STUDIO VISIT
ARTIST 1.
“Okay, so I have a work for the show.”
ARTIST 2.
“Thank god, George. What is it?”
ARTIST 1.
“Firstly – do we have access to the old
bluestone building at the Living Museum?”
ARTIST 2.
“Yes, Kerrie checked with the council.
There’s a gigantic crack down the far
wall on the bottom level—you can see sky
through it—and the resin floor nearby
is cracking too, so we’re basically not
allowed to go near that area and not
allowed to touch anything. Do you have a
first aid certificate?”
ARTIST 1.
“Yeah, I think I do...”
ARTIST 2
“Good, the council says we both need to have one.”
ARTIST 1.
“I originally wanted to present this work
in one of the old factories where women
made bullets during the war, right, but
the place has been demolished.”
ARTIST 2.
“Oh damn, will it still make sense to
show it in the old bluestone building?”
ARTIST 1.
“Yeah I think so. I mean it’s not an
explosives factory, but with the cracks
and all the red tape, maybe it has a
similar feeling. Also, the bluestone
building was a place where they boiled
sheep down to make candles, right? It is
an awful analogy, but what I’m thinking,
well, the artwork I’ve made, it’s really
boiled down.”
(Points to a sculpture on the studio floor)
ARTIST 2.
“George! Is this the work!?”
ARTIST 1.
“It’s the… I’ll explain. So, I’ve written
this story. There’s this artist. She’s
Anglo, middle class, mid-thirties and
she’s doing a residency at the Living
Museum of the West.”
ARTIST 2.
“It’s you?”
ARTIST 1.
“No, no, not me.”
ARTIST 2.
“Okay, I’m sorry George, this just sound
very si...”
ARTIST 1.
“Mel, do you want to me to tell the
story?”
ARTIST 2.
“Yes, sorry. Continue.”
ARTIST 1.
“So, she has been looking at some of the
archives in the museum, at photos of
women working with munitions during WW1
and WW2.”
ARTIST 2.
“Munitions, like guns?”
ARTIST 1.
“Yeah, like explosives. So the artist is
looking through a bunch of photographs
in the visitor centre, it’s almost
Christmas, the place is deserted...”
ARTIST 2.
“Almost Christmas? If she’s anything
like you, she’s probably having a pre-
Christmas crisis, no?”
ARTIST 1.
“Oh yeah, she’s definitely edgy, making
mountains out of molehills … Anyway you
can imagine, there’s stuff everywhere in
this museum, it has been a mess ever since
the flood.”
ARTIST 2.
“The flood?”
ARTIST 1.
“You know about this. The museum flooded
a couple of times last year. That’s why
they called the general annual meeting
2016: the year of the floods!”
ARTIST 2.
“Oh yeah...”
ARTIST 1.
“We’re getting distracted. So, the place
is a mess, there’s stuff everywhere,
photographs, transcriptions, folders,
files, desks, whiteboards, computers,
you name it, and the artist finds a
publication called Go West Young Woman!
and it’s full of interviews with women
who worked in the munitions factories at
Deer park, Maribyrnong and – somewhere
else, can’t remember. The women were
describing a time of social crisis
during the war, and she’s going through
this stuff—the artist—and feeling a
little panicky, you know, about her own
situation, or maybe just about the state
of the world at the time.”
ARTIST 2.
“What do you mean? How was the state of
the world at the time?”
ARTIST 1.
“Well, a bit like it is now. Seemingly
stable, but edging towards environmental
disaster...”
ARTIST 2.
“Is this artist concerned about climate
change?”
ARTIST 1.
“Yes, as it happens she is, and she is
really affected by this material about
the women who were working in the
factories during the war. They worked
long hours in shitty conditions and only
stopped if there was a storm, or if the
factory was flooded, that kind of thing.
Oh, and she is also obsessed with a few
comments they made. The women handling
explosives complained of being really
bored with the repetitive work; bored
despite the very real possibility
of exploding.”
ARTIST 2.
“Huh...”
ARTIST 1.
“And I told you there are photographs in
this publication right?”
