On Thursday night I went to an exhibition opening at £1000 Bend in Melbourne’s CBD. My friend, Jonathan who has featured in this blog before, was one of the exhibited artists and I had met some of the organisers previously so I was basically honour bound to go.

I had an amazing time, I ran into some people who I hadn’t seen for a long time and some who I had seen recently, I really enjoyed being surrounded by so many performers and artists, dressing up and mingling with people. I remember now how much fun I have being a social butterfly; something I’ve forgotten since I’ve been prioritising Fleur time lately.

There were lots of gorgeous works and because it was the opening night spectacular some fantastic performances; including circus performer Spaghetti Man Simon Wright; who was brilliant and inspired a friend to exclaim ‘it’s not stripping unless you’re on a unicycle’. Simon also had a very aesthetically pleasing outfit for his show – excellent orange and black spandex leggings with suspenders and strategically placed orange stars to cover his nipples. His outfit also included a miniature cape on his back; a stroke of genius I would say and perfect for his mixture of circus and comedy.

The highlight of the night was the performance of MC and Magician Nick the Bubble. He did mainly card tricks and sleight of hand stuff, which was really very impressive regardless of the fact that most people have an idea of how misdirection works and that card tricks aren’t magic in the Harry Potter sense. I kept thinking to myself that my mind was blown even though I knew (a little bit about) what he was doing; imagine if I was a child or someone who had never seen it before! I think my brain might have melted. I was volunteered by a friend sitting next to me to get up on stage to assist Nick with a particular trick. It involved holding a card in my mouth, while he held a card in his mouth, and then with a drop of magic and a dash of faith my card was suddenly in his mouth and his card in mine – it was a pretty good trick, the audience seemed to like it and I have it on good authority that it went very well. Plus we both looked spectacular which always helps.

In terms of the artworks that were on display there was my friend’s work – he was displaying spray paint art; large canvases with close-ups of women with guns, a theme for him. He did a fantastic job even though the shots of me in the shortlist for the exhibition it didn’t make it, but that’s ok, my ego will survive plus he’s promised I can be in the next one. Among the other works there was a series of gorgeous photographs combining erotica and imagery of Christ; there were mug shots blown up and distorted on board; there were gorgeous skilled paintings of very abstract images – a woman with only one eye, eyebrow and a mouth and a bizarrely beautiful mock up of the cover of Life magazine; and there were amazing steam-punk-esque sculptures. My favourite (obviously not including my friend’s work which was clearly the best thing there) was a series of intricate and superbly realised digital prints, they took inspiration from nature, portraiture and psychedelic music festival art. The artist is a graphic designer and her work was beautifully polished and highly detailed.

The exhibition will be there all day Saturday and all of the artwork is for sale, I would recommend you get down there and check it out if you can there are some very talented artists being shown here. I think it’s really important that we support and encourage out local artists and everyone knows the time to buy art is before the artists dies, as soon as they’re dead the price goes right up!

So a big thank-you to the organisers, to the artists, the performers, the crowd and also to myself for taking me out and having a fabulous time.