As the Next Wave Festival spread its long reaching tentacles over Melbourne’s diverse artist run initiatives, urban open air spaces, people’s lounge rooms and, peculiarly, its strip clubs, we were invited to embrace its overarching theme ‘Closer Together’. As the thematic string that links the projects and performances of the festival, the notion of being closer together sought to solicit from the viewer an emotional and critical response—an intense physical shudder, a yearning for something better or possibly a reflective exploration of one’s sense of self in an increasingly hyperreal world. Next Wave 2008 successfully shed light on Melbourne’s emerging artists, curators and writer’s practices whilst also engaging with extremely relevant cultural discourses surrounding globalisation, environmental sustainability and our continued dislocation from the world around us.
One project which reflected the breadth and diversity of Next Wave’s programming was Ash Keating’s ambitious 2020?. This project made an underlying statement on society’s never ending and ever increasing production of material waste, whilst also exploring collaborative practice in art. Raiding his local tip yard, Keating appropriated an overwhelming amount of detritus and hard rubbish, re-assembling it into an uncanny and pliable sculptural pile of trash within the bowels of the Meat Market in North Melbourne. Acting as both artist and curator, Keating invited artists, including Susan Jacobs, the collective Inverted Topology, Bianca Hester and Ardi Gunawan amongst others, to intervene in, re-use and re-assemble the trash into fluid, protean and ever-changing works.
When I viewed the project during its first few days, there was considerable activity within the cavernous space of the Meat Market. The main space was framed with large billboard sized advertising posters subverted through a canny play