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LINDEN POSTCARD SHOW
December 7, 2024 – February 2, 2025

LINDEN NEW ART
26 Acland Street, St Kilda, 3182

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LETTING GO OF MY THINGS is a new series of works that couples my clothes from the 80s through the 2000s with intimate stories (written on paper from the 80s). The works are “portraits” and capture aspects of my Berlin/Melbourne artist life, illustrating how memory and clothing intertwine. Three works from the series are launching at this iconic Melbourne show. Read all the stories in one hit below.

LETTING GO OF MY THINGS: THE STORIES

LETTING GO OF EMILY #1
 
A German writer once described my work as “Unheimlich”, informed by Black Romanticism and the dark fairytale. I interpreted that as German, and yet also very Melbourne. At the time, I wore a lot of Emily, which I scored in a shop just south of the Sunshine Coast: a bunch of pop-goth Ts on special during the summer heat. It was also around the time that I met an Aussie curator who said my work was pretty dark and did I, perhaps, have any “happy work”? 

LETTING GO OF MIKE'S JUMPER #2

Mike designed this Merino men's jumper for a company in Collingwood. If you’re a Collingwood footy fan, the similarity has little to do with footy, but then, you’d know because this is cream and the footy jersey is white. Still, it's good to clarify it for footy philistines like me. Anyhow, I scored one 'cos I thought my boyfriend at the time would love it. How off the mark was I! It may have even escalated our break-up? Still, anyone who hates Mike’s jumper sucks. So I wore it around the house, a jumper dress that I sometimes wore just with knickers and other times …

LETTING GO OF MIKE'S JUMPER #3

… So I wore it around the house, a jumper dress that I sometimes wore just with knickers and other times with leggings and usually when I schlepped coal from the cellar to my Berlin apartment. And over the years, Mike's jumper has become my winter garb, my around-the-house gear that I can stain with Kohle or Rote Bete, and it still comes clean. It’s been at least 10 years, and even though it still has oodles of life left in it as a kitchen schlumpy and coal schlepper, it’s time to move on.

LETTING GO OF FLUG #4

I bought this in a shop on Brunnen Straße. I loved both the logo and the connection to the former East Berlin airline. I imagined my relo’s flying across the Eastern Bloc on it, to Mongolia or North Vietnam. My wishful thinking: they were too broken by war and East-West separation to entertain flying. I got the top 13 years after the airline was liquidated. Back in 2004, I had no idea I’d be flying between Melbourne and Berlin for over 20 years and then out of the revamped Schönefeld airport, where Interflug began. For me, this is Unheimlich.

LETTING GO OF LYCRA #5
 
I danced in this in the 80s at the Shirley Glatzer Dance Academy. I also wore it to choreograph rollerskating duets under the carport, blaring Madonna or Duran Duran on my ghettoblaster. I sewed the leotard because I was really into sewing and made all my costumes. I tried to fit into it the other day, and it still fits, but I look like a pink Oompa Loompa. We used to sing a bit at the academy (but never the Oompa songs) because you needed to be versatile, and dancers who could sing had a better chance at landing an Actors Equity Card––and then an agent. If you had no Equity Card, you had no work, and you had no work if you had no Equity Card. Despite that koan, I would not be beaten.

LETTING GO OF THE GUN #6

I’ve just smashed a big conservative white sedan car into some family man’s car. I leave the car and start running.

I drift by toilet blocks and groups of people. I end up in a grungy, cream-coloured upstairs room with a bath in the corner. There's tension in the air and two guys. The dark-haired one seems friendly. He’s also cute. The other is helpful but indifferent. 

Someone else is busting up the stairs. I run to lock the door and just get it locked. The cute guy fills the bath and encourages me to get in. By now, the someone at the door is loading a gun, and I’m mortified. I do as I’m told and lie in the water, clothed. The indifferent guy has left the dream. The two of us are resigned to the fact that the psycho at the door will get in and go crazy because they are so determined. The psycho doesn’t seem to be related to the guy whose car I smashed, but you never can tell. The cute guy says the water will stop the bullets. He lies on top of me and breathes in. I’m submerged underwater, and he breathes into my mouth. He is my breath. I am his. The feeling is warm, safe and beautiful. The sounds are amplified underwater. 

The bullets disappear. 

LETTING GO OF PAINTING #7
 
I scored this from Claudia when she had a stall at Mauer Park. I liked it because it reminded me of my installation, “Whatever Happened to Painting?”, where I filled gallery walls from floor to ceiling with statements in red, yellow and blue, the primary colours (according to Kindergarten teachers). The statements I maniacally painted in Perth, Bendigo, Miami and Berlin were written by art critics and laypeople from around the world, from Iceland to New Zealand. They were comments about me as an artist. I categorised them via the colours as anger/hatred, neutrality or praise. The comments responded to a suite of works I created in 2008 about Kurt Cobain, suicide and self-worth. The suite involved several objects, but the central piece that everyone focused on was a spliff of hash, dope and cremains––and what I would do with it––and this one ephemeral work created the mother of all shitstorms.

LETTING GO OF TV #8

I bought this from Polish designers on Rosenthaler Straße before it got all Schicki and Touri with hotels everywhere. In those days, I lived around the corner in Tor Straße, and there were still empty lots with caravan cafés or a Bude selling Turkish dips. Wim Wenders had just moved in down the street and, near the sky on the side of the building, had painted, "Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit". 

I mainly got this top because of the illustration and text. Two people look at a TV, and below them is a dialogue by an author in German and Russian. It talks of happiness, mass media and its power to seduce. I can't find the quote or author––the wonder of art.

LETTING GO OF UPSIDE-DOWN LOVE #9

Although it looks worn, I never wore it. Boris gave it to me. We were no longer a couple but still occasionally worked together. I get why he got it: I’m a foul-mouthed Aussie, and this T has “Fuck” as part of the slogan. Some Aussies want to make that word Cultural Heritage. Plus, I once made a “Fuck” work that I still really love. It includes a rant with a ton of Fucks and has a stupid title: “Did I flush the Toilet?” but the crux of that work is LOVE. Not an upside-down love, but a no-BS-I-trust-you-so-much-it-hurts, “Man kann nie genug lieben!” kind of LOVE. One of the editions sold to a collector in Bremen, and he loved all those Fucks hanging above their meals area – and especially loved that his kids would grow up with it.

MORE WORKS TO COME!