(Or: a forgotten art movement, a heist, and a family, as told through Wikipedia)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lonesome Border is a collection of short stories by Australian author Hiro Thompson. It was first published in 1995 by Wattle House. The book follows the trials of a series of ‘makers’ – including architects, shipwrights, folk musicians, television actors, sign writers, doll-makers and contemporary artists – in rural and remote areas of Australia. The stories are loosely connected.
In 2007, the book was republished by Text Publishing as A History of Loam & Other Stories.
Themes
The novel’s themes are pride[1], envy[2], community[3], repetition[4] and obsession[citation needed].
Artwork
The cover for the book features a detail from In Flux by Deirdre Pugh. The first print run of the book had to be pulped after Pugh’s lawyer claimed the publisher had infringed Pugh’s copyright.
This article about a short story collection is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deirdre Pugh (born 8 June 1961 in Sydney) is a visual artist and lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her artwork is detailed, often involving mixed media, and is primarily painted with pastel colours.[1] During the mid-1980s several of her artworks were stolen. These incidents were known collectively as the Pugh Affair.
Personal Life
She married artist Gideon O’Halloran in 1985. They had one son together, Xavier Pugh-O’Halloran.
O’Halloran and Pugh divorced in January 1990 in the midst of O’Halloran’s public feud with Sherbet singer Daryl Braithwaite.
Cruxism
In 1983, Pugh and several of her contemporaries moved into an abandoned silo in Creeton, Tasmania where several key Cruxist artists had once worked. Here, the group attempted to revive what Pugh thought to be ‘an ignored and aborted’ era of history.[2] This activity caught the attention of several original Cruxist members, including Maxine Moore and Gideon O’Halloran, whom Pugh would go on to marry.
Although Pugh later said that Cruxism was ‘just work for work’s sake’, many of her most successful works emerged from this period.[3]
Major exhibitions
Shoulders – 1981
The Centre Still Holds? – 1984
Great Southern Lands – 1987
Flux – 1989
Exilia – 1999
Hyperwork – 2001
Great Southern Lands II – 2007
Stolen work
On several occasions, Pugh’s artwork has been stolen. Most notably in 1985, three of four canvases from her[BW1] [a2] artwork In Flux were stolen from her studio. During the 1990s, several of Pugh’s smaller works disappeared from international galleries.
Collaborative work
Pugh has collaborated with other artists on several occasions, including with historian Marjorie Wilcox, and with The Rainjackets on their song ‘Habitat’ and various music videos.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
‘Habitat’ is a single released in August 1986 by Australian experimental rock band The Rainjackets. It was released in Australia as a 7" vinyl single on Sire Records.
It is reported that hundreds of pages of alternative lyrics were written for the song.[1] In an interview in 2009 with Rolling Stone Australia, singer Christopher Peard explained:
[I]t was an idea Gid [O’Halloran] had. Nothing was really working so we pretended there was a perfect version of the song that we were moving towards. I can't remember how many we ended up writing. The version that everyone knows was actually the third attempt at the lyrics … maybe it was a waste of time [to write the rest].[2]
Controversy
The song was blacklisted on commercial radio for its explicit lyrics, which refer to acts of cunnilingus between two women, as well as several profanities. As a result of the blacklisting, Launceston City Council cancelled an all-ages show that the band was scheduled to play in City Park.[3]
The band responded by repeatedly playing the song from a van outside a house in Launceston, where guitarist Gideon O’Halloran believed Mayor Ananias Tsinoglou lived. News footage of the incident, captured by TNT-9, later formed the majority of a music video released by the band.
Legacy
In August 2016, the song was covered by indie-rock band The Jungle Giants for Triple J’s Like A Version. The cover was voted #89 in the Triple J Hottest 100 on Australia Day 2017.[6]
The B-side to the single, a stripped-back version of the song, featured lyrics and backing vocals penned by Deidre Pugh that reflected on the then ongoing Pugh Affair. Years later, this alternative version was rerecorded by Peard as a solo artist for his soundtrack to A History of Loam.
Track listing
All tracks written by C Peard & G O’Halloran
Habitat – 3:29
Habitat (Flux!) – 3:11 (lyrics by D Pugh)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pugh Affair was a series of incidents from 1985–86 involving the theft and later reclamation of the artwork In Flux by Australian painter Deirdre Pugh. The incidents received significant public attention, making Pugh a minor celebrity at the time.
