Love[f]Art #05 | Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro

Hosted by Amanda Love, the LoveArt podcast brings listeners into direct conversation with contemporary artists, extending the work of the independent art advisory, LoveArt, based in Sydney, New York and Athens.

The series draws from Love[f]Art, LoveArt’s ongoing program of intimate, in-conversation recordings with artists, originally conceived in 2020. Filmed in the most unlikely of settings—the guest powder room at the Love residence—the project strips things back to a one-to-one exchange, focusing on ideas, process and the conditions that shape contemporary practice.

Healy and Cordeiro are Australian artists who reclaim and transform the fallout of consumer society in their practice. Titled Don't Shit where you Eat, the work draws inspiration from the 1974 Surrealist comedy Phantom of Liberty by Luis Buñuel and Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century Decameron, ruminating on social cues, conditions and consequences of pandemic induced isolation.

Recorded in April 2021, at the time of the work’s installation, the conversation offers a direct insight into the thinking behind the piece, and the broader concerns that underpin their practice.

Healy & Cordeiro are represented by .N Smith Gallery.

Additional information, including the video version of this podcast, is available here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello and welcome to the fifth Out of ISO but not Australia iteration of Love Art's nano project space, Love for Art, or as we euphemistically call it, Love Fart, where we mobilize this tiny guest powder room into a boîte de valise and a bathroom as a counter to the increasing size and complexity of contemporary gallery and museum spaces. Here we explore the small and the one-to-one to showcase and experience the strength of current artistic expression, which is, by necessity, innovative and ingenious. I'm Amanda Love, and it's my great pleasure to introduce our latest site-specific installation by Sydney-based but nomadic duo, Claire Healy and Sean Codiro. It's colourfully titled Don't Shit Where You Eat, and it's well, as you see, it's a slice of pizza in a pizza box. But of course, as we know, context is everything. And Claire and Sean's practice is predicated on reclaiming and then transforming the fallout of consumer society. Apart from their sustain their sustained ability to insinuate humour with in its art historical precedence, what characterizes their work for me is the continual deconstruction and reinvention of prefabricated structures and the assemblage and accumulation of objects into extraordinarily formally rigorous, often breathtakingly elegant sculptures and installations. And well before COVID, they were totally preoccupied with the dynamics of global mobility, the networks, standards, and financial systems that now both enable and restrict the movement of people and goods. And as you can see, even in our tiny project here, they love to create tensions between order and disorder. And so while their works are shaped by traditional sculptural concerns like mass, form, and scale, they also speak to the way things move and change over time. Over the past two decades, they've participated in residencies all over the world. And their solo exhibitions include Fat Flat Pack at the Kunstlerhaus in Berlin, The Paper Trail at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007, Are We There Yet at the Corcrane Gallery in Washington in 2011, and a survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2012. Their installation, Lifespan, was part of Australia's representation at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and in 2008 they exhibited two major new works at Adelaide's Australian Biennale of Art. They've also had a breadth of public commissions under their belt, including 2018's Cloud Nation in Sydney's Green Square Library, and most recently Tower of Power at Sydney's Contemporary Art Fair in 2019. Meanwhile, Place for Eels is scheduled to open in Parramatta Square next year, and they're currently working on a new commission for the 2021 Oku Noto Trinali in Japan. Claire and Sean, welcome from the wilds of your studio in the Bloom Mountains.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Oh, it's very good. Very nice to see you. So listen, we'll discuss don't shit where you we in depth in a minute. But does your long-standing pre-COVID preoccupation with the dynamics of mobility include bodily functions? I was just wondering if that's why you've participated in this project.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

I don't maybe it's more a not a pre-COVID, but now, you know, in COVID, I what incontinent.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Well, no, anyway, seriously, I mean, you guys know I've been following your practice since your graduation work, Cordill Home Project. And I can still vividly remember walking into art space in, I think it was 2003, well before I was on their board, and being absolutely bowled over by the sheer ambition of the project, let alone its breathtaking formal qualities. So I just wondered if you could speak to you know how did you conceive, let alone execute such a mammoth project, which was in your graduate year?

SPEAKER_03 5:05

I guess looking back then, we were really affected by the uh the amount of building work and stuff that was going on in SIP in Sydney pre pre-Olympics time. And Sydney really at the time, I guess it hasn't really let up in a sense, but at the time it was a real crescendo of noise and movement, and uh we really felt like we were sandwiched within that. And uh the Could Do a Home Project was a real um, I guess uh talking about the si our living situation and uh the pressures that we were feeling at the time.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah, and I think it was like one of the very first grants that Sean and I um were successful in in gaining. It was like emerging up. Um, I think it was like $10,000, which was equivalent to a first-time owner's, a home buyer's grant at the time. And we just thought, oh, you know, we could actually acquire this this home. And, you know, although we don't have anywhere to put it, I mean, we had this great opportunity to exhibit an art space. I mean, and the, you know, two and two were, we were just thinking along the lines of wouldn't it be interesting to really think about what this idea of the home means. You know, it's it's something that has been the great Australian dream for a long time. There's been a lot of government incentives to be a home allener. So I guess it was our attempt at being a high home now as homeless artists.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

I guess we were also very lucky. Although our living situation was quite precarious at the time, we were also very nurtured in a sense that we were part of the a wider collective called um Imperial Slacks. So a lot of although it was quite a mammoth task um demolishing the house and then bringing it to art space and then collating it and forming it into the block, um, we had a lot of help from friends and also a demolition swing. So um I guess it was a combination of you know project management and also um you know a lot of community.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

But it's an incredibly resonant project, isn't it? I mean, the symbolism of it really does play on the irony of you finding yourselves in a generationally resonant situation, doesn't it? I mean, you know, the inability to acquire a home of your own is an ongoing um and increasing uh issue.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Yeah, I mean, like uh especially, you know, we've got two kids now and thinking, wow, uh, are we gonna be living with these guys till they're 40 or something as okay?

