Perth - Western Australian Museum

Last night I hopped on a plane to visit my dear friends who moved West Side earlier in the year. One of things planned for the day was to go to the Western Australian Museum to see the current exhibition about Nick Cave. The Nick Cave exhibition was excellent, mind you, you just weren't allowed to take photos of any of the pieces. This is why I took lots of pictures of stuffed animals. Those you are allowed to photograph, plus they are really cool. You can see those photos later.

Before we went into the Nick Cave Exhibition,  I was bad mouthing Nick Cave as talented though very pretentious and a little bit precious. I had tried to read And the Ass Saw the Angel and failed at each attempt. The text just seemed so laboured to me. Just thinking about that book makes me want to punch something...

Anyway the exhibition was a great reminder about what is fantastic about Mr Cave and what is really annoying. Great photos from the early days of The Boys Next Door and the Birthday Party, and there were also lots of interesting journals and scraps of paper with lyrics. I think it is very generous for people to share that part of the creative process, as it gives you a sense of where great work began and often when the end result seems to be genius, the reality is often that it started off as a simple idea in a raw and basic form.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that although Nick Cave can often come across as overly confident, sanctimonious and generally a bit wanky, some of the text in those journals reminded me that he is also an amazing talent and a man of beautiful thoughts and words.