bilateral kellerberrin

May 14, 2005

Kellerberrin Saturday 14 May 2005

Filed under: keller dailies — Lucas @ 2:30 pm

I dream that Cristina and I are presenting slide shows in the gallery. After the gallery staff spend ages introducing the concept of the organisation etc, there’s only enough time left for ten minutes talking each. I pull out my bell in order to do one minute “lightning” accounts of my past projects, only to find it’s all rusty and it won’t “ding” at all. Most of my ten minutes is spent trying to work out how to make this bell function. I’m assisted by a local farmer in this operation. In my dream, I’m aware of how absurd this all is. In a way, it’s a quintessential presentation of my work. However, it’s not particularly informative for all the people who’ve come along to see slides…

* * * * *

Zed is bored. She hailed me the moment I entered the pub last night for Jag-the-Joker. We had a good chat, propping up the bar while we waited for our fortunes to change at 8pm. Zed said that about four years ago, she actually won the jackpot – over four grand. She gave her daughter some cash (her daughter’s got nothing) and she took a trip up north. That money went a long way.

But now Zed’s bored. She knits a lot, ‘though not with the ladies in the Monday group at the pavilion – she’s not really into women’s company. Television is not interesting, although she switches on after 5pm to watch all the news and current affairs, knitting all the while. Occasionally she writes an article for the Merredin Mercury, bashing it out on her old Imperial. Apart from that, not much to do.

Zed drives a beautiful dark green Kingswood. It’s about her size, she reckons, really comfortable. Years ago she had a nice Statesman, but one day she was hit by a train while crossing the tracks. Wiped out the whole rear of the car, and damn near killed her. The accident has made her more timid. Now, whenever she hears a train, she pulls over to the side of the road and waits for it to pass – even if she’s nowhere near the tracks.

Zed told Cristina some stories about her love life, but I missed out on them as I was in the loo. Something about a wonderful man running off with a younger woman. I think that was Zed’s second husband. But I didn’t get a chance to hear the tale again…Brendan the sometimes jolly publican was bellowing “get your tickets ready!” so we did.

Again, no luck for starving artists this week (or for anyone actually). At least this time, the lucky fellow who got to throw the dart took a punt and turned the card, so the gambler in me was satisfied. But the card was no joker, and he went off empty handed.

On Friday night after Jag-the-Joker, Zed told us, the clientele splits in two. There’s the punters who had just wanted to win the cash, and they go home pretty much straight away. And there’s the punters who want to see the “skimpy,” and they stay on, and drink more beer. She was right: the place emptied out a bit, and the younger folks made up the majority of the “stayers”.

But I reckon there’s more to the lingering youngsters than just the chance to ogle the breasts of a bored barmaid. The pub is THE place to be. If something is going to happen, it’s going to happen here, on a Friday night. I found the atmosphere certainly very boozy, but all the same friendly and not particularly intimidating. Cristina and I had a discussion about “skimpies”. Would I do it for money? she asked. Well, maybe, I replied. I have done nude life modelling for drawing classes before…but this would be a bit different, right? In a drunken environment, anything could happen. You’d be much more vulnerable.

Cristina said she had once taken on a journalism job where she had to work in a sort of skimpy environment in Colombia, but it was more a coffee bar than an alcohol one. She said a lot of the girls who worked there actually loved all the attention they got.

There must be some kind of skimpy agency down in Perth. Every week, a different one is “despatched” to Kellerberrin, where they work the bar from six to eleven, stay the night in the hotel, and then you never see them again. It’s weird…and really imbalanced – even though there are plenty of straight women drinking in the pub, their “tastes” are uncatered for…

Chris, the young chap from the “abs” who I met last week at the pub, reckoned he was detecting flirtation over the bar, and that he had “a bit of a chance with the skimpy”. I laughed, and suggested that making an effort to find out the name of “the skimpy” might be a good start.

Chris’ abbatoir colleague Jeff was there, and he introduced me to another worker too. Jeff suggested that we come down one day this week for a tour of the operation. After finding out I was somewhat vegetarian, he gleefully painted a gruesome picture of the “byproducts” of the slaughtering process – a kind of butchery swill consisting of severed sheep heads swimming in a blood-n-guts soup. This vile mixture is sent off to Fremantle to be processed into blood and bone.

I also met a fellow called Brad, who works at EDSCO (Eastern Districts Seed Cleaning Operation) which is based in the nice old flourmill in town. I asked Brad if he could throw me a handfull of seeds so I can put in my little wheat crop in the back yard of the Craft Barn. No worries, he said – and invited Cristina and I down to have a look at the seed cleaning process sometime this week. Seed Cleaning, I found out, doesn’t mean that the seeds themselves are “dirty” – it just means they are purified – no weed or other plant seeds are mixed in with the wheat…

Mick, too, invited us to come and check out his “Betta Canvas” business. He had some dirt to dish on the Plymouth Brethren, who he works for from time to time. Mick, who is Catholic, said he has a great time picking holes in their strict and sometimes contradictory system of beliefs and insular lifestyle. He said that when they order a new car, the brethren are quite prepared to pay extra to have the stereo taken out. They then don’t care what happens with the stereo. Most often the auto electrician who removes it makes a tidy profit selling it again.

