1. Fairy grottos and folders in the spare room
A conversation on precarious archives with Paul Andrew
Location: Mermaid Waters
When I first imagined this project, I knew that I needed to speak with artist Paul Andrew. Paul holds a library of stories in his brain; he can pinpoint countless moments and memories from over the last fifty years of South-East Queensland’s artist-run ecology. Many of these stories are also held on his website ariremix.com.au; an internet artwork and community archive that Paul has developed over the last 14 years, and which is free to access online.
Paul and I caught up over the phone back in August 2024. We spoke about his visits to the Gold Coast as a child, building strong communities and the joys and struggles of maintaining a living digital archive about Queensland/Australian artist-run culture and heritage.
Paul Andrew is a queer media artist, researcher, facilitator, and curator with experience in using remix, bricolage, collage, and narrative techniques for making assemblage-like archival art initiatives. These are often media-based, produced in diverse varied and variable cultural forms. They has been practicing and exhibiting professionally since 1984.
Paul has actively participated in artist-run culture throughout the 1980 to Now period in local, nationwide and international settings including: Artworker’s Union Queensland, Queensland Artworker’s Alliance (QAA), F. Art (Art Zine), That Contemporary Art Space, That Annexe, Axis Art Projects AU/USA (Art Xtremists International Syndicate), 2B: The Garage USA, [Bureau] Artspace, Breathing Concrete, Bitumen River Gallery, TAG (Tropical Artists Guild), First Draft, Sydney Super 8 Filmmakers, Sydney Intermedia Network (SIN), Queer TV, Metro Screen, DLux Media Arts, Epicormia Collective (Arts and Disability ARI), The Soylent Spot ARI, Next Door ARI, Tripla ARI/IT, OUTERSPACE, and CUT BAIT ARI.
Building on long-standing experience with a DIY, participatory, and pluralizing ethos expressed inside artist-run communities of practice, Paul’s current digital creative archival assemblage work is an online community archives project is accessed here: ARI Remix: https://ariremix.com.au/
K: Let’s talk first about your connection to the Gold Coast. Tell me about some places, people, or any moments or memories that you have. Not necessarily about the arts scene here, but the place.
P: It’s interesting Kim, because as the crow flies, I’m only about twenty-eight kilometres from where you are… or from Southport. I’ve been living on Canaipa for seven years and at the end of the island here is the bay, where the City of Gold Coast Council sort of starts. So I’m not that far away at all. Every New Year's Eve I can see the skyhigh tips of sparkling fireworks on the Gold Coast… I can see the light in the sky, flaring up here just above the trees.
I think a lot about the Gold Coast because of course, when we were kids in the 1960s and 1970s, Mum and Dad had a boat, a cruise craft as we used to say. We used to travel down Canaipa passage - just a few hundred metres from where I live now- it’s a deep ocean-fed channel (and great for fishing) - between Minjerribah, North Stradbroke Island and Canaipa, Russell Island. This is the way to get to Southport, and a wonderland, what was called the Sundale Shopping Centre. We used to go down all the time, particularly at Easter. Those were the days when the canals were just being made, and the housing and larger development of the Gold Coast was starting.
But going back a bit further again… I was born in 1964, so it was during the 1960s that we started going to the Gold Coast. As an artist growing up, I was always really aware of the incredible surfer culture; of the amazing neon signs, adventure parks, labyrinthine arcades, and the little art galleries, mainly private. There was this incredible coastal architecture; the sort of skillion roof, 1950’s vernacular architecture beach houses, commonplace at the time, which are still surviving, still hanging on. And as a kid, I always wanted to live in one of those houses.
But yeah, you know, like many of us who grew up in Brisbane, the Gold Coast was somewhere that we went for holidays. We would drive down to Tugun or Mermaid Beach, and stay in a little block of low rise apartments. There were three bedrooms, you know, one for Mum and Dad and two for the kids. We’d just be at the beach everyday basically, making sand castles, and getting fish and chips!
K: The dream. That’s like the classic summer holiday!
P: Classic summer holidays in the 1960s and 1970s! And the other thing, you just reminded me, that we always used to do, was go down to Point Danger, which was one of our favourites, because it was on the border. We would go to Tweed for fish and chips, and then go up to the lookout. I think we’ve talked about this actually over the years, but there were some binoculars teetering on the precipice, you put in five cents and check out all the surfie’s and their Kombi van’s decorated with vivid ‘Peace’, ‘Flower Power’, ‘Ban the Bombs’, ‘Women’s Lib, ‘Gay Lib’, ‘Land Rights Now’, ‘Make Love, not war’ colourful-hand painted slogans and bedazzling mobile art murals just below. So, you know, lots and lots of memories! This was the time of the counter culture. We were all children of the revolution. These cultural moments are the foundations of my artistic practice, and my worldview.
