October
26
Tags
Photo Booth
An ocean of posters went up ’round the art school: ‘Volunteers Wanted’. The year was 1999 and Melbourne’s Inaugural Biennale of Art needed our help. Our free help. Rich institutions like Melbourne Uni love crying poor. nat&ali couldn’t afford to work for free, we were already paying to learn but the laundry list of international art stars exhibiting were bait enough. This quid pro quo offered the chance to get some hands-on experience. We were young, hot, didn’t know shit and were keen as mustard. Perfect.
When we turned up to volunteer, we were handed brooms. We’d had an altogether different vision of how we might best contribute to the success of the event. We’d host Maurizio Cattelan. We ran into Maurizio at an opening out at Heide and arranged to pick him up from the City Baths at 10 next morning for a day of sightseeing. Maurizio is one of those artists who does laps to wash away art star stresses and keep looking good no matter what the time zone. Who doesn’t love a good excursion, being hosted by locals. We borrowed Ali’s Dad Paul’s car. Our cars were crap and breaking down enroute would be embarrassing. Back then Maurizio was best known for his Flash Art cover, the one where the squirrel does himself in with the handgun at the kitchen table. Healesville Sanctuary was our first destination.
We showed Maurizio round each day. God only knows how out-of-towners were supposed to navigate before google maps. Visiting a Photo Booth on Swanston, we let the machine be the artist, we his muse. Choosing from a menu, buttons were pushed, collaborative decisions made. We liked the little passport photo sized art the machine spat out and split it right down the middle. Maurizio took 2 copies, we took 2 copies. We had two turns, the other image is us on a pretend Vogue cover. As you age the young you looks better and better. None of it is fake. So if you like a bargain, and let’s face it who doesn’t, it’s the cheapest Maurizio Cattelan you’ll ever get your hands on. It’s also the most expensive nat&ali ever and that suits us fine. If anyone buys it, we’re paying down our HECS debts.
If Maurizio’s dealer Larry Gagasion contacts Darren for a cut of our action that’s sorted. ‘Photo Booth’ is a Print edition of 6 plus 3 artists proofs. 2 for Ali, 2 for Nat, 2 for Maurizio and we’ll throw in the details for Print to Metal down in Oakleigh South who do a wonderful job on a high sheen premier aluminium print, Maree will take good care of you. Thanks Aylsa for the recommendation.
Maurizio Cattelan is the only person I’ve met who has had a work sell at auction for 17 million bucks. And that was for the little Hitler praying which isn’t nearly as good as the Pope felled by the meteorite on the red carpet. Recently Maurizio got work as a posterboy for an insurance company. He poses nude and looks pretty buff striding across a photography studio, stolen gold toilet under arm, shielding viewers from his nether region. The ads byline reads ‘great artists steal: art insures creativity, generali insures art’. So much of life you can’t insure against. Maurizio keeps you thinking enough for rich collectors to still like him. He is the court jester in the royal court. He also plays a very strong gaffer game. His 2019 gaffered banana ‘Comedian’ sprung to life when each of 2 editions sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach. Then the mainstream media, who cannot talk about art, resort to two things they love speaking to – money and the stupidity of art, artists and the art market. The third edition of ‘Comedian’ was donated to the Guggenheim Museum, the gift lifts the price for the brave initial investors so it’s a win win win. Everyone takes a selfie with the most famous banana in the whole world because that’s what we do now. Publicity you can’t buy, fodder for the perpetual outrage machine of conservatives and everyone talking all about money, like we don’t already.
The Melbourne Biennale had a sprightly 6 week run from mid-May through to the end of June 1999. Big shows didn’t used to bore us stupid with 6 and 7 month runs. The main venue was spread over 8 semi-gutted floors of the old telephone exchange on Russell Street. Art audiences could talk to a real estate agent about the ‘Hero’ luxury apartment redevelopment on their way round the show. Nobody even laughed. Property was just beginning to infect the zeitgeist. The heritage listed retro fit conversion was designed by Fender Katsalidis. Their business has been forged, like so many others, in close proximity to art, artists and art museums. Artists are cooler than architects. Poorer but cooler. Property subsumed the imagination, the culture, the economy, the academy. Universities focus more on optimising their real estate holdings than on learning and teaching. Housing is in crisis, developers our saviours, swarming round the arts like flies to an ass sniffing convention. All on unceded lands, no closer to truth nor treaty.
After our week off Uni gallivanting round town with an international art star, on our safe return to the institutional haven that is art school we ran into a classmate. It was outside the NGV, right where you start smelling the moat’s chlorine. ‘Which one of you slept with him and did he give you anything?’ our classmate enquired. Maurizio had given us a matter-of-fact warning. ‘You really get to hate some people in this business’ he’d said. We were still naively in the ‘this is sweet, we’ve met our people’ phase and didn’t know what he was on about. Our HECS debts still aren’t paid off, now they’re indexed and the insult grows bigger. Ever bigger. The 1999 Melbourne Biennale was called ‘Signs of Life’, but it died after the first go, victim to budgetary blowouts. Sydney still has a Biennale, Mirvac signed a five year sponsorship deal to help out. Bless.
Photo Booth nat&ali and Maurizio Cattelan (1999)
Vogue Cover nat&Ali and Maurizio Cattelan (1999)
Photo Booth currently on display at:
Darren Knight Gallery
840 Elizabeth Street, Waterloo NSW 2017
Sydney, Australia
7 October – 4 November 2023
nattysolo 