The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
Do the Aborigines wear clothes?
This question forms one of a series of about three hundred questions printed out on four clear perspex panels, that hang across a constructed opening in Watch This Space, an artist-run space in Alice Springs. The work was previously shown at Performance Space, Sydney. Pamela Lofts has collected a tantalising and infuriating set of arbitrary questions, all of which have been asked of her and other residents, while living and working in AI ice for over ten years. There is an annual influx of interstate and international visitors, artists, friends, rellies , around the time when the leaves begin to fall in Melbourne's streets, and there is a sharp nip in the air even in Sydney.
Winter seems a long dreary haul, and what better way to alleviate it than a quick whip up to visit Alice. A few nights camping out under the stars, maybe an Aboriginal experience .. .
Why do you live in Alice Springs?
Do the Aborigines still throw boomerangs?
What do they need money for?
The answers to these questions, if they have answers at all, exist in an inaccessible space. This physical and theoretical space lies beyond that area occupied by the viewer, past the closure formed by four high transparent perspex panels. The remainder of the gallery space contains four painted wooden house doors set in a line, at a tangent to the perspex. The viewer is confronted with the maddening frustration of a series of unanswerable questions, to which the answers lie apparently within sight but just out of reach. What is mandatory sentencing? Why are there people camped in the river bed? Why doesn't Howard say