SPEAKER_02 7:49

I mean Well I find a shipping container out the back.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

We can all have a it can be a project for them to rebuild it.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Yeah, because these were in the early noughties, but it's like things are insane. So um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Maybe they're I mean I mean it's it's fully ironic, and and and the point is is not lost. The only way, and it hasn't changed that you as artists could acquire a home was by taking possession of a house due for demolition, dismantling it piece by piece. Um, an act which of course didn't require any if much or if any financial extrend. But then I love the fact that it it effectively made the new home homeless. True. That space was only a temporary.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

It was always temporary for tomb. Um the way the the architecture kind of responded to the mass of the Cordio Home Project, it felt like yeah, it was it it was a heavy inference. It was. I guess it becomes the that uh stacking of the materials. It's not really everything that's there, it's giving you a hint of what could be there.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Well, that's right. And I mean there was much more to it, as you alluded to before, than just sort of a slice of real estate realism, wasn't there? I mean, you you Sean talked about the colossal, the colossal sort of help you got and the communal endeavor it took to install it with family and friends. And I I wondered whether that project sort of symbolizes or maybe instituted the very kind of collaboration, partnership, and and community that you both seem to value or you valued throughout your career and and possibly rely on daily.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Yeah, I think things come in waves really, like um but at the time we were very immersed in a um in our collective, and I guess I guess a lot of people in that in that in your in your early when you're in your mid mid-20s, it's a very kind of um collective time of life when um you find like-minded people and you support each other to create some kind of critical mass.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

I think it's a very important informative part of my and then you worked in Imperial Slacks, didn't you, for a long time? Little Jungle Works?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yeah, we were part of the founding members for as long as that lasted. And I mean that was a really um nurturing but also um a formative period. A lot of uh members of of the um Imperial Slice, you know, had skills in in different areas. So we were always um, you know, asking each other well about doing something.

SPEAKER_03 11:03

Um artist-run spaces to have a video projector.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

And but then at the same time But I could I can remember going and seeing the first Apple live screen, you know, the sort of the separate one there, it was sort of the state-of-the-art display at the time and just going, wow, gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

But then it was like pre-social media, so like if we wanted people to know about the shots, we had to be organized two or three weeks in advance so we could tell the Sydney Morning Herald or go to the printers or whatever. So a really strange kind of combination of having to be quite professional, but also it being like also being very was really in its infancy.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

And it was really professional, actually. Um, and I I wonder it, you know, had the it was sort of just slightly post-YBA where all the goldsmiths sort of professionalism um had been recounted to everybody. Had had you had that played into sort of the notions of how Australian artists or you guys in particular there had to become more professional in terms of how you presented yourselves and and and your careers and your practices?

SPEAKER_03 12:17

I think not on a conscious level, not really not immensely, but I think a lot of Imperial Slacks members were very aware of that, especially during that time Shawnee G ended up going to Goldsmiths um period. And then but then also a lot of our friends that were within Imperial Slacks had a I guess a much more yeah professional vision of being artists in a way too, because they had, I mean, I I come from very middle class background, so the idea of actually being a professional artist wasn't really um something I thought I'd think, you know, but other members of the group, you know, um were very, very professional and they had they knew professional artists and it was a um a possibility. So it's very I that creates that kind of um yeah, once again, that kind of critical mass.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

So I mean, just to on and this is the last element of that element of collectivism. I mean, you of both were there's a collective duo now for almost, or maybe two dec more than two decades. So how did that evolve in the context of your work and how does it play out now, being life and work partners?

SPEAKER_02 13:39

I guess that was a very like the very beginnings of it was a natural um progression in that um a lot of our work has been of a very large scale, and we've had to help each other and um you know, when it comes to logistics and that sort of thing. But I think once we started living together, uh, and that was during probably a little bit before Imperial Slack's all about uh, you know, and talking with each other, although we might have been practicing as solo artists, I think a lot of our ideas were coming up in each other's words anyway. So I think it really um, you know, it made sense to start collaborating at that. And where and and now it it also makes sense too, you know, like having a a family and living um i in the Blue Mountains, I think we understand each other's responsibilities in terms of you know carrying on with a family that also uh the practice, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Well, and yet on the other hand, I mean, you've traveled so much in your careers. I mean, almost dare I say, construct I think constructing yourselves and your art against the experience of constant movement and upheaval. And a number of your sculptures trigger feelings associated with being on the move or or they evoke a sense of sort of self-reliance and adventure. Would would you agree with that in in terms of the works you made, you know, pre-COVID and post um Cordesan project?

