After last week’s arty excursion to Goulburn, we thought we’d go to the Turner exhibition at the NGA.

It’s billed as the ‘making of a master’ and it’s exactly that – a collection of paintings that trace the development of his style from a fairly boring conventional painter of landscapes into a dramatic proto impressionist creating sea and skyscapes from wild twists and swirls of colour.

Don’t expect any big ticket pictures – the budget obviously didn’t run to that, but the collection of lesser known paintings and excerpts from his sketch books do build the story nicely and it’s definitely interesting to see his sketchbooks and cartoons (and the experiments that reappeared in other better known paintings).

NGA winter and summer exhibitions are always a bit of a scrum. We went at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and it wasn’t too bad – although there was the usual mix of people with frightening haircuts and the inevitable coterie of ignorant men dragged along by their fat wives to ‘something cultural’.

That said, we did see everything we wanted to without too much backtracking and wiggling, and as it was towards the end of the exhibition’s run it was not ridiculously overcrowded.

My major annoyance was having to sign up with TicketTek to book tickets and pay their excessive booking fee, knowing full well we’ll probably get spammed into the bargain. Other than that the mechanics of the visit passed off without incident.

We’re NGA members, so after the exhibition we retreated to the members lounge for a cup of tea and a cake, and I was pleased to discover that tey now provide wifi for members – something to remember if I’m ever in search of a bolthole to write up some notes …

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