Ladies and gentlemen, we are gearing up to host our next Famous Sundowner tomorrow evening. As per usual, the day will start with coffee and cake available all day. Our sausage sizzle will kick off around 5.30 followed by LIVE music commencing from around 6.30. The East End Gallery is bulging at the seams with gifts for all occasions and budgets. We have also had further artists as guests in the Gallery during the week, so we hope to welcome a new woodturner in the near future.
Stay tuned for more exciting news...
In the meantime, we have rejigged the art installation we have created from the items we collected during our latest Northern Jaunt. Primarily, the objects are from three tips - Marble Bar in the Pilbara, Yalgoo in the Murchison and Lawlers in the Northern Goldfields. We had spent several hours at each site. Marble Bar was a triumph, Yalgoo unexpected and Lawlers...we had to sift through a lot of actual junk to find the real treasure. The final piece of the second arrangement was a curved nail I found on the edge of the new Beverley Playspace, which is due to open very shortly.
We created the art installation in order to showcase the artifacts available to history hunters and fossicking folk with very little effort in places that are eminently accessible. However, the installation also began to play with my understanding of so much more than the pieces themselves. Their stories started to reveal themselves. Who were they? How did they live? What was important to them?
The cut-throat razor. The comb. The kitchen grater. The miners' boot heels. The horseshoes. The trike handle. The bicycle wheel. The remains of a blacksmith's tool. The tobacco tins. The matchboxes. The corned beef. The sardines from Norway. The clothes washing detergent.The kitchen spoon and knife. The misshapen wagon wheel. The tractor grill. The bottles. The handmade nails. The bottle top. The various springs. The soft drink gas canisters.
All of these gave us clues by what was left behind. They practised personal hygiene. They coped with canned foods. They were smokers. They washed their clothes. The children had toys. There were horse-drawn buggies and bicycles as travel options. The blacksmith shops were vital services to the settlements. They drank carbonated water, along with beer, wine and spirits. They had decorative adornments on their bed frames. They added horseshoe-shaped heels to their leather boots. Bottle tops were glass.
There was no garbage collection. Rubbish was either jettisoned outside the tent/humpy/house or buried or burnt. In and around abandoned settlements, bottles and metal are everywhere. A metal detector is utterly unnecessary. The remnants are plain to see. And original tips are a goldmine waiting for fossicking enthusiasts to discover.
So, if you happen to be in Heavenly Beverley either this weekend or in the near future, drop into the East End Gallery to peruse our installation and also enjoy the work of over ninety artists.
We look forward to seeing you!
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