable. We are indeed very happy with the […]

Categories: Ancient Greece, Archaeology, Architecture, Didyma, Ephesus, Historic sites, Miletus, Priene, Selcuk, Sirince, Travel, Travel writing, Turkey • Tags: Ancient Greece, archaeology, Didyma, Ephesus, Historic sites, Miletus, Priene, Selcuk, Sirince, Travel, Travel writing, Turkey

Mosques, Churches and Whirling Dervishes

November 2, 2013 by brigitaozolins

It is scientifically recognized that the fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve. There is no being or object which does not revolve, because all beings are comprised of revolving electrons, protons, and neutrons in atoms.Everything revolves, and the human being lives by means of the revolution of these particles, by the revolution of the blood in his body, and by the revolution of the stages of his life, by his coming from the earth and his returning to […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Istanbul, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Architecture, Art, Blue Mosque, Chora, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Topkapi Palace, Travel, Travel writing, Whirling Dervishes

Istanbul and the 13th Biennial

October 23, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Istanbul was Constantinople Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople Been a long time gone, Constantinople Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night They Might Be Giants Istanbul is the final destination on my journey, so it is with some sadness that I write these last posts.  It is a sadness I associate with the concept of ‘hazun’ which Orhan Pamuk describes in his evocative book about Istanbul. Hazun is a state of melancholy that Pamuk believes the whole city suffers […]

Categories: Art, Contemporary Art, Istanbul, Istanbul Biennial, Travel, Travel writing, Turkey • Tags: Art, Contemporary Art, Istanbul, Istanbul Biennial, Orhan Pamuk, Travel, Travel writing, Turkey

Crete

October 13, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Our last days in Greece are spent on the island of Crete, which has a long and tumultuous history of being ruled by other empires, including the Venetians and the Ottomans, and only officially became part of modern day Greece in 1913. Its ancient history is archeologically rich – this is where you can visit the remains of the extraordinary Palace of Knossos, first constructed around 1900 BC at the height of the Minoan civilization, a highly cultured, wealthy, peaceful […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Crete, Hania, Heraklion, Knossos, Minoans, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Art, Chania, Crete, Heraklion, Knossos, Minoans, The Palace of Knossos, Travel, Travel writing

Stunning Santorini

October 4, 2013 by brigitaozolins

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. Rebecca Solnit, A field guide to getting lost. I can’t quite believe I am here, on stunning Santorini, part of the Cyclades group of islands, and known as Thira to the Greeks. It was once a much larger land mass but about 3,500 years ago endured a huge volcanic eruption that resulted in the formation of a caldera, a vast, immensely deep lagoon, encircled by the remnants of the original […]

Categories: Santorini, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Santorini, Thira, Travel, Travel writing

Athens and the Oracle at Delphi

October 2, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Know thyself. Inscription on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi Back in the 1970s I studied the classics at Monash University – history, philosophy and Ancient Greek language and literature. The classics department (which no longer exists) was on the 6th floor of the Menzies building and while it was fairly small, I remember it being a great hive of activity. It was divided into two camps – the Greeks and the Romans – and although everyone seemed to get […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Athens, Delphi, Travel, Travel writing, Uncategorized • Tags: Acropolis, Acropolis Museum, Architecture, Art, Athens, Classicism, Oracle at Delphi, Parthenon, Temple of Apollo, Travel, Travel writing

Padua

September 25, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour. Giotto The train from Venice to Padua has a distinctly 1970s aesthetic – bright blue, angular seating with a hint of the space age.  It feels sad to be leaving Venice, but exciting to be heading for the very first time to historic Padua, the home of the Scrovegni Chapel in which Giotto’s famous biblical frescoes cover the entire interior.  It is also the home of the magnificent St Anthony’s Basilica […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Galileo, Giotto, Padua, St Anthony, Travel, Travel writing, University of Padua • Tags: Art, Botanical Gardens of Padua, Galileo, Giotto, Hotel Belludi 37, Padua, Scrovegni Chapel, St Anthony, Travel, Travel writing, University of Padua

Achingly beautiful Venice

September 13, 2013 by brigitaozolins

…the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzo, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky. The music is, of course, greater than the band, and no hand can turn the page. Joseph Brodsky, Watermark: an essay on Venice I am on Venice’s Aliguana airport ferry, heading towards the Arsenale stop, which is one before San Marco. We stop at the Lido and […]