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Correct. But I think also coming from a new country like Australia, I think that's a common thing on people's minds. Like a lot of people are though, if they're not, you know, first generation Australians, they are conscious that maybe their families came from elsewhere if they're not from an indigenous background. Um, the idea of something happening elsewhere or coming from self from somewhere else, that kind of movement. I think that's like within um quite ingrained our minds.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

I think all we um lived over in Germany. Um I think we were already moving regularly, you know, like just in in the sense of gentrification and the way Sydney was shaping up like, you know, around the Olympics around 2000. Having to move from residence to residence, I think, you know, I I think I must have lived in about 11, 12 different houses within Sydney in my you know, university years. And I think that that has really um been something that has fed into work. And and even when we were living abroad, you know, we were always thinking about our possessions and um our possessions can, you know, everything that we we would buy over in Germany, say, or you know, in Japan, it would be something that we would then have to bring home. So we we started thinking about possessions as in, you know, you own these possessions, but then in a sense, they can own you.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Oh my gosh, because I mean, talking about Germany, I I do think I can so see that in your work, you know, there's a strong line of interrogation about the practicalities and the emotional upheavals of storing and transporting material possessions. And I mean, of course, talking about Germany deceased to stake, of course, is is comes comes immediately to mind. So I wonder um talking talking about just what we've been talking about, how has the recent lockdown and current confinement affected your practice and your ideas of both the transporting and the storage and and and all of that? Well, then we'll we'll talk, we'll look at deceased estate.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Sure. It's kind of strange in the sense that um the life of an artist is actually you know quite uh interior-like in a sense, and strangely um can be a bit lonely in a sense, too. So I think that uh having an artistic practice is kind of served us well in terms of how other people dealt with like working from home and whatnot. I mean, um we have each other's company, which is really fortunate, but really um yeah, I mean, work uh Yadu B in our studio and beavering away, it's not that really foreign uh territory.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah, and I guess, you know, well, I mean, it it changed a lot of things for us um in 2020 because we were um set to go on a residency in Nigata in Japan for three months, and then um a trienali that was going to be happening last um September. And, you know, all of that, of course, we couldn't leave the country, and that had changed everything that we were doing. So we started working like crazy, thinking you know, things aren't happening this year, and let's let's try and make some other things happen.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

And, you know, we had the kids, you know, do homeschooling as well. But I think that's something having done on many residencies and living elsewhere and bringing kids with us, we have been used to homeschooling. We've done it before. And it it hasn't really been too um too jolking, like hasn't changed too much, too many things for us. Although it did it change our whole schedule of work.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

I I think homeschooling must be I can't imagine it. I I feel so blessed not to have to do that. So maybe go to um the seast estate, which was created when you were on a residency in a warehouse in um in Germany. I wonder, can you take us through that? Take us through, I mean, because it's a gravity-defying kind of exploding universe of overconsumption. And I remember meeting you and discussing I'm in Berlin afterwards and discussing it. But um, I'd love you to take us through it.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

Sure. It's very funny that I guess it's fitting that the work was made in Germany, but really in the very south of Germany. At the time we were actually we were living in, although we were living in this warehouse, we were the our main center was actually Basel in Switzerland. So every day we'd like leave Germany and cross over the border into Switzerland and then back again. So there's that movement like within our day-to-day because um we had like internet connection in our kind of like uh borrowing an office from a friend kind of thing. So there was already that kind of sense of movement you've been there, and then the um And interrogation.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Every time you cross the border, you would be interrogated. So, you know, where you go not many um Chinese, Australian people crossing borders and gay.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

I had crossed that border. I have stayed and done it the other way around, going to Basel while staying in that town. And then some really funny.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

So um so that this warehouse that we were staying in was we have a bunch of artists there. Um there were about 30 studios. Um and they were all Swiss and but they were living over the border because this was affordable, you know, studio space for them. And it was a beautiful space. And but there was at the end of their um well they were yeah, then lease and they were getting kicked out by their bandboards.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Yeah. So it was like that's why when when we first got into the warehouse, we were really shocked by just the amount of stuff that was still left there. And he um being victims of cultural stereotyping, we had always thought it Swiss were very clean and Me. So we would just see this like warehouse just full of disgruntled artists, um, leftovers we're at labs is really quite intense in that that um there wasn't a sense of extreme wealth, you know, like there were reams of untouched um beautiful watercolor paper and um rolls that sim, the paints and and equipment and furniture, but obviously, you know, the the issue was that the their studio situation that they their new studio situations just couldn't couldn't um house the amount of stuff that was that they had within the warehouse, so it just kind of got left behind. So um that was what we used to manifest the the eventual work that you're going to see state.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Incredible work and then you the a um a new gallery space, which never happened. So all the walls were ready, and there was never well, except for deceased estate, like with we had bought all the materials into this salary um space and and started here tying up all the stuff.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Was it greeted with some kind of shock uh when you actually exhibited it there? Was with was I mean because it was I'm I'm sure it was the least thing they expected to have as a result of the residency.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Um it was a pretty um it was uh although it was it wasn't an official residency in a sense, it was made during our um We're on the Helen Lynn Freed Traveling Art Scholarship.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

And at that time, I think we had 20,000 for the year, and it was meant to cover tuition costs, and there was no university in Europe that could really take both of us, and we just we had met um a couple of Arbists who'd come out to Australia, um Larton Bloom and um Gantz, and they just said, Look, if ever you're coming over Europe, you've got to come and stay with us, and this is how this residency, it was really a DIY residency. We stayed with them for months and it during this kind of um turbulent time for them, like living in this warehouse in Balenwein and then moving over back over to Basel. But you know, we had asked all the people who had studios in there, you know, if it was okay if we just started, you know, making something with um all their materials. Then we had a a roller skating disco party around good.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

I think that you made a work out of the remnants of the party, didn't you? I we don't have we don't have a um a reference to that, but didn't you do that? Or was that something else?

