Heide Museum of Modern Art

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to have an all day event for work at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Bulleen.  It was my first visit to Heide, which has a couple of galleries as well as various sculptures scattered throughout the grounds.  The property was originally the home of the Reed family and became a retreat for several Australian artists (Sidney Nolan painted his Ned Kelly series in the dining room) before being turned into a museum in the 1980s.

The exhibition that was on while we were there was Louise Bourgeois: Late Works.  It focused on pieces from the last 15 years of the French-American artist's long career.  Most of the works were sculptures she made using different fabrics- from headless torsos to severed heads both hanging from the ceiling and in glass boxes.  There were some interesting embroidered pieces and images made by folding fabric into patterns.  They also had one of her giant spider sculptures over a cage with tapestry on it, which reminded me that I had previously seen one of her spider sculptures that was on display along the Embarcadero in San Francisco near the Bay Bridge a few years ago. Overall it was a confronting and thought provoking exhibit which I quite enjoyed.  I wish I had had more time to spend looking at the pieces.

While at Heide we were also fortunate enough to have a two course lunch from Cafe Vue.  I chose the main course and dessert for my two dishes, which were part of a special menu done for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.  The main was a lamb terrine with fried eggplant and salad.  Dessert was a macadamia banana split, which consisted of caramelized bits of macadamia nuts and cubes of banana bread with pieces of banana and sauce on top of them.  Both dishes were very good.  One of these days I hope to do the degustation menu at Vue de Monde.