Brad (2010) provided an opportunity to reconsider processes, materials, and formal outcomes in my art practice. It opened the way for me to think about my art practice as a multimedia and multidisciplinary process. It also established my studio process as evolving rather than being predetermined, allowing a coalescing of life and art to operate serendipitously. I also allowed real life narratives to be used as content for the artwork in discursive ways

As the narrative of my artwork Brad (2010) unfolded, at times it seemed like art imitated life and at other times, as if life imitated art.

When commencing the PhD, I had a prior commitment to an exhibition titled, Secret Files from the Working Men’s
College, curated by the School of Art, Gallery Coordinator, RMIT University, as part of the Midsumma Celebrating Queer Culture Festival in Melbourne, 2010. I had an idea for the show, but was busy with other projects so just let the
idea sit. I had planned a trip to Seattle and to New York in November/December 2009. I stayed with a very good friend
and artist. She was married, with a child, and had lived in Seattle for a number of years. When I arrived in Seattle,
the first thing she mentioned was that my timing to visit could not have been better. Her husband had nearly died. He had been in hospital for weeks having been revived on three separate occasions. During this ordeal a range of secrets and truths, for years concealed, were now being revealed. When I met her husband at their home, he was so thin that it was hard to imagine he could support his own weight.

One day I noticed a photograph on their refrigerator, of a very handsome man with a young child. After a series of questions it turned out that the picture was of my friend’s husband and his son, from a previous marriage. I could not see any form of resemblance between the person in the photograph and the person standing in front of me that day. Before I could stop myself I said, ‘you were so handsome’. He laughed at both my immediate embarrassment, and I suspect his own selfconsciousness, considering what he looked like now. He acknowledged that he was handsome (as many people had told him this throughout his life) and then added that people often mistook him for being gay ... I laughed in a slightly uneasy way as I could not quite work out the context for the statement. He continued telling me that when he was young, his cousin, who was a few years older, would often dress him up as a girl and photograph him. I felt unsure what to make of this story. It felt as if it had double meanings and innuendos. I said that I would love to see the photograph. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to, but out of politeness, I felt I should be interested. It was clear he was a very interesting man with a colourful and fascinating past. He seemed to trust me almost immediately, probably because of my long friendship with his wife. It was a difficult time for them, as the revelations, which had come out with his hospitalisation, had reached a point where they agreed that they would separate. There were logistics they had to work through. In a strange way my presence seemed necessary as both support and relief for this family. It was strange being in such a personal and intimate situation, which was also charged with an undercurrent of impending upheaval.

Near the end of my visit we were invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at their friends. After two weeks I left my friend in Seattle. From there, I went to New York. I kept thinking about my friend and the complexity of her situation. While in New York, I received an email from my friend with an attachment. The attachment was an image of a young ‘girl’ with a fur hat, blue clip-on earrings and a blouse pulled down below her shoulders. She posed seductively on the edge of a cane chair, with a hand knitted shawl draped over her lap. I could not make out the age of the person in the photograph. However, she appeared too young to be photographed in this sexualised way. Yet, there was a relaxed, calm, self confidence evident in the posture of the girl. She seemed to be in control of the situation. In the background scene was a painting, which may have been a Renoir reproduction, with expressive brushstrokes. The painting seemed to be hanging on a faux wood panelled wall. To the right of the painting, was a crucifix. The photograph was clearly staged for the camera. Her gaze was slightly to the left of centre, where most likely the camera was set up. The photograph had a cream border around all four sides. I do not know how big the original print of the image was.

I realised I was looking at the image my friend’s husband described to me in Seattle. My friend had found the original photograph. The friends we had Thanksgiving with had scanned the original photograph, creating another border around the original border. It was a deeply compelling photograph. I felt intrigued and at the same time a little uncomfortable looking at it as I was not sure what to make of the whole situation. What had started as an aside conversation, had built momentum.

That night I kept going over the story in my head trying to recall the whole experience of the trip to Seattle; the multiple narratives that crossed paths over time, the context in which to read the narratives, facts, emotions, innuendo, suggestions, asides, the future, past, and the present. I tried to untangle facts, memories, ethics, life and art. I felt as if I was inside a film script that was playing out in life. There was so much grey space in the stories, which left me destabilised. My art practice and living in the world collided. I decided at that moment I would make an artwork about this experience for the Melbourne exhibition. I jotted down notes trying chronologically to remember the narrative as factually as I could. I immediately sent a text message to my friend and to her husband ... to share with them my idea, and to get their permission to use the photograph and to make an artwork about the experience. I shared with them the awkwardness I felt ethically. They said they explicitly trusted me and granted me permission. I sat up late into the night (early morning) writing a script as a way to begin the process of developing an artwork.

When printing the photograph back in Melbourne, I deliberately created another border around the photograph, as I wanted to show the border in the original photograph, the border when the photograph was scanned, and then my border when I reprinted the image from the scan. I knew the photograph was central to the final work, but I also wanted the story in the artwork.

Originally, I was going to print the text as a letter for the audience to read. However I decided the writing and the photograph needed to carry the same weight in the final presentation. It was the story itself that intrigued me the most. It was a personal story, said in passing, which seemed fractured. It was full of gaps and begged many questions, which I chose not to ask, as the answers did not seem important. No attempt was made to extract any further information from the story than what the narrator wanted to share. Conscious that the iteration of the story was an oratory experience, I was not sure how a printed text of the story would translate. When writing the story, I wanted the main body of the text to be brief. In the final version it is two paragraphs. It is the five footnotes—which read as asides—that provide background and context to the information in the body of the text. It seemed important to not give too much information away. I wanted the tone to feel conversational and discursive, as it was when it was told to me, except that now, I had become part of the story, and I wanted to ensure this was apparent in the text. I wove my parts into the writing, exposing the process of the narrative developing as a story in itself and as an artwork. At the same time I wanted the story to maintain a sense of the personal, as it entered the public domain.

To maintain this sense of the personal and the intimate, (for the artwork), I created a tableaux of a living room ... a chair, lamp, rug and side table. On the table was a photograph of my friend and her daughter. Included was a thermometer, harmonica and a small digital clock and compass to remind us of our present time and location in the world. A small ubiquitous ceramic figurine slowly rotated 360 degrees on a mechanised motor. This figure was supposed to be the objective arbitrator in real time, bearing witness to events past, present and future.

After exhibiting Brad (2010), I reflected on the methodology and structure I used to make the artwork and realised its importance as a way of thinking about structure, narrative and perhaps even exploring my own personal archive as a way of developing the research.

The work, Brad (2010), became crucial as a way to think about narrative, time and materiality. It somehow gave me permission to embrace personal stories as a way to consider memory and identity as a series of files waiting to be explored and examined. The story of Brad (2010) is personal. I wanted to ensure that everything I wrote was factual. Remembering stories can be fraught with anxiety and responsibility. Like many stories, the story of Brad (2010) unfolded across time and space as human emotional experience: causal, serendipitous and full of happenstance.

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1 Brad (2010), [inkjet photographic print, chair, table, printable adhesive text, woollen shawl, carpet, thermometer, harmonica, motor, ceramic figurine, framed photograph, lamp, digital clock; dimensions variable], for the exhibition Secret Files from the Working Men’s College, Project Space School of Art Galleries, RMIT University in conjunction with Midsumma Festival, Melbourne.

2 - 5 Details

6 Front window from Secret Files from the Working Men’s College, Project Space School of Art Galleries, RMIT University