22 – 24 July 2011

Society started with a bar. Or an idea for a bar. A friend knew a friend who wanted to open a second one over summer and was looking for a concept. They asked me. What came to mind was a simple set-up - a palm tree, a desert island, a framed picture of Tom Hanks in Castaway, a string of fairy lights, one beer, one wine, one specialty drink and a series of variety performances. It could be named Fridays, or Castaways, or Society. I imagined people coming to this island. It would be a set for interactions, unfolding stories, a constructed social space.

While the bar didn’t eventuate the idea further germinated in Melbourne where I was working as Associate Curator of Campbelltown Arts Centre’s Project Room at the Melbourne Art Fair. This project placed collaboration, performance and sustained artist-curator dialogue as a central premise. From this I started to think more about curating in a different framework, using this bar idea as the starting point. Our neighbouring booth was Hell Gallery. Over the Fair’s run and shared Digestives I developed a friendship with its Directors, Jess Johnson and Jordan Marani. When I told Jess of my idea she both encouraged it from her own experiences with Hell and insisted that I get in touch with her friend Dan to enquire about palms on islands.

So the emails began:

Dear Dan,

A mutual friend Jess Johnson told me I should write and inquire about islands with lone palms. Apparently we share an interest on the subject.

All the best,

Susan

Dan replied:

Dear Susan

how do you do

5 videos i would have on the island

billy elliot

the crow

erin brokervich

my big fat greek wedding

stand and deliver

highlander

how about yourself

overandout

dan

I replied:

Dear Dan,

5 videos I would have on the island:

LA Story

Paris, Texas

Weekend at Bernies

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park II

and since you snuck in a sixth

Jurassic Park III

I doubt there will be a dry eye in the house when you play ‘Stand and Deliver’ - one of the most underrated films of its genre.

Susan

After further questions and conversation covering Rambo versus Rocky - when Sly versus Sly who would win? - walking as an Olympic sport, disco and much confusion, Jess clarified that the reason she had put us in touch was for a potential transaction. Dan was building a desert island for NEW 11 at ACCA, Warm Memorial: The Dan Moynihan Experience (2011). Perhaps if the timing was right Dan’s palm could fulfil my need for one at Society.

While the palm transaction didn’t work out due to my all weather requirements, I had by this stage decided to invite Dan to have the first exhibition. I was intrigued by his maximalist approach to sculpture that involved the construction of complex scenarios of found and replicated objects, which permeated my ongoing thoughts about interplays between image, object and performance, the autobiographic and the social, and the construction of space. He was invited to produce a new work.

Transcript of interview conducted in person at Society 21/07/2011

Susan Gibb: Who or what are your influences?

Daniel Moynihan: I was going to answer with a list that I used to answer a similar question when I was a part of Points of View at Tolarno Galleries in 2010. These include inappropriate text messaging, the radio, driving a shitty car. I don’t have a good memory for names, so it is hard for me to list artists, and while I do see and look at things that may in someway influence me I largely rely on myself. Though one artist that I like is Tom Sachs.

SG: I am interested in your approach to sculpture. Particularly in terms of your impulse to use sculpture to construct or pursue a narrative, along with your approach to figuration - how you use this both in terms of the presence of figures in your work and the use of realistic scale, found and replicated objects. What is behind this impulse?

DM: I think it comes from the fact that I feel like I am a bad communicator, that I can’t explain things properly, or how they appear to me. When I get the opportunity to have a show I feel I can finally explain things better, through an object, or through various objects by placing them together. Then again I do not have to explain everything properly, as people can view it as they view it and take what they want from it. I get the best of both worlds I get to articulate through the objects and through materials. Why I chose certain materials or objects? I have a strong feeling or a strong sense about those, those materials best explain what I am feeling, what I am trying to communicate, or tells a story or a joke, or that makes people see something or not sure if they should be seeing that way or not.

SG: You often place yourself in the work. How central is biography to your work?

DM: It is kind of biographic in a sense that I am a pretty shy and quiet sort of person, socially awkward, and all that kind of stuff. By putting myself into these situations it is a way of introducing myself to people and giving them an impression of me without having to physically do it myself. I let the work do it and put myself blatantly in there so that it is obvious who it is about, what it is trying to be about, or that it is obvious that it is coming from me as I am the central figure in it. It is just a way of drawing attention to myself without actually having to do that on a realistic scale or level. I guess it is some sort of weird attention seeking sort of thing. Terminator X speaks with his hands and so do I.

SG: Your work is often talked about in relationship to cinema. What is the significance of that as a continuing reference point?

DM: I think it gets talk about more and more but I don’t think it is all that integral to the work. It is just there because I enjoy cinema a lot, as most people do. Putting myself into characters, roles and scenarios is a way of communicating an idea but expanding on it so that it is not just one object or one simple thing. I like to put it in a context, with other objects, so it sort of builds itself into maybe a still or a scene. I guess that is where the movie thing sort of crosses over. With a couple of shows that I have had there have been blatant references to films, so I guess people put those two together. I don’t know whether I am drifting away from that or further into that, where it’s not so obvious. It is always going to be present. I don’t know whether I am going deeper in to disguise it even further or make it more obvious. I am not sure.

SG: In regards to this exhibition, where did the idea for this exhibition begin, as from our initial conversations it has changed quite a bit over time? So where did it begin and how did it get to where it is now?

