And Those Were the Reasons has MOVED!

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I'll take my science with a twist: SmartBar at the Melbourne Museum

After scoring a couple of free tickets through a Facebook competition, I took myself over to the Melbourne Museum on Thursday night to check out the SmartBar. Verdict: heaven for anyone who likes their evenings to be a little enlightened, or their museum visits a little enlivened.

Museums worldwide, under the pressures of reduced funding and the need to

A bit of my day that makes the winter okay

For two weeks I’ve been walking a particular path at a particular time of day that is, in my mind, too early to be about in winter. Yet there’s one corner of my route that, in its mundane way, gives me a strange sense of pleasure. There’s a hum about the space there, brought into being through the combined efforts of the senses and the imagination of one hoping to imbue the ordinary with the romantic. Sounds are central: the constant deep purr of the traffic that gathers in frustration at the tapering of Flemington Road to Grattan Street; the intermittent whirs and cracks of the construction site that, if you listen but don’t look too closely, echo the never-on-pause progress of New York. Then there is the sense of scent that brings the bitter warmth of the cigarettes smoked religiously by the pyjama-clad patients who emerge from the hospital, hooked-up and bound to the entryways, into the cold morning. It’s a concentration of tobacco that you’ll encounter little in this city, where the haunts of the smoker are less and less. The olfactory mingling of the smoke with the faint trace of cheaply baked danishes, hospital-grade coffee, and the chilled air of the a.m. allows the walker to almost transport themselves—again, with a little less looking—to the streets of the great metropolises of the imagination: London, Paris. The moment makes the morning pass a little more warmly, in spirit if not celcius.

Melbourne Market Diary: July 2012

Since the weather has taken a turn for the nasty, it's sorely tempting to stay cosy inside come the weekend. The Saturday crossword, a peppermint tea, and a hot water bottle on the toes...why leave the house? Only for the promise of warming crafts, wearable wintry one-offs, and that dash for the car through the rain, clutching your new market finds! Click read more for a calendar of just a few of the markets to be found in Melbourne this July.

Melbourne Market Diary - June 2012

A round-up of a few of the best markets around in Melbourne this June.

Click 'Read More' for the full visual calendar, and full 'When, Where, and What' information!

Just found: the work of Lucy James

Independent artist and illustrator Lucy James - and her sharp scalpel - recover images from forgotten books, transporting them into her offbeat but beautiful collage world. Take a look at her website and blog, then head on out to see her work at Anna Pappas Gallery from May 31, and at Craft Victoria from June 14. Click Read More for more images.

Come, journey with me...stop motion video for Ödland

Anyone who, like me at the moment, is feeling a little lost under an ever-growing mound of deadlines, duties and drudgery (oh, the deadly Ds), will appreciate this stop motion video directed by Vincent Pianina and Lorenzo Papace for the band Ödland. Pack your bags - whether to buoy away by sea or chuff chuff on the night train, floating away on a three-minute fanciful voyage seems just the ticket for putting work and worry back in its place.

Cosmic Scale and the Super Future by Ghostpatrol at Backwoods Gallery

Ever since receiving a pair of Ghostpatrol gocco prints last year, I've had a serious soft spot for the street artist's curious characters and captivating created worlds. Now, he's taking on the cosmos, embarking on a quest to understand time and place beyond this human moment. Head to Backwoods Gallery, where an exhibition of five large-scale paintings on linen will be running from 18 May until 13 June.