(above) Slim’s portrait of the silver budgie himself, Bob Hawke (relief, illuminated)

The Gang had a cracker round of openings last Friday, though we decided to limit ourselves to two – less is more, after all – one mustn’t hurry the social aspect of the evening too much, chaps…

Our first port of call was ArtWranglers ‘At Home’ salon for Slim Barrie’s latest work; featuring all manner of goodies from drawing to sculpture to ‘relief’ portraiture. The only disappointment being the absence of Slim himself. But never mind there’ll always be a next time (as our old Granny used to say.) And there was a consolation prize! Nige had an edition of his latest readymade lined up in the foyer for a lucky few earlybirds, which was a rather nice surprise. (Could become the Gang’s new weapon of choice, wethinks.)

                            Slim Barrie, Untitled relief  (illuminated)

There was a lovely bunch of arts aristos on hand, including our all time fave photomedia artist William Yang – who of course is in town for Vivid: the National Photography Festival. 

Though we must say that the numbers were unusually down (at both ArtWranglers and Helen Maxwell’s, our second stop) – surely not because of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games…!!??!!  We fear so. But wouldn’t you think that the arty farty classes would’ve figured out how to record stuff from the telly by now…if they’ve got to watch it at all. (We’re still staunchly maintaining our conscientious objection to what’s turned into the Gulag Games…)

For snaps of the faithful go here.