by Nick FitzPatrick.

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

A storm has risen in the teacup of Perth's public arts community.
        To even name this story's proximate subjects, Boonji Spaceman and the giant Kebab, is to immediately succumb to its special and pervasive brand of farcical absurdity. It is enormously difficult to refrain from indulging each and every one of this story's hysterical details, so extensive and labyrinthine are its zany antecedent factors and metaphysical resonances. Gaze too deeply into the Boonji Spaceman's visor, and you may accidentally glimpse the most louche and low-minded recesses within Borges' Aleph or Indra's net.


Let's first examine the narrative as it is popularly presented and understood:

In July 2021, the City of Perth dismantles Paul Ritter's 1971 iconic monument Ore Obelisk (popularly known as the Kebab) from its Stirling Gardens premises after the work is deemed structurally unsound. The Obelisk is chopped up and placed into storage while the feasibility of its restoration is assessed. Ultimately, costs of conservation and reinstatement are estimated at $113,000. Nothing happens.

In June 2024, the City of Perth votes in a meeting to accept the donation of an artwork it identifies as The Spaceman from American artist Brendan Murphy, purportedly valued at $1 million (in unspecified currency). The deal is brokered by local gallerist Paul Gulotti, and the donation is made on condition that the City agrees to cover costs of transport and installation (estimated at approximately $250,000) and instate the work to coincide with a planned future exhibition of Murphy's work at Gulotti's Cottesloe gallery. The City later determines that it will install the Spaceman on the now-vacant base where the Ore Obelisk once stood.

In March 2025, a public campaign forms beneath the hashtag #savethekebab to publicly oppose the installation of the Spaceman, and to call for reinstatement of the Ore Obelisk. Precise angles of prosecution vary, but argument generally casts Ore Obelisk as a storied and cherished component of Perth's cultural and historical landscape, deserving of conservation as a matter of principled priority before even entertaining the prospect of what lead campaigner Helen Curtis dubs a ‘parachuted-in piece of 1960s space paraphernalia.’ The campaign has since gathered substantial steam among key players in Perth's arts-industrial complex and broadened to question the handling of other public artworks within the City of Perth.

A simple enough story. Compelling, even, and dovetailing ever-so-nicely with prevailing sentiments towards the Zempilas mayoralty, cultural amnesia in Perth, and the contemptuous disregard for history so frequently observed within Western Australian governance. “Of course,” we cry, “Save the Kebab!”
        But let's not rush to conclusions. A closer examination is required. Let's begin with the works.


The Ore Obelisk was unveiled in Stirling Gardens, next to Council House, in 1971. It was a 14 metre length of high-tensile steel oil drill shaft, projected skyward and appearing to skewer fifteen large clumps of economically-significant minerals mined around Western Australia, from Superpit gold ore to Koolyanobbing iron ore. The work's subtitle, Harmony of Minerals, suggests exactly the rapturous spirit of prosperous modernity to which the monument paid tribute. The sculpture's base was, additionally, conceived as a three-dimensional graph, explicating the annual economic productivity of the Western Australian mining sector—an addition presumably considered necessary in case viewers were left trapped in the monument's otherwise diaphanous and poetic ambiguity.
        Paul Ritter, the designer of the Ore Obelisk, was not an artist per se but Perth's first official town planner, later City of Perth councillor, and a noted and prolific sociological eccentric of his time. Ritter's historicisation in Perth is a polarised and complex one, and he is variously and simultaneously remembered as a champion of conservation and godfather of development, as a progressive critical thinker and as a woo-woo charlatan.
        Indeed, there are aspects of Ritter's public persona that fashion him almost as a mystic visionary, of the kind decidedly associated with mid-century utopianism and esoterica, and their marriage within architecture and social planning. He promoted his beliefs widely, lecturing often and publishing many curious texts across his lifetime, with early titles including Universal Manifestations of Orgone Energy in Spirals (1954) and a treatise on the self-coined science of Educreation (1966). Such fabulously modernist, interdisciplinary portmanteaus appear frequently across Ritter's oeuvre, including educreation (Ritter's holistic therapeutic/pedagogical/architectural philosophy), Sculpcrete (Ritter's personal methodological invention for concrete casting using polystyrene), and emoplay (presumably a pedagogical technique, though the precise definition seems to be lost to history). Fascinatingly, Ritter was an enthusiastic follower and proponent of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich's esoteric teachings on orgone, a theorised primordial cosmic life energy—though Reich himself rejected Ritter's interpretations and applications of the theory.
        Ritter “directed” the Planned Environment and Educreation Research (PEER) Institute, staffed solely by himself and his wife Jean—a detail making his appointment as director especially charming. It was this “institute” which conceived the Obelisk, originally as a fixture for a (very) early incarnation of what would later become the Perth City Link project. After that project's deferral, it was this “institute” which promoted and ultimately brokered the erection of the Ore Obelisk in Stirling Gardens after several years of determined courtship with industry and government figures. The official narrative—that the work was erected to mark the state's surpassing a population of one million—seems, on the balance of probability, to be a mere political convenience rather than any sort of genuine motivation.
        Ritter's affairs with the City, in the public sphere, and private enterprise were dogged by controversy, and in 1984 he was arrested and imprisoned for fraud, though Ritter claimed to have been framed.
        Apparently irrepressible, Ritter published two volumes titled Prison Poetry (1986 and 1987) from the inside, and, tellingly, after his release self-published Curses from Canberra: Public Service Conspiracy and the Failure of Democratic Safeguards (1989).
        Ritter died in 2010, aged 85. He is mainly celebrated, perhaps unusually for an urban planner, for his achievements in the negative, having successfully campaigned against two projects: one to demolish the Cloisters building on St Georges Terrace, and the other to construct an 8-lane freeway along Perth's foreshore.


