Mourning the Ends: Collaborative Writing and Performance
A collaborative book researched, written and revised by fifteen individuals situated across the globe: Maria Shantelle Alexies Ambayec, Krostof van Baarle, Peter Burke, Renata Gaspar, Sozita Goudouna, Nilüfer Ovalioğlu Gros, Adham Hafez, Jan-Tage Kuehling, Eero Laine, Sarah Lucie, Juliana Martins Rodrigues de Moraes, Evan Moritz, Malin Palani, Rumen Rachev, and Aneta Stojnić.
Published 21 March, 2025 by Punctum Books.
Do you have any handwritten notes at home, school, or work? Maybe on your fridge, desk, or even your car windscreen? It could be something you wrote—or a note from someone else. Perhaps a reminder, a ‘to-do’ list, or even a love letter!
I’m an artist from Melbourne collecting these handwritten notes. They can be serious or humorous—like “Has anyone lost a pet turtle? I found one in my driveway” or “I’ll do the dishes in the morning!”
I’m fascinated by how these notes reveal the ways we interact with each other. If you'd like to share a photo of one with me, you can send it via email to: pjbguru@yahoo.com.au
Work in progress during a residency at the Fremantle Arts Centre, based on handwritten notes, lists and notices that I have found or have been given in Fremantle and Perth, Western Australia.
An installation of ‘notes’ at the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery as part of the group exhibition Paper Scissors Rock, running until Sunday 10 March 2024.
Image credit: silversalt photography
Safe Deposit is a new video work showing at DAS KAPITAL—a group exhibition of videos in a bank that no longer exists when hard currency is lost or swallowed up. Curated by Amanda Morgan, Kieran Boland and Brie Trenerry.
30 November to 2 December 2023, 12noon–9pm
Union Bank, 236–238 Chapel St, Prahran, 3181
Signs of Agreement at DAS KAPITAL. The BOOreaucrats (Benjamin Sheppard and Peter Burke) explore cultural introspection through the lens of institutional bureaucracy. The duo administrators investigate the investigators, examine the examiners, and perform purposeful profundity through gestures that result in bureaucratic documents, administrative ephemera and more red tape.
Thursday 30 November, 2023 at 7:30pm
Union Bank, 236–238 Chapel St, Prahran, 3181
Photo: Bridget Hillebrand
I Will Do The Dishes is part of a series of large-scale drawings of found, handwritten notes. This particular note was given to me by a colleague who discovered it on the wall above her kitchen sink. In its original context, the note is banal, but when blown up to monumental proportions, it makes a compelling artefact. To me, this note speaks volumes about the household dynamics that silently influence our daily lives — encompassing good intentions, broken promises and procrastination.
Hazelhurst Works on Paper, 2023
Catalogue
Photo: Bridget Hillebrand
A recent article about Attaché Case by Digital Storyteller Robert French at Museums Victoria with a recorded lecture featuring artists Zohreh Izadikia and Mehdi Jaghuri. Link
Photographer: Benjamin Healley
The wonderful stories of 21 refugees and asylum seekers who contributed to the Attaché Case project are now live on the Immigration Museum’s website. The text has been composed by Moya McFadzean and Anh P. Nguyen. Read it here: Link
Photographer: Benjamin Healley
Vin Ryan, Peter Burke and Tara Gilbee are three artists who occasionally collect found, handwritten notes from their surroundings. Each collection represents a series of communications between people but also a gathering of ephemeral objects. In this project, the artists join forces to reinterpret these collections using paint, photography and photograms. A singular anthology of discarded material is shuffled and rearranged into a ready-made conversation. Not quite a stream of consciousness nor a linear, coherent narrative, the artists open the dialogue back into the streets. They aim to establish broader connections, uncover traces and remnants, and even make contact with the dead.
Dates: 7—24 June 2023. Hours: Wed—Sat, 12–5pm. Address: Five Walls, 1/119 Hopkins Street, Footscray.
Vin Ryan
Tara Gilbee
Image: Vin Ryan
Scrub. Wipe. Rinse. Repeat. is an immersive experiment that emphasises the vital role of sanitation in our daily lives. Despite being heavy on process, Scrub. Wipe. Rinse. Repeat. has a light touch that will satisfy (almost) everyone.
As part of Treatment III at the Western Treatment Plant, Werribee from 21 to 22 April 2023. Link
Photo: Fiona Hillary.
Question (2023) is work made in collaboration with Louise Lavarack in February this year. It was created during a City of Melbourne residency (with Benjamin Sheppard) at The Pavilion, Fitzroy in Melbourne.
Photo: Tobias Titz
Mixed Messages is a recent work consisting of a series of paintings of handwritten notes that have been left behind in public places such as car parks, workplaces and footpaths. In their original locations, the notes are seemingly banal but detached from their original contexts they make compelling artefacts. Rendering these inconsequential objects as works of art is a way of noticing the unnoticed and revealing social narratives.
Exhibited at Five Walls in Footscray as part of TXT, a group exhibition held in December 2022.
A new print for the Fieldwork series by the BOOreaucrats (BS & PB) . Here our BOOreaucrats work to uncover and understand the mechanisms of memorial inaction. In this instance, the reversal of invisible redactions for monuments that were never built for incarcerated peoples on Wadjemup (Rottnest Island, WA).
Digital print on rag paper with ink redaction.
Limited edition of 60. 210 x 297 mm.
Commissioned by Artbox, 2022.
Excited to be part of this collection of artists books from the amazing archive Franklin Furnace.
46: Artists’ Books Exhibition
Please Don’t Wash Your Dishes is on display at Bayside Gallery until June 26, 2022.
Acrylic on canvas, 2830mm x 4650mm.
Link
☝️ Power Point (2022) is an Installation by the BOOreaucrats at the North Fitzroy Library (Bargoonga Nganjin) in North Fitzroy, Melbourne until 24 April 2022.
☝️ Power Point marries screen-based graphic culture with a performative gesture from the BOOreaucrats. The mural depicts two administrators (the BOOreaucrats) in full business suits walking into water surrounded by pointing emoji hands. The scene evokes feelings of being ‘at sea’, of being confused and unable to take firm footing. The swarming symbols come from a long history of signs which draw attention and give direction dating back to the fifteenth century. So what is it that these hands are pointing at in 2022? Are the BOOreaucrats following directions clicked from the ether of the internet or are they being clicked at? Either way, they seem to be tentatively negotiating an endless shifting body of water and these dedicated officials seem slightly off balance. It's calm now, but the potential coming of great waves and powerful forces seems perpetually present. Be careful BOOreaucrats!
North Fitzroy Library (Bargoonga Nganjin) Link
Photography: J. Forsyth
‘Please Turn Off Lights When Going Home For The Day’ is a monumental-scale drawing of a tiny, weathered note I found in studio doorway in Richmond. It’s on show at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre until March 27, 2022.
Image credit: Silversalt
‘I Am Very Free’, drawing on paper, in the Wyndham Art Prize at Wyndham Art Gallery, 177 Watton St, Werribee from 13 May to 9 July. Excited to be the recipient of TREAT, a commission to work within the Wyndham Community and with the research initiative, the Public Art Commission, from Deakin University.
