Love[f]Art #16 | Mike Hewson

Hosted by Amanda Love, the LoveArt podcast is an auditory extension of the independent art advisory, LoveArt, based in Sydney, New York and Athens.

Conceived in response to pandemic related restrictions of 2020, LOVE[f]ART is our nano project - our Duchampian Boîte-en-valise. Situated in the downstairs guest powder room at the Love residence, the space counters the increasing size and complexity of contemporary galleries and museums. Instead, we explore the intimate and one-to-one, showcasing the strength of current artistic expression which is by necessity, innovative and ingenious. 

Mike Hewson is a Sydney-based artist whose practice sits at the intersection of conceptual art, structural engineering, and public space. In this latest iteration of Mike Hewson’s GeoPet series, an elite fleet of his bejewelled brick buddies enter their bathroom era as potty pests. Clustered around Amanda Love’s porcelain throne on a custom-build aluminium shelf, their companionship is cutie and nosey; with crossed gemstone eyes they curiously shuffle up close.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Good afternoon and welcome. This is the sixteenth iteration of Love Art's Nano project, Love for Art. I return to something smaller, more direct, more one-to-one. Where on Gadigal Land and here, our guest bathroom becomes a white on belize for contemporary practice, a compressed space for precise ideas. Everything here is site-specific and necessarily inventive. I'm Amanda Love, and it's my pleasure to introduce Mike Hewson. Mike was born in New Zealand and is based in Sydney. He trained as a structural engineer before moving into art, and that grounding clearly stays with him. His work moves across conceptual art, public space, and participation, building structures that people can enter, use, and inhabit. These structures carry the mixed feeling of sculpture, playground, and shared ground. The Christchurch earthquakes were a turning point, and since then he has worked with the idea of the artist as host, creating frameworks others complete through use. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering with honours from the University of Canterbury and an MFA from Columbia University in New York. His work has received major recognition, including Ayler National Award of Excellence and PLA Play Space of the Year. And projects include The Big Slide in Wollongong, Rocks on Wheels in Melbourne, Pocket Park in Leichhart, and St. Peter's Fences in Sydney. Most recently, and perhaps excitingly, he transformed the Nelson Packard tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with the keys under the mat, reshaping this vast space as an open shifting neighborhood. There's more on our website. Welcome. Oh so your trash and treasure pleasure compound.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's this is us down down here.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

So like sitting here in this quiet polyphony, it strikes me that there's something slightly perverse about an engineer becoming an artist. I mean, it's not the usual direction. So before we begin to look at some of your projects, I thought maybe you could tell us a bit more about the effect that Christchurch had on you and how that played into this change.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Yeah, the the the earthquake was something I guess like that um I guess it was halfway, no, not quite halfway through, um my life so far was, you know, you you you roll through life with a certain amount of um understanding about what it's gonna life's gonna continue to be like and then you sort of have this big rupturing moment that uh changes everything. And yeah, I at that point I was the you know, my grandmother was was an artist, but I had chosen the path of like, you know, engineer practical thing. But I always had this um uh yeah, I was always drawn to the arts. And so I would work for a period and then quit and then go back to um yeah, d do the arts projects and then go back to work, save some money, and then so I was doing that back and forth. And yeah, when the earthquake hit in 2011, I I guess that was one of those moments where you just question uh do it what am I what am I doing? Is it is it is it worth it? Because it was this moment when I um I was actually in the central city when the earthquake hit, and I was actually in bare feet as well, typical New Zealander. Um and you looking to looking across the square and seeing the cathedral fall down in front of your eyes and obscurely the the building that my brother and best friend were in, where I had my art studio, and you sort of go through that moment where you're like, Oh, has everything suddenly changed? And the the dust cleared and the building was still there and they were alive, but we never were allowed back. So it was one of those moments where you question like everything that I've been pursuing, is it really worth it? Um and I guess that the the the aftermath of that, you sort of don't realise how much something's impacted you till much, much later when you sort of look at the clues of of I guess everything that I've made that has these traces of um yeah, this sort of thrown together. Um yeah, because there's this there was this uh aesthetic that developed out of um being the most practical and immediate way to repair things after the earthquake, where you know, they would get huge um steel beams um and just basically lean them against buildings and bolt them straight through a you know a kind of a fancy heritage building, but it was like the most um immediate level was available um methods. Structurally and that kind of had its kind of very direct aesthetic. Yeah. So I think and I guess that sort of led into the things that I've been making where it's about using what you have um in a very direct and immediate way to get to an outcome. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

Let's start with those with the with a very early outcome um and head to Moscow of all places, uh where you created Dim Mirror, uh Pushkin Square in 2015. And for those on Zoom, there's a short clip here, but there you literally wrapped a cinema in an image of itself and thereby like turned the square back on itself, which, as you said, is a very direct gesture and a clear line of thinking. Could can you talk us through this work? What what were you setting up there?