And then in the 80’s I would travel there with Mark Bayly, an arts worker and curator who worked at the Gold Coast City Gallery. That was around the time the hotel on The Spit was built, what was it called? Not the Gucci?
P: Yes! The Palazzo Versace! And I’d go down with Mark in the morning and wander around Surfers and Southport and go looking for galleries. Of course, in those days Surfers Paradise was full of these arcades, filled with arts and craft, curios, artefacts, and tourist shops. I used to collect… well, I still collect postcards, and use them to create collages. I guess that’s one of my direct material connections to the Gold Coast as an artist. I love that you can hold and cherish postcards, send them to friends with a little story. So, I was always in those arcades, and they were like these weird things, like funny little museums with memorabilia, which have long since gone. And then there were the more commercial attractions during those days, like the Wax Museum, which I think is still there.
K: Yeah, the wax museum is still there.
P: Yeah, and in the 60s when we were small children, there was one place called Santaland, which was our favourite place on the Gold Coast. It was an assemblage of colourful play spaces. It was on the way to the Coolangatta Airport, which in those days was just a cow paddock. We used to go there because Dad used to take us on the most breathtaking joy flights, which I think for a family was like $15 or $20. We’d fly over from Tweed, up as far as Southport, and then inland, to see Mount Tambourine.
But Santaland was on the way there, or on the way back, and it was this sort of fairy grotto of fairies and pixies and all that sort of 1950s stone garden statue design. It was filled with tropical plants, native plants, epiphytes, palms and ferns, and there were lots of playground areas and picnic grounds where you could have a barbecue. I think that’s long been gone and been developed since.
K: I just googled it Paul, and I can see an old poster. ‘Fantasy land of fun’ is what they called it. ‘The Gold Coast’s magic acre on the highway between Tugun and Currumbin’. Snow White and the seven dwarfs were apparently there. I’ve never heard of this before!
P: Yes! That’s the one! Is there a poster on the website?
K: There is! I’ll send it to you afterwards.
P: Yeah… so I guess I bring that up because it’s such a bundle of joyful memories. But also as an artist, there was nature, politics, and art and culture all in one space. You know in the 60’s - I was an infant - for me, Santaland really captivated my childlike creativity. I can’t remember the names of the people that ran it, they might have been a family of artists. The whole place was unlike anywhere else on the Gold Coast. It was this enchanted space that was constantly being grown, and expanded. It was a collection in a sense. Unlike Brisbane, the Gold Coast was all colour, colour, colour, great stuff for a kid, fabulous stuff for an artist.
But in those days, even though the Gold Coast was a major holiday destination for Christmas and Easter, during the rest of the year it was pretty sleepy. This is in the 70s, when Focus was built; the circular sky-rise, and Caville Avenue, Caville Mall started to take off. I always say to friends, I’m really grateful that we experienced the Gold Coast before all that major development when it was very, very different to how it is today.
And then jump cut to a couple of years ago, when Rebecca Ross was running The Walls down in Miami and I went down for an event called Meat Mirror by Jay Younger. I wrote a reflective piece linked here.
K: Oh yes yes! I was there.
P: You were there, that’s right. And remember there was a panel discussion afterwards when a lot of people were talking about body dysmorphia and cosmetic surgery and women’s bodies. And I stayed on the Gold Coast to catch up with Rebecca and Jay, I helped Jay bump that exhibition out. But I hadn’t stayed on the Gold Coast for about five or six years, so I was able to wander around and see how much demolition was happening. I was really struck by the amount of demolition, because the property values alone are exorbitant, as you know. A lot of that architecture, those blocks of units and flats from the 60s and 70s and much earlier again, those skillion roof beach shacks were all being demolished.
I was saying to Rebecca, I was walking around the streets crying with joy. I remembered so much of the time I’d spent there during those three of four days.
That’s when I discovered one of the arcades that still survives with a fabulous cafe, just sort of near the tram… The woman who runs the cafe was talking about growing up in the 1970s too. She’d be about my age… we were talking about what she remembered from living on the Gold Coast and you know, the landmark site known as the Pink Poodle icon. This reminded me of the Pink Elephant Café my mum used to talk about, in Brisbane in the 1940s, which in my mind, was somehow connected to the Pink Elephant Cafe in Brisbane. On the Gold Coast, I was constantly making connections between things.
But it was also, always a treat when they would come over, because that would mean going to the theme parks. So now that family’s here, we would get to engage in all the attractions.
