The Glen Eira council's gallery had some new exhibitions going on - in the almost 5 years I've been living around here, I rarely remember to pop in for a look, but I managed to do so today.

The first exhibition was a series of photos by a Konrad Winkler, entitled Visiting Leila, which consisted of various photos about his wife's mother - either photos of her, or photos of various memorabilia and such, each with a note of explanation written by Leila herself, in that flowery-looking writing our grandparents all seem to have (at least in Australia). The most striking thing about the photos of Leila were that she'd always be blurry over a nicely focussed background, which sparks some questions about the photographer's relationship with her - does he feel a little cut off from her, or isn't sure where he stands ? or maybe she's dying (the little bio didn't seem to indicate anything of the sort) ? I'm not sure.

The other, larger exhibition was the Silk Cut 2002 acquisitive awards for linocut prints, which had some fairly interesting, though usually fairly stark (as is the norm with linocut, I suppose) imagery. The one I found the most striking was Dianne Fogwell's large, colourful matrix of dream-shapes and words, entitled while you are sleeping.