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Well, this was a kind of you know, a strange thing to be. I was at Columbia at Art School at the time, and I think this was in the summer. Um, and I was invited to do a public project over there, and this is in Pushkin Square, one of the more important sites for the people of in Moscow. It's a you know, it has a lot of you know historical significance, and it seems strange that they're finding like a little Kiwi to come over and and do a major work.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Um how does that come about? Just that you ended up there.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Well, I it was sort of, I think I I was at a party in Berlin and met, I think it was um was it Francesca Ronin Halfbirds? And then I met someone who was there and they were like, oh, and they sort of stayed in touch and then invited me over. And um it was one of those things very early on where I I wasn't really on anyone's radar as an artist, but for what you know, occasionally you meet people in your career where they notice you very early on, even when everyone else sort of thinks you're and it you know, it is a kind of pretty simple and and kitsch idea to just you know print one thing back on onto itself. Um but yeah, basically when I was there, I just took a photo from the top of the stairs looking in the opposite direction. You know, the basically the view that the cinema would have. Uh and then, you know, just it's sort of like 3D chalk art, but using vinyl and then printing and putting it back on. Um and yeah, it was sort of, yeah, it was just a kind of basic mirroring of the structure as a way of um you know helping people to re-see the um the site that it was and all of the I guess the surrounds of you know, and this was in the phase when all of my white and my work were very site-specific, and and I think there was a I had a s sort of a shyness around not wanting to put my mark per se or my you know, to create something from outside and place it. It was it was um just not feeling like I had the place to have a a voice here, or maybe I was slowly developing it.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

Uh and so I mean it was very existential in terms of um, you know, as an engineer, you obviously understand how a building holds itself together, but then the very idea of wrapping um a photograph of itself around the building is is questioning its own existence, isn't it? I mean, it was that therapeutic for you or more mischievous?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Well, I think it's sort of. I mean, again, back at this time, I think there was I I I hadn't really felt that I had a place to be, to have such a a large voice, which is why the work sort of became this kind of camouflage at the same time as being quite monumental.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Yeah, it was pretty ambitious.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah, and and I think they installed that in in in 24 hours. So it was a very, yeah, it was a great experience actually. And and I don't know if you spent any time in in Moscow, but it's a fascinating, fascinating place. I it just had this, and you know, I had a very strong sense of how how you know, certainly in the early 20th century, how disconnected it was and uninfluenced by the West. And there was just so many amazing kind of shapes and gestures and things that seemed so other. And I think that's again why I just didn't feel like I could do anything other than do a kind of mirroring of of what I was seeing.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

I think I was there around that time actually.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Yeah, it was when the Garage Museum was up there in that time, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Yeah, absolutely, which was a wild time in Moscow. It was a really wild time. What a strange place. Yeah, it's very, yeah. Well, if Dim Mirror was about how how we inhabit and photograph public space, you were at Columbia at the time, and as I understand it, your thesis moved much more into the idea of housing in inequality and and the architecture of exclusion. Was that m moulding in your in your psyche or was it a conscious shift or a natural progression?

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Well, I think it was a very specific time in uh academic thinking in universities when, you know, it was the early time around the like Black Not Black Lives Matter movement. There was a lot of um, there was a lot of discussion within universities, you know, questioning the kind of internal power structures. And there was, you know, there was a book. I spent a lot of my time in art school doing um the graduate architecture papers because they have an amazing architecture program there as well. So I was going to a lot of these classes and learning about the built environment because I guess I I had no formal architecture training, and I was just curious about how the world is the shape it is and why the cities look like they do. And and then, yeah, there was this book called The Art of Inequality that the architecture uh, you know, one of the faculty or few of the faculty were promoting. And so that project was my way of trying to understand and question, you know, what is what is my place as a New Zealander coming over here and making work in Harlem. And so I did these um the the thesis show was in the Fischer Landau Center in in Queens, and I decided right before opening that I would do a I guess a site kind of a gorilla painting. And this is a oil on canvas uh that I hung on an abandoned building next to the Fischer Landau. So it wasn't technically part of the show, um, but I just did it as a kind of a rogue move. And in the part of Harlem where the our studios were based was where Renzo Piano and Columbia was doing a massive expansion, uh that they called it, you know, uh was I guess under the under the guise of urban renewal, which was very analogous to in the 60s, they were they did a lot of um what they called slum clearing. Basically the same thing, which is like taking land and property from people through um imminent domain mechanisms within the law.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Did didn't Hans Hacker do a huge work about the chocolate, about all of that?

