IAN MILLISS Darwin in Wallerawang 28 July - 24 August 2008
When Ian Milliss was given a load of plywood TV stands by a fellow member of the Network of Uncollectable Artists (NUCA) it was inevitable that they would be adaptively reused in some useful way. Ian Milliss has always championed the idea that the artist's job is activism to change their culture using any means available, that they should be “memetic innovators” as the critic Donald Brook describes it. He is particularly interested in the borderline between utilitarian and cultural products and adaptive reuse has increasingly become the focus of his recent activities through his blog adaptivereuse.net and his heritage and community activism. “Adaptive reuse is usually a term to describe the reuse of buildings but I use it to describe any situation where a superceded technology or material is reused differently to its original intended use” he said. “Adaptive reuse of every sort is becoming recognised as a major technique for achieving sustainability because it retains the embodied energy of existing materials, thereby reducing energy consumption. But there are also stimulating problems associated with reusing materials”. But artist's stools? While satirising Piero Manzoni's earlier tinned stools http://www.pieromanzoni.org/EN/works_shit.htm they also reflect the mundane fact that we all need somewhere to sit from time to time. “It partly arose from the incredible variety of carved African stools that Ray Hughes Gallery has occasionally shown but it was also to explore some of the many possibilities available in the simple slotted construction used for the original stands” he said. Stools ultimately are a simple meme and memes, like animals, only survive by adapting as times change.The many variations evolving like a natural process led to this light hearted tribute to the 150th Anniversary of the first public exposition of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, a theory that was first hinted at in Darwin's diary comments about his 1836 visit to Wallerawang, the small NSW town where Ian Milliss lives. For more on Darwin’s thesis from Wallerawang click for Sydney Morning Herald article by Daniel Lewis |
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