Berlin Fishing with Jan M. Petersen
2003 and 2023
470 x 360 x 110 mm
Internal guitar back with painted elements by Jan M. Petersen in 2003; fragment of a
wall poster; cigarette lighter from a visit in the 1980s with ‘Berlin’ logo including bear;
handset of an Australian telephone from the 1960s/1970s.

Spe/cial
2023
790 x 320 x 70 mm
Reflective tape on plywood, juxtaposed pieces; on backing board including sandpaper
sheets; with chrome steel lettering ‘Spe’ from a ‘Special’ insignia on a Holden car.

Cartoon Afterlife of the American Dream
2023
1340 x 960 x 150 mm
Warner Brothers and Disney toy characters, bought for my two youngest children in the
mid 1990s when they already felt ‘vintage’ so maybe 1970s?; brass letters; Laminex
sheet background; in a fine wood frame by Dino Consalvo. Made at Steel River Studio,
Newcastle, with Stephen Hobbs as studio assistant.

Sly Owl
1998 and 2023
1050 x 1050 x 55 mm
Reflective tape on plywood; pieces of rusted steel wire from excursions in the
countryside across decades; all attached to canvas on a stretcher in a wooden frame
with painted edge.
Four constructions made of small reflective scraps were made in 1998 in a homage to
Rosalie Gascoigne (whom I’d met at her house in Canberra, introduced by Peter
Townsend the editor of Art Monthly in London whom I’d spent time with while living
there in 1985-86). Note that Rosalie never used cut circles, nor did she turn ‘slowly’ into
‘sly owl’ though she could be affectionately named as just that.

Music of the Spheres
1983 and 2021
355 x 455 x 20 mm
Reflective tape on plywood, varnished old wooden frame, wood foldable ruler, old
flattened tin lid. Written on reverse: Music of the Spheres, July 1983, Bowerbird,
Arnhemland.

Emergency Call
2023
980 x 670 x 140mm
Carved coconuts, origin unknown, from the South Pacific presumably; antique handset
from an American telephone (the phone body was used for a Drillaphone sold at Ubu
Gallery, NYC, in 1998-99); with figure shapes made for pressing into biscuit dough; all
mounted on a reflective sign on plywood; with a deep wood frame.

Electric Moon, Radio Arnhemland
1983 and 1994 and 2023
1390 x 650 x 65 mm
Mounted on Laminex sheet, in wood frame by Dino Consalvo.
‘Electric’ cast in lead using an old brick marked ‘electric’, a Wangi Wangi circa 1994.
Transistor radio found at the camp of Artists in the Field with Frank Hodginson and Tim
Storrier in Arnhemland in 1983, with wooden ‘batteries’. ‘Moon’ from the same circle
series of cut reflective board, covered with pure gold leaf.

East Berlin, 1984
1984 and 2023
460 x 410 x 50 mm
Vintage wood frame; burnt list of hymns from a church; wooden Pinocchio figure with
lifting leg and arm (one each, no foot); the latter two objects found among casual street
ruins in East Berlin in 1984.