Art After Dark


This evening I went to ‘Art After Dark’, an outdoor event at the hipster enclave of Gilman Barracks, where there were lots of art exhibits, some live music, and a lot of pop-up restaurants.

There was no art. There were, severally:

  • a room of mirrors that was just some Ikea mirrors on the walls (at least a funhouse of mirrors makes you look amusingly fat/thin/tall/short
  • what appeared to be some bad enlargements of a Future Sound Of London album cover, stuck on a wall like the most minimalist 17-year old boy in the world’s bedroom
  • some bear traps and a very long snake that looked like a phallus when you first noticed it (on reflection, that was actually quite good)

There were a few galleries that you couldn’t get into without a ticket (although I suspect the security guard at the entrance of each was an imposter, part of some complicated art installation prank. There was nothing that made me angry, sad, excited, happy or enchanted. It was just substandard, uber-mediocre bilge.

But what of the other entertainments, you might ask?

The music was only technically such, in that there were people and musical instruments involved.

The pop up restaurants was somebody selling depressing French fries for $12.

So all in all, not the greatest. One mitigating factor was that there is an ice cream shop there that sells a delectable strawberry flavoured ice cream. Otherwise, I had a right strop on and went home again as soon as I could, complaining about an event designed for MBA students to stand around at pretending to be cool before they go back to a job in investment banking. It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.


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