The work that the City of Perth refers to in their June 2024 meeting as The Spaceman appears to be more accurately (or more lately) titled Boonji Spaceman. It is 1,365 kilograms of steel and carbon fibre, formed into the suited figure of a 7-metre tall spaceman, mid-low-gravity-step, and presented in markedly Koons-esque blue chrome. The entire work is covered in the kind of schizophrenic scrawlings you might expect to find on Albert Einstein's chalkboard, if only he had been some kind of toxic positivity influencer hellbent on contriving the precise mathematical formula for world peace, instead of lamely contriving whatever it was he actually contrived: [trust] × (PASSION) + [DESIRE] ⨳ 7[ADVENTURE].
        Boonji Spaceman is the work of artist Brendan Murphy. Born in New England in 1971, Murphy moved to Europe at a young age to pursue a professional career in Germany's basketball league, before later returning to the US to take up trading on Wall Street. Recalling his life's arc, Murphy can identify the precise day he pivoted to art: September 11th, 2001.
       ‘Everyone who worked on Wall Street lost friends, we all knew people who died that day,’ Murphy told Forbes in 2019. ‘That day was like a mirror for a lot of people and made many of us question “am I doing what I really want to be doing?” That’s when I decided to leave finance and become an artist.’
        Luckily, he was tennis buddies with painter Eric Fischl, who (according to Murphy's account) granted the upstart access to his studio for inspiration. ‘Also, David Salle and Robert [sic] Bleckner,’ said Murphy in the same conversation with Forbes. ‘I got a crash course with two or three of the best painters in the world and I began to experiment with different materials and that just kickstarted the entire process.’
            Twenty-odd years down the line, the artist is going strong. Murphy's repertoire encompasses innumerable paintings and Boonji sculptures featuring his signature formulaic scrawls. He has patented his chroming technique of choice to allow him to scale his business. In 2021, Murphy launched the Boonji Project, unleashing a legion of customisable NFT Boonji Spaceman avatars upon an apparently eager market and raking in over $15 million USD. The same year, Murphy unveiled Frozen with Desire, a special 42-inch Boonji Spaceman featuring a visor encrusted with 6,200 diamonds (totalling 517 carats), and commanding a highly publicised price tag of $25 million USD. After a year sitting in Saks Fifth Avenue's jewellery vault, the work appeared at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2022, where its price had dropped to a mere $15 million USD. In February 2025, the work was “unveiled” again at Riyadh's Four Seasons Hotel (this time alongside a curated cheese tasting!) now available for SAR 77 million, just a shade over $20 million USD.
        Many interested sources online are quick to highlight Murphy's collectability amongst the world's elite, his sculptures being acquired by such cultural luminaries as Warren Buffet (billionaire CEO of holding company Berkshire Hathaway), Larry Page (billionaire former CEO of tech giant Google), Bracken Darrel (mere multi-multi-millionaire CEO of fashion outfit VF Corporation), Jorge Paulo Lemann (billionaire investment banker and ex-tennis player), Serena Williams (tennis player), Novak Djokovic (tennis player), Grigor Dimitrov (tennis player), a handful of other semi-notable sportspeople, and Ryan Gosling (who suddenly seems that much less fuckable). Strangely, these same sources fail to enumerate the esteemed public collections which have acquired Murphy's work—this list is left to the reader's imagination.
        Such astronomical success may slow or arrest lesser artists as they grapple with questions of change, legacy, and reputation. Questioned—during a 2014 presentation at Google at which an unidentified, green-shirted Jim Doe introduces ‘Brandon [sic] Murphy’ as a new friend, recently acquired on a Caribbean yacht trip back from an island owned by Richard Branson—as to whether he concerns himself, artistically, with the opinions of others, Murphy granted his rapt audience insight into a recent exchange deemed especially resonant:

The difference between ideal creative output and just being noa- being a decent- is- that's the- that's- I have a- Alberto [sic] Bertini, my friend from Australia. Big Developer. Built some of the biggest buildings Australia, sold his company f- three hundred million bucks. Went off- off the reservation. He's now covered in tattoos, rings, an- bought his own island in Fiji. We had dinner with him last week. The girls stepped away. An- and the guy's completely out of his mind on some level. Super successful. And I said to him, I s- what's the one thing that you can tell- what's the difference- what's been the difference maker- he's- it's just an incredible guy. And the word he us- used was 'fearlessness'. Fearless. Coz the minute you start thinkin' what other people- n this is a guy who has- has done it, and still does it. And I thought that was very interesting.

Precisely how the Spaceman came to the attention of the City of Perth, we are sadly unlikely to ever know. What we do know is that Paul Gulotti, of Cottesloe's Gulotti galleries, was instrumental. Anyone with an internet connection and a burning hole in their pocket also knows that Gulotti has access to a great many preeminent artistic minds of our times, also representing such titans as Russel Young (USA), Mr Brainwash (USA), and Robert Mars (USA). For the savvy few with their finger on the pulse, it may have been possible to know that Gulotti was, in fact, perfectly suited to broker a major art placement with the City of Perth in 2024.
        And so, at its Ordinary Meeting on 25th of June, 2024, shortly after City CEO Michelle Reynolds appealed to almighty God for the ‘wisdom to understand [the city's] present needs... and grace to serve our fellow citizens with integrity and selfless devotion,’ the city council voted unanimously in favour of Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas' motion to accept the donation of Boonji Spaceman.
        The next day, Zempilas proudly announced the decision, posting on his Facebook page: ‘A gift for the City of Perth in honour of our origin story, the City of Light and John Glenn.’


On one level, the #savethekebab campaign invites, in the popular mind, a dichotomy of choice. Which do you want, Perth? Our beloved Kebab, or the Big Ugly American Spaceman?
        This is a reductive and unilluminating lens through which to analyse the debacle, but it does provide an opportunity to discuss each work on the basis of its merits—so let's indulge it for a moment. Now, then, is about the time to take off the researcher's gloves and deliver a frank appraisal of the works at hand.
        There can be no doubt that Boonji Spaceman is, by any credible measure, tawdry crap. Let's be precise: it is tawdry, tasteless, and uncritical crap, hawked by a quackish dilettante, and instated by a blundering and navel-gazing body politic. The problem is that it's hard to describe Ore Obelisk as much else. In fact, it is tempting to view the instatement of Boonji Spaceman as a moment of astonishing historical symmetry. One giant, hideous thing, emblematic of the idiotic fixations, self-serving narratives, and grossly negligent governance of one era dies. And from its ashes rises another giant, hideous thing, horrifically and upsettingly evolved to emblematise precisely the same for our current moment.
        The Ore Obelisk is a perfect monument to the Western Australia of the late 20th Century and its irreversible coupling, economically and culturally, to the rapacious exploitation of our mineral resources. It is brusque, phallic, quite literally unrefined. It is almost a taunt against those who this society and its industry dispossessed, and who until very recently could scarcely be named. History has proven it hopelessly optimistic, even for the white everyman who public art of its time may have been supposed to serve.
        The Boonji Spaceman is in turn a perfect testament to a 21st Century Western Australia, swept—like the rest of Australia, the majority of the developed world, and a great deal of the rest—into the frenzied and hyperreal turbulence of globalised late capitalism trailing in the wake of an increasingly deranged United States. Mesmerised by wealth and celebrity, enthralled by myths of independent endeavour, and enslaved to prospect and speculation. A sculpture as contrived and hyper-referential as it is (again quite literally) empty. A spaceman, the final frontiersman and last safe vestige of settler colonial iconography, dressed in Murphy's pathetic and impotent emotional “formulae”—the nervous jitters still echoing after the depravity of September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror.


