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"The Floor" - Floor covered with photographic imagery, Lindsay Colborne 1995
Entering the gallery was a daunting experience for some. Unsure whether to enter, they would stand at the front door and call out, "Is it OK to walk on this?"
"Yes", was the answer. Of course it was. Walking all over the art was the whole idea. Everything changes, particularly when you interact with it. Nothing lasts forever, everything is eventually destroyed and remade. The act of looking at the floor art as you walked on it played an active part in it's destruction. By helping to destroy the work as they looked at it, the viewers of the work played an active role in the theme of the work.
Since the work was nothing but glued-together bits of photocopy paper, I wasn't expecting it to last too long. I wasn't even sure if it would last through the opening night, but in the end it proved quite resilient and apart from a few nicks and tears, it stayed together for more than a month. Finally a dance party was held on it and "The Floor" was destroyed once and for all.
But that was not the end of it.
"The Floor" - Floor covered with photographic imagery, Lindsay Colborne
The art gallery used to be an RSL Hall, so it had a lot of floor space. I was asked to be part of a group exhibition and when I walked in and saw the size of the floor, without thinking I asked the gallery owner, "Can I exhibit my work on the floor?" She said, "Sure."
At that stage I had no idea what I was going to do, except that I was going to cover the floor somehow. I had limited time to get the floor down, which left no time to develop my concepts concerning the nature of change, which will have to be the subject of a future floor, so this time I simply floated many of my existing photos of people in a sea of white. I tiled the images out on an A3 laser writer and glued them all together piece by piece, there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Each people-photo is life size and made up of about 50 A3 pieces. It took me two solid weeks of printing and gluing and positioning to completely cover the RSL Hall-sized floor.
"Back Yard in Coorparoo" - Lindsay Colborne
I lived in Coorparoo in this house for a while, and so I'm wondering what the name "Coorparoo" actually means. I know it's an Indigenous word, but that's all I know. I've just now gone to Wikipedia and discovered... that it may mean "place of the biting mosquito" or "call of the dingo" or maybe it's the name of a creek that runs off Norman Creek... I don't know. I think that particular creek, which runs past where my father and mother grew up, is now a large cement drain - very practical in the floods. This site reckons that Coorparoo means "a ground dove", and that the name resembles the note of a cooing bird. But that site also reckons that Mt Cootha means "Dark Honey" and I always thought it meant "One Tree" because there used to be one very big tree that towered above all the others before it was chopped it down. - Well obviously... I can imagine the conversation of the first settlers... "Wow!!! Look at that wonderful big tree that towers above all the rest!" - "Yeah. Let's chop it down and burn it!"
Thompson Estate is what Annerly used to be called before WWII, and according to my Dad it's roughly between Ekibin Creek and Buranda. Ekibin Creek I now know is the name of the creek that is now a big flood-proofed cement waterway which flows off Norman Creek and is the creek that the Indigenous people may of called Coorparoo. Thompson Estate is a stones throw from Coorparoo and interestingly enough, if you did need to actually throw a stone from Thompson Estate to Coorparoo, you would have to throw it over the inbetween suburb of Stones Corner. Both my Mum and my Dad are from the area and they know only one story about the name of Coorparoo. In the 20's 30's and 40's when they were growing up there, they knew Coorparoo as coming from the Indigenous word for the cooing sound of the Indian Dove. My Dad explains it like this... "Cooooorpaaaaaroooooooo" he says, like the Dove would coo it.
"Crucifixion" - Photograph, Lindsay Colborne
If you do not send this blog to any people you will have very bad luck, but...
Send this blog to 10 people and you will have good luck and a wish will come true.
Send this blog to 20 people and you will have even better good luck and two wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 30 people and you will have very good luck indeed, and three wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 1000 people and you will show them all how gullible you are.
I understand why people send traditional chain letters with the hope of making lots of money from fools down the line who think they can get something for nothing, but why do people send email chain letters that promise no money, just good luck and miracles if you send them on to large numbers of other people? And why do people believe it and diligently send them on?
Sometimes the messages contained in the email chain letters are inspirational and/or informative, but why the need to promise miracles to get people to send them on, or bad luck if they don't?
The altruistic reason is that they think they have a good message that people need to hear. They play on people's 'fear of lack' in order to get them to send the good message on. I still have no idea why though. Because the thing that ends up being bounced around the world is not a good message but rather, a large number of expressions of 'fear and lack' from the lives of the people sending them. A seemingly altruistic unselfish concern for the welfare of others becomes a lack of faith in people's ability to recognize and pass on a good thing when they see it.
To send these email chain letters on, no matter what the message, is to send on an expression of the belief that you can't look after yourself and that you need someone to give you miracles on a silver platter.
But seriously, if you don't send this blog to 10 people right now, you will get a big boil on your bottom.
