Art School 9th september 2003

I have seen some pretty weird buildings in my time. Some that you just know are going to be weird from the way they look outside. And some that just turn out weird. This building though was one that I really did not expect to be weird. That is, until I walked inside. The very first room was weird as. Okay, I thought it might be an abberation. But the place just got weirder. Very cool mind you. The whole place had been taken over by art students and converted into a sort of freedom of expression art gallery / studio of sorts. It is quite obviously still being worked on.

Fibro cement buildings. Old, one story, cant be exciting.

But there's some weird stuff on the outside. A couple of security stickers, graffiti, a computer monitor and Mr Ned Kelly.

Lots of graffiti on the outside. And a very unkept look.

Ahh, an open door. And a fridge.

This was our first taste of the building. I mean this is weird. Arabic writing on the board, weird stuff hanging from the ceiling and a hole through to the interiour of the building. But there was more weird things to come.

This was in the next room Was this spooky or what. It was like trees had grown in though the walls. It was dark in here too as the window was boarded over.

Ahhh, an industrail landscape, jigsaw puzzle peices, monopoly money, disks. The person who had done this had gone to a lot of trouble, glueing each individual note in place.

Monopoly.

Even an old map of UA City had been glued to the door.

Rubbish filled room.

Filing cabanites and wine bottles.

Ghosts escape from a hole in the wall.

The western end of the building housed a large room.

Strange comments in chalk.

Political? I think most of the graffiti here was political.

This was weird. A hospital gurney thing with a couple of women painted on it.

Stenciled door windows lead into the stencil room.

Some one had gone to a lot of trouble to do those stencils.

More of them.

Detail of the stencils.

We headed back the other way.

Weird things abound.

A toilet, not fit for ladies.

This door lead in to another weird room.

Ahh, yeah, what the hell does that mean?

More of the same.

In this room there were two linked images. This one of Baghdad.

And this one of Canberra.

Idea - Action

You are entering the Twilight Zone.

A land of sight and sound.

Where all things are not as they seem.

Man this place was weird.

See what I mean? I quite liked this bit though. I thought it was cool.

Then we encountered this. Now this is COOL!

Later on some one added some monopoly money to it.

A bit of a mess.

Beer and video games.

Drying.

The room of flies. Some one had worked grass into this weird sructure and had also created about a dozen flies which were hung around the room. The shelves hold weird peices of bone. This was extreemly cool.

Another view of the fly room.

Work in progress.

Weird.

More weird.

Now this was definetly political. I can make out Saddam, The Queen, Johhny Howard and some Middle Eastern guys.

This room was obviously still being worked on. You could smell the paint.

I'm not sure what this is, but I liked it.

Civillian Emergency?

Power board.

This was the main room the building could be accessed through.

Even the outsides were painted.

Stored canvases and a Hoover.

That strange looking skull dude again.