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there was there were artists at that time that were kind of working to kind of um unpack and shine some attention on what was happening in that move. But essentially it was land that was taken. And during that time in the 60s, they built the Section 8 housing, which was sitting right next to, and that's a painting of the Section 8 housing brickwork. Um the vinyl in the background is an image of the built mind brain center reflecting these Section 8 housing. So they're like kind of 50 or 60 years apart, but sort of built under the same guise of a land grab through um imminent domain, like the takeover. And so these this sort of strange model that I built here is on the left is the School of the Arts, which our studios looked out opposite, that sort of little left one with the trees out the front. And then the right is the Mindbrain Um, I think that's what they call it. It's basically the neuroscience facility that Columbia was um touting as the reason for this big takeover. And underneath on the bottom right there, you can see this uh this sort of sprawling model. And this was I found this in the basement of Columbia, and this is the actual Renzo Piano model that I kind of stole. And you can see the the triangular um the section eight housing from the late 60s, or and then you can see this kind of glass architecture of Renzo Piano's full takeover of um of this section of Harlem um under the urban renewal kind of wow. Yeah. So I sort of put them in as the footing of this thing, and then the air conditioning units above, and I sort of did this laser cut model, and these air conditioning units were just blowing cold and hot air because I sort of thought his architecture really looks like these box units that you see everywhere around New York. Yeah. Um, and this whole project was my very earnest way of trying to, it was really about promoting books, and you can't quite see it in that image, but under the art building is was stacked up this book, The Art of Inequality. And so again, very it was my attempt about trying to understand my place and talk about and to promote this book. It's quite funny to look to look back on um about how yeah, how much I was trying to kind of understand my place in terms of making anything as an artist in a foreign place. Particularly.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

But like that's I mean, you know, obviously they're coming from New Zealand and then making something in in one of the world's most unequal cities anyway, but one of the but the city where art receives the imprimata that gives it, or it's the ultimate imprimata, you know, you have to get in New York. And um, you either get it or you don't. But I s but I think there's um I think both of those works you can see a through line because both those works in an ambitious way uh take on their spaces and both of them interrogate how power shapes those spaces that we move through. They're just at different scales, but and in different places. Now, talking about different places, you might not know this, but I grew up in Wollongong. So this next chapter feels close closer to home than New York or Moscow. So after Moscow and New York, you arrived in Wollongong in about 2018, and there the work shifts in both scale and material, because we're now talking about 230 meters of the Crown Street Mall and the work called Illawarra Placed Landscape, which I mean a 17-meter palm pole, huge forklift rocks, a playground.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

How how did that move happen from Well, I I um I don't quite know how that move happened. I mean, I certainly didn't notice a shift when I was at art school, and I, you know, I was I was uh I remember one of my uh best friends uh at school sort of being quite frustrated with me with my very reflective um site-specific artwork that didn't really do or say anything specific. He's like, when are you when are you gonna actually do something? Say something. And um uh harsh. Yeah, harsh, but I guess it was a kind of prompt that kind of yeah, like I guess I was just waiting my own time to sort of have a bit more of a a voice in a different manner. And I was at school with, oh, you know, I I studied with Rick Ret Terrawani quite a bit, and I remember when we had won this project. Um, so I was at I think I was halfway through school at this point, and so yeah, it would have been 2015 when they actually announced that we'd won that project, and there was yeah, it was a huge growth uh period over the next three years trying to figure out actually how to build these things because I had been an engineer. Um and but I th and I so I had this idea that I knew how to build things. I built some quite huge marine construction projects, but when it came down to the nuts and bolts of making these things, it was yeah, I was quite a palm tree on a 17 pole or something like that. Yeah, but it but in this but but in this um proposal, in the earliest proposal, I had done some mural type thing, so sort of trompoy gestures. And I had, I think the palm of a pole came from when I was working in mining in Port Headland, and I just saw how people were using the landscape. So, you know, big mining companies would take over these areas and they would sort of win over the public by designing these kind of fancy water parks, um, completely in the middle of nowhere, and they wouldn't get used. But it was sort of just like kind of clip-on, strap-on paradise. And so this idea of like kind of, you know, it's it was the most direct way of sort of saying, you know, the palm tree as a banner or as a tool for kind of urban urbanization or or you know the expansion of of you know leisure and luxury in into a city. Um, but specifically for Wollongong, when I first arrived in the mall, there was they just stripped all of that kind of 80s um architecture out, you know, the kind of brick fountains and the the archways, and they had just yeah, put this kind of granite paving through the whole thing. So it was kind of just like this empty channel. And so there was a big need for the artwork to actually do something because it wasn't a space that anyone would want to remain. So I started having almost being forced to kind of lean into the aspects of things that would change the way you moved through. So the the chunks of sandstone were basically to kind of break up uh that that long section of mall where that actually removed a lot of the seating because the method owned clinics around the corner um kind of meant that there was large groups of people just gathering and hanging out, and it wasn't a great place. Well, the the the shop owners weren't loving the people hanging out, so they just stripped all of the seating out, but it meant that no one wanted to be there. So I was like, if I can put something in that that is movable and sculptural, if it doesn't work, we can move it. And so this has become part of one of my tricks that I use in in pitching public projects is that they have this flexibility um that if it doesn't work, we have a pivot because they all they both look to be um semi-permanent, but they in some aspects they actually are, so you can adapt your design and kind of get past the bureaucracy through having you know, providing something that also has a pivot. Um and so yeah, eventually the the Trompoy aspects just weren't strong enough to justify keeping. And you know, when you talk about long-term murals, it ends up being like ceramic tiles, you know, digital printed ceramic tiles. And there was just back then there wasn't any really good technology. And and it turns out after this project, the the function of this playground part became this way that I've been able to, well, a fund projects because when you do it through the guise of infrastructure and you provide some sort of satisfy some sort of civic need, people don't question it as much.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

I and I can see two things happening in that work that r in your work. One which you've described is the movability, and we'll move on to that a minute in in a minute with Rocks on Wheels, but but the other element I see coming in is is the artist, is you as host for a space, and you you know, that space is actually augmented by the use of that space. I mean, is that is that a point you're aiming for in a public work? That point where you know you see the kids playing on the rocks? I mean, is that the definition of success? That that point where someone just forgets it's art?