You know on a regular day, the locals wouldn’t - or at least my family wouldn’t - be going to explore those places and do those touristy things. I guess, if it’s just what your surrounded by, you’re not as excited by it, or maybe it’s not as inspiring when it’s your everyday. Or maybe even, because it was the early
2000s, it didn’t have those special qualities that you got to experience years before. By this time, there is a lot of development and changes in the city, and those older buildings are not quite the same anymore, or they’re changing or being knocked down.
So, I really love hearing that different perspective from you, it’s so fun. And it’s got a real joy attached to it.
P: Well, you just reminded me, so when you went to school, was this part of your schooling? In primary school or high school, going to theme parks like Dreamworld? What that part of your education experience?
K: No, no it wasn’t. Or maybe… yes, it was actually. We would do excursions to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary a lot in the primary school years. And in high school, we would actually do the opposite, we would go to Brisbane. I would have gone to QAGOMA a few times, and if you were doing dance or theatre, you would go to see a show at QPAC, at the Lyric Theatre.
P: Wow yeah, see. And David Fleays? Was that still there…
K: Yes, yes, sorry. We would have also gone to David Fleays because my school was very close. And Paul, I have a horrific memory of the place, because they didn’t have fences that were high enough and I had a cassowary lean over and try to bite me, because my plastic red necklace looked like berries.
P: Oh my goodness!
K: Yes, it’s quite a scarred place in my mind!
P: Yeah, I remember… well I didn’t have that experience, but I do remember the emus were always a bit funny there. Of course, I remember down the road at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. You know it was such a thrill to have your bodies just covered in Rosella’s!
Another thing I was just thinking about, going back even further, long before my lifetime started… but my grandfather, my dad’s dad, and my dad, would often talk about driving down to the Gold Coast. We’re talking the 1930’s… they had an old lorry, and in those days there were no roads by the beach because of the sand dunes, right? They sort of melded into the beach shacks that were built along the seafront. When you drove from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, they had to stop halfway and chop down trees because of the dirt road. Or if a tree had fallen down, you’d have to chop it up and remove it. You’d stop at a creek, and the creek would be flooded, so you’d have to turn back and drive upstream or downstream where you might find a sandy outcrop to cross the creek on. It was just really precarious! You’d go down on one lane and come up on the other, and often you could drive for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, without having another car pass you.
I joined a couple of those Gold Coast Facebook pages, of the Gold Coast back in the day, and I really love them. You get to see images of hotels and pools and parks… and the Cascades - which are still there - was such a mecca back in the 1970’s because it used to have free hot water. Also Southport, where the Olympic Pool is located, because it had “Free Hot Water”; as in boiling water. So you’d pack a thermos and go have a picnic with a cup of boiling hot tea or coffee, which was just such a huge draw.
P: Yeah absolutely! So anyway, over the 80’s, there was a bit of a queer scene evolving. Now I can’t remember what the Acid House Music clubs were, but there was one, later in the 80’s - I think called the Meeting Place - on Caville Avenue. When I was there to see Meat Mirror at The Walls, I think that whole precinct at the front where the Meeting Place was had been demolished. And there was another club up the road… which might have been called The Site, now that I think about it. We used to drive our friends down and go dancing in the days of “house music all night long” as that lyric goes. Yeah… things changed in the 80s.
K: Yes completely. Well it’s so great to hear… it makes me love the kind of quirky recent history we have here on the Gold Coast. I don’t know, sometimes I feel it can get misconstrued, or it can get weakened? You can forget these things right? I guess that’s what this is all about. It’s about all those moments… you know I've never heard of that experience, of your dad having to chop down trees just to get here. Like I never would have thought! You don’t often get to stop and consider what came before you, and those little stories are just golden.
P: Yeah I agree, and so many people have those stories. But this is where your project’s really important, because people have an opportunity to share memories, and to remember together, about things which are not just about nostalgia. They’re about understanding place, and connection to place, and connection to people and heritage. And of course, it was the same in Brisbane, where a lot of the places that were knocked down were meeting places for young people. Because they were inexpensive, they were fun, they were playful; they were liberatory in so many ways. Whether you’re dancing, or thinking.
And the Old Burleigh Theatre, I remember when that was still a cinema, and an arcade. And the independent band scene on the Gold Coast, what was that fabulous hotel, band venue, club there on the beach at Burleigh, overlooking the water?
K: North or South Burleigh?
P: I’m just trying to remember… Well, anyway, there were a whole lot of venues. So people who were particularly into music, and not just the mainstream stuff, but the more independent stuff, would drive down from Brisbane.
