2024 Ballarat Begonia Festival highlights

 

Pictured above and below: selected highlights from last weekend’s Ballarat Begonia Festival. 

The top photo was snapped at the Art Gallery of Ballarat on Sunday afternoon, the day before Monday’s Grand Parade, during Curator Julie McLaren’s lively and informative conversation with Scotty So, whose short film, Queen of the Begonias, is currently on view on the AGB Big Screen (See Blog Post Monday, March 4).

Directly following: 

Newly restored fernery at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, a small selection of this year’s spectacular Begonias (some of which will serve as references for a future work, possibly more), the fabulous performance group SWAY, and (final two images), HRH Scotty So, 2024 Ballarat Begonia Queen. 

Flashback Friday

In anticipation of the renowned Ballarat Begonia Festival  this coming long weekend: a flashback to Begonia Virus 2, 2020, acrylic on canvas board, 10 x 10 cm, private collection). 

The photo directly below was taken at the 2020 Ballarat Begonia Festival, which was, as always, a spectacular affair.

Begonia Virus 2 was made in the relatively early, still uncertain months of the Corona Virus. (I never could resist a play on words). It is one of two paintings created for the first annual One Hundred Faces exhibition at Playing in the Attic, then located in Ballarat, now thriving and blooming in nearby Talbot.

Who knew that this and its sister work, Begonia Virus 1 (2020, private collection), not to mention those made for subsequent iterations of One Hundred Faces, would be precursors to my current work?