We are now over a month into the proper public undertakings of the #savethekebab campaign.
        A change.org petition calling for the Obelisk's reinstatement prior to the Boonji Spaceman's acquisition has, at time of writing, garnered over 1,500 signatures. Articles have appeared on the ABC, the Guardian, WA Today, and Arts Hub Australia. The story even earnt its own article on eminent arts critic John McDonald's substack (huge for Perth). Campaigners presented themselves to a City Council meeting to demand answers (albeit not entirely successfully). Notable figures from the local landscape have taken up arms and spread the good word.
        On balance, it's a good cause to support. The Ore Obelisk is indeed deserving of better treatment, as a notable, complex, and historically enmeshed monument. The Boonji Spaceman is indeed artistically void, and we'd all probably rather see public money spent on something—almost anything—else. The City should indeed be ridiculed for its lack of taste, condemned for its lack of transparency in its dealings with Gulotti, and questioned on its lack of consultation in accepting the Spaceman.
        Outright opposition to the Spaceman's arrival, however, seems to be a doomed cause. The Boonji Spaceman has well and truly touched down on Australian soil, funds have been provisioned, debts have been incurred, and a mild media circus roused in anticipation of its imminent installation. The campaign itself knows this, refocusing advocacy onto conservation of the Obelisk and other public artwork, calling for transparency, and somewhat optimistically pitching the City West/SciTech complex (or anywhere else, it seems) as a more suitable destination for the Spaceman.
        Whatever the outcome, it's worth reflecting on some of the social and emotional vectors the #savethekebab campaign has activated. Rhetoric has at times flirted with provincialism, nationalism, protectionism, and brute financialisation of arts and culture. Historical significance of the site in question is relevant only insofar as convenient, and never beyond a colonial timeline (campaign leader Helen Curtis repeatedly invokes Stirling Garden's sanctity as “Perth's oldest garden”). Nor is there any appetite for an earnest assessment of Ore Obelisk's narratives and tensions, beyond deploying such thought-terminating clichés as “like it or not,” or reposting a video of British artist Yinka Shonibare explaining that he thinks destruction of colonial statues is tantamount to book burning—hardly a helpful or even a relevant parallel. All this is to say that a genuinely nuanced and sensitive examination of the situation at hand has been almost as lacking from the campaign as from the City. Perhaps this is the price of politics.
        Moreover, it is difficult to shake the feeling that the #savethekebab campaign is missing the forest for the trees. Nobody who has been paying a modicum of attention for the last five, ten, or fifteen years can pretend to be surprised that the City of Perth should behave the way that it has, that government should display such little respect for the arts, that such a Boonji travesty should arise. The outcry over this single inflection point seems in ignorance of decades of arts positioning and policy. The arts industry has, in many ways, worked hand-in-hand with the public and private sectors in allowing its output to be commodified and relegated primarily to self-serving political performance, “activating” spectacle, or idle decoration.
        ‘Public art should reflect who we are,’ says a #savethekebab-branded Facebook post by Apparatus, campaign leader Helen Curtis' own arts consultancy operation which itself expertly peddles palatable art solutions to developments in the public and private sectors.
        One final question then, before we lay down this mess. Who are we?


Thus far we have entertained ourselves with the quirks and vague conspiracies of the chosen few, the cultural and political bourgeoisie whose actions collectively comprise the dominant events occasioning the turgid erections that are Ore Obelisk and Boonji Spaceman. But stories of corruption among the powerful are quotidian and ubiquitous the world over. We might gain one final perspective, then, by stepping back and taking in the full vista of this place in particular.
        Public art's power in shaping collective perceptions of history, place, identity, and narrative is lost on nobody in this story. Nobody—not Zempilas, not Ritter, not Curtis, not Murphy—is at odds over whether public art ought to tell the story of this place, its people, and their history. The matter at hand is which stories ought to be told, which stories the public wants and needs. Of course, any story, whichever story, will be just that: a story.
        There is only one, whole truth. Uncontrollable. Messy and entangled. In places, it is triumphant and magnificent. In others, ignominious and contemptible. The truth cannot be entirely contained, nor edited, and where such attempts are made, the truth bleeds out through seams and cracks and silences.
        The truth is that Perth is a remarkably fortunate city, blessed with natural beauty, material plenty, and peace. And the truth is that this place is a settler colonial outpost founded upon the domination, genocide, and enduring, totalising disenfranchisement of Aboriginal people.
        The truth is that the tireless industry of this state's prospectors and miners has delivered dizzying riches so bountiful as to guarantee the prosperity of all who live here. And the truth is that these riches have flowed into the hands of the very few, and that today a widening wealth gap renders the necessity of mere shelter unaffordable for many hundreds of thousands.
        The truth is that, in a beautiful moment of unity, the city of Perth left its streetlights blazing, and festooned its laundry lines with gaslights in a bid to be glimpsed from outer space by astronaut John Glenn aboard NASA's Friendship 7. And the is truth that, half a century on, such starry-eyed visions of global camaraderie and American excellence are dulled and fading.
        But the whole truth of this place, its people, and their history is one with which the public—and by extension its elected government—has been unwilling to reckon for 200 years. And of this unwillingness is born precisely the kind of hapless and incompetent storytelling embodied by Boonji Spaceman and the giant Kebab. Until, collectively, we find the fortitude to face all the stories of this place, earnestly and in depth, each story we tell will be filled with seams and cracks and silences. Our public artworks will remain fantasies of unblemished virtue and grand endeavour, or empty and generic works of formalism. The story of our city will remain imbued with its special and pervasive brand of farcical absurdity.
        For now, we are left to brace for a probable reality, thus: that the Boonji Spaceman is, in fact, precisely the kind of art the public wants and enjoys, and perhaps—in this moment—what it deserves.

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Endnote:

boonji
noun. (coined, B. Murphy c 2021)
/bʊnd͡ʒi/
1. Positive energy derived from creativity.

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Image credits: 1) Photograph courtesy of the City of Perth. 2) Photograph courtesy of Frances Andrijich, Perth Public Art Foundation.

by Sam Beard.