I’ll have to Google it, but it’s right when you’re coming around and you look up the North and can see all of the surfers on the horizon. And, The Playroom, near Tallebudgera, was another.
K: Is it on the Miami side? I’m trying to remember what’s along the highway? I don’t know, was it up on the hill?
P: I don’t know… but where I was going with that, was just the commute, as you experienced in the 2000’s when you were in school, to QPAC and GOMA. For me, it was clubbing. And because the Gold Coast was a tourist destination, people from all around the world were there. People came from Brazil, UK, Europe, throughout Asia; people came to the mecca. That was the greatest trip in those days! And this is long before schoolies started and the things we know today.
But then, I remember living in Northern Rivers, before I came here in 2018, in Ballina, which is quite similar now to what the Gold Coast used to be like. And uncannily, at this stage of my life I was finally living in a 1950’s skillion-rooved house, built by Charles and Elsa Chauvel and it was a place they called, Jedda, and made the film by the same name. We’d come up for the queer festivals, film festivals and performance art stuff that was happening in Burleigh Theatre. You know, only ten or so years ago. I remember there was a bowling club that was turned into a sort of uber cool underground meeting place… cafe… with vegan and vegetarian food. In our minds, it was like ‘the happenings’ of the 1960’s.
So that underground culture has always been there, and that’s why I came to the Gold Coast. Even when I was with my family, I was trying to find the alternatives…
I’ve just done with Elizabeth… I’ve helped facilitate some workshops through council. And each week we were getting 20, 30 artists coming, from all different fields. And I might have recognised maybe three people each week. And I was going, ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ And a lot of these people were new to the Gold Coast and looking for an art scene. And in one way, I was so excited to meet new artists, who are… you know, when you’re looking to join a community… very excited and motivated. But at the same time, I’m thinking ‘Where can you go from here?’ I think we did maybe seven workshops in a row, and I kept thinking, ‘this is the moment, this is your chance to connect. Get each other’s instagram accounts and mobile numbers and make that connection now.’
Because at the moment on the Gold Coast, we have a lot of one-off events, and it’s like… you’ve got to hear about this event and get there and be there, and for this short moment you have space to connect and meet new people. I feel like there’s not enough space for people to just bump into each other, or to casually meet in that way…
P: I mean… look at your experience, for example, with Nextdoor ARI and that iteration, I forgot… the postcode of Surfers Paradise…
K: Oh what we did at The 4217, when you came and visited?
P: Yes! That’s a great example where you actually have not just a space for events, but a meeting space where there’s dialogue and conversation and reflection and discussion and co-creative activity. You sort of plan to do things, and it can be anything, from hanging out having coffee to grabbing a cold beer, or going for a swim, or maybe collaborating on an artwork or a project, or just scheming and dreaming. Those places where it’s not just an event space, but where you can actually sit down and have a really good chat; particularly in an artful environment.
That’s why artist’s want spaces, because it’s not just about exhibitions and making and self-publishing. It’s actually about just getting to scope how everyone’s feeling. Particularly for younger artists, they might be feeling really depressed because the art sector is so vast and so spectacular. It’s really based on space and these community based activities where you bring it back down to earth and go, ‘Let’s make something about this’. And that’s where The 4217 was a really good example of connecting with people; developing a network, working out how you could transform a physical space and create a strong sense of community, and meaningful interconnectedness.
Those sorts of things are never going to disappear, and not just for young people. But of course, it is the access to physical space. And here we are, not just in a housing crisis, but in a space crisis, where physical spaces are being demolished. They’re incredibly profit driven. They’re for a very select, privileged community of people, who are property investors and have portfolios. And that development means that all the spaces that are small and community based, and a little bit ramshackle, are disappearing.
Now this is where leveraging council and arts bodies like Arts Queensland, is really important, because reactivating and renting these spaces is not cheap.
K: I’ve been thinking a lot about something I remember you saying on the BVAA chat, that yes, we’re not reinventing the wheel, but where is the evidence of the wheel? And that’s what I’m hoping to capture in these conversations, because there has been so much that’s happened, but there’s so little documentation that’s publicly accessible.
You know, The Walls was open for nine years and by the time I was in the art world, it was really only for the last maybe two or three years of the space. But there’s years of writing, art, career development, of community coming together, of workshops; all sorts of different things. And fantastically, The Walls still has their website accessible for now.
But if you’ve come to the Gold Coast recently, you may have never heard about The Walls. And where’s your in to start learning more about what’s around and what’s been done here already.
P: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, and that’s basically the work I do as an artist. I call myself a facilitator, and in my current doctoral research I propose the term, ‘artist facilitator of memory work’.
