Tank

Tank 2003
New Zealand at Michael Lett's Gallery in Fantasy Island group show curated by Hany Armonious

Shelves

Using the existing shelving

1. Twigs grown in my garden hot glued together.

2. Styrofoam ball floating on pool of water contained in a plastic bag resting on my yellow t-shirt.

3-4 Bakers clay with blue food colouring, mini mountains with architectural features ( retro model houses).

5-6 Fairy lights under red plastic bag

The doctor is in

Bus ticket collection
Printed numbers in water


I collected Metro Ten tickets because I liked that they printed out the exact time of the transaction. I used the services of Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald to acquire more tickets. I found there were other people who had been collecting for years. I wanted to map out every minute of every hour of the day that the buses run. I cut out the time and pasted it on to sticks, shown here. I never completed every minute of the day, but I got close. I think they matched the ghastly laminex counters in the gallery.

Sunrise

Install view

Sunrise 2004 Install detail
Josie Cavallaro, Lisa Kelly and I shared a studio at 16 Pidcock Camperdown for about five years. Marrickville Council runs Chrissie Cotter Gallery just down the road, with a Bowling club, and a tennis centre. We decided to do a show together. My work, The doctor is in, was playing with all sorts of ideas.
Sunrise
This portion contains a collection of pink materials, offset by a flouro flag (kindly donated by Josie) draped off a plinth. On the plinth were small offerings, sweet honeysuckle, some food and a candle. The bright blue table was found and I painted it. It had been used for years as a palette and was hugely bumpy. It is a painting. These found Australian coins had rusted in a jar, and formed a centerpiece. I keep coming back to money over the years. The inference of transactions. Symbolising exchange, wealth and my desire for money. That one and two cent pieces were discontinued (I still find this radical), and nowadays people will step over a 5c coin on the street (some people).
Money on the table: gambling? voodoo? bribes? illegal activity? I have a well cultivated reaction to money. From the thousands of images I have seen of greenback-filled suitcases to my personal desire for enough money to live on, money is a huge part of our society. I dream of cash, literally. Wads of it. When I was little I would take money and steal. I'd throw the money on the ground and pretend to find it. Who doesn't love finding money?
Capitalism. What a loaded gun, the temptation for money. What we'd do for money. As a kid, I used to hang out after school asking for bus fare money from strangers. I am not proud of this, but it was something I did to get money for sweets. One man turned out his pockets and he had only 35cents and a little charm. He held it out to me in his palm, offering it all to me, and I was shocked, he had so little and he was willing to give it to me. I turned it down and felt so ashamed.
I was in Paris in 2000, waiting in a queue outside a gallery. It was freezing cold, and the wait was long. A homeless fellow was gleaning money from the crowd, and when he got to us, we gave him some cash and he flipped out and threw the cash onto the street and yelled incomprehensibly and stormed off. We gathered the money and left it on the ledge for him, it was like 100 Franks. His action was so unexpected. He humiliated us.
The doctor is in refers to the psychiatrist's office. I was sent to analysts/psych since I was about eight years old. I have always loved them. A formal exchange where you have someone to talk to who doesn't judge you, and who can illuminate your ways of thinking about things and coping with emotion.

Essay

I wish I were bigger


Fatter? Taller? More famous? Or just giant?


I wish my work was bigger!
The stain on the carpet looks like spew. The day I was minding the show outside on the pavement someone had done a big red spew and I knew I had done right.