SPEAKER_02 21:21

I I I I certainly didn't set out for that to be an important aspect. It was more that I, well, mining back into like public sculpture in general is it's very hard to do good public artwork because you're limited with the materials that you can use and you're limited with yeah, cause of the you know, the sun, the weather, um, vandals, the materials. Yeah, expectations. You there's so many things stacked up a up against you. And and also how something ages is very important, how it sits on the ground is very important. For example, you know, you make a giant thing and you just have a giant base plate and some bolts straight onto the ground. It doesn't s doesn't rest in a way that has is sort of delicate. So early on, I spent a lot of time thinking about like how things rest on the ground and how they can age really well. And as soon as you start really thinking about the durability questions, by the time you've tried to make it last a long time, it doesn't matter what people do to it, because it's already tough enough to survive the sort of nature part. So it was almost an incidental use that you know people could interact with it. Um, because you're trying to make an artwork that gets better with time, um, but still has this kind of ephemerality to it. So with the webbing straps in that um in the, you know, the palm strap to the pole or whatever, it was trying to fit something into, you know, the looseness of a nice studio practice where you're, you know, your kind of Berlin-ready sculpture with your truck strap, uh, you know, that that's an aspect that you often just can't fit into a public project because council says, oh, you that's gonna fade or someone's gonna vandal, vandalize it. Well, if you make it relatively easy to replace and inexpensive, then you just put it in in a part of the maintenance manual. And because everything else is so low maintenance, this allows you to for the artwork to have this kind of presence that it's it sits outside of typical uh typical, you know, the the the bronze horse on the stone.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Which which it clearly does.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

Um, I mean, and and it that's an award-winning project, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah, well, I mean, certainly the the I don't really know if there are any art art awards that it's it's certainly won a lot of other awards, some playground um rubber manufacturer, it was a sort of sports servicing manufacturing awards. It's I won a lot of um playground awards as it's turned out. And uh it's certainly been talked about a lot.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

And just I'm interested, how did you get over? I mean, how do you deal with when you el introduced that playground element, how that then do you deal with public liability?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

I mean, that's a very complicated aspect of it that I don't talk so much about, but certainly it's been one of the hardest parts is that as soon as the insurer's cottoned on that your artwork isn't just to be looked at, they put it into a much more conservative category, which is the play category, which is really the risk category that um you know, local governments, at least in Australia, view anything it needs to pass the playground code for them to allow it to be in public space, unless it's clearly not something that people are going to want to climb. And and again, when you're the the designer and the builder, that's a very difficult risk category or insurance category. It's under the design construct ones, which normally it's only just mega construction companies that have that kind of coverage. So I have to be uh covered directly with Lloyds in London because no one over here would touch me. We had to fight for that particular thing, and if I hadn't fought for that, I wouldn't be able to do this work. And each year you go around for renewal and you don't know whether you're gonna have to shut up shop.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

So it so each year it's your personal liability that's on the line.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But I but I take that it's also, you know, like it's it's sort of pay-to-play, and it's also like, you know, it's an honor and a privilege to be doing kind of work that is helping change the shape of like public space and gaining more territory for other designers who look at it and go, wow, like I just I thought this was not possible these days. Yes. And it seems to be, Mike seems to be always like taking it up a notch each time. And I do it very carefully, but it's very intentional. Like you have to earn the trust, you have to prove you're right, and sometimes I'm not. And so that's why I only progressively kind of uh you know, gain more territory in each project.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Yeah, well, I mean, and just as you if you as you explained, I mean, one project's obviously led to another. So you've had Victoria, you've had St. Peter's, Alexandria, and Lycart. I mean, you you you're steadily reshaping the streetscape of the eastern seaboard. But the one I wanted to focus on next is is Rocks on Wheels in South Bank in Melbourne, which was from 2022, which is exactly what it sounds like. More than 300 tons of Victorian bluestone boulders set on on dollies. It kind of runs on a kind of reverse spinal tap shopping trolley logic. So in my to me. So what's going on here exactly?