For fans of Jesse Marlow’s street photography, the images in Street Posters 2020–2025 will appear familiar. Perhaps not only because they’ve been postered around Perth and Melbourne in the format presented in this exhibition (that is, accompanied by text by artist Sam Bloor), but because the photographs are from a series Marlow shot between 1998 and 2004, since published in his 2021 photobook Second City.[1] Bloor and Marlow began collaborating during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns, which resulted in a selection of Marlow’s black and white street photographs paired with Bloor’s characteristic sans serif aphorisms. These designs—images and texts—were then printed and pasted as large posters around the streets of Melbourne and Perth (and Fremantle, on the old Woolstores building, which doubles as a popular postering spot). Now, for Street Posters 2020–2025, held at Kolbusz Space, the posters are (re)presented as archival prints on aluminium, in editions of five (‘ready to hang’, as the room sheet notes) for clientele and fans of the pair’s respective work. This preamble outlines what interests me most about the work, the recycling and reworking of it, which leads me to ask: which iterations are most successful and why?
        Before addressing this question or the exhibition itself, here is what one needs to know about these two artists. Jesse Marlow has a storied career as a photographer. Based in Melbourne, Marlow published his first photobook in 2003 (Centre Bounce: Football from Australia’s Heart), followed by his first collection of street photographs, Wounded, in 2005. He has been awarded several notable art and photography prizes, and his work is held in the collections of Monash University, NGV, and the Australian Parliament House. In a review of Marlow’s Second City—the series in question—photographer Doug Spowart notes that the work ‘reveals [Marlow’s] astute observations of the human relationship with and in the urban environment through his use of candid photography approaches.’[2] In an interview with American photographer Blake Andrews, Marlow described how the title for the book (which he began working on during lockdown) came about from ‘the constant reference to Melbourne […] as Australia’s “Second City” during the early Covid-19 reporting. As the editing process progressed, the title took on a whole new meaning, as the distinction between the Melbourne we all know now and those reflected in the photographs […].’[3]
        With these two remarks in mind, the synergies with Sam Bloor’s practice may already be apparent. Bloor cut his teeth in Perth’s graffiti scene before transitioning into traditional signwriting techniques. Before long, he began utilising these techniques to present brief phrases on walls and old signage spots around Perth and Fremantle. The evolution of Bloor—from graff scene to text art—was completed through his borrowing from conceptual art of the 1960s and ‘70s. Particularly relevant touchstones seem to be John Baldessari’s Pure Beauty (1968), Lawrence Weiner’s A Stake Set (1969), and Jenny Holzer’s Truisms series (1977–87), specifically the iteration that involved Holzer pasting the Truisms prints around the streets of Manhattan.
        The significance of the urban environment for both Marlow and Bloor is signposted before entry. Through the window of Kolbusz Space, a large wraparound print of a photograph of the Bloor / Marlow posters in situ advertises the show to passers-by. To me, this particular rendition—the eclectic street poster—is the most interesting. As editions in the gallery, art objects in their own right, the interplay between mature street photography and youthful aphorism is at best whimsical and at worst perplexing. Some of the aphorisms are perhaps more aptly described as (and I do not mean this in a derogatory sense necessarily) juvenile. This particular mood or overwrought cadence is exemplified in the aphorisms; ‘Fever Dream,’ ‘Doomed to Flourish,’ ‘All My Bright Ideas vs the Sun,’ or ‘The Early Bird Dies on the Way to Work’ are all apt contenders for angsty emo song titles. This may seem dismissive—not so, however—as it is important to assess the text, the image, and their relationship in order to grasp the whole. The aphorisms throughout Street Posters 2020–2025 tinge the photographs with airs of youthful despondence, overwrought poetics, detached ennui, and pub philosophising. These moods are not dissimilar to the subjects of many of Marlow’s images: scenes of city life passing by somewhere between dissociation and contentment. The photographs and texts appear tightly bound together, as opposed to the large-format posters which more boldly asserted themselves in the urban landscape. These pairings may have been more compelling in the gallery context had they been pried apart from one another, freed for the viewer to associate varying texts and photographs.
        A friend pointed out another interesting comparator for Bloor’s aphorisms, those by Rirkrit Tiravanija for last year’s Perth Festival. ‘Do we dream under the same sky?’ asked Tiravanija, via billboards and posters, laid out in black sans serif type on stark white backgrounds (the inverse of Bloor’s usual format). In these works, Tiravanija appears to search for a poetic “open-endedness”, encouraging a participatory quality in which the viewer makes up for the ambiguity of the respective aphorism and fills in the blank with a “meaning” of their own. At the time, I concluded that the “open-endedness” of the work was a disguise for its insufficiencies.[4] Perhaps my review unfairly focused on the content of the posters, rather than the effect they might have on unsuspecting viewers going about their business. Instead of thinking through Tiravanija’s work as an art object, but as a sign [5], one can appreciate the need to jar, confuse, or discombobulate with idiosyncratic phrasing. In an environment of competing signs, one might conclude this phrasing is a way to pique interest and ignite questioning in the mind of the viewer. If this is true, their simple design only adds to the curiously conspicuous yet low-key a/effect. On the other hand, interpreted as art objects (perhaps a misreading), or even simply as text, the whimsical naïvety of the signs betrays an awkwardness that is hard to shake. But Tiravanija’s signs remained on the street and not in the gallery. Because of this, I now tend to favour the more generous reading.
        For Bloor and Marlow, what were eclectic street posters are now commodities in a gallery. This is by no means an issue in its own right. But devoid of their relationships to adjacent posters, cruddy brick walls, and obscuring street signs, they are isolated and thus the sums of their own parts. Under this spotlight, Bloor’s text-based work never quite transcends its youthful and despondent argot. Compare this with Holzer’s Truisms: Holzer strips the texts of any personal “style”, paring the phrasing back to impersonal, fundamental ideas. In their naked state, the germs of ideas are ready to infect a host—with little concern for their host’s context, surroundings, or interests. It is through the directness and clarity of Holzer’s phrasing, combined with the minimalism of its presentation and the complexities that come with its public display on the streets, that the most interesting qualities of Truisms are formed. Bloor and Tiravanija share an “open-endedness” that Holzer does not, and therefore, we can turn to the pair to understand what Truisms might have been like had it lacked Holzer’s crisp, sharp, and concise phraseology.
        Combining such phrasing with images—at least in this context—does not detract from the text. But it does complicate it. This pairing of recycled photographs and texts in such a tight convention as “image on top/caption below” just seems too slick, too formulaic, in the gallery space to yield the kind of perplexed contemplation the works might have provoked in the urban settings where they were initially postered. Or, perhaps the ubiquitous nature of internet memes, aspirational image/text combos, inspirational Kmart posters, or workplace calendar designs, is too great a burden to be borne by the works of Street Posters 2020–2025 in the eyes of this critic. However, their slick presentation, sophisticated photography, and contemporary idioms will undoubtedly find an adoring audience.

Sam Bloor and Jesse Marlow: Street Posters 2020–2025, Kolbusz Space, 15 – 16 March, 2025.

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Footnotes:

1. I haven’t yet consulted a copy of Marlow’s Second City, a collection of 44 street photos published by Marlow’s own imprint, Sling Shot Press, to confirm that all the images selected for the Bloor/Marlow collaboration are from the Second City series. However, several certainly are—including some of the most poignant in the exhibition.

2. Spowart, Doug. “Second City by Jesse Marlow – Book Review”, Photo Collective, August 12, 2021. https://photocollective.com.au/book-review/doug-spowart/second-city-by-jesse-marlow-book-review/

3. Andrews, Blake. “Q & A with Jesse Marlow”, blog, April 28, 2021. http://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2021/04/q-with-jesse-marlow.html

4. See Partial Sightings: Rirkrit Tiravanija in the suburbs, Sam Beard, Dispatch Review. https://dispatchreview.info/Partial-Sightings

5. Rirkrit Tiravanija proposes this very idea in a recent interview with the Louisiana Channel: https://youtu.be/KUYL90wEoYc?si=QmphVKuLITcj4k35

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Image credits: Installation photographs of Sam Bloor and Jesse Marlow: Street Posters 2020–2025, Kolbusz Space, 15 – 16 March, 2025. All artwork by Sam Bloor and Jesse Marlow.

by Darren Jorgensen.

Recently the Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street made news after succeeding in recovering unpaid wages for around eight thousand Western Australian pastoral station workers [1]. These workers were living on stations with their families, but were unpaid or underpaid because they were Aboriginal. [2] Despite the feudal structures of power under which Aboriginal people laboured, Street remembers station life fondly. ‘They liked their work,’ Street recalls, for although they ‘worked for no money... I know it was hard work, but it was good fun, it was a good life.’ [3] For three decades Street has been documenting his memories of life on cattle stations in the 1950s and 1960s, with drawings, prints and paintings of droving, mustering, branding and camping. It is remarkable that it has taken so long for him to have a solo show outside the commercial galleries, as Street’s paintings are well known among collectors and those interested in Aboriginal history. Amidst the fetish for dots and ochres, his historical scenes have been overlooked by curators. Since showing experimental paintings of cattle on shaved and etched cowhide in the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Desert River Sea in 2019, Street has come to appear as one of the most crucial Australian artists of our time, as he brings life to an epoch of horses and cattle, saddles, and spurs. His exhibition at the Fremantle Arts Centre, Stolen Wages, offers a survey of the diversity of his practice, and includes a classic series of his prints, new paintings and an installation illustrating the beginnings of his art in illustrations on the side of a water tank.
        Born on Lousia Downs Station around 1948, Street was raised toward the end of station time. After a childhood in a bush camp, he began working after moving to the station homestead when he was 10 years old, collecting and chopping wood, and moving it around with a donkey and trailer. He went on to learn all the trades necessary to running a station, from making ropes to shoeing horses. [4] He compares what life was like then with life today:

In the 1940s and 50s people used to go mustering in the bush, these were hard days. People had to ride all day, no helicopters like today. They used to put them in the bullock paddock and count them 500-600 bullocks or more. They used to muster all these bullocks and drove them to Derby, Broome, or even Wyndham. They had no trucks in those days, long trips, droving these cattle, it would sometimes take months… No more droving now, them trucks do all the work. [5]

