Found: Outside the Greyhound Hotel – 11.00 AM
Found: St Kilda streets
Found: Acland St
or relaxed and comfortable?
“The whole of St Kilda will be at Kenny’s funeral. I’ve had fifty calls today and it’s only lunch time”, said the Sacred Heart Mission receptionist. We’ll know the date next Monday or Tuesday after the Coroner has released his body.”
Everybody has a story about Kenny. He was a photo journalist and camera man. He said he covered the Vietnam War. Some people said he was never the same when he came back.But nobody really knows for sure.
Every day people put new flowers in the vase. M put a tot of port next to a burning candle. “I’m holding a vigil”, he said. “Acland St will never be the same”.
Changing the meaning: gang bang no more.
Rest in Peace – Kenny Douglas 1943 – 2005
St Kilda wouldn’t be St Kilda without the local characters that have always been part of the streetscape. They are as important as the physical qualities of the land and give this community its unique identity. Monument on Wheels was conceived to pay homage and represent the importance of these people.
The shopping trolley wheels and the weaving text represent the paths both psychological and physical that these people have traversed to survive on the streets. The text is broken up into fragments and the order isn’t immediately evident, just like the speech of some of the people the work refers to. If you want to get the full meaning you have to stop for a minute and think.
Most people who have lived in St Kilda can tell you about a favourite character, often with a fondly described name: track suit man, green man or milk carton man, who constructed millinery extravagances from old milk cartons and wouldn’t leave home without his hat
The work celebrates the resourcefulness and importance of these characters, but also recognises the community that supports these people; restraunteurs that feed them, the people who stop and have a ‘yak’ with John or Kenny as they go about their daily business, or those who handover for the $3 coffee that is really a beverage enjoyed from a brown paper bag.
“They wandered by it’s sane seas because it was a more generous city, not as mean as the others, where the would be singled out as being queer if their lipstick were skew whiff or buttons undone, or speech slurred or hands shaky and yellow with nicotine”.
When J returned to add the second stencil somebody had left her note. She left the website address on the note and hoped that they would meet one day when she was stencilling another discarded mattress.
Poverty, unemployment, homelessness…………………….
or voting for John Howard.
“Do you want a rose? A gold coin for any one you want”.
Up and down Acland St he travails, fronting locals, strangers and tourists in the bars and cafes. He always moves on quickly if there are not takers.
The other day he had on 2 different coloured shoes… a different kind of look to the young gals who used to sell roses for charity.
The letters were strewn up and down Acland St. The first time it was a drag, the second time it was mean spirited. It wasn’t the council cleaners, just somebody who want to spoil the fun.