Theft
On 5 November 1985, Pugh reported that three of the four canvases that made up In Flux were missing from her Creeton home. There had been no witnesses to the removal of these canvases. Pugh and her husband, fellow artist Gideon O’Halloran, had just returned from a visit to Sydney. The couple’s studio had been burgled, although none of O’Halloran’s works had been taken.[1] Police reported that deep tyre marks were observed outside Pugh’s home.[citation needed]
First canvas
On 13 November 1985, one of Pugh’s canvases was discovered in the collection of the National Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand by Hank Cogmire, a packing assistant.[2] Cogmire told police that he was a fan of Pugh’s artwork, and had recognised her distinctive style.[3] Pugh travelled to Wellington to verify the artwork and bring it safely back to Australia.
The canvas that had not been stolen and the reclaimed canvas were exhibited during January 1986 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Victoria, under the title Compact. Consisting only of the outer canvases, this version omitted by necessity many of the autobiographical elements of the original work, such as Pugh’s appropriation of several of her colleagues’ work, including O’Halloran’s Cruxism-era prints. As a result, Compact was often perceived as a tribute to the Australian landscape that surrounded Pugh’s studio.[4]
Second canvas
On 17 June 1986, the second stolen canvas was discovered on SS Canberra after it came into port in Vancouver, Canada. The P&O cruise ship had travelled from Sydney, Australia. Authorities believed that an art smuggler had tried to take the canvas to Canada to sell on the international market.[5]
The reclamation of this second canvas across international borders attracted renewed media attention to the case. The canvas remained in customs in Vancouver until it was retrieved in August 1986 by O’Halloran.
Third canvas
On 28 June 1986, the final canvas was found beneath Stutkins Fall, when emergency workers worked to recover the body of an international tourist who had fallen into the cave.[6] The canvas, although suffering minor water damage, was in good condition, suggesting that it had been placed in the cave no more than a month prior to its recovery.[7] [8] The discovery of the canvas at Stutkins Fall, a fifteen-minute drive from Pugh’s home of Creeton, raised concerns that the perpetrator (or perpetrators) was local to the area.[9]
Aftermath
The Pugh Affair raised the profile of Pugh’s work considerably.[10]
Over 1986–8, Pugh restored the damaged middle panels of In Flux, recreating several elements of the painting. In Flux was shown in full once more in 1989. Over the next decade, Pugh’s work was rarely exhibited
In popular culture
For several years following the incident, many references were made to the Pugh Affair in Australian popular culture, particularly in radio and TV variety shows.
The incident is mentioned in the 2004 song ‘Picasso’ by hip-hop act The Hilltop Hoods.
In 2013, Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby performed a show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival titled The Pube Affair, which investigated the incident.[11]
The crime podcast Criminal brought attention to the incident again in 2017, sparking new interest in the case. Users of the podcast’s Reddit page have started a new investigation.[12] [13]
Theories
As no one has ever been charged for the thefts, several theories about the artwork’s disappearance have emerged.
A popular theory is that the thefts were taken out by several artists who had feuded with Pugh’s then-husband Gideon O’Halloran. This theory was recounted in the 2004 documentary An Affair to Remember produced by SBS[14] . Although the artists’ names were edited out of the documentary shortly prior to broadcast, it is believed these artists include former participants of the Cruxist movement who were frustrated at O’Halloran.
Contemporary comments made in The Examiner newspaper by Pugh’s step-daughter, Partridge Wilcox, which were recirculated on social media platforms in 2017, suggested that Pugh’s step-son Xavier Wilcox should feel ‘some responsibility’ for the missing canvases.[15] Wilcox was formally questioned by police at the time, but no charges were laid.
Some people[who?] believe that the Pugh Affair was carried out by Pugh’s family as a way to raise the artist’s profile. This is categorically denied by both Pugh and O’Halloran. Some people[who?] believe that Pugh’s large philanthropic donation to St Aloysius’ College immediately after the Pugh Affair was a way for Pugh to assuage her own guilt.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
St Aloysius’ College is a Catholic, co-educational college for grades 7 to 10 located in Strahan on the west coast of Tasmania.
The school, then known as St Aloysius’ College of Hope for Boys, was founded by The Brothers of St Aloysius in 1902. In 1913, the school admitted girls and was renamed St Aloysius’ College.
In 1955 the school incorporated students from the nearby Creeton High School which was condemned following the economic downturn of the area.
St Aloisyus’ is known for its Australian Rules football team, the Bishops. YEAH THE BISHIES!!! GO BOYS!!!
The EK Sherman Memorial Theatre Room was built at St Aloysius’ in 1988.
TEGAN B GAVE JAYDEN A GOBBY!!!!
CLASS OF 19 RESPECT!!!!!!