Street’s earliest surviving drawings were on a water tank on Louisa Downs, where he etched pictures of someone riding a bucking horse, a truck and an aeroplane. This tank is recreated in the gallery as a floating installation, coloured with the images of vegetation in the shadows of the evening. Street insisted upon its significance of the tank to the show’s curator Emilia Galatis, who brought photographs of it out from the Mangkaja Arts archive. The tank was recently destroyed, making these photographs and this installation a unique key to unlocking Street’s work, which has its origins in station time itself. In the droving days, drawings and writing etched into the black bitumen of water tanks, as well as onto rock, were known as the ‘bagman’s gazette.’ [6] The gazette included the names the men who worked on stations, naked sketches of women, portraits of drovers, and as on Street’s tank, men riding bucking horses as they broke them in from being wild and untamed. [7]
        The painting Out in the Stockcamp (2024) is one of several long tableaux produced for this exhibition. Each painting offers a glimpse of station life as it was, drawn either from his memories, from his father’s stories, or from other stories of station time. His paintings draw the eye with their incredible historical detail, Out in the Stockcamp featuring saddles and spurs hanging from branches, horseshoes and tools laid out on a blanket, and a fire being stoked for cooking the evening meal. As Galatis points out, each animal and stockman have their own personality, in the expression on their faces or their standing gait. There are other paintings in the show with the same level of detail, too, featuring rain falling onto a camp in a wide valley, a horse drawn wagon meeting a group of people still living in the bush, mustering, and branding yards.
        Many of the paintings combine two vignettes, of camps, people and horses; and of landscapes and cattle moving in parallel to the gentle horizon. Trees and cattle yards tend to unify the duplicity of Street’s compositions, and sometimes draw the gaze into dusty and rainy skies. Some of his paintings are less detailed because the dust from thousands of hooves is obscuring the stockmen traversing a bleak, orange and red emptiness. There is always a cinematic quality to Street's pictures, in which the figures of animals and working people strike singular figures in the vastness, creating a pastoral sublime.
        Horses are as much the heroes in Street’s compositions as stockmen. They stand tall amidst the trees and shrubs, a symbol of power across cultures, whether in racing horse paintings from eighteenth century England or in the ledger drawings of American Indian warrior bands of the late nineteenth century. In these Australian paintings the horse stands for something else—against the trauma of colonial dispossession and exploitation, Street's work articulates a narrative of Aboriginal empowerment through droving, mustering, yarding, and breaking in. There are two kinds of horses in Street’s compositions. One stands and faces the viewer, while another is in movement and shown from the side. In both cases they make strong figures in the landscape, often engaged in spectacular action as they loom over the cattle that they are steering through the dust. In some paintings there is no vegetation or other distraction but billowing red clouds that rise into the air. Amidst this sublime spectacle, the horses and their riders resemble thin Giacometti sculptures as they shape the void around them, dividing the composition with a mob of cattle belting through the dust. The riders are masters of these empty scenes, their horses empowering them with creation and movement.
        Street’s dynamic compositions are very different to the pacific landscapes of colonial and settler Australian artists. From the first paintings of the settlement at Sydney, artists chose the picturesque as their preferred genre, sending home images of sparsely vegetated, rolling hills. They were landscapes ideal for the grazing of sheep and cattle, and largely painted by artists who had little experience working as shepherds or stockmen.
        In addition to these paintings, and to the installation mapping out Street’s earliest drawings on a water tank, the exhibition includes paintings on cow hide and bull skull. It also includes some of the most original and beautiful images made in the history of Australian printmaking, Ward’Birra Gamba Warag-goo, They Got Water for Work was a series made for an exhibition in 1995, and documents the building of a well and drawing water to drink, with women and men carrying, digging and pouring. The simplicity of the figures, leaning toward and away from poles, tanks and wells, belies the grandeur of creating a source of water for cattle and people in the creation of station infrastructure. Street’s attention to detail here collides with a sense of essentiality, of depicting only that relationship of labourer to labour, of hand to image, in a way not possible in the all-over medium of painting.
        It has been something of a common argument, and one that Street himself has made, that his paintings of station time are inseparable from the Gooniyandi wages case. The title of the Fremantle Arts Centre show, Stolen Wages, attests to this conjuncture of art and politics, image making and activism. It is, however, also possible to argue that Street’s paintings are also deeply conservative. Their compositions, interest in details, and the pastiche method by which he constructs his mise en scenes are more like the history paintings of Tom Roberts than the pop activism of Richard Bell, for example. Amidst the high colour expressionism that typically comes from Mangkaja’s studio, Street taught himself to paint naturalistically, delineating the materiality of station life with sweeping north-west landscapes. Through Street’s work we find ourselves deep within Australian history—amidst long labouring days, and fireside in the starry dark of night, listening to stockmen singing the cattle while wrapped in a swag and waking into a dawn still sore from the previous day’s ride. This is history painting at its best, of an era that was eclipsed by the arrival of trucks, helicopters and motorbikes, and by the mass exodus of Aboriginal people from station time to community time, where Street has spent most of his life, thinking about the stockman days he left behind.

Mervyn Street: Stolen Wages is at The Fremantle Arts Centre, 8 February – 20 April, 2025.

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Footnotes:

1. Alys Marshall, “Stockman Mervyn Street and the History that Prompted a $180m Indigenous Stolen Wages Settlement,” ABC News, 11 November 2023, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-11/stockman-mervyn-street-indigenous-stolen-wages-settlement/103075386

2. Ibid.

3. Mervyn Street, June Davis and Alex Smee. The Old Stockman Days. Video. 28 October, 2013. ABC Open.https://www.abc.net.au/local/videos/2011/04/06/3184025.htm

4. Philippa Jahn and Mervyn Street, “Jawardji Mervyn Street: Writing it Down in Paint,” unpublished essay.

5. Jahn and Street.

6. W.E. Harney, Life Among the Aborigines, Robert Hale, London, 1957, p. 183.

7. See R.G. Kimber, “‘Play About’: Aboriginal Graffiti in Central Australia,” in Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale, The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, pp. 124-125; and Darrell Lewis, 'The Bush has friends to meet him' in Alan Mayne, ed., Beyond the Black Stump: Histories of Outback Australia, Adelaide, Wakefield, 2008, pp. 291-292.

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Image credits: 
Installation photograph of 'Mervyn Street: Stolen Wages', Fremantle Arts Centre, 2025; Etching on water tank, rendered in installation (detail), Fremantle Arts Centre, 2025; Water tank on Louisa Downs, 2016. Photo Wes Hill.

by Rainy Colbert.

THIS YEAR SCULPTURES BY THE SEA EXISTS PURELY IN THE MIND. I THINK THAT’S GOOD, BECAUSE I HAVE WRITTEN 100 SCULPTURE IDEAS FOR SCULPTURES BY THE SEA.

1. IT’S THE PERTH CACTUS BUT ITS MADE OF CORAL REEF. 


2. ON THE PONTOON STANDS THE STRONGEST MAN IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA. WHOEVER CAN PUSH HIM OFF IS CROWNED THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD. 


3. IT’S ME ON MY BOOGIE BOARD, DOING TRICKS. 


4. CHILDREN DIG A REALLY BIG HOLE AND CONVINCE EVERYONE THAT IT’S BOTTOMLESS. 


5. CHRIST HAS ARISEN. IT’S EASTER COME EARLY. LEAVE AN UNWRAPPED CHOCCY EGG ON EVERY CAR. 


6. BALANCE BIRD, BUT REALLY BIG. 


7. SIX GLASS CYLINDERS ARE ARRANGED FROM EAST TO WEST, EACH HOUSING ONE OF COTTESLOE’S MOST UNDESIRABLE RESIDENTS (AS VOTED BY ANONYMOUS COMMUNITY POLL). THE ROOF OF EACH CYLINDER IS A BIG MAGNIFYING GLASS. AS THE SUN SETS, PEOPLE GET TO SEE DEMOCRACY IN ACTION. 


