FRANCESCA HEINZ, ELOISE KIRK, BEN TERAKES: MILKSOP

Installation detail (all images courtesy of the artists and SOFA Ilam Campus Gallery)

Lady Godiva, Peeping Tom and a Dusky-Hued Rent Boy: by Sach Catts

‘The Countess Godiva, who was a great lover of God's mother, longing to free the town of Coventry from the oppression of a heavy toll, often with urgent prayers besought her husband that, from regard to Jesus Christ and his mother, he would free the town from that service and from all other heavy burdens; and when the Earl sharply rebuked her for foolishly asking what was so much to his damage, and always forbade her evermore to speak to him on the subject; and while she, on the other hand, with a woman's pertinacity, never ceased to exasperate her husband on that matter, he at last made her this answer: "Mount your horse and ride naked, before all the people, through the market of this town from one end to the other, and on your return you shall have your request.”

‘On which Godiva replied, "But will you give me permission if I am willing to do it?"

‘"I will," said he.[i]’

CRITICAL THEORY

Critical Theory: Study #1, digital photograph (2013)

EXPERIMENTAL READING - PERFORMANCE MONTH 2012

Experimental Reading, performance details (images courtesy of Julia Rochford and Performance Month)

Performed at Peloton, Sydney, 11/10/2012 to open Performance Month 2012.
Destructive stress testing of printed edition of Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain.

ANDREW NEWMAN, COMINGS AND GOINGS

The accountant and the artist by Sach Catts

An old song by Randy Dougherty outlines the conditions for the good life; “Lucky, lucky, lucky me, I’m a lucky son of a gun/I work eight hours, sleep eight hours, that leaves eight hours of fun.” The simple division of one’s time into these segments provides the standard model for our existence. For most sons and daughters of guns these three states of action are easily distinguished. If one sleeps for eight hours there remains sixteen hours of potentially productive time in one’s day. Randy is lucky and therefore half of his productive time can be devoted to fun. For the less fortunate anything other than work is potentially fun. There is an important structural distinction that can be applied to demarcate our hours of work and fun however. Work can be defined as the time during which one’s productive output undergoes a ‘value adding’. For the majority, workers employed in a traditional workplace, from the time one arrives at work to the time they leave their productivity is financially remunerated at a market-determined rate. Thus, work = production + remuneration. In this sense, when the receptionist sits down at the counter their productivity undergoes a paradigm shift and enters the market.