Lucky Strike

These pictures are from an installation I've just completed in Shepparton, in northern Victoria. The project, initiated by the Shepparton Art Museum*, forms part of the Shepparton Festival that runs through early March.
Myself and another artist, Kate Mitchell, were each given a shop front in the town centre to install an art work. The project was established to enliven the central retail district of the town, which has seen a large number of businesses close down or relocate as the demographics of the area have shifted. 

My work, titled Lucky Strike, is installed in an old newsagents and comprises a number of paper- mâché objects that together form a loose narrative based around an amateur excavation and the discovery of a giant gold nugget. The nugget is on one hand a symbol of a desire for the sudden or speedy acquisition of immense wealth - the newsagent as a purveyor of tatts scratchies has always held such a mythological potency - and on the other it stands as metaphor for the potential rewards of earnest endeavour. 
I wanted the work to be funny, but also to be uplifting, or at least optimistic.

*Special thanks to curator Danny Lacy and the rest of the s.a.m. team for inviting me to participate and for chewing the fat over a few beers afterwards.