8. KINETIC PRESSED HAM. DUDE ON MOTORISED ZIPLINE GETS HIS BARE ASS PRESSED THROUGH A HUNDRED PANES OF GLASS.  


9. EVERYONE IS GIVEN A FREE METAL DETECTOR. ANY VALUABLES FOUND WILL BE DONATED TO ME TO HELP RECOUP THE COSTS OF THE METAL DETECTORS. 


10. COLOURFUL MURAL OF A WOMAN LOOKING PENSIVE. 


11. DESALINATE THE OCEAN AND SELL BOTTLES OF THE WATER. 


12. WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? I DID. ONE HUNDRED GREYHOUNDS RACE DOWN COTTESLOE BEACH. 


13. PLACE T.A.B. BETTING MACHINES ALONG THE OCEAN SHORE. MAYBE I WIN SOME MONEY. 


14. MAKE THE WATER SO COLD THAT ALL THE WAVES TURN TO ICE. 


15. MAKE THE SAND SO HOT IT TURNS INTO GLASS. USE GLASS TO REPAIR THE BROKEN WINDOWS OF PEOPLE’S CARS. 


16. BIG MOUNTAIN OF TREASURES I GOT FROM… NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. 


17. ALL THE RAINBOW LORIKEETS ARE CAPTURED AND PAINTED GREY AND MADE TO HOLD TINY IPHONES. THEY ARE ALSO GIVEN TRANQUILIZERS TO REALLY HAMMER HOME THE MESSAGE. 


18. A WILD BULL HAS ESCAPED FROM THE ABATTOIR. HE’S PISSED. 


19. A SEVERED HEAD WASHES UP ON THE BEACH. NO ONE KNOWS WHO IT IS AND EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT. BUT ACTUALLY, IT’S JUST A STEM CELL HEAD GROWN IN A LAB.  (COLLAB WITH STELARC?) 


20. SOME KIDS ARE PLAYING WITH A BEACH BALL BUT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST A MEDICINE BALL AND THEY’RE ACTUALLY RIPPED. 


21. ASTRONOMY-GRADE TELESCOPE WITH INK ON THE EYEPIECE SO EVERYONE WALKS AWAY WITH A BLACK EYE. AND ALSO IT’S POINTED AT THE SUN. 


22. MOVE SOUTH FREO POWER STATION TO COTTESLOE AND COTTESLOE TEA HOUSE TO SOUTH FREO. 


23. WRITE A LONG LIST OF ANYONE WHO HAS EVER SLIGHTED ME OR HURT MY FEELINGS. RIP IT UP AND THROW INTO THE SEA. WEEP TEARS OF JOY AND HUG ALL MY NEW EUROPEAN BACKPACKER FRIENDS. 


24. BEACHED WHALE PIÑATA. 


25. THE PIÑATA IS ACTUALLY FILLED WITH WHALE EGGS. EVERY CHILD HAS TO TAKE ONE HOME TO RAISE IN THEIR POOL. RESPONSIBILITY. 


26. EMPTY EIGHT TONNES OF BOILED SPAGHETTI INTO THE OCEAN TO STUDY EFFECTS ON ECOSYSTEM. 


27. OUTDOOR COMMUNITY SCREENING FOR A FILM THAT NOBODY LIKES. 


28. WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE GUY DROWNING AT SEA. 


29. REPLACE SAND WITH GLO-SAND. 


30. FEED REST OF FISH AND CHIPS TO SEAGULLS. THE CHIPS ARE MADE OF WHETSTONES. THEIR BEAKS BECOME RAZOR SHARP. 


31. CUT DOWN ALL THE TREES AND PUT THEM BACK UP. 


32. A TAX INSPECTOR WALKING THROUGH BEACHSIDE ITALIAN RESTAURANT CALLING “TAXMAN, TAXMAN”, TAKING HANDFULS OF PEOPLE’S SALAD AND RISOTTO, GETTING HIS FILL. 


33. DIG A HOLE UNDER YOUR MATE’S TOWEL AND PUT THE TOWEL BACK. 


34. TWO LOVERS LAY ATOP ONE ANOTHER IN A GLASS BATHTUB. ONE OF THEM IS MADE OF ICE. AS ONE LOVER MELTS, THE OTHER DROWNS TO DEATH. 


35. VOLUNTEERS HANDING OUT SUN CREAM, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST MELTED ICE CREAM. 


36. GIANT MAGNET THAT SUCKS EVERYTHING IN WITHIN A FIVE KILOMETRE RADIUS. 


37. SOME FISHERMEN WHO LOOK LIKE HUMAN VERSIONS OF THE FISH THEY HAVE CAUGHT, AND WHEN THEY BLINK, THE FISH BLINK TOO. 


38. RELATIONAL AESTHETICS PIECE WHERE I COOK HOTDOGS FOR MY FRIENDS. 


39. MY MOTHER’S FRIEND SHARON MAKES BEAUTIFUL HANDMADE SOAPS MADE FROM ETHICALLY SOURCED NATURAL PRODUCTS. THEY SMELL DELICIOUS AND ARE GOOD FOR YOUR SKIN. USE TO REPLACE URINAL SOAP. 


40. ORGANISE FLASH MOB. SPEND THREE MONTHS PRACTICING WITH STEADILY DIMINISHING INTEREST. ON THE DAY, ONLY THREE DANCERS SHOW UP. YOU STILL HAVE TO DO THE FLASH MOB BECAUSE IT’S ON THE PROGRAMME. 


41. ANT FARM FOR TROUBLED TEENS. 


42. TUNNEL UNDERGROUND INTO THE BOTTOM OF PEOPLE’S ESKIES SO YOU CAN GET WASTED FOR FREE. 


43. I AM WEEPING BUT MY TEARS ARE ACTUALLY JUST HOLOGRAMS. 


44. NO MORE BINARIES! NO MORE BUSH VS BEACH. MOVE 800 TONNES OF KALAMUNDA GRAVEL ONTO THE SHORE. 


45. WORLD’S TALLEST LADDER SO WHEN THE SUN SETS, YOU CAN GO UP A RUNG AND WATCH IT SET A SECOND TIME, AND THEN TWO HUNDRED TIMES MORE. 


46. DUDE REFUSING TO COME OUT OF THE WATER BECAUSE HE HAS A BONER. 


47. NEW RULE THAT EVERYONE HAS TO WEAR THEIR CAPS BACKWARDS, UNLESS THAT’S HOW THEY NORMALLY WEAR IT. IN THAT CASE, THEY HAVE TO WEAR IT FORWARDS. RADICAL EMPATHY. 


48. REROUTE THE FREMANTLE TRAINLINE TO GO OFF THE JETTY AND INTO THE SEA. 


49. ONE OF THOSE AEROPLANES THAT WRITES WORDS IN THE SKY BUT ANYONE CAN TELL IT WHAT TO WRITE VIA WALKIE TALKIE TECHNOLOGY. 


