I meant to say or

2 thoughts on 54: Sally Szwed

Barry Thomas March 25, 2014 at 2:08 pm

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Hi Sally, If you didn’t know – in 1978 I planted 180 cabbages as a work of art in the CBD of Wellington New Zealand. We had no public funding, no permission to enter and ‘use’ this private land (which had been left cleared and vacant for some 2.5 years). I just had to do it – got friends to help me and I planted the cabbage seedlings in the form of the word “CABBAGE”. The ‘Work’ lasted some 6 month and when we finished up we held a week long festival with stages and covered the whole site with native forests etc etc. This last festival had some small public funding and I was not involved in that funding process. Now (last year) our biggest museum/ cultural institution Te Papa – The Museum of New Zealand – purchased most of my archives of Vacant lot of cabbages… around 250 photos, press clippings, even my note books. see – http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2012/11/02/vacant-lot-of-cabbages-documentation-enters-te-papas-archives/ I think I would say from your fine evaluation of the ‘red tape’ vs intervention debate is that the latter will always have a place and in my experience the very ‘work’ involved with the former always sanitised and dilutes the ‘ah ha’ of both the artist and viewer.

 tao Wells March 25, 2014 at 3:58 pm

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 or The Soul at Work, by 'Biffo' Berardi, or this guy http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/4239839/Artist-paints-noble-picture-of-dole