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Something else.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Listen, um, I know that you're avid fans of Henry David Thoreau's mid-century classic text Walden, or I think it's Life in the Woods is its other title, where he lived for six months in a remote, barely essentialed hut. And I wondered, was the making of this project when when this book became a touchstone for you, with its kind of core philosophy philosophical question of how much is enough? Because I know you go on to sort of raise that again in in other in other works that you make, that question of how much is enough.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

I think um it's that that level of understanding through experience is really um really important for us. The way that um Henry David Thoreau went about, you know, just to understand something by doing something. I think that's that's something very sculptural about that in a sense, like sculptors really um learn from from doing things. And I I guess when you expand that um and then yeah, into how to live and also into you know broader scope um kind of artistic pursuits, yeah. That kind of modes of living and uh modes of creating art kind of feed into each other.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah. It's been something that we've reflected on and it has appeared, you know, throughout many of our projects. Um just this kind of more it I guess it's a dumb way of instead of going to a university or learning about you know, going to TAFE and learning metallurgy. I he taught Henry um or David Garot talks about, you know, forging something yourself and then working out how it might work just through this whole process of yeah, doing it a DIY kind of way. So seem quite fond of that or just, you know, it it really is how an artist gets about within the was fundamental.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Now, um, of course, you know, we we've sort of alluded to your glamorous nomadic lifestyle, and and on one level, travel at that ext to that extent is glamorous. Um but the works that you make and sort of highly condensed gatherings of personal belongings also speaks to much less appealing realities of packing, unpacking, sorting, storing, freighting, and that are the other side of the glamour associated with nomadic lifestyles. And I I wondered whether you two things. I wonder whether you sort of systematize this now, and I think you might have answered this question if you've systematized these more mundane elements in your life and work, and also as to whether you find any element of the sublime like in these inherently um in in the mundanity and toil that involves these early projects in particular.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

So yeah, I mean, we I think we often have these kind of out of out-of-body moments when the our general packing and unpacking and sifting and sorting when we're thinking, what are we why are we doing this? Like I think um, you know, everybody feels has experienced that within travel and movement, or when you're kind of moving house, or I think these things are a common, a kind of common contemporary experiences dealing with your belongings, dealing with your lifestyle choices and um handly identify. So I think, yeah, I I guess maybe that's why that's something resonant about our work because that it's it's common these things are common experiences, and we've all been most of us have been in that kind of situation where you know you have you solid, what it what are what are all these things?

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Why why did I buy why did I buy all these things and voice boys are three of the same hammer and why have I cut you know, especially when we had an apartment in Germany and well, you know, friends that um were living in um Scandinavia and then they'd have an apartment uh and in Germany and they'd double up on their belongings. So I guess that's where IKEA has come in to uh play a a major kind of um materialism out work in that where the this whole kind of idea of duplication of objects to to feel this um at-homeness or make the sublime and the ridiculous, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

So that's yes, so that's great where it is. I I was thinking in the Casper David Friedrich sense of having to go through it all to actually experience the end result, you know, all the you know, actually getting there, packing, actually sorting, packing, repacking, doing it and getting to the end. But but listen, another side of your practice, um, just moving away from from the packing and and repacking, is fundamentally um questioning the nature of buildings and institutions, isn't it? I mean, um your early work, for instance, in the public arena, often found you in contexts that aren't generally it's sanctioned by the mainstream art world. Um I don't know. Should we should we talk about the critically derived of it wildly popular sculpture by the sea and the sculpture in city exhibitions, the domesticated army tank and package tour, and the that eerie cabin, I think it was Raiders of the Lost Ark, that was in um Martin Place?

SPEAKER_03 30:59

I guess um, in a way, like the it's funny in that like um sculpture by the sea is pretty much the same age as I mean um as our practice in a sense. So kind of like contemporaries in a sense and really kind of grew up in the same at the same time, and it's very funny, like they of course they've always had different objectives, and it's been interesting how they've come, you know, i from a very different space. I guess David Hanley originally was much he had had much more experience within film production. Um and also, but similar, you know, he's from a lore background.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Um and then so yeah, I think Yeah, you were in the very first school to Barbasi, I think, um, with Astro. And I think there were only three artists that I can't remember.

SPEAKER_03 31:58

But anyway, it was but it's a very it's a very unique situation that um installing artwork on in Bondi or around that area. And um we I guess we I mean so often people respond to the space like on a on a formal level, like you know, you know, it's very beautiful, the sea and the the elements and stuff like that. So but I guess we were thinking about the space in a much more kind of politically charged and you know, uh we we were all always being obsessed with things like caravans and whatnot, and the idea of having a house on meals um and colonizing a space. And so obviously the natural extension from that is an army tank and um the idea of you know an army tank being like a a fortress, a fortress on wheels in your sense, and then and then the people who the idea of you know trailer trash or whatever, like what is um what is the something that's on wheels? Like I guess like with the we've been in a lot of protracted wars, and you know, the idea like often you see a caravan, it's something that's supposed to have this kind of idea of freedom, but it's just stuck somewhere. And I guess this um this work package tourism a similar situation where there's this idea of freedom or mobility that it's like mired down and it's like I'm sure it's the most political work to ever get installed in sculpture by the sea.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

I think they they they took a deep breath after that.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

I think it was very kind of them and very I mean you can look at it and say, wow, you know, like they they're really willing to take on a lot of risks and um you know they have like a lot of faith in their artists. So I think it's it's very special. Although, you know, there's such they have uh it's been such a funny relationship with um the rest of the art world, whatever, uh maybe quite important for people to come from different, you know, from uh yeah, different places to bring on different things. I think that's it's kind of a pretty healthy thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

So does the does the safety zone of the art gallery effectively neuter any sense of subversion or surprise for you? I mean, is it these public sites that you that enables you to best demonstrate your ability to play with expectations as well as value systems?