50. SWITCH THE HAND SANITIZER WITH MELTED ICE CREAM. 


51. LOCAL MOTHERS GROUP MEETUP BUT THE INFANTS ARE ACTUALLY JUST HOLOGRAMS. 


52. PLUCK OUT A STRAND OF HAIR FOR EVERY VISITOR TO TAKE HOME AS A SOUVENIR.  


53. INCREDIBLY HOT PERSON OFFERS TO RUB SUN CREAM ON YOUR BACK BUT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST ICE CREAM AND THEY’RE ACTUALLY JUST A HOLOGRAM. 


54. MAKE THE SUN SHINE A MONOFREQUENCY LIGHT. 


55. ONE OF THOSE TURKISH GELATO TRICKSTERS, BUT HIS ICE CREAM IS ACTUALLY JUST A HOLOGRAM. 


56. DUDE TRYING TO RECREATE THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR COLDPLAY’S YELLOW BUT HE KEEPS HAVING TO RESTART BECAUSE OF PEOPLE IN THE FRAME. 


57. COLLECT ALL THE TOWELS PEOPLE LEAVE ON THE BEACH. WEAVE INTO A BEAUTIFUL TAPESTRY TO DEMONSTRATE HOW ART BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER. 


58. POUR ONE HUNDRED LITRES OF ANTI AGING CREAM INTO THE SEA. FOR EVERY MINUTE SPENT IN THE WATER, LOSE TEN YEARS. 


59. TEENS SPELLING OUT YOLO WITH THEIR ARMS BUT THEY HAVE TO STAND LIKE THAT ALL DAY WITHOUT SHELTER, SLEEP, FOOD OR WATER. 


60. INVITE VISITORS TO DONATE BLOOD WHICH I WILL INJECT INTO VEINS TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. 


61. FLY IN ONE OF EVERY APE FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD (GIBBON, BABBOON, GORRILA, ETCETERA). PUT THEM ALL IN THE SAME CAGE. EVERY DAY, THE AUDIENCE VOTES ON WHO THEY WANT TO EVICT. THE LAST APE WINS THE REST OF MY GRANT MONEY. EVICTED APES RECEIVE NOTHING, BUT MAY WANDER COTTESLOE BEACH AS THEY PLEASE, ENJOYING THE BEAUTIFUL SCULPTURES. 


62. DUDE SITTING IN HIS CAR, BOGGED IN THE SAND, EATING MCDONALDS. 


63. SPEND WHOLE DAY COLLECTING BOTTLES AND CANS. THROW THEM INTO THE SEA. WHO CARES? 


64. PLEDGE TO PLANT A TREE FOR EVERY AUDIENCE VOTE, AND IF I DON’T WIN, PLANT WEEDS. 


65. DEVELOP SPEECH IMPEDIMENT. PRONOUNCE WIGGLE AS WINGLE AND WINGLE AS WANGLE. 


66. ARTISIAN CRABSTICKS MADE FROM THE PULVERISED FLESH OF EXOTIC CRUSTACEANS FLOWN IN FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. 


67. WHITE PEOPLE WITH DREADLOCKS PLAYING HACKY SACK ON THE GRASS. THE HACKY SACK IS MADE OF LEAD AND THEIR FEET HAVE NO NERVE ENDINGS. 


68. FIREWORKS BUT DURING THE DAY. 


69. SMUGGLE THE BATAVIA SHIPWRECK OUT OF MARITIME MUSEUM. RESINK AT COTTESLOE BEACH. 


70. AN INCREDIBLE CHOREOGRAPHED DRONE SHOW OF SOUND AND LIGHT, BUT ITS ACTUALLY ME AND MY FRIENDS WITH HEAD TORCHES FLYING IN A PELICAN’S MOUTH. 


71. THE GIANT GOONBAG FROM 2014 AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME IT’S MADE OUT OF SOLID GOLD. 


72. BURY A BILLION DOLLARS OF GOLD IN THE SAND. TURN THE BEACH INTO AN OPEN PIT MINE. 


73. PLACE FART BOMBS UNDER THE WHEELS OF PEOPLE’S CARS TO PROMOTE ALTERNATIVE MODES OF TRANSPORT. 


74. SCULPTURES BY THE SEA X BROWNES MILK COLLAB. THREE AWESOME NEW FLAVOURS INSPIRED BY THE TASTES OF WA SUMMER. 


75. A NEANDERTHAL WASHES UP ON THE SHORE, ENTOMBED IN A BIG BLOCK OF ICE. NOW HE’S HOLDING UP THE CANTEEN LINE, ASKING WHAT THINGS MEAN. 


76. DESIGNER DUNCE CAPS. 


77. LEAVE A LOADED GUN ON THE BEACH TO SEE IF CHEKHOV WAS RIGHT. 


78. THE TOILETS AND URINALS IN THE PUBLIC BATHROOM, BUT THEY’RE ACTUALLY JUST HOLOGRAMS. 


79. A TRAIN ENTHUSIAST WHO HAS NO LIPS BECAUSE THEY ONCE TRIED TO KISS A MOVING TRAIN. 


80. A DESK WITH SOME PAPERS FROM SCIENCE BOOKS ON IT. IT IS IMPLIED THAT THE RESEARCHER IS MENTALLY ILL. FIND WAY TO STOP PAPERS BLOWING INTO THE SEA. 


81. BREED A THOUSAND RATS IN A LAB AND GROW ALL THE HUMAN BODY PARTS ON THEM USING STEM CELL TECHNOLOGY (COLLAB WITH STELARC?) THE RATS ASSEMBLE TOGETHER TO MAKE AN INCREDIBLY HANDSOME MAN. BE CAREFUL NOT TO FALL IN LOVE ON THE FIRST DATE— LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING. 


82. MY FOUR RUDEST FRIENDS ARE SAYING BAD THINGS AND USING FOUL LANGUAGE AND I MUST FIND A WAY TO TELL THEM OFF WITHOUT CHANGING THE GROUP DYNAMIC. 


83. CAPTURE FOUR GREAT WHITE SHARKS AND GIVE THEM LEGS AND ARMS AND MAKE THEM RIPPED (COLLAB WITH STELARC?). 


84. BASIL ZEMPILAS FAMILY GATHERING, REUNITED AT LAST WITH HIS ESTRANGED BROTHERS OREGANO ZEMPILAS, CORIANDER ZEMPILAS, BOVRIL ZEMPILAS AND FIVE SPICE ZEMPILAS. SORRY, THAT WAS JUST A BIT OF POLITICAL HUMOUR. 


85. BEACH RAVE BUT THE DJ FORGETS HER AUX CORD AND ONLY HAS A 2ND GEN IPOD NANO SO WE JUST LISTEN TO CDS IN HER CAR AND THE ONLY ONE SHE HAS IS PAUL SIMON’S GRACELAND. 


86. LEGALISE DACKING. HAND OUT SHIRTS THAT SAY “PLEASE DON’T DACK ME, I’M FREEBALLING”. 


87. HAVE A BREAKFAST TABLE FOR ALL THE KIDS COME WITH NO BREAKFAST, BUT IT’S NICE BREAKFAST AND THEY HAVE TO PAY. 


88. GUY WITH A 2009 HAIRCUT AND A SIGN THAT SAYS FREE HUGS. 


89. ASSEMBLE A TEAM OF NATURE’S GREATEST ENGINEERS (SPIDER, BEE, DUNG BEETLE AND AN ANT). CREATE A SHARED COWORKING SPACE FOR THEM TO SHARE IDEAS AND WORK TOGETHER ON SOME INCREDIBLE LAND ART. 


