Art and abart in and near Canberra

I found I was going to have some time on my hands in Civic this morning so decided to take some photos of the street art scene.  A few other items suggested themselves along the way and could be tortured to fit a narrative so here we go.

The first image is near the start of the outing showing the descent into Queanbeyan.  It is mainly here because I finally had the camera on hand, and Frances poised to use it!

Further along the road we go past Canberra Airport which has erected this to distract motorists who are rude (their view) or sensible (my view) enough to ignore this place.  It does seem to be mobile and suggests to me the business plan of a pyramid sales organisation.

In Civic there is quite a bit of official art here and there.  This first one is on London Circuit, near where we parked.

In so far as Civic has a centre it is probably Civic Square which includes the Canberra Theatre, the Canberra Museum and Gallery and the ACT House of Assembly.  The forecourt of these includes this rather nioce fountain.

Across the road in the Canberra Memorial.  This is a memorial to the people who have participated in peacekeepng work as well as armed conflict.  It  was done by Matthew Harding.

Near the Carousel is this rather whimsical figure titled Big Little Man by Dean Bowen.

This is an old favourite which I have often referred to as "Ramming the Shears" with apologies to Tom Roberts.  It is actually titled "Ainslie's Sheep" referring to the original Scots settler who grazed his beasts in the area, before deciding a Canberra Winter was too warm and headed back to a Summer in Scotland.  The artist is Les Kossatz.

Where there are sheep there are usually dogs.  This fine lot "Bush pack (nil tenure)" are by Amanda Stuart.

I can't say much about the artist's involved in the following images, from the service alleys behind the nice shops, since they generally don't leave their names.  However they do all IMHO have considerable skill in execution unlike the vandalistic tags.

In many cases in large cities one of the questions about graffiti is how did they get up there to do that? That question is easily answered for this final sample.

It also links to these images in an alley where I thought the piping and other industrial stuff made quite artistic shapes!

Somehow I found that a bunch of tourists taking photos en masse was quite amusing.  Somehow stranger than me doing it solo!