Work I Have Done

Brief.

City of Melbourne Laneways Commissions are a highly successful annual commission of public art, the focus being on beautifying one of central Melbourne's 200 laneways.

Response.

Architect and long time collaborator Jan van Schaick and I decided to create a work that would plug a logo deep from within the reservoir of Melbourne's collective memory of corporate images. Laneways are where rubbish is collected, the space in which commercial and residential dwellings deliver their refuse. Our giant daily, zone 1, tram ticket was an icon of things we discard daily but the sculpture represented a 15 year old tram ticket at the time of creation. A relic of Jan and my youth. The old tram ticket was nostalgia not just for our adolescence spent on public transport but for a time when tram conductors patrolled trams actually owned by the public.

Brief.

My brief to the architects focused on creating a male womb, the space in which men artificially create life. I asked the architects to look back at the continuity of this myth: God created Adam & Eve from mud; Zeus incubated Dionysus in his thigh; Rabbi Judah Loew the Maharal brought Golem to life; Geppetto carved out Pinocchio; Dr. Frankenstein and his monster; the Superhero characters such as Superman, Batman, and Spiderman - are all depicted as mixed blessings. I asked that the listening room be a bubble, a temporary opening up of this thick sediment of myth that runs deep through the history of narrative.

Response.

The space is designed to emphasise a mixture of organic form (the architects clearly stuck with the womb form) and highly jagged topography and plateaus (ancient myth), constructed out of paper – the material most commonly used to articulate the terms and conditions of our technological progress. This prying open of a particular strand of mythological terrain was done with precision acoustic engineering tools that made it particularly resonant for listening to Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. This masterful, beautiful voice of hubris is the secret architecture of the listening room.

Brief.

Maker, Manufacturer, Market was a strategic initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts that focused on assisting object designers in delivering a commercial product to market. Designed only to last for three years they decided to hire a strategist to develop external opportunities for the national object design sector.

Response.

A two pronged approach was taken to determining how to deliver useful opportunities to the national object design sector: 1) researching their business development barriers 2) finding excellent international programs for supporting design businesses. Once both were identified a strategy for locating the necessary funds external from The Australia Council was determined and external parties secured via a Tender process for delivery of the program.

Brief.

Each year Australian product designers trot off to Milan for the Salone Del Mobile, the world's biggest trade fair. Many have micro scale companies and the annual pilgrimage is a serious expense in relationship to their annual cash flow. The ambition of the journey is to win contracts with major manufacturers, or for those who self-manufacture, to find buyers and distributors for their products in Northern Hemisphere countries.

Response.

Many designers hold the individuality of their brand above everything else. So the first hurdle to overcome in forming a joint venture was assuring the designers that the partnership was purely 'back end', having no effect on their brand positioning. In 2008 a joint venture was claimed between seven leading Australian product designers so that their export marketing activities were claimed collectively rather than individually.

Brief.

The Green Pages aspired to be the leading directory for environmental products and services. Lead by Environmental Engineer Katie Patrick, the little start-up company, quickly grew off the back of strong corporate interest in the 'green' market to a company of 15 full-time employees in 2007. It was important that the magazine developed market integrity by delivering strong and engaging content on the sustainability movement.

Response.

Having edited the magazine's inaugural edition in 2006 I stepped up into the role of Creative Director and Executive Strategist in 2007. In 2007 Ewan McEoin was engaged as magazine editor, a brand launch team was engaged and venture capital was secured that enabled the necessary cash flow during the first months of engaging the advertising sales team.

Brief.

Launchpad is a product design mentoring program created by design publishing juggernaut Indesign Publishing. Realising that the program had matured Indesign engaged Simone LeAmon and Lou Weis to develop the next level of program frameworks that would see an improvement in applicants, judging processes, creative and commercial outcomes

Response.

Simone, a veteran of Government and private awards processes, steered through a soft touch refinement of the program resulting in clearer, more detailed guidelines for judges to select applicants' work.

Brief.

Initially I was brought in by inframe.tv founder and creative director, Matt Hopper, as a financing strategist. www.inframe.tv focuses on revealing the work that goes into the creative work we see in galleries, showcased in design magazines or headlining festivals. Inframe.tv is a website that shows just how much hard work, routine and rigour, goes into refining a creative process. My passion for these stories soon saw me volunteering my time rather than billing for it.

Response.

Matt Hopper's films for inframe.tv are beautifully conceived little documentary gems. However, they are extremely time consuming and resource intensive. Lou Weis created some new content platforms that ensure we can keep the website refreshed with new content on a weekly basis. We are currently creating these new platforms (mid 2010). The Australian Government provides grants for innovative web content, so to ensure our eligibility Weis secured a syndication deal with Babelgum.com - a major web content buyer and distributor. A range of creative industries contacts have provided the

Brief.

State of Design had been operating without a creative director for 2 months and it was 6 months away from launching. Lou was brought in to build the business forum from scratch, give coherence to the public program, refine the criteria of the Premier’s Design Awards and oversee all aspects of the delivery of the Festival’s 120 events.

Response.

State of Design has a massive public program. To give coherence and link the public program to the business forum Lou created three spotlight themes: ‘mobility systems’, ‘digital strategies’ and ‘the built environment’, focusing on urban density. Lou implemented a highly collaborative management system so that the entire team had a voice in how programming was conceived and delivered.

Brief.

Arts Festivals have programming slots they must fill in order to please their patrons. When it comes to public art the patron is usually a cultural centre (using one of their forecourts) or a City Council (using one of their public spaces).

Response.

Microwave Nights was a media tunnel, a 20 metre long projection wrapping of an existing shelter that runs the distance between the two cultural centres. The curatorial agenda focused on 'time allocations.' The video artworks were created at lengths that approximated our general time commitment to each; work was the longest video, entertainment was the second longest, day dreaming the third and lasting 1 minute was a video work for Amnesty International which covered our time spent to charity.

Brief.

Ketel One is a premium vodka brand produced out of The Netherlands. The Nolet family have been creating Ketel one out of the same distillery for over 300 years . The brand focuses on purity of taste, the hand crafted nature of their product and the simple design and colour pallet of their bottles. Our brief was to create a temporary tasting bar that epitomised the brand commitments whilst providing a warm and relaxed space for functions.

Response.

Theatre people make the best temporary spaces, they understand the smoke and mirrors of the momentary space better than architects. So I engaged Bluebottle as creative partners along with visual artist and longtime collaborator Geoffrey Nees to work on the space.

Brief.

The success of Microwave Nights (2000) resulted in Sydney Festival requesting an installation art concept for their festival. My brief was to come up with something akin to Microwave Nights... After walking around Sydney for a few days, I decided not to do that.

Response.

Joy Ride was a motion control ride that paid homage to the bed hog lying deep within all of us, the little ride was a church to displaced intimacy in which perfect strangers were asked to lie next to each other and experience a series of video works. We created a Joyous Joy Ride, a boring, tragic and melodramatic Joy Ride. Joy Ride sandwiched its reclining audience between an industrial floor (a 5 metre revolving turntable) and a digital ceiling (a 5 metre circular projection screen).