Sandra Brown is Object’s Touring Programs Coordinator, and a ceramicist in her spare time.

Well I finally got to go and see the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) down in Hobart while I was recently in Tasmania for work. Was it worth driving down from Launceston to Hobart?  Definitely! Although the day was bitterly cold with Arctic winds coming off the water, the museum was a warm and welcoming ‘womb like’ cavern, carved into a sandstone outcrop on the Derwent River.

Directed to the bottom level of the building, deep below the surface,  I stepped out and was immediately reminded of those dark, moody galleries found deep in the basement of the Louvre in Paris.

Last weekend, I took advantage of the first glorious weekend weather Sydney has had in a while and took myself around to some of Art & About on Saturday. It’s a massive, city-wide program, and there’s no real way I could get to most of it (not to mention that it consists of a number of programs and events scattered over the month of the festival), so I stuck to the outdoors.

First stop was Sydney Life, a collection of large photographic prints lining both sides of the avenue stretching through Hyde Park. That avenue is one of my favourite parts of Sydney city anyway, and during Art & About it becomes even more so. I remember the first time I came across Sydney Life eight or nine years ago, and how struck I was by the brilliant utilisation of the space — an exhibition of Sydney photography outside, amongst the trees, grass and people of Sydney.

Despite its name, Saturday In Design actually officially kicked off on Friday 19 August, with many of the participating showrooms and studios holding special events or simply giving attendees an opportunity to get the jump on the Saturday rush by tuning into a few locations a little earlier. Severely inauspicious weather, however, meant that this wanderer decided not to venture out into the howling winds and at times torrential rain, instead leaving it to the glorious day that followed to leg to as many venues as I could.