if only we knew... 

 

The contemporary constitution seems to be that of a double mindset, simultaneously considering ourselves as agents committed to an infinite, linear perfectibility and also as passive passengers bound toward inevitable catastrophe/s. At the moment there’s an increasing neurosis that we always need something more, bigger, better, newer, faster, more au fait. Use by date to use by date to use by date. Even nostalgia needs to update like a device. But maybe the bigger, ‘smarter’ house, dream lifestyle tropes, corrective trends or new infrastructures to accommodate and generate these neuroses might not amount to social coherence. What can design/making offer to bring poignance and presence to the everyday things we live and interact with in our place within the current spell of renovation ↔ recurrence?

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As live-in caretaker at Heide MOMA, I’ve been amongst some the disruptions wrought by these forces. I sourced the materials for the pieces in this exhibition from the many changes surrounding Heide (The North East link tunnel project and the demolition/development of the Yarra Valley Country Club next door) and also from within Heide (empty milk cartons from the café and the iconic fragments of Mt Gambier limestone deemed unusable) and how they may speak to what’s happening more broadly.

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Heide is sanctuary. Where the contemporary, the modern, the historical, the colonial, the ancient, and the timeless converse. Or jam. A composite view of my nightly experience here over the past few years would be the scrappers and copper thieves scratching around the abandoned country club buildings next door. The weekend illegal raves in the golf course where the kids would party in the proposed site for townhouses for oldies while on the other side, the tunnel works rumbled on for future prosperity. I’d poke my head out the door to find munted youths pissing, puking and vandalising, a lamppost hosting a security camera and tawny frogmouth and hear the excavators, see the crane lights blinking through the canopy of the centuries old Wurundjeri marker tree. As far as eras go, it all seemed a little…..Baroque? Australian settler ↔ unsettlement Baroque? Bastard Baroque? 

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So, rather than paint a picture, take a photo or write a poem, these are attempts to use design/furniture to chart the intersection of the flows of history and place and other forces as a co-ordinate in an ongoing cartography rather than a trendy product line. Points for a possible reimagining or navigation as much as creative documentation? Wakeful objects to shake the dream home tropes? Unpredictable things even AI can’t co-opt/hallucinate? An invitation to step outside the ruse of public opinion, corruption and consumption that come with the spectacle of each ruin ↔ monument? To stir suspicion of ideal forms? Can furniture be allegorical? Who knows. 

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