something for nothing
( you can't take it with you )


About a year ago I came across something Gary Foley said in an interview, it was right at the end of an article, I think in Artichoke magazine. The way I remember it, he said he was getting to the age, perhaps 50, when an Aboriginal man has to start thinking about death and he explained he was preparing for this, changing his life, getting himself ready.

I was struck by the unfamiliarity of the sentiments and the politics inherent in them. Much later I was reminded of that paragraph when I was thinking about the ideas that I carry with me, ideas accumulated over the years that, until now, I’ve been reluctant to admit I won’t have time to get around to. Ideas for artworks, textile printing machines and curatorial projects but also other stuff, films, products, town planning …

I assume some of the ideas I carry around haven’t seen the light of day because I’m unsure of their worth, they’d be hard to commit to, difficult to present publicly. Easier ideas to present are the ones with obvious practical limitations that suggest they should… could only exist ‘on paper’.

So anyway, I was thinking about this when I was offered a chance to show new work at Craft Victoria and decided to use the opportunity to unburden myself of some of these ideas, in particular the ones that refer to making, production and the exploration of media. Other ideas, too close to my heart, more plausible… more resolved, I won’t be divulging at this stage… perhaps one day.

When I told a friend about my plans for the project they admitted they were disappointed in me, they thought I ought to be more optimistic. But I don’t see it that way, in fact I plan to use this project to encourage my friends to join me, not just in a process of personal release but in an opportunity to discuss ideas, how they exist and how they’re spread…

on how ideas exist

( from a conversation at spacecraft studio, Melbourne Nov 2006 )

“ that reminds me of this artwork I proposed making, it was quite some time ago now… you know the graveyard just below Stirling Castle? Anyway, it’s called the Valley, I know it really well and once when I was back home I ended up speaking to this old guy who told me the grave I was looking at belonged to a famous local footballer who’d accidentally killed someone in the 1950’s in a fight in the Red Lion pub. And I was really interested because my Dad used to drink there and he was a footballer. I remember asking if he knew any others, you know, interesting characters in the cemetery, and off he went…

He was a great story teller and on the way back to Edinburgh I felt it was important to write down what I could remember about his characters, and their stories, heroic, tragic …  and later on I had an idea for an artwork, based on meeting that old guy, who turned out to be called Douglas Henderson.

I wanted to spend recording his stories, and finding others, about the people buried in the Valley cemetery. I’d tag the grave stones that were part of the project, graves that had stories attached, so the viewer… audience experience would be a self guided tour of the cemetery punctuated by these locally embellished homegrown histories.

Telling some stories would attract more and I’d continue periodically recording and adding to the work. Perhaps the veracity of an account would be challenged and I’d have to record two versions of the same story, you know, William McPhee 1755 – 1801, version (a) and version (b)!

Although I didn’t get permission to make the artwork it’s still an interesting project for me. Lots of people have the concept lodged and ask me about it, as if its happening… ongoing….. actually that reminds me of something else. Quite a while ago I was shown an artwork by Mel Chin. It was a single sheet of paper, A4, the work was sort of an explanation, how to make this specific artwork.


Now; I think you started with the flags….  you had to cut up American flags into 10cm squares and then cook them in food additives, E numbers and food colours, you know, the info on the back of packets riboflavin 334, food acid 455 anti-caking agent 884, all that kind of thing.

Then he provided details of a certain model vending machine, you know, crisps, chocolate bars… I think he even specified the type of clear plastic bags you needed to put the pieces of cooked flag in! Anyway, once you’d cooked the fabric pieces and put them in plastic bags you hung them, re-assembled them, on the grid of the vending machine, in the right sequence to re-make the American flag.

I’m pretty sure he even gave instructions about where the vending machines ought to go, underground stations, outside post offices….. eh, I can’t remember where actually…  I might be making that bit up.

So anyway, punters would come across this vending machine, put their dollar into the slot and choose a section of the American flag cooked in, for example, junk food additive x, maybe the orange colour they use for those cheese puffs, that’s probably the one I would go for. So the vending machine coil pushes the packet forward and it drops down and then the mechanism promotes the next piece forward to replace it and, as a consequence, to re-make the flag.

I guess I must’ve looked at the text for about, well maybe 10 minutes, at the Fabric Workshop, in their archive, downstairs from the printroom, which means it would have been 93 or maybe 94, so about 12 years ago.

I don’t suppose Mel Chin had any intention of making the work, or having anyone else make it for that matter, actually I can’t be sure about that either. Hey, I’ve really no idea how faithfully I’m passing on this information, I’m sure my retelling will have changed it a bit over the years… it would be nice to think he’d taken that into account too. “