Signs of Life
CF + Melinda Smith + Owen Bullock + Shane Strange
Site-specific installation work for the 2018 Contour 556 Sculpture Festival around Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, curated by Neil Hobbs. Variable Message Board generously sponsored by Allcott Hire.
C556 artist bio: Canberra based artist Caren Florance has a Doctorate in Poet Wrangling. Her posse for this event includes: ANU law graduate Melinda Smith, winner of the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award and author of 7 volumes of excellent poetry; Owen Bullock, Haiku master and lover of everything colourful; and Shane Strange, prose poet nonpareil and the proprietor of Australia’s hottest independent poetry press, Recent Work Press. Together, they are irrepressible.
Signs of Life used one artist, three award-winning poets and a Variable Message Board (VMB) to share responsive, bespoke poetry with a lakeside audience. You can’t get more site-specific than that. Each Saturday morning the VMB moved to a new festival destination and one of the poets gave a live poetry reading to launch their VMB performance. Each poet provided a response to the specific site of their VBM placement, involving the site itself, natural or architectural features that could be viewed from the site or the history of the site. On the last weekend the VMB was placed outside the Contour 556 gallery and played a ‘best of’ for the festival end. This engaging ephemeral work drew attention to the poetics of place and evoked an experience of immediacy via an object that is designed to draw attention to itself.
After a general run outside the festival launch, Shane Strange programmed the VMB at Bowen Place, behind the NGA, between the pedestrian underpass and the lake, from 6-12 October. Melinda Smith was sited at Henry Rolland Park on the northern side of the lake, from 13-19 October. Owen Bullock’s shift was back across the lake, in Bowen Park, en route to the Kingston Foreshore, from 20-26 October. He also conducted a Haiku Walk through the park on Sunday 21 October. Finally, the VMB finished at East Space, Commonwealth Place for the final weekend (and afterparty) on 27-28 October.
Audience numbers for the festival are estimated at 7-12,000 on weekends and 2-4,000 a day on weekdays. We would like to thank Neil Hobbs and Allcott Hire.
You can see more Signs of Life by searching the hashtags #c556signsoflife, #contour5562018, #contour556 on Instagram.