Mick told me he was once arrested for setting off fireworks outside the door of the police station. I think they were illegal bangers from Canberra or something. He threw them from the window of a passing car. That sounded like great fun. I asked him if he had any left that we might set off to celebrate our exhibition opening. He said maybe, maybe, but I won’t bank on it. A lot gets said in the pub on Friday night. Much of it can’t safely be repeated in these pages…

Mark the butcher was there too (people call him Marcus, I think). He said his mate in Bunbury is going to send up those independent magazines so I can check them out. They’re pretty political, he said. But I should get a laugh out of them. Mark was wearing a southern cross t-shirt, like the eureka stockade flag. I asked him what it meant, if it was a socialist thing or what. Nah, not really, he said. Don’t bikies wear that stuff too, I asked? Yeah, I suppose so, he said. From the way he talked it didn’t seem that the symbol was a very specific or meaningful thing for him. Just that it had something to do with being independent, doing things your own way, living a bit of a different life.

* * * * *

So much to write about!

I haven’t mentioned it before, but I’ve been engaged by the shire to hang a series of photographs in the council chambers. The photos date back to 1933, and feature the members of each successive council posing for a group shot. Pauline (before she stepped down as shire president) decided to have them re-hung, rather than rotting in storage. She wanted something “artistic” – and that’s where I come in.

Felena came up with the concept, and I’m designing and implementing it. The idea is this: instead of hanging the photos in lines or grids, they are arrayed on the wall in a pleasing organic formation. A black line links each photo to the next, forming a crazy chronological diagram.

You can be pretty sure there’s no other shire in the wheatbelt (well, probably anywhere) that has its history displayed in this way. It’s a graphic demonstration of Kellerberrin’s “point of difference,” as Pauline says. I had a lot of fun playing with the layout, and I think I’ve got it looking good. I’ve even mapped out where the photos are going to go for the next twelve years, so they won’t need me back for at least that long…

council chambers arrangement
a preliminary arrangement of some of the photos…

* * * * *

I forgot to mention: between hanging pictures at the council, and Jag the Joker, I popped round to Pat’s to help with her computer. Pat is one of the ladies at the gallery, and she gave me a bag of wool for the crazy vest-for-the-pipe project last week.

With much excitement, Pat has purchased a brand new computer. I was glad to hear this, because it meant that teaching the ladies how to read my blog might not be so much of a challenge – the willingness is the main thing.

Pat lives on Forrest Street, which is not very far from the council chambers. I walked over there will my bag full of tools. When I arrived, dogs started barking and a man emerged from the shadows. “hello, have you brought a block of beer?” he asked. “Unfortunately no!” I said. “Am I in the right place for Pat?”

I was – she came bustling out of the kitchen door to greet me. The man, obviously, was her husband, whose name is Bill. Bill and I shook hands. I could smell a sort of fishy smell. In his other hand he was holding an open tin of catfood. He’d been feeding the cat when I arrived.

Pat’s main computer issue is wiring. She’s trying to get a phone line linked up to the machine. There’s an old phone connection right next to it, but it doesn’t seem to work, so she has to send a long telephone cable snaking through the house to the computer. I tried to get the phone plug happening. We experimented with different combinations of wiring (there are only 2 active “points” in a phone plug, but you get 4 wires. Which 2 are the right ones?) but the best we could get was a faint and distant dial tone. Certainly not loud enough for a conversation, so probably no good for her internet connection either. So my technician skills had failed.

Pat proudly slipped a cd into the drive and showed me photos of her grandchildren up in Kununurra. This is why she got the computer: so that her family can email pictures to her. She’s a bit slow on the old mouse, and sometimes has issues with the “double click”– but that’s more a motor skills issue than a conceptual thing. Pat is very quick to learn. I showed her how to change the view in windows from icons to thumbnails, and how to use the scroll wheel on the mouse – both of which she picked up immediately.

Bill brought me a goblet of port, which I sipped while Pat showed me some beautiful digital shots she’d taken up on Lake Argyle in the Kimberleys. I had been on the same boat trip as her (ten years ago now!!) so we could share stories about the abundant catfish which make the water almost “boil” when you throw food to them from the boat.

* * * * *

And FINALLY: I picked up my drink coasters from Bob in Cunderdin today. To tell the truth, I wasn’t overly happy with them. The ink is patchy and not really solid and dark. I was going to get him to reprint them, but then I discovered a spelling mistake and a typo I hadn’t picked up in the proofing stage. Grrr…I should have got eagle-eye Felena to read over them before I gave em to Bob…

There’s no point reprinting mistakes. I decided to accept the fate of the “publishing gods” and use the coasters “as is.” At the very least, they still do their job – something to hand out which advertises www.kellerberrin.com …

greg drink coaster

2 Responses to “Kellerberrin Saturday 14 May 2005”

  1. bilateral kellerberrin » Kellerberrin Tuesday 16 May 2005 Says:

    […] nd my first “permanent” public commission! A lot of the planning and plotting happened late last week. The design involves a kind of flow chart “diagram” concept. I […]

  2. bilateral kellerberrin » Kellerberrin Thursday 19 May 2005 Says:

    […] ’s starting to happen. “Feedback” is beginning! The “kellerberrin dot com” drink coasters have been helpful. I gave a couple to Pip next door a few days ago. Yesterday, as I was […]

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