Home is Where the Art is

Sophie McIlwain

Sydney likes to multi-task. Whilst beverages of the alcoholic variety have long added to the allure of gallery and exhibition openings, Sydney likes to add ‘good grub’ to coincide with its viewing of visual arts to prolong the dual feast for eye and palate beyond the boozy launch. Publications such as the Bois de Chesne: Top Art & Food Sydney give readers a guide to the best gallery-cafes and restaurants that are ‘art friendly’ and in the locale of a gallery or exhibition space. The fact that The Yellow House is now known for the art of the date tartlet rather than the works of its original clique of avant-garde artists is testament to the trend of ‘art plus happy-diversion’. For the individual who wants to get married and experience contemporary art all at once – the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) holds wedding ceremonies (actress Sophie Lee recently got married in organza in front of a hanging of Josef Beuys’ felt suit)! Artist collectives such as the Wedding Circle in Chippendale and the Knot Gallery in Surry Hills blur the lines of residential and public exhibition space.[1]

At the recent premier screening of the refugee documentary, Anthem, at the Screening Room (a project of the Wedding Circle) one stunned filmgoer was surprised to walk into the public bathroom to find the filmmaker taking a shower. The fusion of domestic life and exhibiting art is not phenomenon peculiar to Sydney – the underground spaces of New York or the infamous squats of Berlin’s Mitte district are notable forerunners – but a Sydney renaissance of artist-housing-meets-exhibition-space has been born from the legacy of The Yellow House. The Chocolate House squat, known affectionately as ‘Lanfranchi’s’, and the so-new-it’s-nameless exhibition space on City Road, Chippendale, are two of examples of this new wave. In true post-modern style, the six resident artists of the City Road space held an opening night/house warming party with the abstract theme of ‘come as your greatest downfall’. So with a strict tea-totalling policy and a pad of paper and a pen in hand this reviewer signalled her intention to critically discern rather than party thus revealing her greatest downfall ...

Four bikes are chained to the security bars of the window that faces the busy street. Behind the bars is a window box filled with plastic fruit mingling with an erotically staged tableau involving some miniature Spice Girl merchandise and a plastic Halloween bat copulating with a tiny effigy of John Howard. The party is spewing out onto the street – nouveau-mods mix with punks and girls from art school in expensive jeans. The sound of an electric kettle reverberates through the entrance hallway at an unnatural pitch and volume. This distorted noise comes from the first of the bedrooms that contains one man in glasses with a DJ’s turntable. The DJ is ironically called ‘Toecutter’ because he cut off part of his ear as a thirteen year old punk rocker. On a wall behind the stereotypical punk-DJ, who is playing a clichéd version of Noise Art, is a placard explaining that the entrance hallway is filled with horse images and paintings and sculptures as a subversion of ‘every young girl’s dream’. Perhaps more interesting than this simplistic explanation of curatorial rationale is the fact that the explanation is stuck to the wall in the first place. This mimicry of a gallery display is perhaps more subversive because of its home setting than the equine installation itself.

A girl who introduces herself as ‘Spat’ hands me a zinc called ‘This is My Heart and Other Travels’. Spat is not the only house member with a strange nickname. Spat is part of an artistic duo known as ‘Spat and Loogie’. And the housemate living on the second floor of the terrace is named Bobbit – a reference to the infamous Lorraine Bobbit. A documentary maker, photographer and activist known as ‘Cipi’ (meaning both ‘beautiful flower and ‘white trash tourist’ in the Tetuon language of East Timor) lives on the third floor surrounded by objects of exotic fascination from Indonesia and East Timor. The aliases and personas adopted by the house members gives an historical nod to the creators of The Yellow House who adopted names and titles as they lived in their artistic and communal environment. When asked about the influence of The Yellow House as a blueprint for living, working and exhibiting art, Loogie giggles: ‘Ginger-Megs (film maker and ‘principal’ of the house’s ‘art school’) is my dad!’

