Among the treasures of the Wollongong Art Gallery (WAG) is the Mann-Tatlow Collection of Asian Art.  Donated to the gallery by William Tatlow and Gora Singh-Mann it includes antique bronzes, ceramics, furniture and textiles.  Gift giving, bequests and other acts of generosity are important expressions of Civic commitment.  As a vessel for individual identity the Civic is malleable and can be shaped by idealism and volition, shared with others without contriving to reduce individual difference to the transparent. A Civic identity enables participation and confluence without producing an amalgam in which individuality is lost though dissolution. 

WAG provided a residential studio and supported our access to the Mann-Tatlow collection.  We were allowed to photograph the surfaces of rare pieces of furniture and a selection of their sumptuous, gilded 19th century frames.  From these high-resolution photographs, we were able to build pallets and to alter the scale, tonality and colour of the details of the furniture.  Mise en scènically (re)incorporating them into a feed-back loop of their own (altered) materiality.

Sampling and dubbing are important processes for us as they support our continuing exploration of Spolia, an ancient and widespread practice (spoliation) whereby stone and other materials used in a built structure are carried away to be used elsewhere.  Whilst it has obvious practical and ideological implications, we are more interested in its magical and spiritual potential.  We are inspired by how musicians use dubbing and remixing in a similar way, modelling our engagement with spolia on their work. Eminem’s sampling of Dido’s Thank You (1998) for Stan (2000) is a significant reference point for us.

We were able to commission Subject biographies for the items from the Mann-Tatlow Collection included In the Illawarra Pavilion from the South Coast’s Writers Collective. Embedding them in the illusionary architecture of the Illawarra Pavilion alongside the Object biographies compiled by WAG’s Collection Manager Louise Brand.  Both reflections of the artefact, that of it in the world of transactional records and of it in the imagination of creative writers living locally could be accessed through adjacent QR codes incorporated into various textures of the Pavilion’s interior.

The blending of inviolable museum objects and those brought in a store, therefore safe to handle or interact with, enabled the dancer and choreographer Ryuichi Fujimura to create a new dance work in which he could take and move with items from and within the Illawarra Pavilion.  The ambiguation of cultural and monetary value is a consequent concern in our practice, as is contesting the increasing primacy of the later over the former in art and life.

The Illawarra Pavilion’s installation was a milestone in our understanding the distinction between enactment and representation in demarking the political image from the politics of the image.  It was developed at the Clothing Store Artist’s Studios and with the financial assistance of a Project Grant from Create New South Wales.