I remember when we were talking about Love Letters To Miami, the final work you were involved in. That’s a great example of what I would call an archival art initiative, and a ‘creative archival assemblage’, where you piece together all these different fragments of evidence and memory and community, and you’ve made it – assemblage-like- into a wall based installation. That’s why I keep asking Kim, please write something for ARI Remix!
K: Ah yes! I will, I will!
P: It’s just a great example, and only one aspect of The Walls’ contribution to community, to knowledge and cultural knowledge production.
K: And I will say I felt quite privileged to hold those stories, you know, as someone that really only got involved in its last few years. To then be receiving people’s memories of the years before; it felt quite special to be a part of, that’s for sure…
P: Oh how important has that been for you as an artist?
K: It has been, totally. I do think that was a key point in my art practice, of noticing that there’s something I’m interested in here… about archiving, or about collecting, or about people and stories, that I want to pursue further. That’s probably the start of it, which really came from an invitation from Rebecca. When I had my artist in residence there, I had this printer, and I was playing around a lot with the ideas of the digital and the physical world. So, asking what’s happening when I’m making stuff on my computer and printing it out and then sort of playing with the cycle. So there was just paper being printed all day long and being stuck on walls. It was really an encouragement from Rebecca that kind of pushed me in this new direction, which I’m enjoying.
P: The way I see your practice, or certainly the beginnings of your practice, the foundations, you know… the internet is an archive. I think, what’s his name, Hal Foster described it as a mega archive, which it is. And there you are; you just really quickly found Santaland between Tugun and Currumbin, like in a moment. That’s just one example. But, of course, one reason why I started ARI Remix was that the reality is- and this is still the same 14 years later- is that a lot of the information, evidence, memory and community about artists and cultural heritage is not accessible on the internet. That's changing, but it's still got a long way to go. There is more collaborative memory work to be done.
And then there are these two sides of, you know, either self determination; so it’s community driven and there’s that point of agency over our story. Or, there’s the opportunity for people who are wanting that institutional recognition, so you know, it is important for our story to be recognised in the institutional space.
P: Yes…
K: And for me, I’m looking at this thinking oh wow, I don’t really know where my archive is going to sit. I’m just starting; you’re the first person I’m speaking to. But it seems like when creating an archive, there’s a responsibility that you have to ask why am I the one telling the story, or who is telling these stories? And why are these ones important versus others?
I guess all those things get ironed out along the process. But I’m also interested in what happens when we’re doing that digitally? That’s the other thing I’m interested in from you for ARI Remix. You’ve developed this site, where there’s so much on their Paul! There’s so much to look at and read and watch and access. But maybe what are the challenges of the digital, as opposed to a zine or a book, or something physical that sort of has an end date?
I realise I’ve just thrown a million thoughts at once but…
P: Oh no, it’s really good. Let’s go back to you for a moment, as a response, like look at the approach you’ve got right now with Sea-Craft. You’re interviewing eight people. A great starting point. You have a very focused project; it’s community based, lot’s of recuperation; in terms of you accessing, retrieving and recovering stories and examples of artists, ephemera and photographs, and documentation, and interviews like the one we’re doing now. Then you pull it all together in the digital space and you’ve got an online archive.
The way I understand that you’re working, it’s very community based. It’s locality driven, it’s both arts-based and heritage driven, and it’s about people’s storytelling, about people having agency with their memories and their involvements, and their interests and their explanatory frameworks and their conceptual motivations; all of those things, and more. And of course, their creativity; what their creative practice is, how it’s evolved, and how it changes, what themes they’re addressing, what sort of political and philosophical, artful, and technical considerations are coming into play. And so that’s sort of what you’re doing.
That was my approach with documentary filmmaking; always having multiple perspectives presented around a theme or subject. The idea was again like what you’re doing; of polyvocality, of multiple perspectives. I’m not the narrator of all these different histories and stories. I’m a facilitator that brings these divergent, diverse stories together. That’s really important to me.
And it’s really, really important to me that people like you are doing what I call archival art initiatives, because the energy and the synergy that you create through the work is probably very different to what I do. And the thing Lisa Darms’ touches on, is that the people who started community archiving were people who understood that they wanted to facilitate other people’s evidence, other people’s memories, other people’s ephemera and political banners and posters, you know- whatever the ephemera is- into collections. To actively mitigate again erasure. And they were very much connected to queer culture, feminist culture, protest movements, and anarchic principles which emerged in the 1960s, 1970’s and in the 1980s in Queensland, with ferment of oppositional culture, thanks to Premier Jog Bjelke-Petersen and co.