SPEAKER_03 34:35

Well, that's a pretty good question. I mean, because the institution offers it's a temple really, and it offers a place for people to sit down and look at things in a different in a different light to analyze things, but then it's also it's a double-edged sword, I guess, in the sense of like anything is possible within an art gallery, but then does that also take something away and that you can take things for granted or something than that institution.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

It already has like there is a dialogue where there is an audience that the gallery rings, and once you step outside of that safety zone of the gallery, um you start, you know. I mean, I I love that about um if an artwork can actually become something that you're not really sure is an artwork and it exists within um you know the public's um sphere, and it it becomes I'm thinking about um location to die for, which was an early work we did where we put um the gallery up for sale and um it opened up a whole new audience of people, people who were interested in real estate rather than the gallery hunter. And I think that, you know, once you start tapping into these other realms and opening up, you know, or just questioning our actions and our daily lives, I think it can become really interesting. But I've there's something that I really marvel about being in the temple of the gallery space or the museum space. There's something that is it's like a sanctuary or it's it's something.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

I don't know, like once you see work within that space, it can be almost that actually that actually leads me to my to my next question away, because I always get the sense that it's Sean that's has this interest in in kind of agit prop and political pop art, and this sort of somehow works with your dick concerns for the way physical and institutional structures work in the world. Is that fair kind of I know it's a quick gloss, but is that relevant?

SPEAKER_02 36:51

I don't know, I guess it it's uh I mean it used to be, I would say. Like how earlier earlier were a lot of my practice was really looking at at the you know architectural, institutional, um you know, the way that places the the being and and you had much more of this kind of pop influence. But I think that's changed, you know. Like I think we have grown and merged.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. I mean, we've been by making work for quite a while together now, so yeah, things really kind of interleave and people, you know, ideas flow in and out.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

But uh, I mean, uh it's interesting that that at this stage most of the works we've looked at, um, despite their kind of constructivist elements, they've all retained um what I would what I would call like the very traditional, like the um the emetic nature of of art. I mean, you know, you can't enter those buildings, you know, while they're so while they sort of rehearse on them on the one hand, sort of more real-world operations of exchange, as you just alluded to with the you know, the selling the gallery, um, they always remain formally grounded within the formal concerns of of Capital A art. It's always deeply embedded in your work for me.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think we I guess that's another one of the things that brings us together that we were both trained within the same sculptural um faculty within um what was the College of Fine Arts. So I guess we are we do have like a a sculptural language that um we both kind of speak. Although like some of the you know, there's always different kinds of works and stuff like that. But I think that was really the the beginnings of how it kind of came about.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

And would you say that sort of this sort of skill in demonstrating that that these endeavors aren't mutually exclusive came to its well or was certainly widened in in the epic primary producers, which was I think 2007.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

Yeah, I guess that's a lot more like um it's much more relational, aesthetic um project in the sense that it was the real it was a real community coming together and then through this action producing something um that was, I mean, ended up quite sculptural, but yeah, that it was much more of a um of an experience.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Yeah. I mean and that was one element, I guess, but it was also um, you know, nodding to the architecture of of Sydney and thinking of like, you know, where um all the mortar of a lot of Sydney's very first buildings came from, the middens that were um found around the shores of Sydney. And you know, that's what well that's what this whole um project was was looking at. But no, I guess the performative element brought on this the sculpture in a sense, at least this coming together of um people shopping their own oysters and then um eating them on the day, and then you know, we we fired them and made it into this concrete block.

unknown 40:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

Very fond memories of that project because I actually I participated in it, and then of course we acquired the extant remainder. I mean, it was a grand gesture, and I think it has the wildest description of medium ever. What was it? 30 picnic bankers, 58 oyster chuckers, 58 buckets, 3,600 oysters, two kegs of beer, very important, and lemon. How did you conceive it? How did you come up with I mean that I just that uh that whole project? Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

I think well, we were living over in Germany at the time, and um Sally Green was curating that show, and she had invited us to take part of this whole project, Shiny Ruins. And I think for me, that's where the picnic blanket comes in, because we had been looking at the the act of picnicking and how, in a sense, it's like an act of colonization, like it's laying claim to ownership of a particular piece of land for a period of time. And I think it also spoke to the way in which we were living in Germany, you know, like we were newcomers to to Germany, and it was maybe a temporary situation for us that that's in a sense how the picnic plate came in into it.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Well, I guess it's a bit of a personal story, but but also I guess within a lot of the narratives of of Sydney in general, like what is what is um is there a shina look for a shared shared narrative between Indigenous and not Indigenous Australia and very difficult thing to do, especially if you're you know from non-indigenous background, like what is how to how did these cultures meet, or how do these cultures meet, or you know, it's quite a can be quite a difficult thing. So thinking about something quite simple like you know, oyster midens and also coming together, but then also something you know that weird share where you know the middens that were created over thousands of years suddenly became more so to housing, it's such a strange and kind of evocative um idea.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

I thought it was you guess working in carriage works, you know. It was I think it was the inaugural um exhibition that was taken on. Well yeah. Yeah, and I think you know, it's such a massive space.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

It was it was before carriage work was was really the behemoth out of the I think it actually used every bit of it. And it was it was brought on by Performance Space, really. So Performance Space is one of the original tenants at carriage work. So yeah, so it was quite it was it was interesting, you know, everybody was really just navigating and starting out um feeling putting the feelers out how the space worked.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

So and it really was beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

It was amazing, and we move better move on to talking about epic projects, we better move. Move on to 2008 in your APT piece you exhibited at Goma, which was in Brisbane, when you exhibited Not Under My Roof, which was made from farmhouse flooring, which is basically wood and linoleum, as I understand it. I mean, it's another work of enormous size and ambition, which is also aligned with rigorous formal curity. And, you know, like Cordial Home, it did involve the acquisition, demolition, and recontextualization of a family dwelling. So instead of a condemned suburban house in Cordial Home, you have a derelict Queensland farmhouse in Not Under My Roof, which was five years later. Is it at all fair to say that in both projects, home has been deliberately rendered uninhabitable and its promise of permanency completely undermined, or you know?

