Anyone can find or make one or more rooms of any shape, size, proportion, and color — then furnish them perhaps, maybe paint some things or everything. Everyone else can come in and, if the room(s) are furnished, they also can arrange them, accommodating themselves as they see fit. Each day things will change.

Notes from Behind the Beard… (+ timelapse day zero)

Posted: May 29th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Day 0, timelapse | 4 Comments »

A few notes from the first night of Push and Pull at Locksmith Gallery…

As I mentioned in these pre-beginning ramblings, Nick and Astrid and I decided not to bust our butts hauling in a whole lot of furniture before the show. Instead, the idea was to incorporate the collecting of all the stuff which goes into Push and Pull, into the live public time-frame of the work itself.

early at push and pull

So just before six on Thursday, people started trickling into … an empty room. A few people had been tipped off, and brought along small furnishings with them to get the ball rolling… a broken umbrella, some fake plant fronds, a urine-soaked cushion, a jigsaw puzzle…
Read the rest of this entry »


Pushing it…(some thoughts before we start)

Posted: May 27th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Day 0 | No Comments »

Tonight we’ll be cutting the ribbon, or at least, answering the doorbell, for the first Aussie manifestation of Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann.

Before it gets a-rolling, I thought I might just spend a moment thinking about the piece, and how we’re planning to do it…

As you might have guessed if you’ve been nosing around this website, Push and Pull is one of what Kaprow called his “environments” – kind of like early versions of what we’d call installations these days, but with the explicit intention that the work would evolve and change constantly, rather than being set up and left static like an abandoned stage set.
Read the rest of this entry »