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Well, so the I mean, this was the starting point, you know, the Wollengong project, I'd had this kind of um, you know, nature and transit or, you know, in um off the back of a truck kind of sculpture. Um, so naturally, you know, I guess there was the the art handler Instagram that was kind of a thing back 10 years ago of um, you know, artworks partially installed on on on dollies or whatever, or under a Falkliff slot or whatever. And then there was an image by Diane Arbus that I always found quite yeah, very magical, mystical, like kind of Disneyland. And it literally, I think the title is Disneyland, like Rocks on Wheels, Anaheim, Disneyland or something. I don't even know if it is actually there, but it was maybe these kind of partially deconstructed fake cliffs, maybe from a Hollywood set, maybe from um a Disney partially deconstructed um Disney ride. You know, there's these sort of giant fake boulders on these sort of rail trolleys, and there was something quite um powerful about that kind of um you know fantasy, or like yeah, um, in a very sort of quaint way. And so uh City of Melbourne invited me to do uh they had a playground project that they had to do, and uh Rob Adams at the time uh saw me give a talk uh in 2018 about my uh Wollongong project, and I think the title of that talk was Um Flirting with Inefficiency. And it was sort of going through the Wollongong project and just explain to landscape architects why you know failure intrigues artists so much and why the misuse of things and um you know watching the behavior of things when they're not used in the right way can be a really informative and generative thing. And so he invited me to put together something that we could basically pitch is taking the scope of the landscape architect, the builder, the playground manufacturer, and deliver a kind of a bold project. Um, he was sort of he'd been working at City of Melbourne for 40 years, and it was sort of his last kind of project. And so he's like, you know, let's try and do something that really um helps set in a new direction for how we view, you know, public space and play. And so knocks it out of the park, literally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I wanted the the the the reed of the park to be this City of Melbourne coated plaza type thing. So it's got the what looks to be the the iconic half meter by meter paving stones of City of Melbourne that you see on all the footpaths. And the only reason they have this paving stone is there are quarries just out of Victoria that have these large-dimension boulders that they can then chop up into these large because there wouldn't be many cities around the world that could specify such a large standard paving stone. Um, and so I just wanted to bring in the raw form and literally sort of roll it in. Um, so it has this, there is the weight of this object, but it's kind of yeah, it's it's a it's a funny gesture, and you know, a lot of public art is like the giant heavy thing balancing on the needle. It's like, oh, how does it do it? The sleight of hand in this one is who would bother to make such a high capacity dolly. Um, and so you can see here you can't, there's actually metal rods that go up in the middle of that. That's a solid nylon wheel that we got machined. The lid is injection molded plastic and it sits on a 10mm stainless plate, and the rods go down maybe 600 into a 500mm thick waffle, concrete waffle slab. So all incredibly hard to make, and each dolly can probably hold about between six to ten ton, depending on the loading.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

So there's four of those dollies would you know holding up some of the boulders are up to almost 25-30 ton root. A lot of people walk in and they go, Well, I know how much the dolly can hold, so the rocks must be fake. And then they go up and touch the rock, and then they kind of then they really get confused. And then also they step off the real bluestone onto the rubber bluestone that I developed. So all along there on the bottom is a this looks very much like the standard city of Melbourne paving, but I developed this faux bluestone rubber that passes the playground code. So um simple gesture. Um, but it was really around just trying to give um maximize the outcome for the public because it's right at the base of a tower that's 350 meters high. So it's right back in the middle of a very dense part of the city. Um, and in order to get the maximum value, most play structures are just like intelligent these towers with a platform and stairs in between with rails on the side. And really, all you can do is just climb up the ladder, walk along, and go down the slide, and you're not allowed to go on the outside. So I kind of got around the code by bringing in these um things that don't have any platforms, therefore, therefore they don't need handrails. And so there are all these open climbing structures. So every surface of the sculpture can be used. So it's in terms of outcomes, play outcomes or whatever, it's huge, hugely achieving that. But it's also allows you to do really interesting sculptures that aren't so limited by the by the code.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Yeah. There's also um, I mean, there's something pretty deadpan in that work as well. I mean, is the humor intentional or does it keep just keep finding its way in?

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Well, I think again, I've had to, you know, you have to be careful you don't get too far ahead of your abilities. And I guess I, you know, the humour, I think, if there's humor in my work, I'd I try and not be too brave with it.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

Yeah, fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

I think it's um sometimes humor can be deadly serious.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Yeah, I'm not that serious, but I think, you know, and I I guess the we're we're maybe having a little more fun now than than than before. Well But it's really dead pay.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Well, um, absolutely, because all of that, the rocks, the dollies, the sandstone, the sand pits, I mean it brings this brings us all to a a real turning point because last year you were given the keys, quite literally, to one of the most dramatic spaces in the country. And that's the Nelson Packer tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and you turned it into a neighborhood. Can we step into the keys are under the mat now? We actually have a little clip if you're if anyone's watching via Zoom.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Yeah, great. Yeah, this was the this was the eight and a half weeks of uh of of um yeah, the huge push to to bump in an insane scale project. And I guess a lot of this came from this thing that Galley were like, well, Justin saw the Rocks on Wheels project and had just sensed an energy there. He'd seen photos and was like, yeah, yeah, cool. So in the sculpture project, but kind of visited and seen, oh well, the energy of the people in the space is something that I haven't quite seen before, and the presence of the objects themselves and how your body feels in relationship to it was something that he, you know, he felt was was something new. And so, you know, we're talking about doing, you know, obviously a playground because I think that's the thing that a lot of people want because it ticks the metrics, and but we ended up sort of pitching for something that was much more like I think the original word, the phrase uh title of the show I wanted to pitch was park party.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

