Laneway Commissions 2008« back to Previous Laneway Commissions
 Laneway Commissions 2008 brochure (734kb) 
Location of the artworks:
 1. Organisation for Future Good Steps
Raafat Ishak
Where: Niagara Lane (between Lonsdale and Little Bourke streets, and Elizabeth and Queen streets)
When: 4 July 2008 – 15 March 2009
2. As It Appears…
Beth Arnold and Sary Zananiri
Where: A small alley north of 22 McKillop Street (between Bourke and Little Collins streets, and Elizabeth and Queen streets)
When: 18 July – 23 November 2008 (waking with the city and resting at night)
3. Agony/Ecstasy
Phebe Parisia, Eddy Carroll, John Howland
Where: Manton Lane (Enter from Little Lonsdale Street, between William and King streets)
When: 25 July 2008 – 22 February 2009
4. The Speed of Sound Nau Interactive Bells
Anton Hasell, Terence McDermott
Where: Union Lane (between Bourke and Little Collins streets, and Swanston and Elizabeth streets)
When: 8 August 2008 – 26 January 2009 (morning to sunset)
5. Welcome to Cocker Alley
Bianca Faye, Tim Spicer
Where: Cocker Alley (off Flinders Lane, between Swanston and Elizabeth streets)
When: The work can be viewed from 15 August 2008 until it dissolves completely over the following year
6. Time and Again
John Alexander Borley
Where: Various public spaces in the CBD
When: Repetitive walks to take place between early June and late July 2008
 1. Organisation for Future Good Steps
Organisation for Future Good Steps is a sculptural intervention, veiled as architecture. It is a non-functional staircase that attempts to amplify the aesthetics of proximity while expounding the rigours of anxiety, distance and delirium.
Organisation for Future Good Steps is a steel structure, connecting two buildings in narrow Niagara Lane. It is elevated from the ground and has no clear beginning or end. The staircase is missing several steps, railings and landings. Parts of the structure appear broken or disconnected from other absent structures. In stark, vivid white, the staircase does not lead to doorways or windows. Instead, it appears wedged, as though a consequence of some apparition, a site of drama.
Organisation for Future Good Steps aims to establish and occupy a physical space while propagating the continuum of ascent and descent as rigorous, aesthetic and intellectual experiences.
back to top ^
 2. As It Appears…
The city is a place that is alive and constantly changing. Each building has its own lifespan. As it grows it deteriorates, fades and warps.
In a small alley off McKillop Street you may notice that something isn’t quite right. There is a slow warping or anomaly that is not initially noticeable – the building appears to be breathing…
Is it that time has caught up with this old building that pants to keep pace with the city or perhaps that new possibilities have opened up to it, gestating, pregnant with possibility?
An ambiguous respiratory process is at play, pushing out from the surface of the wall while embedded into the social fabric of the city. The organic nature of the bulge reflects processes of building and change within the city while at the same time humanising our experience of that process.
back to top ^
 3. Agony/Ecstasy
Desire does not turn off. This work exists to annul itself as an advertising sign. It contains the mechanisms of a promotional sign yet it sells nothing except itself. It sits between a blank white space and a constant pulsing machine, with its lights pointing nowhere – a sign to nothing, containing no end point.
The portrait alludes to the image of a classical figure at the nexus of agony and ecstasy. The neon is a subversion of materials and processes inherent within the advertising industry – processes that incite desire and saturation.
back to top ^
 4. The Speed of Sound Nau Interactive Bells
A bell is a robust instrument – a certain purity articulates a single pitch at a single point in time. Surrounding this purity, it is otherwise entirely silent, heavy, immovable, at rest.
This installation draws from both an ancient Chinese bell design – Nau Bells – used in pre-Han dynasty court music, and bells that are set along a path to the Golden Mount Temple in Bangkok, which people ring as they encounter each bell.
In the spirit of this tranquil moment with its heightened awareness, the bells serve to alert people to the sonic qualities of the path along which they travel, and their own presence upon that path.
A laneway is a fissure within which the residue of city sounds fall and come to rest – layers of silence beneath the turbulence. As we walk, each bell marks our journey through an otherwise silent world. They punctuate that silence, but the city's sonic residue again recovers.
Do not listen to the bells: listen to the silence that envelops their decay.
back to top ^
 5. Welcome to Cocker Alley
Amid the rubbish bins and rats of Cocker Alley, a magical, golden pipe structure crawls over the back of the Nicholas Building like a vine growing towards light.
Welcome to Cocker Alley inhabits the grimy peripheral zone of the laneway. These man-made pipes reflect lines in nature and are part of a simple exploration of beauty. The network of pipes is invested with a sense of value through the embellishment of their surfaces with gold leaf.
The Nicholas Building was constructed with the influx of wealth brought by the Gold Rush. Gold was integrated into the building from its conception. The building’s internal workings are signified through the externalised network of pipes clinging to its surface.
As the city bustles below, the golden ladder leads upwards, encouraging a passing glance to evolve into a visual escape leading up to the sky.
back to top ^
 6. Time and Again
In May 2008 a notice was placed in the Melbourne mX newspaper seeking interest for participation in the project Time and Again. Eight residents were selected from the respondents to meet with someone they did not know. Meetings were scheduled in city laneways in early June, and for one hour pairs walked with no pre-determined course of direction through the lanes and streets of Melbourne's heart.
The following week, on the corresponding day and for the same hour, each pair met and attempted to repeat all aspects of that initial journey. This happened again the week after and was ongoing to late July, until every individual walk was repeated a total of eight times.
Throughout the eight weeks each participant discussed their experiences with one pre-selected writer. In September 2008, the responses made by these eight writers were published as a catalogue available at retail outlets in Melbourne and around Australia as well as free online at www.timeandagain.info  .
| 