Art for art's sake

From the Art Gallery Of NSW to the MCA (via the Wagamama restaurant in Bridge St for yasai gyoza, yasai katsu curry and Shanghai Beer) to the Powerhouse Museum.

Or, in terms of temporary exhibits, from the retrospective on figure sculptor Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal (1863-1931) and "Chinese Jade From The Forbidden City" to "Primavera 07: Exhibition By Young Australian Artists" to "Improving Life: The Design Of Swedish Innovations" and "Cinema India: The Art Of Bollywood".

Highlight reel: Addster shrinks before an imposing statue of a naked Circe (no fair - she had a pedestal!); hunts for the Nine Elders Of Huichang in a carved jade mound that would make the finest Games Workshop modellers weep; turns up his nose at an installation of broken packing crates, then admires the work of Queenslander Martin Smith (window-sized photos with lines of lyrics or prose punched out. The letters spilled on the floor below); concludes the Swedes are too busy saving lives (perfecting the pacemaker and dialysis machine) to perform menial tasks (hence their robotic vacuum cleaner and lawn mower); and boggles at Bollywood's take on "ET", "Koi... Mil Gaya", a musical romance - of course - about a "developmentally disabled" man who meets an alien that embodies aspects of the Hindu gods!