ARTIST 2.
“I think so, I can’t remember.”
ARTIST 1.
“Well there are photographs too, and she
looks at this one photograph, of women
working in a cordite factory during
WW1. Cordite is a kind of smokeless
propellant that replaced gun powder …
Anyway, it’s an image of the interior of
a cordite factory and she is looking at
it for hours.”
ARTIST 2.
“Really…”
ARTIST 1.
“Maybe one hour, but she is transfixed.
Maybe it’s the composition, the way the
image pulls you in, makes you feel like
you are standing inside of this long,
narrow … wait I have it here, I’ll
show you.”
(Takes out a photocopied photograph)
ARTIST 2.
“Right...”
ARTIST 1.
“See how it pulls you in? That long
narrow room covered from floor to
ceiling with two different kinds of...”
ARTIST 2.
“Floral wallpaper? How weird!”
ARTIST 1.
“Yeah, right? Isn’t that strange? I mean,
it’s an explosives factory … Why do you
need floral wallpaper?”
ARTIST 2.
“It looks like a cottage or something, or
even artist studios … look at the booths,
how many … seven of them. Wide enough to
fit a workbench.”
ARTIST 1.
“So they handled explosives there,
packed .303 bullet shells with cordite.
Apparently it was one of the most
dangerous places in the munitions
factory.”
ARTIST 2.
“Maybe that’s why there were those
corrugated partitions in there … So if
one of them blew up, the others would be
protected.”
ARTIST 1.
“Can you imagine? Anyway, this artist I
was telling you about, she stares at the
image and it really troubles her. She
starts wondering—shit—maybe these women
needed floral wallpaper to calm their
nerves or something … And then she sees
it.”
ARTIST 2.
“What does she see?”
ARTIST 1.
“Look at the floor.”
ARTIST 2.
“OMG George!“
ARTIST 1.
“Right! Look at the way it was peeling up
over the edge of the partition like that
… like, in anticipation!”
ARTIST 2.
“In anticipation of what?”
ARTIST 1.
“Who knows? An explosion? A flood? An
air raid? The artist is really shocked
because the floor was peeling up
apprehensively, menacing the floral
wallpaper, threatening the composure
of the women. Suddenly, the image feels
like a hoax. Suddenly, these women are
not so stable. The floor was ready to be
pulled up at any moment if there was an
accident, an explosion … pulled up and
dragged out those double doors.”
ARTIST 2.
“And, the artist is shocked by this?”
ARTIST 1.
“More than shocked. She is debilitated.
She can’t make anything. You wouldn’t
know from looking at her that she’s
obsessing over this detail, blowing it
up in her mind, catastrophizing it … but,
she is.”
ARTIST 2.
“Why this image in particular, do you
think?”
ARTIST 1.
“I don’t know, I’d say it speaks of
something in her own time that she
can’t really articulate … Maybe it
is something about stoicism, denial,
distraction, an inability to come to
terms with the reality of things, the
fact that these women were working in
a highly explosive environment that
appears benign, obscured by a layer of...”
ARTIST 2.
“Linoleum?”
ARTIST 1.
“Yeah, decorative elements. Anyway,
perhaps it’s an image of how she is
feeling about her own time.”
ARTIST 2.
“Okay, heavy. Then what happens?”
ARTIST 1.
“She keeps ruminating about the image,
and about climate change, and about her
labour, and she feels like she is going
a bit mad. She doesn’t know what to make
and she doesn’t know whether anything
she makes will be useful, or just be
part of the problem, you know...”
ARTIST 2.
“So she starts questioning her role as an
artist...”
ARTIST 1.
“Yeah … but, she doesn’t want to throw
in the hat just yet, because art is the
only thing she’s any good at.”
ARTIST 2.
“You mean, throw in the towel?”
ARTIST 1.
“Sure. She figures that perhaps she
needs to work through the problem, make
something with this detail.”
ARTIST 2.
“So what does she do?”
ARTIST 1.
“She blows it up.”
(Gestures to the minimalist sculpture
comprising extracted iron ore and
polyvinyl chloride)