Fancy Work Indeed

Published by Lizzil Gay on March 21, 2011March 21, 2011

This weekend I had the absolute pleasure of participating in “Fancy Work” at Pipemakers park in Melbourne. Pippa Willson  of Future Art Research had constructed a stunning house out of domestic waste plastic and installed it in the park amongst the trees and near the river for 5 days. I attended for the afternoon dressed as a fifties house wife and served cup cakes and tea (I also did a little bit of tidying). There were weaving lessons with NT fibre artist Adrienne Kneebone, kids were playing wildly in the park, Izzy Brown showcased her political hip hop videos and there was one helluva cowgirl Diva Dingo cracking her whips. In a world where most of our entertainment is paid for and highly controlled Pippa created a space where we traded art, ideas, films, performance, energy, stories, food and fun – no cash required, no specialist knowledge required, no security guards, no pressure, just space, time and colour.
I left each day reflecting on the fact that art, when it distances itself from the art market, can be non-capitalistic it can be a place/time where we go for recreation that isn’t a pub, a shopping centre or a TV screen bombarded with adverts.  ‘Fancy Work’ was fancy because we fancied creating some work together, we fancied sharing stuff, we fancied to do something which didn’t focus around the grind of buying and selling.

Thanks Pippa, thanks FAR and thanks to all the fabulous people who made ‘Fancy Work’ fancy in all the right ways.