Albert St, Richmond

After several recommendations, I headed over to Richmond today to Albert St, home to 6 separate commercial galleries. I'm glad I did. It was an absolute delight to be able to visit 6 galleries in the one session, and I can see why people talk highly about Albert St.

Each gallery is well worth a look. Here's a quick summary of what was on when I visited.

First stop was at the John Buckley Gallery, currently holding an exhibition of works by Mark Galea. Mark's work consisted of paintings and sculptures. I preferred his sculptures the best - His vividly coloured box-shapred pieces were more interesting to me. The paintings will be popular but to me they were nothing more than inoffensive corporate foyer art.

Next up was the Karen Woodbury Gallery, which was undoubtedly my favourite exhibition that I saw on Albert St. I loved Michael Doolan's exhibition of silver and coloured moulds of cartoon shapes, like this one here (for now and for ever, almost 2 metres high).

There was similarities with this exhibition and the designer toy movement. It's interesting that this exhibition would definitely be considered fine art, whereas vinyl toys is probably considered a lot more lowbrow.

The 3rd gallery I visited was the Sophie Gannon Gallery, which featured an exhibition by Judith Wright . I really enjoyed these large-format piece s. They were done with acrylic and wax on Japanese paper, creating very interesting textures.

I then visited the Alison Kelly Gallery. This gallery specialises in contemporary indigenous art like the current exhibition by Nyirrpi. I'm not really into indigenous art, so just a quick browse here.

The Anita Traverso gallery was next. Although there wasn't a specific exhibition on here it was refreshing to see a room full of great artworks by different artists.

And finally, I headed upstairs to the Jenny Port Gallery, which was another favourite for me. Through a Scanner Darkly was the highlight, Chantal Faust's exhibition of portraits taken with a scanner rather than a camera. Anything on the surface of the scanner appears very vivid, while everything else is much more hazy. A beautiful effect.

All in all, Albert St is a great way to spend a few hours an see a lot of great art. They're running an open day on the 13th October from 11am which might be worth checking out. I have a flyer for it which lists the website address at http://www.albertstreetgalleries.com.au, although it doesn't seem to be working at the moment.