DM: For this show I have just tried to approach it differently to other shows. It has been good to work on this show simultaneously to the upcoming show at GRANTPIRRIE as I can approach them completely differently. With this show I have just tried to be a lot more relaxed with my approach to it, to work more instinctively than normal. As with the GRANTPIRRIE show everything is more thought out and deliberate. With this one, when I started to plan things I tried to cut myself off and force myself to change direction in a way, as I wanted it to be more responsive to the space and also the opportunity. The fact that it is only on for a few days makes it different as well. I just wanted it to be a bit looser, a bit more instinctive than the other shows that I have done. Most of the other shows I have done have been an idea that has been developed and laboured over. Not that I haven’t dedicated time to this show, I just wanted to work differently, I think that it is why it has changed since our initial conversations. Another major factor in making this show was bringing it here.

SG: The practicalities?

DM: Yes, the practicalities. Driving it here, the financial implications, which unfortunately do determine the work.

SG: What is the rationale behind the title for the exhibition Proper Arrangements?

DM: I kind of have a small collection of titles and things floating around in my head. I tend to come up with titles and then work on shows. The title says it all and I kind of build around that. It is probably a strange way to operate but it works for me so I stick to that. I have always found it a strange saying “proper arrangements”. I have only ever really heard it in regards to funerals, on ads on the radio and such, “We will make the proper arrangements.” It’s like “proper arrangements? What are those” I guess you can look at it from a sculptural perspective; it is arranging things “properly”. I just like the way it sounded and the sadness of it. It sort of follows on from the ACCA NEW 2011 show as well, and those sort of themes of demise. That is where the images for the overheads came from. It is a kind of a self-help guide of do’s and don’ts.

The images actually came from a birthday card I made for a friend. After I put it together I thought I really want to do something with these images. This was the perfect occasion so I had to think about how to put those on the wall. It is really funny as I normally work in 3D and I had these real connections with these 2D images so I had to think about something sculptural to deal with them. So that’s where the overhead projectors came in.

SG: I would also like to ask about the drip. It has been there since the beginning of your idea for this exhibition. What is the reason for this being maintained through out the process of the exhibitions development?

DM: The drip was a way to work with the space. Each show that I have had has always directly responded to the space I have been given to work with. That’s what I wanted to do with this space as well, I wanted to take an element of that space that I could work with. The drip seemed an obvious thing to do, as there is the upstairs level that you normally don’t see or can’t access. I also had a dripping tap in the NEW work. I always like to take something from an old show and carry it on. Whether it is the shoes on characters, there are little elements carried over. It was also a way of working above the ceiling, which I have also done twice with the show at TCB Small Step for Dan (2007) and Utopian Slumps Still Sitting Still (2009). So it sort of carries on from older themes but reconfigured to suit this space.

SG: Across your practice you consistently break away from the traditional four wall white cube. What is the ongoing interest in always subverting such spaces and taking them outside of themselves?

DM: Artistically it is hard to try and do things that haven’t been done before. I always struggle with that. Especially if you are working on a show and some one shows you a book and you are like “Fuck, that is what I am trying to do” and it is really disheartening. Me doing that and messing with space, taking them out of the ordinary, is a way of trying to do that, and capture someone’s imagination. A way of trying to approach it in a way someone hasn’t or wouldn’t think of doing.

It’s like using materials as well. When I was on residency in Canada I came across all of these materials, and it made me think about international artists when they come here and spend time here, and then what they use or what they see as a material to use in their practice, something that we see everyday so may kind of dismiss. When I was in Canada, I kind of got the appreciation for what they do and tried to use these kinds of materials. I think it worked there as people were like “I didn’t even think of using that as a material.” It’s just a way of employing that idea I think.

SG: I would also like to go back to the beginning. You use to be a carpenter. How has this previous skill and occupation effected your art making?

DM: I really have my friend Jensen Tjhung to thank for that. When I stopped being a carpenter and went back to uni in Wollongong to do art and design, I thought I would never need to pick up tools again. I was done with that. I did a lot of painting and printmaking and things. When I moved to Melbourne I had a small studio and was doing some paintings and messing around. Nothing to serious, but still being active. Then my friend Jensen had this exhibition. He always gets this team of people together. He was like “Would you like to be in the team? You can be on construction”. I got really excited, as I was a big fan of his work and he is a really nice guy, so I was like cool I will do it. Straight away I made this scale model and I was like this is how I am going to do it. It was totally his idea and his show and that sort of stuff. But when we physically started making the work it was like a revelation, it was like I can use these skills for what I realised I wanted to do now. I realised there was a reason I had done all this shit, this miserable stuff, and from there it just really took off. His encouragement, me working, and getting really excited about the process, and feeling confident as I knew my way around machinery and technique. I knew that what was in my head I could make as I had the skills and the confidence that doesn’t exist anywhere else. 

SG: What year would it have been that you took that direction?

DM: It was around the time I moved to Melbourne, about four or five years ago. It was 2007 or 2006.

SG: So before that though your practice followed a more two-dimensional bent, painting etc?

DM: I ended up moving away from painting as the subject matter kind of bothered me. I didn’t know what to paint. I was working at Bunnings so I started exploring paint finishes. So my paintings became all about the kind of finishes you get, so more the materiality of the medium rather than what was being created. So that’s how I moved more through to objects. 

SG: So did the paintings become more abstract or formal explorations of paint?

DM: I was working with text. In the same colour paint but with different finishes, such as low-sheen and flat over a gloss background, so that you looked at it at different angles and could see things clearly. One Small Step For Dan (2007) at TCB was my first solo show ever. I had been in a couple of small group shows before that, but really low key and not worth mentioning. The TCB show featured a replica of me in the process of sawing a circle in the ceiling while obliviously cutting a hole through the floor. That show was a real turning point. It just all seemed to work so easily and come together well. And from there it has sort of … I guess … gone down hill [laughs]

Image:
Installation view. Photo: Susannah Wimberley