CONNIE ANTHES, a Sydney based artist, will be installing an INSTALLATIONwork in the SAWTOOTH GALLERY in Launceston in a few weeks ... She needs "Non-rotten timber lengths of any colour shape and size as long as they are reasonably lightweight." ... she's sent a pic of early small prototype (SEE BELOW)... she's wondering if anyone in Lonny had any ideas of where she might be able to source such stuff in Lonny? ... if she has to ship from SYDNEY it will cost her a fortune she doesn't have ...... she has been scrounging renovators skip bins and council clean-ups in SYDNEY which seems to be a decent way to collect the stuff ...... Then she has been taking it back to my studio, drop sawing the ends and cutting out any rotten sections and then pre-drilling them for assembly and she has collected about a quarter of the timber she'll need thus far, in order to make a small prototype (pictured below). As anyone can see, she's using old fence posts, skirting, and leftovers of studio timber - any colour or length as long as it's reasonably lightweight (she dosen't really want to use 2x4 if she can avoid it) ...... they are being assembled in a "cobbled together" fashion, allowing her to build onsite in relation to the space she's workin in ...... The structure will then be wrapped in cling film, sprayed and transformed into a geometric projection surface. The space will be dark, so no one will see the wood itself in daylight, only the shadow cast by the skeleton ...... its correct - she's not interested in the aesthetic appearance of the wood, only its functional use and its safety for people encountering it in the dark (ie, removing rusty nails and nothing too splintered). And she won't take back the wood to Sydney, though I doubt much of it should be used as firewood (a good deal of mine comes from old houses which used lead-based paints, which I don't think you'll want to burn) ...... the concern about not being able to glean much wood in Lonnie is the reason she's been collecting in Sydney ...... she says "at least I can trawl the Council cleanups. ......
In response to the ideas you sent through ......The first 2 options mentioned may not be all that she needs ...... "Scantling waste and pallets probably won't provide the lengths I need to build the armature upwards in a short period of time" ...... Though she'll certainly will need shorter lengths to reinforce and change direction in the build ......she'll probably be looking at needing 25 x 2+metre lengths and then mixed short lengths of about 100m worth, at a rough estimate ......The remaining options sound great but ideally require time to lobby contacts in lonnie, and though we're sure we might be persuasive, the material may just not exist on such short notice (especially in the winter months!). As there is only a few weeks before she comes down, it seems like the smart money would be on her continuing to forage up here .... NOT REALLY DO YOU THINK? .... with a view to flat packing and freighting a load down in a couple of weeks ... NOT REALLY... and if you down there come across a miracle haul down in Lonnie we can change strategy then ... the word is that we have our fingers on the pulse of what happens in town, so putting the word out could be enough. Then at the end of the process, it'd be good to donate the timber to someones burn heap or anyone we think of might get some other use out of it??? COME ON LONNIE LET'S SHOW'EM
