Australia Day 2013 : We are there to video the Kandos Street Machine event. So much happening! Hotrod cars on steroids, flags, mullets, and aussie swazzi tatts. I’m outside my comfort zone and it’s hot! The event is a fabulous circus that saturates all the senses. The sound of roaring engines and exploding tyres, the shiny, coloured duco and chrome gleaming against the black burnout track constantly being overlayed with snaky, rubber tyre tracks. And then there’s the smell. I look through the viewfinder at a set of tyres being dissolved into smoke and the thick cloud is drifting toward me, it envelops me and the acrid smell penetrates my mucous membranes. There is no escape, I can taste nothing else.
The next weekend we return to Kandos to install our Chapel of Rubber installation in the empty miniature church inside the old Spanish-style nunnery. We know the town has mixed feelings about the Street Machine event that happens every year and brings thousands of people to Kandos. Our idea was to create a shrine to the event; and to **rubber, burnouts, metal, wheels, donuts, horsepower, petrol, fire and smoke. The best thing about exhibiting out of the gallery is that people tell you honestly what they think of the artwork. With the intimidating white walls eliminated viewers don’t hold back. I had so many excellent conversations about art, local history, religion, motor vehicles and more. It was a pleasure to speak with artists that I rarely run into in Sydney about their work. Turn around in the main street and there would be another performance artwork happening. And as I was staying at the Railway Hotel there was no escaping the creative pressure cooker even at night.
Thanks to Alex Wisser, Anne Finegan, and Georgina Pollard for the brilliant concept of Cementa.
Josephine Starrs 19/3/2013