90. OFFER TO TAKE PEOPLE’S GROUP PHOTOS BUT THEN JUST BROWSE THE GAMES ON THEIR PHONE. 


91. CARRY WHOOPEE CUSHION IN BACK POCKET TO GIVE THE PICKPOCKETS A SURPRISE. 


92. GEOLOGISTS DIG UP A BIG DINOSAUR BONE BUT IT ACTUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE A DINOSAUR’S DICK BONE. 


93. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF MENTAL HEALTH? DID YOU KNOW THAT 30% OF AUSTRALIANS SUFFER FROM MENTAL HEALTH? COME TOSS SOME BEANBAGS AND WIN SOME MINTIES FOR MENTAL HEALTH. 


94. CLASSIC BLOKE WALKING ROUND WITH BEER CAN ON HIS HEAD, SHRUGGING HIS SHOULDERS, NO BIG DEAL. 


95. FLY IN ONE HUNDRED OF THE BEST BORAT IMPERSONATORS FROM AROUND THE WORLD. THE BORATS WALK AROUND THE BEACHFRONT AND LIAISE WITH THE PUBLIC. BUT, ONE OF THEM IS ACTUALLY BORAT. VISITORS HAVE TO VOTE ON WHO IS THE REAL BORAT AND THE WINNER GETS TO LIVE IN SACHA BARON COHEN’S HOUSE WITH HIS BEAUTIFUL WIFE AND THE REST ARE SENT BACK TO KAZAKHSTAN. 


96. SOMEONE HAS BEEN SMOKING IN THE CHANGEROOMS. I CAN SMELL IT. NO ONE’S GOING HOME UNTIL SOMEONE FESSES UP. 


97. WORLD’S THIRSTIEST MAN HAS DRUNK UP ALL OF THE BEACH WATER. NOW COTTESLOE BEACH IS COTTESLOE DESERT. THE GOVERNMENT FLIES IN ALL OF PERTH’S HOTTEST OPEN MIC COMEDIANS TO MAKE HIM LAUGH WHICH WILL RELEASE THE SALTWATER. THIS IS NO SMALL TASK. THE THIRSTY MAN HAS NOT LAUGHED IN MONTHS. HE IS DEAD INSIDE. 


98. COMMANDEER THE ROTTNEST FERRY AND STEER IT INTO MY LEAST FAVOURITE SCULPTURE. 


99. UNDERTAKE SIX MONTH RESIDENCY AT LOCAL HOG TANNERY, LEARNING TO MAKE AN AUTHENTIC PIGSKIN BULLWHIP. STAND ON JETTY AND DELIVER OWN HINEY ~ONE LASHING~ FOR EVERY SCULPTURE IDEA REJECTED BY SBTS AUTHORITIES. 


100. A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET.
      
     

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     Image by Rainy Colbert.

by Amelia Birch.

Full disclosure: I’ve lately been wrecked by writer’s block. Fortunately, it seemed a Perth Festival exhibition hosted by Fremantle Arts Centre could offer an antidote. Queenslander Kate Mitchell is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores ideas relating to productivity, social connection, and magical thinking. Her latest show, titled Idea Induction, was reportedly ‘designed to spark the flow of ideas,’ a compelling premise and on the personal level, I hoped a timely intervention to my own creative block.
        Idea Induction consists of five works. At the centre of the room should have been what Mitchell refers to as a “singing chair”. Unfortunately, the chair itself was missing on my visit, seemingly only installed when Mitchell herself is present to facilitate. In this piece the subject sits on a monochord throne, and Mitchell perches behind and strums on the back of the chair to transport her subject to ‘a liminal space where ideas, intuition, and insight naturally arise.’ In the absence of the singing chair was Prompts for Idea Induction, a series of beanbags and some headphones facing a video work that took up the entirety of a wall. Across a trippy watercolour background, a total of fifty phrases swung metronomically back and forth, one at a time, like a hypnotic powerpoint presentation. One of the first snatches of text that rippled, all caps, before me said: ‘SET INTENTIONS.’ Willing myself to go along with it, I thought about breaking my writer’s block. ‘BAKE A CAKE,’ the screen suggested inanely. ‘EAT DATES.’ ‘HUM.’ It was hardly groundbreaking stuff, but I stayed seated for all fifty(!), totalling a whopping 38 minutes in the beanbag, and over that period I oscillated wildly between irritation and sheer bliss. There is something extremely healing about engaging in a work that is so earnestly, perfectly cringe. Broadly speaking, Idea Induction draws parallels between the process of giving birth to a child and the “birthing” of ideas via the creative process. The point is laboured and kitschy, never quite managing to transcend the purely literal, something one might expect from an exhibition about the process of creating something novel.
        In Things Observed In The Space Between Two Full Moons, thirty sequential images stretch across the gallery wall. There is a charming nostalgia to these prints, more like children’s flashcards than tarot. A dead duck, a hobby horse, and a laundry basket are rendered in suburban browns and mauves. Though simple, the methodical patchwork and the silence of the image is the closest the viewer gets to a meditative experience in the exhibition’s entirety. But the work, and such meditative reverie, is burdened by the sheer weight of textual lore. Things Observed comes with an accompanying thirty-line poem on a nearby piece of paper. The poem translates the images one by one in the obsolete spirit of a decodable reader. Things Observed already has a three-paragraph explanatory text, so is the poem necessary to tell us exactly what each image “means”? Herein lies the biggest pitfall of the exhibition: a reductive obsession with text to the point of suffocation. Any attempt to focus on the visuals of Things Observed feels burdened by the simultaneous consumption of some kind of directive text. To one’s right, the twee soft sculpture of Patch Ups looking extremely Etsy circa 2014 spelled out thrilling words like ‘MAGIC’ and ‘VISION,’ while Prompts for Idea Induction to the left shouts in caps that you ‘WATCH TV’ or ‘GET A MASSAGE.’ It’s a relentless visual bombardment that has more in common with the doom-scrolling phenomena of “two-screen viewing” than any purportedly meditative effect of Mitchell’s ideology. Ultimately, the work lacks the conviction to exist visually without extensive exposition. More frustrating than the relentless affirmations is the impossibility for the work to speak for itself.
        In the small alcove beside the exhibition there is a video of Mitchell strumming on the chair while a visitor sits enraptured. There is also yet another pamphlet to take, bearing a full page of additional instructions. ‘Carry a notebook and pen around with you,’ the pamphlet instructed me. ‘Reflect in the evening. Start your day with a declaration. Embrace the perspective of shoes.’ I longed for illiteracy. These weren’t even as fun as the ‘EAT DATES’ directives of the previous room. These reams of accompanying lore in all their shallowness seemed an attempt to compensate for the theoretical weakness of the art. Mitchell’s pieces even felt out of date by the current resurgence of woo, a Kikki K-ification of commercial affirmations rather than anything particularly intuitive or transgressive. That Idea Induction made it into the 2025 Perth Festival catalogue is truly fascinating. But perhaps I would have felt differently if I’d sat in the strumming chair.

However, as you can see, it did ease my writer’s block.


Kate Mitchell’s Idea Induction is on display at the Fremantle Arts Centre, and runs 8 February – 20 April 2025.

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Image credits: 
1. Installation photograph of Kate Mitchell’s Idea Induction is on display at the Fremantle Arts Centre.
2. Kate Mitchell, Study for Idea Induction (Highway Driving), 2024, image courtesy the artist.