And this thing of of like, well, you know, what about everyone other than the kids who get dragged to these things? And um I guess this sort of siloed approach to a lot of design over here where you do then, you know, this is the playground for the five to seven-year-olds, and the the teenagers are given this area, and this playground's more for the you know, seven to eleven year olds, and it's like, why are we doing this? Like so much of other parts of the world, everyone just mashes together and it sort of works out. And it's a more interesting way because you know, when you when you make something with everyone in mind or no one um at the same time, the people use it in ways you don't expect, which sort of opens up a lot more possibility uh for how things can be used. And also, you know, this thing of there's a lot of people that don't have access to you know, people of other age groups, there's plenty of older people that have no children in their lives, and it's very important for them to be comfortable around younger people. Um, and I think it's the responsibility of all of us to to make spaces more open for people to naturally mix. I mean, New York's a great example of at least all um class backgrounds, you know, mashing up on the on the sidewalk because there is so much, everyone's forced onto the street. Um, and a lot of you know parks around, you know, the the piazza is obviously a multi-use space where you sort of drink wine, kick a soccer ball, and it kind of changes in its use. So it's not I guess particularly significant that we've done that in the tanks, it's more in the context of maybe an art museum, but also within Australia uh that we have all these things kind of happening together. So yeah, I just sort of started with wanting to bring in some water as a way of hosting because you know, giving someone a glass of water is like that kind of basic gesture quite globally of being a host. And and then you also like allowing people to wash their hands is like, you know, there's the ceremonial aspect, but also like you touch one of Mike's dusty artworks, you want to like, you know, wash your hands. And but that very simple gesture of allowing that meant that you have to deal with the waste afterwards as another hosting mode because you don't want the other person to feel awkward that they have to then carry their hand juice out of them. So we needed to pump the water in and we needed to pump the waste out. In order to do that, we needed to have a tank. And I wanted to raise, well, we could have raised a very localized area and have water in just that zone, but I thought for the most sort of accessible outcome would be to just ramp it up and have the whole park raised, which also gave this kind of material possibility of the floor being the biggest part of the artwork. So and then it allowed us to have a sauna and a steam room, and then when you have a sauna or steam room, you want to have a shower afterwards, and then you want to dry yourself, so you need towels, but then you need somewhere to wash them, so you have a laundromat, and so there's this sort of one thing leads to another. Eventually you can get get to everything, but that sort of went to the sort of this um large, I guess, outdoor-coded park. So you really feel like you're sort of outside there.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

Well, it does feel like um a neighborhood. I mean, it but it but even the title, um, The Keys Under the Mat, you're just talking about the notion of generosity and hosting. But the title, The Keys Under the Mat, Make Yourself at Home, I mean, in that space it does carry a certain charge. Was this a deliberate act of provocation um against the or you know, to the to the institution, or was it something closer to a gesture of generosity towards the institution?

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Um, well, maybe less directed towards the institution and more just to a clue to the visitor that um the institutions decided in this instance to really um make themselves vulnerable to an extent. And and you know, when you do let someone into your house when you're not there, which is obviously what the keys under the mat implies, is that you trust them to an extent. And please don't ruin my favourite china or your, you know, don't sit on the you know, the white couch with your whatever. Yeah, you know, there's this thing where you you make yourself vulnerable, but then you know, as if you're the guest, you feel like someone's really trusted you, and that's a nice opportunity for connection. And I think so that that's sort of where the name came from. And also Justin wanted something that was slightly more esoteric than my park party. Um but I think it's good though. I think it it sort of has led it to it's also such a strain, you know, we've sort of started printing it on towels and t-shirts and just repeating the keys out of the match as kind of an absurd title too, uh especially to keep repeating. But but I think it's it's led itself to I mean, even without the title, I think people wouldn't have had any troubles because it's amazing to see how people have just really embraced it, haven't they? People are using it. Sort of walking past some kid getting undressed, like just in the middle, and there's a bunch of teenage girls running around and togs splashing water on each other, and you know, someone's barbecuing up at just like you know, hot pot on a on one of the opera house panels.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

It's sort of just people really have because people are going in and and having barbecues there, aren't they? Yeah, absolutely. Every day, yeah. Piclets. You know, it's mothers making piklets for kids or things.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Yeah, no, it's and I and I think you know, some people just wandering around in their undies.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

It's like but I think what what I noticed, there was a shift during install that was quite noticeable where we started out, you know, you can see in the early one we're sort of stacking those plastic um uh floor units, which helped us raise the floor. And then we, you know, and then we put the plywood down, but it was still very much gallery space because it was coated in this kind of exhibition language. As soon as we started bringing the concrete panels and we started like putting sand in the joints, and it started to feel like you're outside, that suddenly the workers and anyone else in the space would just sort of sit down and you wouldn't treat it like you're in a, you know, if you did that say up upstairs on the second level in one of the other gallery spaces, the fact that you were just sort of able to just sit around and chat with no real sense of purpose was I think there's something that really changes and it changes your relationship to the building itself because of these like kind of aged-in materials, feeling outside.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

And I mean, they are aged, uh, I mean, in a different sense. There's there's a lot of salvage material in that work, isn't it? I mean, thousands of elements, each of them with a prior life. I mean, what's more important for you there? Is it the practical side of real reuse or or kind of the way those materials carry memory into the work?