Spat and Loogie's creative partnership has earned them grants from such organizations as Next Wave (Melbourne) and they were also recently selected to be part of the very collectable card series of Non-Collectable Artists. They created their collective pseudonym to hint at the ‘easy to swallow but quickly regurgitated’ objects of consumer refuse. The claim to desire 'people to start to spit out what we should no longer swallow'. and their installations, sculptures and performances are provocative commentaries on contemporary Capitalist society. Recently, Spat and Loogie chopped 60 kilos of onions for eight hours in an ‘endurance performance’ as part of the Equiesse festival in Sydney. The onions were packaged in containers and then given to ‘shoppers’ (audience members) in place of whole fresh versions. They created ‘tear capture ducts’ and bottled all their tears from their onion chopping labours (and we are to assume they cried because of the ridiculousness of consumerism?) because they announced ‘crying is for the weak (just do it)’. The Equiesse performance was created because of their belief that ‘consumerism is the antithesis of freedom’ and that the 'facade of capitalism is that it pretends to cater for the needs of the individual when it does the reverse in actuality'. From April 7-9 the duo held a performance at PACT in Erskineville where they revealed the cons and tricks played by big business consumer outlets. The pair has set up shop in the living room of their house and hold regular performances for visitors in a mock supermarket installation. Spat has been infiltrating the employee ranks of her local chain supermarket as part of a sneaky case study to inform their artistic works planned for the future. They have both been creating a website and preparing for performances and workshops in Melbourne. On the night of my visit the duo are performing brief highlights from their PACT performance and a video of their work is playing in the lounge room. Loogie is dressed as a big toe and this reviewer wonders if that it is a reference to the DJ, Toecutter? Loogie explains that her outfit is inspired by her pedi-greatest downfall that her feet are ‘freakishly big’ and then adds ‘and I always put my foot in my mouth’...

The party is quieter at the top level of the terrace house. A different mood sets in as you climb each stair. Photographs of East Timor line the walls and jewellery collected from travels to the country hand from the balustrades. Two scarfs with printed images of Indonesian peasants cloak the doorframe of the attic bedroom. Hanging on the peak of the stairs in a privileged position is a painting of a dead woman. Crouching next to the woman is a small girl who is naked. The girl’s body is raw and exposed to the viewer but her head is buried in the body of the dead woman. The painting is rendered in a sombre blue and grey colour palette that seems out of place against the background of smiling photographs of East Timorese at work and play. But the juxtaposition of everyday life with brutal death has been a reality in East Timor because of the guerrilla war fought against Indonesian occupation since 1975.

As I descend the stairs back to the heaving party below I wonder about curatorial narrative and integrity. Most public galleries exhibit by theme or some uniting element but the art shown in this house is a mix of medias, agendas and genres. The most fundamental element of the artworks is that they are passionately political. When I look at the Zapatista mural on the kitchen wall and I am told that it is a remnant from a fundraising film night for the Mexican liberationists I am not surprised. And resting against the opposite wall are signs saying ‘No Blood For Oil’ alluding to the current debate about Australia’s claiming of oil in the Timor Gap. This house now seems to have somewhat of a socialist commune air rather than simply being a witty yet bourgeois parody of an exhibition space. And so perhaps this house and its crew of activists and artists is not an archetype of Sydney’s attempt to blend all hedonistic passions together – food, art, parties, wine. Perhaps the word ‘multi-task’ is irrelevant in this context and the idea of ‘solidarity’ is an apt replacement. These individuals work and exhibit in a collaborative environment removed from the restraints of the mainstream. It makes this reviewer wonder if her party costume was not appropriate. Perhaps coming dressed as ‘too cynical before examining the facts’ would have been more fitting?

Endnotes:
[1] Australia Council for the Arts, Artist Run Spaces, Community and Student Galleries in Australia, Artist Run Spaces cited 2 May 2005

Posted by susansteggall on Mon, 20 Jun 2005 11:09
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