open house
131 Mt Alexander Rd, flemington
6~7 september 2014
This exhibition was curated by Millie Tuttle. At the end of her residential lease with friends in 2014, she decided to hold an exhibition on the last weekend of the lease. This exhibition captures different responses to the idea of plane in relation to the house and its transitory state. The exhibition opening had live music and interactive actions with artworks.
catalogue
Lillian Barto, Untitled, photography, wood and fixtures
Bridget Griffiths, Untitled, Duvet, Wax
Giordano Biondi, 131 Mount Alexander Road, Masking Tape
Millie Francis, Intevening, paper, wood, drawing implements and masking tape
Pascale Dawson, Untitled, plaster, pigment
Amy Parker, Idle Talk, steel, plaster, paint and ontecar
artists & artworks

Lillian Barto, untitled
photograph, wood and fixtures
My intention/theme in my work is people’s/our interaction with all different levelled planes, my work emulates the physical and moveable plane through a personified wooden pole.
Closed Caption Translation
In the forest there once sat a man, he did not know he was in the forest, he was simply in his home. While the man thought he was home, the bird thought it was flying over the supermarket for grubs and other insects. While the man thought he was home, the deer thought it was on it’s deathbed and the wolf thought he was at a very fine restaurant indeed. my piece is about all of this and none of it. We exist on one plane of life, there are thousands of others around us. When you look at my piece I want you to think about all those moving through their own plane of life around and then think to yourself ‘I’m so much hotter than all of them, they can all go suck it.’

bridget griffiths, untitled
duvet, wax
This work portrays the absence of intimacy
Closed Caption Translation
Have you ever seen a movie that leaves you somber, full of heartache and reaching for something that you’ve never felt before? Some of us face this in our everyday lives. You are the lucky ones, you are the survivors. I have loved and been rebuffed, they said I wasn’t good enough. I have stood at the gates of hell and longing, I know what it is to feel sadness, to be sadness. Please for the love of god, take me back, take my hand and lead me through the darkness of this world. My one and only, my beloved. Garlic Pizza.

Giordano Biondi, 131 Mount Alexander Road
masking tape
The artwork consists of a few rolls of masking tape, unraveled and attached in long strips against the surfaces of the house. The strips, adhering against these surfaces, collect the dust and debris that has been deposited on the walls, floors and furniture of the house. The masking tape retrieves some of the essence of a space that has been lived in: it collects the evidence of what has passed through, what a hand left behind when it’s pressed itself against a wall, the dust and fibers of a coat, the changes of temperature, the organic matter that flakes and releases itself from our bodies from time to time. These strips of tape collect the time passed in this house, a house that has been lived in, a house with its own micro-fauna and flora, living on its surfaces, layers on the space that overlap each other, different tomorrow from what there is today. 131 Mount Alexander Road is one last picture of the property, an embrace of the place that sits on the address from which the title of the artwork takes its name. These strips of masking tape run along the whole room, as if to keep it all in place and hold it tight; but in this one case the most necessary and common items of domestic life, the roll of tape, isn’t repairing something, it’s recording it. These strips will then be rolled back together, their stickiness already compromised by what they have gathered; they return to their original form, but useless in any practical way; the roll is simply a disk that has registered the space not through sound or image but through touch. When we adhered the tape along these walls, slowly unravelling it as we go, our hands touch the walls, follow it’s contours, it’s angles, and realise the distances between corner and door, wall to wall, bathroom to living room, the bumps and levels of the space we have trodden upon so many times. We leave this place as we roll back the tape with a bit of the house clinged to it, never to unravel again, for fear of dispersing what has gathered between the folds of these rolls of masking tape. And there will be other houses to live in, and other tape to keep in the pantry or the kitchen drawer, to repair, and to conserve.
Closed Caption Translation
The artwork consists of a few rolls of masking tape, unraveled and attached to the walls of the house. The tape will uncover the filth of the three young people and their friends who dwelt here and we will reveal in it. When you look at the tape and see specks of dirt and debris, that is the skin from the victims. I will expose all of their ungodly habits by following the contours, the angles, the bumps and levels of the space that their disgusting filth has covered for so long. There is no other way for us to get clean, except by revealing the extent of their misdoing. Through perseverance we will have closure, we will have revenge. 131 Mount Alexander Road is I suspect one last picture of the lives of many and it is our duty by examining these rolls of tape to uncover the truth of their disappearance and lay their souls to rest.

millie tuttle, Intervening
paper, wood, drawing implements and masking tape
The work aims to engage the audience physically in the space while it transitions towards a new living space. Through small sculptural interventions, your attention is brought towards the impact of our time in the house which spans 2 years. A tree has fallen, only to be propped by its own limb, the kitchen is falling off the house and the ripple effects are seen in the walls of each room. While these events are not directly caused by our impact, their existence will effect the transition of moving from the space. Explore the space, and find the less obvious remnants of our lived time.
Closed Caption Translation
When a tree dies, we prop it up with it’s own flesh to remind ourselves that even in death there is no dignity. A home dies when we leave it. But we can bring it back to life, by adding to the interactive artwork on the walls we can finish the ancient rite and resurrect the home for one last party. Side effects may include, bloody stool, dizziness, partyhardy syndrome and homesickness. (authorised by The Australian Government Canberra).

Pascale Dawson
plaster, pigment
‘Things that are consistently changing are not inclined towards definition, since a definition which implies one moment will no apply to the next…’ Richard Tuttle
Closed Caption Translation
Sometimes we just have to say, fuck it, what is the point of defining the indefinite. No one tries to tell each wave that it has definite shape as it comes into the shore. Waves do what the fuck they want and the ocean finds this supremely preferable and all the little water molecules get along quite well I think you will find. *hint hint* People and Nations should be more like the ocean *hint hint*.

amy parker, idle talk
steel, plaster, paint and ontecar
1.8 x .8m
Idle Talk is my first response to, and meditation on the ideas of Heidegger in Being and Time. Considering the unreflective discourse of the everyday, and ‘not staying with what is nearest’. Looking to a shared preference for all that is ordered, and what is left of a chair when utility is hinted at and nothing further.
Closed Caption Translation
rehturf gnihton dna ta detnih, hinted at and nothing further
utility is futility, tyilituf si yilitu
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
Heidegger, Being and Time, Nazi and philosopher, professor and Teutonic knight.
none of it matters because people don’t think, they just are
ytilituf si yilitu, utility is futility
hinted at and nothing further, rehturf gnihton dna ta detnih

Address
131 Mt Alendander Road
flemington, melbourne