5 minutes into injury time

so, after being so ridiculously tired, you’d think I would have slept like a log! not so. all that caffeine, all that stress plus a few thousand head miles, I did not sleep at all! I’m pretty sure it was about 1:30 when I finally decided to stop stressing, got up, made a cup of pep tea and finally fell asleep until the wonderful time of 7:30am. beauty. I was so strung out that I had to go for a run to get myself back into kilter. go for a run? yeah, I know!

photos thanks to sarah mosca

so, back into the city at about 8:30 to dump more stuff and then find a park. I felt like absolute crap, so much of my memory about installing is a bit foggy, but I do remember us being quite organised and starting early. we used one of the cabinets kind of as a test piece – did a bit of cooking, painted it on and we were away. the key to stage 2 of the installation was always going to be about a production line. and apart from a few periods where we were cooking and applying in fits and starts, we mostly had it down pat. I had recruited 2 sets of friends, who I’m eternally grateful to, for the morning and afternoon shifts. I cooked, sarah mosca applied, dean sammut also applied and sarah barber was our dishpig for the morning session. as I finished cooking a pot of goo, 1 each of the painters would start and as each pot was finished, sarah b would wash them the tiny sink at sticky. and apart from having to deal with the waves of race goers, it was going pretty well. we had quite a long lunchbreak ‘cos I was exhausted and it was an opportunity for us to hang out with the afternoon crew, who took the installation to completion – sarah, paul turner and craig atkinson.

photos thanks to sarah mosca

the afternoon worked so well – we started off with sarah cooking, paul and I painting and craig as dishpig, then swapped ‘cos I was feeling pretty ratty and just needed to cook – so sarah got back on the cabinets. all was well until about 4pm, then we realized that we were running out of material, patience and time. we stretched it all out to cover a total of 10 cabinets, ran out of gas just as we finished (literally) and left our little installation of crumpled contact in the cabinets. it may not be refined, but what’s a bit of harmless fun in a subway :)

photos thanks to sarah mosca

did I mention I was strung out? holy crap – I think I almost cried a bunch of times and was relieved more than anything that the installation was over. it’s very hard to have a critical eye when you’re physically, mentally, emotionally and creatively exhausted. which is why preparation is the key.

photos thanks to sarah mosca

after we documented and packed it all up, it was off to the pub for much-needed refreshment! nothing puts punctuation to installing a show like a brew of some sort (or red lemonade for me) and hot chips!

and that’s about it. the work is now currently in a state of flux – which is what it’s all about anyway. and as far as I hear, it’s looking OK.

more photos to come later.