At play

Yesterday I whizzed past a poster that included the name 'Anish Kapoor'. An exhibition? Where? When? I love his sculptures. I love the way he experiments with materials, meshes art and maths, melds sculpture and engineering, makes the viewer a participant. I love the playfulness.

Today I was meeting my Christchurch friend L's cousin (also L) for the first time. Over coffee I asked her about Aboriginal art so she suggested we go to the Museum of Contemporary Art. And guess what? It's where the Anish Kapoor exhibition is! L showed me a collection of exquisite Aboriginal paintings on bark from the 1960s and 70s - much finer than those I've seen before. Then I spent this afternoon with Anish Kapoor.

People were smiling, even laughing. Strangers were incorporating each other into his mirror sculptures and starting conversations. Everyone seemed content to be in other people's photos (I hope this man is). A warder I spoke to said that the public had never spoken to her so much as during this exhibition.

In a benign mood I went out to the Rocks area of Sydney and climbed towards the bridge. On the footpath under the bridge vehicle sounds echo. The rhythmical metallic kerplunk, kerr-pluunk, k'plk of the wheels of different sized vehicles over access covers is surprisingly musical. (More musical, to my ears, than some 'music' I heard this evening but that's a different story.) Then I came across a plaque honouring 'the 16 workers who gave their lives to build [the Sydney Harbour] bridge' and suddenly I was feeling neither benign nor musical. I thought of the millions whose lives have been stolen at work or at war who are similarly 'honoured'. Gave. I wonder how many were asked if they wanted to make that particular donation and lose any chance they might have had to play.