Catalogue Essay

Sarah Goffman’s wish to be ‘bigger’ is a clue to the ethos of her latest installation. If only she was more capacious, then she might be able to harbour all the junk in the world. This passion for objects may be read as a symptom of intense curiosity. While studying literature at university, Goffman was plagued by the thought that she could never read everything, marvelling at libraries stacked with more books than she could hope to absorb. Evidently she feels the same way about all the detritus she now seeks out. Her plaintive proclamation may be understood as the inevitable outcome of a collector’s obsession, or the manifestation of a desire to save the planet from rubbish. Indeed, the two aims may be intertwined in an altruistic yet covetous drive to improve the environment.
Goffman’s installation, made almost completely from found materials, is full of intriguing combinations, seemingly infinite in their variation, like a microcosm of the world made from trash. Here, the artist suggests new aesthetic forms for things which are usually despised or beneath notice. Arranged in organic formations, these cast-offs appear compellingly beautiful. A tree branch in a giant bag, plastic shopping bags sport customised pockets and toilet paper is embroidered like exquisite craftwork. Commonplace items are repeatedly transformed from the prosaic into the decorative, blurring the boundaries between categories.
While this composition may be read as an inspiring DIY dream, or a masterpiece of waste management, darker themes may be discerned. The structures on display have unmistakably apocalyptic resonances, suggesting a crumbling cityscape after a disaster. Miniaturised scaffolding submerged in a fishtank illuminated by a floating strobe, with stained carpet beneath, summons up the spectre of civil decay. Here, nature is visibly damaged by artificial constructions, but is itself already man-made and mass-produced, reflecting the perils of excess. In spite of these black undercurrents, humour is evident in various distortions of scale: scaffolding inside a fishtank, a small box labelled ‘Extra Large’ and a miniature newspaper mountainscape.
Goffman’s collections could be understood as a way of filling the void, a compensation for loss or momento mori. After all, every collection is a constant reminder of the very reality it has been created to stave off. The objects she covets are talismans of an inverted conoisseurship, each piece the grave of a past desire. Many of the materials Goffman puts to use will be around long after we are gone, given their virtually indestructible, toxic qualities. In this installation, people are absent except in caricatural forms while inanimate objects testify to the folly of our endeavours. Inhabiting a blackened zone, an empty motorcycle suit hangs surrounded by an audience of cut-out faces. Elsewhere, money and ashes sit side by side on glass, as in a macabre shop display, posing an equivalence between human life and hard currency.
B.L.Magner

I

Install detail I wish I were bigger 2003 Solo show at Scott Donovan Gallery, Liverpool Street
Found motorbike rider's suit, lace gown, goggles filled with sand, embroidered toilet paper, light, tissue box, candied nuts, hot glue bowls and cubes, plastic bag with orange on glass plate, found table.

Protect me from what I want found Simple shoe box

Newspaper mountain
Newspaper, water, tray

I wish

Tank
2003
detail
Hot glue, copper wire, sand bags, water, laser, pump

Giant woman 2003
Install detail
plastic bags, hot glue, lights

I wish I

Install detail

Embroidered toilet paper 2003

By embellishing this throwaway material I suggest an alteration to ways of thinking.

I wish I were

Shopping bag, glass plate and an orange
Tank 2003
Plastic hot chips 2003

I wish I were bigger

Plastic bag spray painted, tree limb from outside, string, paper silhouettes






















Detail
photocopied cash, spraypainted found board, found brick, tea, buttons, lights, hot glue, found carpet, paint

After you

After you 2003

Rubber band face detail and painted Vitawheat biscuit I've got love in my tummy

bubbling light fog machine

mirror, found objects, wooden fruit, tissue box, wire, paper, hot glue, paintings on canvas Someone told me I should try painting

Front Room Kitchen

Trouble in Canberra

Hotel Module 2003


Solo show at Canberra Contemporary Art space Cube
Top right Install view
Centre left detail Centre right Install view
Bottom detail DEGENERATE MATTER hot glue

What possessed me to make such a complicated installation out of town?
I wonder. The title, Hotel Module refers to a hotel room I stayed in, when I ran away from home at sixteen. I'd taken my passport and all sorts of belongings. I was a naughty and disturbed kid and this act got me into a lot of trouble (I was found). I stayed in the room devising plans to get me out of the situation I was in. There was justified anger but also a lot of false illusion. In this show I was thinking about all that past baggage I still carried around with me, and the symbols of that.

Trouble

Texter on Kleenex tissues.

Found book

More trouble

Top Found postcard with plastic and hot glue

Centre Repetitive texter on blotting paper (site specific work)

Bottom Detail Glass beaker, water, styrofoam, light

I used a lot of different coloured detergents and liquid soaps in the show, Playing on their scents and different pearlised colours.

A factor of my shows has to do with experimenting with putting objects out into the gallery environment. I am constantly learning how to install, always trying.

Plastic Reality

This was made for a group show at MOP curated by Koji Riju.

It is a simulation of a real event in my bathroom where a praying mantis came and sat on a pink jellyfish hanging on the wall. It is made from hot glue, paint, string and a jelly cup container.

2003

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