Keep in mind, these larger institutions like Hauser and Wirth, where Lisa Darms is a professional archivist, they have a fabulous spot; high velocity air conditioning, bug and insect free storage repositories, and thermostatically controlled temperature environments. My stuff sits in folders and boxes in my spare room, as well as your stuff from past and recent artist-run activity. And probably the same for the people you’re interviewing. I mean, I don’t know what Rebecca’s collection is, but it’s probably in a bunch of folders and boxes as well.
But to finish on, when I started ARI Remix I wanted to indicate to people that there are lots of examples throughout Australia and overseas, but particularly with an emphasis on Queensland, where collaboration does make the impossible possible. I felt it was vitally important that young people know they are not reinventing the wheel, and that a collectivising mindset is a transformative one, especially for artist-run activity. This is a foundation logic to ARIs which in the current Web 2.0 digital environment encompasses all types of artist collectives, cooperatives, groupings, and arts-informed assemblage-like spaces.
K: I can so see that during my time working in ARI’s; the things you could get done when there were a few excited people together, was really quite amazing. We used to say that if we had just one new person come along then it was a successful night. If there was one person we got to know, we’ve got to learn about their art and what they’re doing, then that’s a success. Because that is the truth of it. In this community building, it’s really not about the numbers.
You meet people, and you never know where it’s going to lead. I wonder actually where I first met you? It was maybe at Wreckers, I would say…
P: Yeah I think we met at Wreckers, and I interviewed Landen and Abby. You guys had that space in West End…
K: Boxcopy? Yeah, we were borrowing Boxcopy’s space.
P: That was maybe end of 2019 and early 2020 when we completed the interview, and of course, only a month later there’s the Global COVID-19 phenomenon unfolding, you know, global pandemic. But look at what you’ve done. You persisted, you prevailed. You’ve been enthusiastic. Self-determination is always crucial. That sense of transformation afforded through a shared goal, where you can transform and develop and grow your practice. You can do that along with others, and find like minded people, y working together, and creating a conducive setting in which to do that.
K: Yeah… and it really has, in the emerging art scene. But then also, that was a space where through the curation, they were able to bring some amazing artists here. Because on the Gold Coast we don’t have an arts school or anywhere to study art. If you want to learn more about art after high-school, you have to got to Brisbane, or to a bigger state. So to have access to these national artists and connect at The Walls was amazing. Like, I got to meet Jay and that was a big deal, to chat with an artist whose work I’m also researching at uni. And she’s just here, down at the beach. And then positioning our emerging artists amongst those established artists… like I’m so privileged to know that I exhibited there.
That’s what I think we’re lacking, that sort of in-between space…
P: Well, I remember talking to Landen and Abby and maybe you too, and certainly Amelia, who at that stage had stepped back from Nextdoor ARI, but when you had this new space and reactivation opportunity at 4217, there was a sense of, but will anyone come along? We won’t know anyone. And look what happened.
K: Yeah, I guess that’s it. It’s the confidence or the risk, of doing and hoping people come.
P: And they did, and they do. You know the old expression, ‘build and they will come’. But what I often say is, ‘build and they will come, but will they hang around?’ And this is my sentiment; I don’t work in the arts for notoriety and status and prestige. I do it because I really believe in, what I call ‘fabulous nobodies’. And the art scene is full up of fabulous nobodies, and they’re the people I consider my tribe. Which is not to say I don’t have artist friends who are very well known, that have that traditional arts reputation or achievement… but, what’s more interesting for me?
Community, and community-based arts-based endeavor is what matters to me and to many. And in the institutional remit, that agency- the voices, the experience, the testimonials, the lived experience of artists- sort of doesn’t get recognized, acknowledged, or embraced. Again, that’s what I want to do with ARI Remix, is make it feel like it’s owned by community and they’re growing it. So the relationship between institutions and community based collections and archival initiatives like yours, it’s really important… that people that do end up in a collection, say in the City of Gold Coast Council or HOTA (Ho-ta) or something like that… HOTA (Hotter). Sorry I still say HOTA (Ho-ta).
K: You and half of that Gold Coast still say HOTA (Ho-ta), so it’s fine!
P: Yes, they’re always saying HOTA (Ho-ta).
K: I think it's HOTA (Hotter) because it’s ‘hot’. I don’t know if everyone’s quite getting that point.
