Not quite the lively debate we were looking for but decent art

We attended the third late-opening event at the Museum of Contemporary Art, timed to coincide with the city's festival of light, known as Vivid. Staying open late on at least one week night is a good idea. The MCA should do it regularly although I doubt that the gallery could afford to do so until its new space is built and open to the public. Only then, I think, will the MCA have the non-exhibition space and facilities (cafe, bar and performance areas) to pull in punters who might not find the art as accessible as the paintings ansd sculptures in the Art Gallery of NSW, where the Art After Hours on a Wednesday evening is hugely successful.

This evening's debate on the meeting of technology and art was a good idea realised less well than it might have been. Boring is another way of describing it. The organisers meant well I'm sure but the ideas on display were mostly pedestrian and presented by at least a couple of the men who spoke in condescending, barely cohrerent, self-serving and vaccuuous terms. The references to Brian Eno's illumination of the Opera House sails were quite interesting but the simple fact is that work speaks for itself and there was little that its spokesperson could give us in the five minutes he had. The others, to be honest, were forgettable even as they spoke.

But the idea is a good one; drawing people into the art space outsdide of usual business hours. And the gallery spaces were busy. Rick Maynard's photographs in the exhibition Portrait of a distant land drew good numbers of people who spent time in front of excellent but challenging images of poor, black contermporary Australia (predominantly male images, as they were). The space on the mezzanine floor showing photographs by some of Rick Maynard's inspirational predecessers was worth visiting: Ansel Adams came as a bit of a surprise because he's primarily a landscape photographer but who wouldn't be inspired by his precision and intensity? Dorothea Lange and Paul Strand weare less surprising.