BLACK ST REAMER 2022

18 May 2022 : Kandos Museum, Kandos, NSW, Australia

BLACK ST./REAMER

“Black streamers blow from the roof of Kandos Museum like the winds of time. Being black, they are anti-celebratory. I think they come from the past, matter and action swallowed in some black hole returning to haunt us in karmic retribution.”

Materials: 1400 metres of black polyester ribbons / 3 x plywood support baffle boxes 80cm x 80cm x 45cm / 3 x Industrial Fans / timber platform / spotlights / webbing straps

This work presented considerable obstacles to realise and I am grateful to Cementa Director Alex Wisser for his perserverance in wanting this artwork in the festival. I’m also very grateful to Buzz Sanderson, President of Kandos Museum, for his technical advice and support throughout the planning and realisation stages.

The idea for this work came from my performance Delta in which I become ensconced in 300 metres of black crepe paper. That work was originally commissioned by Alex Wisser for the exhibition Push the Medium at Narrandera Arts Centre, NSW in 2018, following which it was performed twice more in different situations. I then did a durational performance Black Reamer, hand shredding A4 black paper for the opening event of the exhibition The 1st Biennale of International Reductive and Non-Objective Art, curated by Billy Gruner at The Stores Building, Old Parramatta Gaol, Parramatta NSW. So these body actions with black strips were transferred to the Kandos Museum with the idea of the building itself performing. The buidling, a repository of history, backing onto the vista of the defunct cement works and the mountains behind, winds of time and change blowing down into the town.

The installation comprised about 700 black polyester ribbons fixed to baffle structures into the window arches on the facde of the museum. They were powered by three industral fans. The whole work had to be crane lifted up to the site. Again I am grateful to Buzz Sanderson and Alex Wisser and to Tracey Boxsell for supporting the the crane hire. The installation operated blowing from 10am to 6pm daily, and when off, the streamers hung down over the Kandos Museum sign out of the windows like streams of black tears or long hair. I broke up the title and word Streamer for two reasons. The Museum had formerly been a Methodist Church, hence ST. or Saint. In using the word black I was thinking of the potential black past, and I was thinking of the venue we performed in Katoomba earlier in the year ST.ST.ARI (Steep Street Artists Run Initiative.)

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