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Yeah, probably the latter. I mean, certainly it's much practically harder to work with um salvage materials, um, but until you have a method of doing it. And, you know, like as, you know, we've got this kind of huge, you wouldn't even really call it a studio set up right now that we're we have out outside. I think it's just also just in response to the amount of waste you see, you know, in any renovation project, we have these such tight rules, like not rules or just expectations around, you know, the build trades and trying to keep a trade accountable to do a good job and defecting them to make sure they do a good job. But what that leads is, you know, the types of materials you lead to. We're not able to sort of see the aged beauty of materials as part of our um desire patterns.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Well, unless, uh, of course, um you have an exhibition like potty pets. Yes. Well, you did get to use the PP in the title.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

So we've now moved from quarried sandstone, tons of bluestone, the tank neighborhood, to a tiny guest bathroom with vitrified bricks, uh, crystals, and all other sorts of mad detractors, triatus. And these works follow on from Geopeds, which you first showed at uh Cindy Contemporary last year, and you priced by weight, which gave them a certain logic and and a certain tone. Um, just going back to that idea, where where did the idea of the price by weight come? And did anyone haggle with you?

SPEAKER_02 42:54

So the first versions of this, I was doing these tile paintings, I think they were like $30 for the physics room in Christchurch, but I did these like Bunnings style. Could you could you do an oil painting and sell at a bunnings price point? Um and then obviously the the price goes up each time, but the further the the intention was like, how do you how can you like get people a cheap painting? I think this was like 35 and this was like 55. All unique, hand painted by me. And so that led to the Crocs project. And then when um Michael and Andrew um from Met Thomas wanted to um work on a project, I'd already been collecting these like beautiful um hundred-year-old salvage bricks from the Coramal Coke ovens that um a developer was wanting to um work on a preservation project with me here. And when I did my first site visit, I looked at what these um bricks, or some of the bricks, I think you might have a close up of this. Is us salvaging them. So we're basically looking through the giant pile before these got crushed. um to find the good ones. And what what it is in a in a in a coke oven, they have they bring in coal and they bake it at a really high temperature. And at the top of the archway, well they're all fire bricks. And at the very top, yeah, 100 years of of burning at high heat, all of the different minerals and chemicals from the coal melts into the bricks. And then when they demolish this these structures, I was like, I have to these are like contemporary contemporary ceramics. And I don't even have to do anything. So I'd been collecting these things quickly as much as I possibly could before they crushed them all. And yeah, we just wanted to try and we had them around the warehouse and we just sort of left some on the table to try and you know a lot of my processes you collect the stuff, you let it talk to you for a while to see what it wants to be. And then they just were like friendly little objects. Sort of you almost see like a little mouth in a thing there. And you know there's this obvious cute thing that we have as humans where we anything that sort of um oh there's one that we have here I can see in that photo. Yeah and and you know this sort of silly thing of putting eyes on something these little bugs, little creatures, little friends and you know this kind of thing of like trying to draw people into the materials of the world and the everyday objects and the discarded materials and you know just make these little friends and I think the crocs that I did with um Michael Bugelli at um the Altarola art fair um were the first thing where I kind of made these pets like a chainsaw carved um Douglas Fur um uh crocodiles and so the pets were this kind of nice natural thing that we ended up making and and again like trying to you know riff off the the art fairs um you know how how kind of uncouth it is to do the cash and carry. Yeah uh and but also that that is also an opportunity because it can be such an exhausting experience going through and looking at stuff. And I think a lot of people just breathe a sigh of relief when they went into the booth and it's like oh something's you know kind of you know like there's still serious sculptures but they're they're it's fun to kind of go, oh yeah this is just a bunch of stuff glued to a brick. Um well it's you know it's taken a long time to get to this point in my career where where I you know I'm able to like make something that I take that I think is a really good sculpture and make it at a price where you can access you know like a lot of sculptures that size of 5,000, 10,000, you just you know yeah it just becomes eventually there'll be all that.