P: Yeah I don’t know! I remember being surprised, like what is this thing that’s evolving on the Gold Coast? I don’t know whether it was Facebook or Instagram, but what happened was the guy who used to work with Sebastian Goldspink at Alaska Art Projects, which was a really fabulous Sydney based artist run initiative for many years…
K: That would have been Bradley Vincent…
P: …he worked with Bradley Vincent, and Bradley got the job at HOTA. I remember being in Sydney as Alaska Art Projects was folding, and Sebastian was saying, ‘oh you need to connect with Bradley. He’s just got this job on the Gold Coast’, and that’s how I found out about what HOTA is, and what it was evolving as at the outset. So whatever year that was, maybe 2018, 19, 20.
K: The gallery’s only been open for I think two or three years now, but I do know Bradley was working there before the new gallery opened. But yes, he’s since moved on from that position, off to do some solo curating, which I think is amazing, and I’m glad that he’s stayed on the Gold Coast. Once you’re embedded in a place… it’s so nice to see someone who’s come from a major city choosing to stay.
P: You just reminded me of the other person working at HOTA; Tracey, whose last name I’ve forgotten. I managed to get in touch with Tracey just before she was leaving…
K: Tracey Cooper-Lavery is her name…
P: Tracey is a really important person for you to look into. We talked about her writing a story about the Hibiscus Room, which is always fascinating potential story for me. I didn’t get to experience it… and she worked on the artist-run venture with about six other artists. Tracey would be someone to talk to because she’s an example of someone who crossed a bridge between independent, grassroots, community-based, and experimental conceptual activity; to the institutional GLAMR sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Record Keeping environments). A simple way of putting it; Tracey understands, and empathises with just how foundational, and formative those types of experiences are. Someone working within, for one of a better term, the hierarchy of more traditional arts institutions in Australia.
And another person, who I think still lives in Southport; George Petelin, who had an important commercial gallery in Southport around 2008, 2009. And if you spell that it’s P, E, T, E ,L, I ,N. George is important for a whole bunch of reasons. He was an arts journalist for many, many years, for mainstream media and publications like Eyeline, and he taught at the Queensland College of Art. But George was/is a really big supporter of independent artist-run activity in the 1980s, and since. In fact, he wrote a lot of articles for the Australian national media about how important artist run culture was. Jump to late 2007, 2008, he opened a commercial gallery on the Gold Coast, which was an absolute haven for artists. So he’s someone worth contacting.
K: Yeah great! I love hearing all these different names, because I like the idea that the website acts like a mind map because that’s how my brain works. My notes are just one big squiggle! But all these different names are just offshoots, to another story and another history.
P: Yeah thank you Kim for this invaluable chat opportunity and an ongoing dialogue. I’m really excited about what you’re doing. I’ll just finish on where I’m at…
Right now, I’m finishing a Doctorate of Creative Industries at QUT in the School of Creative Arts, and I’ll just mention it because what my research is about- is simply put - to introduce the concept of, and potential for, community archives and community-based archiving to artist-run communities of practice. There is all this incredible literature and knowledge that’s out there about how to manage these precarious collections, ephemeral affects, cultural stories, and how to safeguard and transmit them.
You’re providing a great example through the web based activity that you’re working on now, and that’s just one way of doing it. Of course, DIY zines are another way, and that’s been a more recent emphasis in my research. But also wall-based installations, like Love Letters to Miami, are a great example you could adapt and iterate. And mind-mapping, which is a big part of what installation practice is about, because they’re bringing together disparate and similar elements into one physical space and through creative archival assemblage techniques they’re interconnected. There’s a connective logic between those things.
What I wanted to finish on is that what always amazes and inspires me is when artists get together; particularly to sit down and tell stories and ask questions and create dialogue. Artists talk about things - which many people might think are strange - like how to get space, how to organise artist fees, how to leverage institutions, how to strengthen collaboration within a group, how to transmit your narratives; whether through a blog or social media or a website. Often talking about the nitty gritty stuff, of what makes up the machinations of running a space. So I always advocate for increased coordination, collaboration, collectivizing, and interconnectedness between artist-run activities and ARI sites. Rather than seeing it as an isolated, singular and unique and discrete entity, I see it as a much more networked community phenomenon, which I think, I know from past experience with your creative practice will come through in what you’re doing Kim.
K: Yeah I hope it does! The other day you also spoke about exit strategies, and I think this project… it’s a great starting point. It’s very easy to get excited about all of this, but like you said on the phone; just take it slow and approach each person with care, and once it’s all finished; sit and reflect.