SPEAKER_03 44:58

I guess um really at the at the root of both um situations is economics really um, you know, and ideas of value. I guess within Australia, housing is always like some it's always elevated to some kind of mythical object, the acquisition of housing and stuff. But the reality of home ownership is a lot more fluid and a lot more sometimes a lot more tenuous. So um I guess originally within Cordilha Home Project, that house was destroyed, uh was demolished because the land value had increased, so they decided to build multiple houses upon that land. So there um the house that was originally there was rendered worthless, whereas um within not under my roof, the uh the the house that was there originally was on a farming um plot that had been amalgamated into something. So there was what was once like five farms had been amalgamated into one farm due to um you know the economics of farming, due to land um changes, due to climate change, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

So it's another project um which is you know dealing with the social and the political implications of of living arrangements, for instance. But how does all this then relate to your 2009 Venice Biennale project lifespan, which which seems to be a bit of a departure?

SPEAKER_02 46:30

I guess um, yeah, I mean I guess we didn't memento more in in a sense. Like I guess having this opportunity to um exhibit in this deconsecrated chapel and um Ambi. Yeah, thinking about all the space and um using the fresco above the um ascension um to Mary as our footprint was something that um we wanted to work with on a sculptural level. But I guess thinking about this space where you know um memento mori is usually something that is about um thinking about one's life, you know, like birth, death, marriage, and always coming well within the the chapel, you know, the space and I guess you know the home is also um something of that has holds great importance.

SPEAKER_03 47:33

I think we were tying the province together, we were just very interested in materiality in a sense, and so the two house projects in the sense like those houses had had kind of died or had passed away in some kind of sense, and then also we're thinking about that idea of movement, that idea of impermanence within housing, and then this is kind of like impermanence on a on a kind of on a life level in a sense of creating an artwork out of a material that was already dead, also. So the idea of using VHS cassettes that something that you know was invented during our lifetime but also died during our lifetime, too thought would be an interesting way to to approach um the idea of memento mori.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Well, you neatly nailed the idea of memento mori, didn't you? Because I mean, just in the in the in the concept of the exhibition, because what what was it was almost what was the exact number? 175,218 or so Vassette. So I can that's in the whole point that they were arranged in in this chapel and such that the combined running times of all these cassettes, if played consecutively, would be 60.1 years, which was the average human lifespan in 1976, which again was the year the VHS was released.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

I mean, it's pretty um seamless piece of conceptual footwork there.

SPEAKER_03 49:08

Uh yeah, I mean, like I guess also our generation was the generation that really started um really heavily documenting their life, you know. I mean, so much these days, people can't see things unless uh these days people can't see things unless they're looking at it through their phone. And I think also, you know, when so much like people started, you know, really photographing things and videoing things and someone, you know, this idea of like being um of being videotaped from go to woe uh very kind of evocative for us.

SPEAKER_02 49:45

Yeah, I guess this work held a lot of personal information. And I see that similarly, not under my roof and Fortile Home Project had this real humanistic quality. You could see where all the furniture markings on the Linoleon floor not under my roof was, and where people like walked through, and there was certain parts that had been worn, like on the Linoleon, and similarly to to the um li lifestand, there were so many videos of people's you know, weddings or um very personal um video recordings that were held within this this Molypic structure.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

Yeah. So um we have to I have to move on. You've you've got so much um amazing work, it's it's hard to leave anything else because after Venice, um you did have your incredible survey show at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art with that uh uh amazing um front installation with the plane and in the structure. Um, you know, one thing, what was it like to see your work, if I shall I say, laid out like that? But can you just talk to the the plane? Because I think that's I feel like that's the first plane I saw in your work, at least not unpacked. I know I know you did packaged up works. I think one of them wasn't we can see it in one of the pictures there in the in the museum.

SPEAKER_03 51:16

I guess the ideas of flight and you know uh the idea of freedom, but also within structure is something that had we had already been thinking about a lot. And um the idea of the individual really within the framework of the of a broader society and how society is able to give voice to the individual, like it were the plane that the small plane really kind of embodied that that idea.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Yeah, I guess you can't see it here that the plane is positioned so that it would, if it was, would continue to fly, it would smash right into the front of the using, which was the new wing was just being unveiled for this exhibition. So I guess the placement and the positioning of it was important for us, but you know, thinking about the aeroplane itself and thinking about systems, how um you know, when when certain sips systems meet, they they don't necessarily work anymore. They don't function. And it's like that there's something that kind of um gets a bit messy when I meant.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Were you thinking of 2011?

SPEAKER_02 52:39

Well, I mean, it was it was it wasn't like what fed the work, but it was it it was the I it was an idea of that, I guess, hinting at that, or thinking of like the the individual um and the idea of descent.

