Battery Operated
Collaberative project, Gallery 6_A Artist Run Initiative
Artists: Amanda Shone, Tricky Walsh, Andrew Harper, Alicia King, Andrew Rewaldwith special support from Mish Meijers
Battery Operated was part of MEMBRANE, the keynote exhibition of the 2008 Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, Federation Square. The location for our work was subterranean, deep within the service tunnels chosen to parody Tasmania’s geographic and cultural location within the vernacular of mainland Australian culture. The title derived from the use of five hundred kilos of donated potatoes from the food company McCains Foods. Five ‘patches’, one for each artist were wired up to create a twelve volt electric current fed to an overhead tram-like cable system to a centralized car battery. This in turn was fed back through another cable system to power and illuminate one element of each artists practice within their allocated ‘patch.’ For my installation I wove copper wire around apples piled like a Croquembouche. The apples were encased in salt adhered with egg. As the fruit rotted, the wire corroded to a blue patina, juices pooling onto a pulsing light cast into a sugar plate. I was attracted to the notion of illuminating a state of decomposition, or rather the specific decomposition of a state of preservation as it were. As a durational piece this work highlights my interest in the process of decay and transformation as performative.