P: You reminded me of another thing, which is just to say, from my queer perspective, I hear you talk about care. It’s really important to understand that this sort of activity we’re talking about is deeply embodied and embedded within community, and community care. So, those embodied stories playing a catalyzing, and iterative role, they play out over time, over diverse temporalities including ARI temporalities. ARIs like many community phenomena are not ‘fixed’ in time, or a cultural moment, they evolve as community needs, values, agency shift, and evolve. What you’re generating and what I’m generating, will never be-what is often discussed in traditional archives literature as a ‘comprehensive archive’, because there is no such thing. Archival theorist Jamie A Lee puts it elegantly regarding these types of creative archival assemblages we are working on. Initiatives that are community based, community led, explicitly archival in tenor, and temporally generated. Sites and spaces that grow and become enriched and transformed through more participation, narrativity, memory and nuance, these spaces function more affectively, as: “stories so far”.
When you commit to an online project, there’s always the idea that you can disconnect from it, that is, to stop or pause it. But digital culture is so demanding, and for many people it can feel all consuming, and at times, vexing. That’s part of the challenge I have living on Canaipa, is I have very poor phone and internet connection. These sorts of logistical access issues are really problematic and costly for me; I don’t have this fabulous, robust fast internet and digital infrastructure. Things like access, connectivity, fast speed, cost and labour, play a part. I’m in the process right now of shifting my domain and hosting service, which is a major task that will go on for the next twelve months or so, to fix any content disrupted by a major migration process, and to streamline ARI Remix, for a faster and more accessible online experience. Moving from remix.org.au to remix.com.au, is happening because I simply can’t afford, and maintain the hosting fees in a fast accelerating cost of living crisis, and a competitive and ever depleting arts funding climate where creative, and iterative archival work, is less valued, and less of a priority. Sadly, this is a commonplace fact in many archival settings which rely on funding around the globe, and this is why memory work which resists erasure and symbolic annihilation of independent community mindsets and cultural forms depends on community participation and support.
K: Yes, just paying for the domain name each year… and then it gets exponentially more expensive.
P: Yes, depending on where you're hosting. In fact, where are you hosting yours? Would you describe yours as a blog, as a website, as a digital artwork? How are you describing Sea-Craft at the moment?
K: In my head, I’m seeing this as a digital artwork. But I don’t know if I’ve landed exactly on how I’ll talk about it. Funnily enough Paul… yesterday my laptop crashed and died. It overheated, and then nothing.
P: Oh! I have such empathy because that’s happened to me too, twice in fact! But this is really important stuff to talk about because there’s this broad assumption that people are connected, that they’re networked online, and that the tech is reliable. And also, that people use the internet to find the information we’re talking about. And yes, those things do happen. But there are also people of all different age groups and inclinations, who are increasingly not connecting, or what’s often called critical refusal in the literature. These are mega monolithic corporations with billionaires at the helm and colonizing the universe in their sights, and so there’s more critical refusal around participation within these monoliths, and denying their products and services, because our agency as contributors and participants, is, in a sense, gone at a whim.
So this is another thing; once you’ve made your digital artwork or whatever you describe it as down the track, how do you keep it living? 'Do I keep it online? How do I do that? How am I going to pay for that? Do I earn enough money to pay for the hosting of the infrastructure that’s required?’ These are ongoing challenges that I faced, and I’m very fortunate and blessed to have been able to attract some funding along the way. But in moments like now, when I don’t have funding and my income is very low, it becomes a case of financial hardship.
K: And even memory; I feel like memory is the skill you’ve got to have in this archiving world.
P: Well yes, and no. I think memory is really interesting… that’s why I say I’m a ‘facilitator of memory work’. Like there was someone I was trying to remember the name of the other day, and Facebook and Instagram can be a really good way of nuancing, clarifying or remembering together.
I often use the term remembering together because, you know… Jay Younger and I, we did a fabulous project with Lehan Ramsay called _____AXIS Art Projects. It was a big longitudinal project that we did in Brisbane, New York and Los Angeles, London and Tokyo… and I’ll remember things that Jay’s forgotten and she’ll remember things that I’ve forgotten. But that’s why I’m really trying to advocate for community-based archiving in the present, because you’ve got all these digital affordances now, and if you can just do something small, simple, and affective it’s a good way to create an evidence based approach to your archival sensibilities or mindset.
And some people might say to me, ‘Why would you bother archiving? That’s something institutions, and other people do.’ And I said, ‘Well that’s not actually the case’. That’s my reason for why I do what I do. Because institutions, in fact, institutions are interested, but they don’t have the collections, because artists are not donating their primary resources materials, or stories, or oral histories, to collections, because they don’t think that they’ll do it justice. So these are things that you’ll discover I’m sure, along the ‘remembering together’ path. So, good luck! The only expertise needed, is an opportunity to show and tell a little story with other like-minded people.
K: Thank-you! I love that - remembering together. That concept is like the perfect way to end. That’s so great.
P: Thanks Kim.
K: Thanks Paul.
It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.