SPEAKER_03 52:54

It's very interesting that I guess it's something that we do think about a lot in it's it's very interesting our times where you know there's always there's the idea of the primacy of the individual and the idea of individual freedoms, but at the same time we live in such interconnected times and we really rely upon each other and um the idea of I don't know cooperation. And um I I think that's especially obvious right now within COVID times where we've had people had to uh temporarily hopefully um release some of their individual freedoms in order for the greater society to kind of um you know get over a a bigger issue. And it's very interesting how different countries has have kind of successfully or unsuccessfully approached that problem. Um yeah, so it's it's very it's very interesting. I think it um this time has really brought that into focus, that idea of that tension between like the individual and the collective.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Hmm. Um a project that you did that was which is a much lighter project, but I said is very dear to my heart, of course, because we worked on it together, which was the um Reader's Diadest project for QT in Melbourne, which I actually saw the other day. I went back, I was down in Melbourne first time in over a year, and it was such a thrill to see the work looking as pristine and as galvanized and interesting as when you made it. So on.

SPEAKER_02 54:34

Oh, that's right to hear that we we haven't seen it for quite a few years, so it's really right to hear film.

SPEAKER_00 54:40

Well, you know, it's accumulating literally thousands of books that you collected, ranging from popular fiction to old encyclopedias to self-help tomes, isn't it? And you installed them, they all had to have black or white backs, spines, and and because that was in keeping with the like the film noir aesthetic of the hotels. But I again I love the the way that you made what I think is a supreme a supreme marker of our time, and but it definitely remains well within you know the overarching remit of your practice.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

Yeah, I like for me when we were making that, it was interesting in thinking about um, you know, amassing and collecting all these books. There were so many books that we came upon because people just can't keep books anymore. Is this idea, you know, um the value of space and um being able to, you know, hold hold on to so many themes. So yeah, it was interesting uh moral project.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

But I'm I know I'm I'm moving quickly so we can get through to to the project here now. But so finally, because it does help us draw closer to the project we have here, I thought we could talk about the pizza effect of which was your 2018 project in in Sapporo in Japan. I mean, I know you jokingly described the pizza effect as not burning the roof of your mouth with hot cheese, but I I feel there's more to it. I mean, it was a huge community project, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 56:19

Yeah, I guess it's a very I guess it's something that we think about a lot in that um, you know, again, about movement and you know how how cultures come together and things like that. Pizza effects is a very strange uh cultural phenomenon where it's about the importation and exportation of IBUs in the sex and through different cultures.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

And the idea of pizza being a very southern Italian like food that was then brought over to um America and you know bastardized with bits of pineapple or you know, and then booked back again to Italy, which was embraced. And so we I guess w at the time we were in Japan making this work, and um it was we were thinking about um there's a lot of little Japanese uh foodstuffs and cultural things that have had Western ideas come to it that also um make it a better theme, or it has become something that the Japanese have embraced. I think it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

I think a lot of the time, you know, people think about oh, you know, like trying to get to like the essence of a culture or something like that. But then globally, you know, cultures mix and come together and spawn new things all the time. I guess the pizza effect is thinking about that. And um, yeah, we're we're interested in how these things come. There is no like definite start point or end point to anything. Things are constantly flowing and and uh getting re-re-created.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

So it's an ode to hybridization.

SPEAKER_03 58:05

I guess well put.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

Oh, of course. The pizza effect neatly brings us to our project here. Don't shit where you eat. So I'd love you to take us through this, please.

SPEAKER_03 58:19

Sure. I think it's it's a very visceral kind of work in the sense. Um the idea when you walk into a toilet and then there's like a a piece of food, and especially a piece of food is as like trashy as a piece of pizza, and it's so it you have this uh it's a kind of like not that should not be here.

SPEAKER_02 58:43

Like there's something that should be elsewhere. I guess we we uh thinking about you know the time in which um with the whole COVID era where we had to bring work and um rest and play, and every facet of our life has been concertated into um one space. And so I guess that's what we were thinking about with this piece of pizza that has just been um left at at your feet while you're sitting there in there.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

I know. Well, we've got we've got some good pictures of it here, but you you did um elaborate and uh in I know in your other statement, um bringing even bringing in the Decamera and Boccaccio's sort of player tale. Um do you do you think you you you talk about the loss of faith um in institutions and at the time? And do you think that we will suffer a similar post-pandemic loss of faith in institutions?

SPEAKER_03 59:47

I don't know whether I'd use the word suffer, but I think there should be a I think they that that played really did make bring about a lot of questions. And I think um what we've been through also will bring about has brought about a lot of questions about how we live and what we hold, what's important and what's not important. I mean, just something so simple as you know the concept of working from home, you know, like you talk to anyone like before, like and it was always like the holy grail like, oh, I wish I could just work from home and blah blah blah, but my boss won't let me, we all have to be in the office, etc. etc. And then because of this whole COVID thing, it's like everybody's working from home, and now most people want to get back to the office, but um, to get away constantly being surrounded by work, but then we are here. So often these kind of traumatic or kind of things can make us reassess, you know, how we do things and we can maybe do things differently, or like often like what we think is totally essential or necessary might not be as solid as you think.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

And uh we just think that, you know, the way that with well, particularly here in Australia, we've been able to um follow particular rules to pretty much eradicate the the virus. You know, it's pretty amazing that in in this case the politicians had listened to the sites and you know, we've we've been successful in being able to get about without facial masks and managing public transport now without you know, we're in a in a heated in a zone that is really amazing, and I just really hope that um we can bring this to really a spirit of cooperation.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

So you're positive about this, then you you actually think that you know we we could bring about we could adapt to change and and and and maybe take up and face the challenges of our of our age.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:58

I hope so. I think it's a bit a a little taste of, you know, because that we're there's constant the way that we operate as a society has is bringing about consequences and you know we uh you know gradually, whether it's bushfires or pandemics or just you know uh climate change in general, you know, we there are there are there are consequences to our actions and we need to come together as like to cooperate to to deal with these things.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

