3.8 The Bunnings Cultural Zone (Mini Episode)

Transcript

Should we just do a full intro and then I won’t have to edit it in later? Intro for the three of us? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is Hung Up. We’re in Prop Gallery in Ashfield today. Aiden’s on his lunch break. And I’ve just been let out of fucking COVID prison. This is my first day out. So I’m going around saying hi to all my old lovers and everything.

You’ve been so sprightly. You’ve been so excited. It’s true, yeah. I’ve been really excited to be out. It’s very cute. So I’m Matt and… Hey everyone, Aiden here. And we’re joined today by… Othie Willis. Who is an artist here at the show and it’s like a group show, right? Yeah. And we’re seeing a lot of like augmented reality.

We’re seeing like… I’m sort of saying like neural network kind of looking things. And like reflective and lenticular lenses and like… Yeah, a lot of cool like modern like technical materials, right? Yeah. And there’s lots of just like digital stuff that you expect to see online. Like digital feeling imagery that’s been imposed on the real world.

Mm-hmm. Which is always like an exciting like little trick. And it’s cool because the gallery is so visible. Like you can walk down here and there’s stuff on the outside. It’s got like glass… I mean, just big windows that you can see. So it kind of like… I don’t know. It’s super visible. And so yeah, one of the things that we liked was like… Do you know whose work is this stuff?

Like the almost kind of graffiti… This is Yanti’s work. Yeah. Yeah. The stickers there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so those stickers were on the outside of the building as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was like the first thing that I dug. Yeah. Me too. How was the opening night? It was lovely. Yeah. Cool. It’s a familiar faces. It’s good to be in Ashfield.

Yeah. Because it’s the only like artist-run space in Ashfield. I don’t know if there’s many others. So it’s like nice to… Have like see the kind of Ashfield community come around. And then people from other… In the West, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It’s… I think we went to… Maybe it was the first show opening night here or something.

But yeah, it’s a really beautiful like social space. And we were joking about like people like on their way home from work. Being like, what is this? Like, you know what I mean? Like surprised to see art stuff going down here. Yeah. We get a lot of people walking in. Yeah. Walking in and being like, whoa, like what’s… This isn’t, you know, the usual like space. Yeah.

The walk-in is fascinating. Because a lot of the Aries we go to, it’s like tucked away somewhere. And you just wouldn’t know that it’s… That there’s anything on there. So yeah, that’s cool. It’s beautiful. Huh. Do you want to talk a bit about your stuff? Yeah, sure. Okay. Can you introduce your works and maybe just speak on it for a little bit? Yeah. Of course. So this work, I’ve kind of cast paper into like reflective…

Um… Fabric that I’ve kind of sewn together. And it sits behind a lenticular screen that I’ve salvaged from a television. So all of it’s found materials like the paper and the reflective material. So I kind of work with…

Especially the reflective material because… And I mean the lenticular too. Because they’re just so abundant in our time that they’re waste. Mm-hmm. But also like our ancestors have never seen like this crazy shit. And I mean if climate change has the desired effect, like I don’t think it’ll be continued to be made in the future.

So it’s kind of like a funny little pocket of like such intense abundance that we have the opportunity to like… Or I have the opportunity to like make something out of and kind of cherish it in a different way. And kind of undermine those value systems of like trash in quotation marks.

Yeah, it literally is like some gorgeous like science fiction looking like materials that yeah, you’re so right. It’s like literally in the grand scheme of things only just popped into existence. Hmm, very cool. Yeah, I’m really… I got a personal relationship with this exactly. Like I’m really… You know like it’s like the tradie pants with the band of reflective material.

And then you see it like there’s like Nike jackets and stuff now like just made out of this. Or I saw it somewhere else too that was really exciting. Or like it was like a running hat. Like a really high-end like CLE like cool French running hat. And it was just like all that. Like so you can be like seen at night. Yeah. So and it always like it’s just funny how yeah, like it’s cool.

It’s just reminding me of that. I think like yeah, someone I remember seeing it online someone with like a jacket just made out of this. And it was just like, why is that so? Yeah, that’s so cool. You look like a fucking like ballad. Like you look like like functional. Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s something there’s something beautiful about that. Like you’re kind of repurposing the like massive economy of scale that like imagine the factor that these lenticular sheets.

They probably printed like a thousand. Yeah. In a day or something. Yeah, I feel like yeah, like tradies and stuff like that’s just so sci-fi like and it’s like a weird party. They got they got lights and it’s like little flags. Yeah. And they’re all like reflective and wearing fluro. It’s like it looks like what’s that Bruce Willis movie looks like the fifth element, you know, like on a lot of these job sites.

