Rest 150 litre Ice Melt
October 21, 2010
On Friday morning at 5.30am the city of Melbourne barely stirred, the air sweet with the taste of summers spring.
REST & GIFT were 2 150 litre blocks of frozen natural pigments... ephemeral... there were no white canvases and no white gallery walls, they were to be for their moment apart of the landscape we now have filled with so much visual context, a seemingly blur upon our tied eyes.
Their story began that morning with the flight of butterflies and the excitement of, for a moment adorning the streets of the city i live in with something Beautiful... a moment of me... a temporal exchange of the life that manifests within creation.
By 11.30am the blocks had been scattered like the disparate city... GIFT (the red block on Swanston st) had been pushed onto the side walk by the council... the smaller fragment was put under the Plain trees that give Melbourne its high rate of hey fever every spring as the northerly's blow their seed husks amongst the tram sand towards the water... i can only assume that the call was put through by the church and or someone higher up within council seated behind a desk somewhere far away, to remove the block of melting ice from the seated square... and within the form and function of the council worker a 130 or so litres of frozen water is not an approachable picking up item... so there the fragment of ice stopped, up against a pole like a mini resort building jutting into the pedestrian pass... it had gone from a work framed by the courtyard of 'Ladies Only' seats, watched over by the statue of a history that did not share the true meaning of GIFT... to a curiosity of a left over wedding decoration scattered just far enough from the mighty church and its encapsulating eye...
REST was placed within Hosier Lane, Melbourne's most famous and celebrated Street Art Lane... here the piece sat in comfort surrounded by the passions, the conversations and the colour of others... like all street art just another ephemeral happening conversating with the past present and future...
unfortunately one of the owner of Movida's (possibly my favourite tapas bar in Melbourne), a tapas bar and restaurant that celebrate their glory within the street arts lane, who utilise the walls of pictures and text, even for their website and publicity... did not stop to experience the visual beauty... did not get down and smell the cumin powder and indian spices slowly revealing themselves from the block of ice... or listen to the chamber orchestral movement happening within... was it the fear of a deluge of water flooding like a Bill Viola video piece past his door... or that we have become accepting of social political graffiti, slogans and images, now almost postcard expectancy...
It led me to ponder even futher on the understandings we all may have on the BEAUTIFUL... and within this i talk not of beauty, a constraint and label we now use like a swing tag and or magazine cover... though beautiful within the emotional response we may have when we REST and partake within the GIFT...
REST was broken up as it slid down the cobble stone lane and put to rest on top of the drain... it is better to not messy the sidewalk though messy the underground water ways that we may never see... thankfully the 3 pieces were saved by Andy Mac (the owner and curator of Until Never Gallery) and his Mum and given new life and from there went like a soccer ball up and down the lane till the sun went down and the crowds grew restless.
Gav Barbey
click here for HATE LOVE ice melt
click here for HATE LOVE at Until Never