Yeah. I really hope that, you know, this this period of time which has really slowed things down, it's a period of reflection. Um I really hope that this time can really you know help us get on with with fixing up the nest that we're in, you know, environmentally.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:57

I think yeah, there's something about humility really involved in it. Like it's very similar to the idea of you know in War of the Worlds, that H2 worlds where where you know the Martians came and they had like this amazing technology and they could take over the world, but then in the end, these Martians were destroyed by earthly bacteria. And it's like it's it's it's a common kind of idea, I guess, like where a might it's David and Goliath kind of situation where you know as humans we think we have a grip on on everything, we can control everything, and then to be for the whole of society to be brought to its knees by like something that's smaller than a bacteria, like it's a virus, it's the smallest thing possible that's like considered a semi-life form, you know. So it's very strange.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:46

Um when when you when we talked about um the project, you did mention, um, and I think this is an example of your constant ability to provide a social critique with a deeply humorous element to it. You did mention uh Brunel's 1974 film Phantom of Liberty, um, which we do have a clip on here. If I'd like to talk to that, we can play the clip without the sounds because there's subtitles.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:16

Okay. Yeah, I mean, he it's such a funny film. I kinda I hadn't watched it in a long time, and I guess it's so refreshing to see how how savage he is really on these kind of social niceties and stuff. And there's something I guess because usually when we think of surrealism, there's something a little bit kitsch or something like that about the way surrealism is often thought about, but the way Bunuel goes about it, it's a real, it's such a such a funny way of poking fun at his kind of bourgeois kind of sensibilities and stuff. And um I mean look at all those toilets by the seat. Uh it's so wild.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

Um I totally relate to it at the moment from where I'm sitting in this bathroom, the toilet with a piece of pizza at my feet.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:19

And it's just done so dead, can it's so awesome. And it it there is something so dreamlike about that because you know, like in a dream, it's totally things that are totally off happen, and you don't think twice about it. It's somehow, yeah, somehow the brain can kind of deal with it. Or else in waking, it's like when these things happen, it's a real such a strange shism can create some kind of opening in your mind. It's like, oh god, like what is what is going on?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, on that note, and just before we end, I um and look. towards the future, which I do feel more positive about after talking to you, because I I I think you I there's there's a lot to be there's a lot to in that it can be improved and possibly will be. But can you give us I don't know if you can or not give us a peek or some insight into what you're working on now. And I know you've got an imminent international deadline but I know you you're also I don't know what your stricter about talking about it. Yeah we have um I thought was a war of the worlds you were making there behind behind you.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:31

I thought it was actually sitting in front of the kind of moon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:36

So right now we're producing this like a lot of our things it's it's something that's gone a little bit um out of control. So basically this is all what we see here is all paper mache. Right. Giant um paper mache moon um that we're currently creating for a trionali in uh a place called Okunoto in Japan. Um that'll be in the second half of this year. So we're very interested in um the idea I guess like our society is very kind of um sun kind of orientated we're very interesting like the sun goes up, sun goes down and then the idea of duality is very strong within our cultures and but then the idea of the moon is is much more you know the waxing and the waning of the moon and stuff it's much more kind of nuanced and yeah not Okunopu is like it was once a fishing village.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:31

So I mean it still is but um there was huge industry there for fishing. And I I we were thinking that you know the moon must have played a very big role in um you know how these fishermen must have you know caught all their all their fish.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:47

And also like on an economic level the way the reason why they're bringing on this triinali is it is trying to revitalize the spaces you know like there's a lot of you know um depopulation within Japan stuff people moving to major centers. So is it certain like waxing and waning of population and economics and we thought like the moon was an interesting symbol of that how things wax and wane and not particularly maybe in a way that's like just black and white like day and night but in that kind of nuanced fashion. So that's why we're converting this crazy crazy moon that's going to occupy a um what used to be cafe winning Okunotop yeah it's there at the cafe the pretty much floor to ceiling um this moon will occupy that space so it'll be really tight it will it'll be quite well hopefully uncanny in the it'll be hard to get around the original kind of shower era furnishings will be in there as well. So again I guess it's like that not intrusion but that that relationship between something that's natural and something that's like the human sphere and how that impacts us in in a similar way that you know the COVID is done or whatever like so um yeah so oh I think it really is a paper moon paper moon that's not yeah it's only a paper moon. But well yeah I'm not sure you can see here but the the cover the A FM mache is made from um yaoi um manga which is so yeah you can't see from here but it's all added from um Japanese comics that it's a special it's a very special interesting thing called yaoi or boy love. It's it's um manga that's written by women and it's for women but it's actually all about male gay love. It's a very strange it's a really strange subcon it's it's it has that kind of we thought it was very interesting in it it's not it's really not straightforward like black and white like Stun and oh why am I not surprised about your work it'll work on a in a micro and macro level as a lot of our works so you'll be able to get quite up close and personal with some of this graphic inventory. But then you when you pull back into all the craters and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:12

Well I think in that spirit of magical thinking and future possibilities we're going to have to finish but thank you both so much for participating in the project and for taking the time to do this interview. As always it's been as much a pleasure as an insight so I hope you have a great night and good luck for Japan. Are you are you going there? Well we really we really want to go there I'll call what see if I can get the vaccine like you know I'm not yet but if I was just I'm 50 this year and it means that I couldn't get the vaccine next month but not not in time for the trion it's we really need to go there and you almost need to be 49 so you get the Pfizer vaccine and you can have two weeks and then you'll be right so yeah I mean once again it's like in the hands of the gods so we just now to see if it might be soon well we'll we'll at least it will be recorded. Well again thanks very much and good luck and keep me posted thanks Amanda thanks for having us by Amanda