Yeah, even the tool designers like I’m really into tools as well. And like, so I really like the Bunnings catalog like the tool designers look like they’re going for some like all the drills kind of look like science fiction weapons like something out of like a sci-fi cheesy sci-fi movie. Yeah. So we’re standing in front of Chloe McFadden’s like Bunnings section and it’s like a projector and this like what do you call it?

It’s like a pegboard. So yeah, standing in front of like a pegboard with all these kind of like I was calling them neural network tools. They kind of look like they were designed by a machine that’s been like sort of recounted what a tool is to the machine. I think that’s from my memory. That’s exactly what it is. It’s like it’s an AI trying to build tools.

That’s like a conglomeration of all different tools. Cool, cool, cool. And so and then it’s kind of morphing between different tools and Chloe 3D printed a whole series of yeah of those forms. They’re lovely. They look like they have these like really specific jobs. Yes, it looks like it’s some kind of like mass effect surgery like where you get like, you know, like some sick new brain implant to make you run faster.

This is what that surgeons got like on his on his in his surgery wall. Yeah, exactly. And there’s also a projector in front of the pegboard in front of the real pegboard, which is projecting what looks like even more tools more tools. More tools. Are they also they’re like normal tools. No, they’re like rotating. They’re not normal tools.

They’re like all rotating and stuff. No, I mean, they are real tools. No, no, look at that. That’s the same thing. Same thing. I think they’re like morphing between different tools. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I can see. But yeah. Very beautiful. Yeah. It’s become a spanner up there. But then it’s making its way to some other.

Yeah. Cool. And there’s also a doctored Bunnings catalog. Yeah. With all the like creepy tools in it. Yeah. It was like, what’s the on the front of this one? We’ve got thank you gifts for every dad. Is Father’s Day actually coming up? I’m worried. 5th of September. Is that the real day? 5th of September.

Yeah. Mother’s Day is the next one. And it’s my dad’s birthday. So it’s like always a funny dance. The guy with the Barbie. But I think it’s interesting because Bunnings is culturally important. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like somehow. I know the huge Bunnings. Like the Bunnings in Ashfield is pretty noteworthy. Like it’s in an old clock tower.

Really? Yeah. Have you seen it? It’s the one thing you can see from far away. It’s like the Bunnings that we like look to upon the horizon. Absolutely. Yeah. Despite their like massive like megalopolis like corporate like what would you call it? Like sprawl. Like they definitely had this effect of killing all the independent hardware shops.

Yeah. Despite that it’s like still culturally beloved like somehow. Yes. It is. It is. It really is. I don’t know. More so than like Woolworths. Yeah. It’s like a lot of people go by and no one feels any kind of loyalty to Woolworths as they do to Bunnings. Right? Yeah. It may be to do with the aesthetic of like that kind of like black and white kind of

simple tradie aesthetic. The kind of working class hero of our time. True. Definitely. Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised. I remember going in like I think it was like kind of in between a lockdown like we had to wear masks maybe like a year ago. And there was like a real sense of like I don’t know people like taking time for them time

for themselves. Like they were like I’m going to work on my DIY project like I’m going to fix up my house like it was like a good thing to be doing like it felt like a like a proper way to spend your weekend like a virtuous way. Yeah. A virtuous way. And but there was also a sense of like these motherfuckers are never going to get around to this.

You know what I mean? I sense that. I don’t know if I was like being a dick. But absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve I’ve got like I’ve been there’s been like maybe four or five times where I visited Bunnings bought a whole like thing and then never got around to building the like whatever it was, you know? Yeah. Oh, really cool.

It’s cool. Yeah, I really do. I like the effect of having a combined like projected and real world. That’s that’s a nice kind of moment. And this is put on like this is what is it? Is it Kofa? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the student union.

Okay, cool. We originally were going to have a space on Anzac parade and they got like some developer was like about to knock it down. Like you can have this for six months and then COVID hit. Oh, fuck. And so we didn’t end up doing it until like we found this RE in Ashfield and it kind of

came together this way. Cool. It all fell into place. Nice. Cool. Yeah. That’s kind of why it was like incubation because it was like all through COVID. But it was like maybe sometime soon we’re going to do this. Yeah, I see. I see. So this has all been in development for quite some time then. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And do you want to just before we go like say if you have an Instagram and also like just the details of the show like the run time and opening times. Yeah. It’s on to the 26th. So not much longer. But and my Instagram is Othie underscore Willis. W I L L I S.

Yeah. Also follow Prop Gallery. Yeah. On Insta. Yeah. I think that’s pretty much it. Yeah. Great. All right. Well, thanks Othie. My name’s Matt. This has been a little bonus episode because we didn’t get a full one because I had COVID so sucked in. Sucked in. See you next week. Bye.

Bye.

Show notes

We managed to catch @othy_willis at @prop.gallery for a Kudos off-site show called Incubation. Hear our on-the-spot reaction to a couple of works, and Othy talking us through their process for this show 🧠