Participating artists:

Brenda L Croft (Australia)
16beaver (USA)
Daniel Boyd (Australia)
Temporary Services (USA)
Jakob Jakobsen (Denmark)
Lisa Kelly (Australia)
SquatSpace (Australia)
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro (Berlin/Sydney)
Evil Brothers (Ned and Tom Sevil, Australia)
You Are Here (Keg de Souza, Andy Nicholson and Zanny Begg, Australia)
Michael Rakowitz (USA)
Miklos Erhardt and Little Warsaw (Hungary)
Bijari (Brazil)
Democracia (Spain)

A re-enactment of Allan Kaprow's Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann (with thanks to the Allan Kaprow Estate).

Temporary Services

Photo by Temporary Services

The sculpture pictured above, Bower, was created in 2007-2008 by the artists Susan Milne and Greg Stonehouse. The sculpture is on the corner of Regent and Redfern streets in the Redfern district in Sydney.

Temporary Services are conducting a Public Sculpture Opinion Poll on Bower as their contribution to There Goes The Neighbourhood. They have put up clipboards in public spots around the area of the sculpture with flyers asking “What is your opinion of this sculpture? Why do you think it was placed in this neighbourhood?” Passers-by are encouraged to either write their response directly onto the flyers or e-mail Temporary Services at publicpoll@temporaryservices.org with their answers. All of the replies they receive will be posted for people to see in the exhibition and on their website.

Temporary Services is a group from the state of Illinois in the USA. A previous Public Sculpture Opinion Poll that they conducted in Chicago resulted in multiple and varied replies to a sculpture that appeared in their neighbourhood without any previous public input. The poll was instigated to address the lack of public participation in choosing and placing art in publically used spaces. Temporary Services think of Public Sculpture Opinion Poll as a method to instigate and record public discourse when city planners and governments fail to.

The members of Temporary Services also collaborated with their fellow co-founders of Mess Hall, an experimental cultural center in Chicago, on a similar opinion poll about surveillance cameras. Surveillance cameras have been placed in various neighbourhoods in Chicago with a chilling lack of public discussion. The cameras are maintained by the Chicago Police Department as a crime-prevention tactic, but little input is sought by the communities that the cameras have been placed in. A large poster was made for the front window of the Mess Hall space with a picture of the surveillance camera that had recently been placed on a corner near Mess Hall and the question, “What do you think about having a surveillance camera in your neighbourhood?” Again, a variety of responses were collected and then reposted in the window of Mess Hall for passers-by to read and talk about.

Temporary Services would like interested parties to come meet them and share opinions about Bower during their Artist Talk:

Artist Talk: Temporary Services
Saturday, May 30, 4pm
Performance Space
245 Wilson St, Redfern, Sydney

More information about Temporary Services can be found at http://www.temporaryservices.org.