Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro

This work is inspired by a vision that can sometimes be seen, driving along a lonely highway. A stranded car, a missing wheel and a large rock used as a jack to prop up the car while the wheel is being removed. A strange vision, seemingly linking the stone age to the industrial age. Instead of a rock, we will use a concrete sculpture, nothing fancy, something that can be purchased at ALDI or a garage sale. The sculpture will be more along the lines of something found in a garden rather than a under a pyramid. The car will have the appearance of having been hastily abandoned, like something from The Cars that Ate Paris or the original Mad Max: a sign of the end of times. From the car emanates the sounds of a century ago: Dame Nellie Melba, an International opera singer that took Melbourne as her stage name. The work will bring into focus the difficulty Australia has with the idea of ‘Culture’. High culture is hard work, it is practicing your scales on the piano, it’s reading books, it’s memorising dance moves. It is the kind of solitary work that Australia does not celebrate. How do we produce culture that is authentic to the Australian experience? We believe these tensions are especially obvious when talking about culture in Regional Australia. How do we create work that is not the emulation of another culture nor is it ‘The Loaded Dog’. Australia is dry. It’s wit is dry. The culture is even dryer.