SPEAKER_03 46:39

Well there is something quietly absurd in taking a construction brick you know which is a very basic utilitarian thing, albeit one that's imbued with the history of the urban sublime and then turning it into a pet. But it's I can see that it's both the materiality and the mischief here that does inspire you. Yes. But but I was going to suppose bring on bring you on to the constraint of here because of this space um in which I'm sitting because uh you know you've built works for thousands of people and now you're working here in a very tight space at a much reduced scale. And I I sort of wondered if you could talk a bit about how did this constraint work for you in in in coming up with this installation.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Well yeah I mean I guess all artists like like constraints in that you know it's it's the uh it's that the set of parameters that we we often put them on ourselves to an extent so when we receive them often we're you know quite glad to have something to work around. I mean certainly the playground was something that there was a lot of parameters that we had to work with. And you know learn learning about this amount of space that one needs and how what's too close and what's too what's too creepy. But yeah and and then you know putting some in the sink you know so when you wash your hands it's sort of this one under there that's sort of getting a little bit of dour. And so I guess it's sort of come from the back of you know I've I've learnt to make objects that um can handle a certain amount of of use and interaction and and they don't get worse with time as a result. I mean obviously some are much more ephemeral like a leaf or something you're not gonna put that underwater. It's but it should be obviously quite obvious to the to the user what its you know what its capacity is. Yes. And yeah, you know making a custom shelf was kind of and you know again I a a lot of the things that I'm I'm um my challenges in in this this year and the coming years is like you know what sort of uh what's the um economy that can support your practice because now I'm working at a scale that to deliver a park like that I need to operate at this scale but there's not there's not enough money within art to support that. So we you know we're doing structural steel for the building industry. I'm probably going to try and do some more playgrounds. There's only there's not enough you know art money to support the kind of industry that, you know, but that's where we're going into merch and furniture. I think it's interesting to try and yeah to try and make these things work.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

And so you know building a shelf was well that was ambitious too I mean that was a very ambitious way of handling a tiny space.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

Yeah well I think I didn't quite know how challenging it would be to build a shelf but that's often one of the blessings uh with um you know the work that we do is we don't often know how difficult it is and if we had known and um actually we're we're we're applying for some research and development grants at the moment. And turns out one of the one of the uh the key components to receive a research and development sort of tax incentive is you you need to not know what the outcome will be. Or it would be not possible to know what the outcome would be because sometimes you know it takes a certain kind of um bravery or stupidity or whatever the the work the right word is to embark on something that no one's really asking you to do or there's not like an incentive to do it. So certainly working at the scale that um Justin, Danielle, Emily and myself and the team worked on to to pull off that this project in the tanks I mean certainly there's not it's it was far over and above and um but I think that's the great part is that we and everyone I'm working with obviously I didn't do half the work. It's incredible to go on this journey to kind of um and also hopefully it's a good artwork. I mean all of this thing I'm trying to impress my few little art friends that also are interested in the the well it is an artwork.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

It is a good artwork it's in it's in New South Wales most important museum. Yes by definition.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

Yeah that's definitely still trying to do all these things and and get new audiences because there's not enough people to collect art at the moment to support the current artists in Sydney and we need to bring more people in and we can't there needs to be ways to they need to be interested. We need to find ways to have them interested in order to support all the other artists who are not going to be making playgrounds or furniture. Certainly I don't think everything should be usable but that's the thing that I think is necessary for me to keep the industry alive to support what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_03 51:21

Just to just to sort of go back to sort of the actual art object nature of things I think you mentioned the other day that um all of that work is in modules that could theoretically be stand independently.

SPEAKER_02 51:34

Yes yeah yeah I think one of the things that I did very early on when you start doing functional things where you're like you you know as a as an artist in a studio you're like I like well I'll see a lot of space around this thing. And then you try and do some sort of functional outcome you're like well I actually have to make it way too close for it to actually be a good well-resolved sculpture um being having done that through so much time one of the ways I entertain myself is I still try and resolve the individual object even if it if it is too close in the installed manner that if it was isolated into a white cube it would be a standalone object. And so I think you know say the whole the entire tank show while it might be a big mash together if you were to isolate the objects even even just sections of the floor or some of the other elements I still try and think about them as, you know, resolve them as sculptures. And I think a lot of the people working with me some sometimes get confused when I seem to be very specific about why this thing actually needs to be over to the side a little bit and that other messy bit isn't the right kind of messy. Yeah right because we are still trying to make artwork.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

Yeah. Well look um one final question getting back to our installation here which we're we're very I'm very happily ensconced in now with all my friends. I mean I do love the title potty pets but surely I just wanted to surely the endearing Australian um expletive shit a brick must have crossed the mind especially in relating to these turbulent and political I hadn't yes but I hadn't um yes exactly I mean sometimes the uh the artworks sort of you know they'll they they write themselves in the in the art and the sort of the readings there's multiple readings that yeah that that that come out in the wash um or in the flush. Perhaps I'm just showing my my my childhood growing up in Wollongong.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

It's it's great to see it in a in a different context and I do hope um the nice little friends go to some good homes.

SPEAKER_03 53:35

Um cutie cutie and nosy as uh as I think Mike um thank you so much for being part of Love for Art and for taking the time to speak to us today. Look it's been a real pleasure working with you and hearing about your practice and I do urge everybody to check out the keys are under the mat in the tanks. It's on until late August I believe this interview will be on our website and of course a big thank you to Alura Shivastraber for producing this project and for Leela Viedler for research and to Mike's gallery Let Thomas and of course all his team. So thanks for joining us and hopefully we'll see you again soon. Thank you.