Heide Museum of Modern Art

By Thomas Feng

June 11^th, 2019

Felicity meets us at our apartment on a warm summer day, entrusting me with her car to drive down the highway into suburbia. I have put off driving for many years now out of a lack of need or desire; but the years of being hassled by family and friends to do so has worn me down.

We're visiting the Heide Museum of Modern Art in the north east of Melbourne for a Sunday morning outing. Felicity's been out in Taiwan the past few months, and our friendship has often revolved around coffee, galleries and museums.

As we arrive in, Felicity calmly teaches me how to park.

Situated on the home of famous Australian artists John and Sunday Reed, the Heide is an eclectic contemporary mix of art, architecture and gardens.

The grounds are typically spectacular and a quintessential place for a picnic, but we opt not to sweat it out and instead head inside the galleries.

There are three "Heide" houses, each with their distinct architectural taste. Heide II (below) is my favourite; it is a classical modernist creation is a gallery to be lived in, and would be the idyllic Australian house in the 1960's and 70's, with its thick limestone brick and timber furnishings.

As I marvel through iconic artworks, I cannot help but to stop to look at the soft, golden afternoon light blanketing the whole house.

My favourite piece is Sweeney Reed's 1969 "Telegram".

Let's walk a sky together

There is a beauty in its simplicity. It feels like an early form of "Instagram poetry", where stuttered clauses to make a sentence are enough to evoke deep, heartfelt feelings in each of us.

But instead I think of Reed sitting atop the hills of Heidelberg in 1969, looking out onto the night sky of the Melbourne metropolis, wanting nothing more than to sit in silence and be in love with.