Categories: Art, Contemporary Art, Travel, Travel writing, Venice, Venice Biennale • Tags: Art, Contemporary Art, Estonia, Latvia, Palazzo Grassi, Romania, Russia, Venice, Venice Biennale

Snapshots of my last days in Latvia

August 30, 2013 by brigitaozolins

I’m on a plane, on my way to Venice to see the Biennale and to Padua to see Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovengi Chapel. Unless I stop sleeping altogether and start taking drugs, there is no way I can write up all the experiences I have had in Latvia since my last posting with the attention to detail I would like to give them. So, instead, I offer a series of snapshots with brief comments. I go on a canoeing […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Latvia, Libraries, National Library of Latvia, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Architecture, Gauja River, KIM?, Latvia, Mezaparks, National Library of Latvia, Rigas Maklas Telpa, Saulkrasti, Travel, Travel writing

Lost in the woods… and other adventures in Latgale

August 19, 2013 by brigitaozolins

…Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. Thoreau, quoted in Rebecca Solnit’s, A field guide to getting lost. We are in a dense forest on an unposted dirt road about two or three kilometers from the highway.  Viktors keeps driving until the road becomes more like an overgrown track. “I’m sure it was this […]

Categories: Art, Daugavpils, Latgale, Latvia, Rothko Museum, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Art, Daugavpils, Garden of Destiny, Kurcums, Latgale, Latvia, Liktendarzs, Mark Rothko, Rothko Museum, Storks, Svente

On leave in Latvia

August 13, 2013 by brigitaozolins

The desire to go home … is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars… Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.  Rebecca Solnit As soon as I arrive at Gate 16 at Gatwick airport, I am in the company of my brothers and sisters. Everyone, with the exception of two […]

Categories: Architecture, Latvia, Riga, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Art Nouveau, Latvia, Riga, Riga Architecture, Travel, Travel writing

Loving London Part 2

July 30, 2013 by brigitaozolins

A group of Romanians has been camping out at Marble Arch recently, a short walk from where I am staying. The police have attempted to move them on, and while they apparently leave for a short time, they keep returning. I see them on BBC1 news and then I see them in reality as I make my way to Hyde Park. There are about a dozen people, including children, gathered on the grass with their belongings packed in carry-on sized […]

Categories: Art, Buckingham Palace, Contemporary Art, Hyde Park, London, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Adam Phillips, Apsley House, Art, Bill Viola, Blain Southern Gallery, Buckingham Palace, Coll & Cortes Gallery, Contemporary Art, Douglas Gordon, Ellen Gallagher, Hyde Park, ICA, John Soane Museum, Katarina Fritsch, London, Marble Arch, Meshac Gaba, Museums, Paul Holdengraber, Robert Irwin, Serpentine Gallery, Serpentine Park Nights, Simon Starling, Speakers' Corner, Susan Wilson, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, The Fourth Plinth, The Mall, The Queen's Gallery, The Royal Academy, Travel, Travel writing, Wellington Arch, Word Sound Power

Loving London Part 1

July 25, 2013 by brigitaozolins

London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: a tour of the world’s greatest fictional city. The new heir to the British throne, Prince George, was born two days ago. Last night, along with millions of others, I watched on television as his parents showed him to the world outside St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, which is not very far at all from where I am […]

Categories: Art, Contemporary Art, London, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Art, Contemporary Art, Greenwich, Hyde Park, London, Mark Landy, Prince George, Punch Drunk Theatre Company, Temple Film Studios, The British Museum, The Drowned Man, The National Gallery London, the National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Family, The Serpentine Gallery, Travel, Travel writing

The last post for New York

July 20, 2013 by brigitaozolins

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding. John Updike New York does nothing for those of us who are inclined to love her except implant in our hearts a homesickness that baffles us until we go away from her, and then we realize why we are restless. At home or away, we are homesick for New York not because New York used to be better and not because she […]

Categories: Art, Australia Council Studio, Contemporary Art, Long Island, New York, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Ad Reinhardt, Aida Sehovic, Art, Big Nick's, Contemporary Art, Francoise Grossen, Green River Cemetery, Gwen Hardie, Hannah Wilke, Harold Rosenburg, Jackson Pollock, Katz's Deli, Lee Krasner, Long Island, Mary Lum, New York, Simon Harsent, Sto te nema?, The Springs, The Swiss Institute, Travel, Travel writing, When Harry met Sally

