THE NAKED CITY – INSTALLATION SCINTILLATION!

What is it about so-called art installations that capture our imagination, at times ignite our disdain, and are often totally perplexing? Imelda Marcos assembles a shoe collection in its thousands and we label it rampant greed. Somebody fills a swimming pool full of old boots and rubber thongs and we call it art!

Hoarders in Bondi fill their house and backyard with old cardboard boxes and it becomes a community concern.  Yet The Sydney Town Hall hosts ‘The Object Lesson’ for the Sydney Festival and it’s an installation sensation, with the blurb stating “the audience is welcomed into an immense, towering installation of cardboard boxes to explore a memory palace: haphazard piles of trinkets, objects and souvenirs of a life’s worth of recollections and relationships.”

Sounds a lot like the front yard of the infamous Bobolas Family in Bondi, who for years have repeatedly installed a mountain of trash surrounding their house, much to the chagrin of neighbours and Waverley Council who have spent thousands hauling away their mess. Nobody has ever described the Bobolas family as artists, yet in many ways their collection of household garbage was an ongoing statement on the disposable society.

Perhaps their latest collection of plastic bags, supermarket trolleys and assorted pavement junk should have been reassembled in London’s Tate Gallery, possibly alongside Tracey Emin’s ‘Unmade Bed’ and declared a biting comment on urban antipodean consumption. Better still, in a radical synthesis of art from two hemispheres, why not throw the goddam trash into the grotty unmade bed and let the public be the judge.

Here at the Naked City we thoroughly endorse the concept of the art installation, but let’s democratize the medium so anybody can set up their own artistic statement. On garbage night for example neighbours could be encouraged to arrange their whirly bins in a series of unique configurations, Stonehenge one week and a cubist design the next. Garbos might kick up a stink, but would be soon placated when told it’s all in the name of art.

It’s now fashionable to leave strings of padlocks, old thongs and even bras in public places and along fences, but let’s expand the inventory to include old prosthetic limbs, well thumbed copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey, Barbie dolls and old street directories – anything in fact that is likely to spark the public imagination. One or two of these objects might seem relatively insignificant – but fifty or more and you are making a statement baby!

Whilst some art installations are relatively small, it’s size that really turns on the viewer. Think of the big yellow ducky and Jeff Koon’s massive floral puppy which once graced the outside of Sydney’s MCA. Build a towering monolith of old pizza boxes in your backyard, complete with a 45 degree tilt and you not only have the ‘leaning tower of pizza’ but an installation worthy of a major festival. When it comes to homemade installation art the world really is your oyster, or anchovy, or pepperoni…