Beautiful Boston

July 16, 2013 by brigitaozolins

O happy town beside the sea, Whose roads lead everywhere to all; Than thine no deeper moat can be, No stouter fence, no steeper wall! Ralph Waldo Emerson I’m on the train to Boston on my second last big excursion before leaving New York. I’m very happy. Outside it’s misty and completely overcast, such a refreshing change from the heat wave we’ve been having in Manhattan. There is no air conditioning in the studio, and the heat builds up day […]

Categories: Art, Boston, Contemporary Art, Libraries, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Art, Barry McGee, Boston, Boston Athenaeum, Boston Botanic Gardens, Boston Commons, Boston Duck Tours, Boston Public Library, Contemporary Art, ICA Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, John Jeffries House, John Singer Sargent, Mark Cooper, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Old Granary Burial Ground

More art and more shiny happy people

July 8, 2013 by brigitaozolins

My art deals with light itself. It’s not the bearer of revelation – it is the revelation. James Turrell I’m in the final days of my Greene Street residency – only 8 days left before I leave New York and head for London. I still have a lot to write about so I’m going to use subheadings and take a more shorthand approach in this post – well, as much as I possibly can! THE CLOISTERS The Metropolitan Museum of […]

Categories: Art, Contemporary Art, Guggenheim, New Museum, New York, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Annette Allman, Apex Art, Ariel Krupnik, Art, Art in General, Artists Spaces, Contemporary Art, Dia Beacon, Fiona Lee, Guggenheim, Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, James Turrell, medieval imagination, MoMA PS1, New York, The Cloisters, Travel, Travel writing, unicorn tapestries

The Toronto Trip

June 25, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Last week I spent 4 days in Toronto. I went there to visit an academic at Ryerson University and to experience some of the art scene, but I was also obsessed with making a trip to Niagara Falls. Toronto is hard to describe. Parts of it, especially around the west end of trendy Queen Street which is known as the Indie capital of the city, are reminiscent of Melbourne’s Brunswick Street, but the rest of it is more like Brisbane, […]

Categories: AGO, Art, Contemporary Art, OCAD, ROM, Ryerson University, Toronto, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: 401 Richmond, AGO, Art, Contemporary Art, Lewiston, Niagara Falls, OCAD, Queen Street, ROM, Ryerson Image Centre, Ryerson University, Spadina Avenue, The Gladstone Hotel, The Harbourfront Centre, The maid of the mist, Toronto, Travel writing, Vid Ingelevics

Lorca, Barney and the Eucharist

June 18, 2013 by brigitaozolins

And at the evening’s end I wanted to be my voice. 
A nightingale. Soul, 
turn orange-colored. Soul,
 turn the color of love. Frederico Garcia Lorca The second New York Public Library LIVE event I attend is a celebration of the life and work of the Spanish poet and dramatist, Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936). The first was a conversation between Paul Holdengraber, who directs the LIVE program, and Matthew Barney, who currently has an exhibition of around 100 drawings at the […]

Categories: Art, Books, Bryant Park, Frederico Garcia Lorca, John Giorno, Matthew Barney, Morgan Library, New York, New York Public Library, Patti Smith, Pierpont Morgan Library, Poetry, Travel, Travel writing • Tags: Art, Bryant Park, Eucharist, Frederico Garcia Lorca, John Giorno, Matthew Barney, Morgan Library, New York Public Library, NYPL LIVE, Patti Smith, Paul Holdengraber, Poetry, Subliming the Vessel, Travel writing, Will Keen

Lost in the Library of Congress… and other adventures in Washington DC

June 9, 2013 by brigitaozolins

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arms themselves with the power which knowledge gives. James Madison I am sitting in the Rare Book Room in the Library of Congress, looking at a book on alchemy that was published in 1676 in Hamburg, Germany. The book is by Edward Kelly (1555-1595) and is titled Edouardi Kellaei tracatus duo egregii De lapide philosophorum. It is displayed on a clear acrylic stand. It […]

Categories: Art, Congress, Hirschorn Museum, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, National Mall, The Smithsonian, The White House, Travel, Travel writing, Washington DC, Washington Memorials • Tags: Arlington, Art, Capitol Hill, Capitol Visitors Centre, Congress, Hirschorn, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, Lincoln Memorial, Madison Buidling, National Gallery of Art, National Mall, The Smithsonian, The White House, Travel, Travel writing, Washington DC, Washington Memorial, Washington Monuments