Alumni
Daniel ‘Hacker’ Hackett (footballer)
Garrick Berlage SLAG DAD!!!!!!!!!!! fuCK OFF!!! (cricketer)
Xavier Wilcox
Partridge Wilcox
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Xavier Wilcox is an architect and futurist from Tasmania, Australia. His commercial work can primarily be found throughout New Zealand, where he later relocated.
Wilcox is the son of the painter Gideon O’Halloran and historian Marjorie Wilcox.
Wilcox is known in the Bitcoin community as ‘Good-dog’.[citation needed]
In the 1980s, Wilcox was outspoken about his distaste for Deirdre Pugh’s artwork In Flux.[1]
In 1990, Wilcox established the Cruxism Museum in Creeton, Tasmania. The museum closed for repairs in 2000, and has yet to reopen.[2]
This article about an Australian architect is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Flux (stylised as ‘in flux!’) is a large-scale self-portrait by Australian artist Deidre Pugh, created in 1984/1985. The painting, comprising four 2m × 2m canvases joined horizontally, incorporates amateur photographs, stills from Pugh’s home videos, newspaper articles about the artist, medical records, and old artworks abandoned by her then-husband Gideon O’Halloran.[1]
In a preface to the exhibition catalogue for ‘Great Southern Lands’, Pugh described the artwork as ‘the detritus of life writ large’.[2] Pugh believed In Flux to be her most significant work to date.
In 1986, two of the four canvases comprising the artwork were exhibited as a single artwork titled Compact, which went on to be shortlisted for the Wynne Prize.[3]
In 1989, an updated version of the work was exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia.
Theft
See: The Pugh Affair
Critical reception
Upon exhibition, In Flux was warmly received by the Australian art community. Laura Murray Cree wrote in Art & Australia that Pugh’s work was ‘stark, devastating and utterly female’[3] while artist and critic Elwyn Lynn claimed that the work ‘carefully walked the precipice between humour and shame’.[4] The incorporation of O’Halloran’s discarded Cruxist artworks was noted by several critics as Pugh’s final comment on the art movement. Pugh distanced herself from Cruxism after her sudden increase in notoriety due in part to In Flux. In an interview with ABC Hobart, Pugh said that she believed that the movement was ‘just a ragtag clique with a self-obsessed, self-appointed spokesperson’, and that she believed O’Halloran had ‘inorganic intentions’ for the collective.[5]
In 2007, after purchasing the artwork for his private collection, David Walsh described In Flux as ‘gaudy … I just had to have it’.[6]
Family reaction
Xavier Wilcox, who at the time was Pugh’s stepson, called the artwork ‘a disgrace’ and ‘a stain on my father’s legacy’. In a letter to the editor of The Mercury on 12 December 1985, O’Halloran wrote: ‘I think it’s a right laugh. Finally something to put Creeton on a map’.[7]
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Creeton is a town on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia, located 175 kilometres south-west of Burnie. It is a remnant of a once thriving rural community. Although it is listed in several guides to ‘ghost towns of Tasmania’, Creeton currently has a population of 33.[1]
Creeton is known for its now-defunct tin mine as well as its ties to the Cruxism art movement.
Creeton was founded in 1878 by General Archibald Stutkin, after surveying areas suitable for mining. The town was named after Stutkin’s mother’s birthplace of Creeton in Lincolnshire, England. Upon founding the settlement, General Stutkin remarked that ‘the whole place had the odour of old eggs’.[citation needed]
Supported by the Creeton Mining Company, the town had a burgeoning population through the 1920s and 1930s. After a mining disaster killed three people in 1954, the mine was forced to close. The population declined by 71% from 1954 to 1957.[2]
Creeton Post Office opened in August 1890 and closed in 1955.[3]
Disaster
See: Creeton Mining Disaster
Tourism
Although no official tourism industry exists in Creeton, the town is popular with urban explorers and photographers due to its many abandoned buildings.
Notable residents
Marjorie Wilcox (historian)
Gideon O’Halloran
Margaret Thatcher (concert pianist)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gideon O’Halloran (1935–1999) was an Australian painter, artist, and musician.[1] He is known for his artworks which physically build on top of his past work, what O’Halloran described as ‘a living genealogy’. O’Halloran used a combination of simple photocopying and printmaking techniques to create his recurring artworks. He was a key figure of the short-lived Cruxist movement in Tasmania, Australia. O’Halloran was a founding member of the Australian experimental rock band The Rainjackets.
Biography
O’Halloran was born in Launceston, Tasmania to Anglican parents. He studied at St Patrick’s College. After graduating, O’Halloran drove trucks in mines around Zeehan, Regatta Point and Creeton, where he settled and began his art practice in 1960.
Although he had no formal training in painting, O’Halloran toured Tasmania to sell his work from the back of his ute.[2] O’Halloran’s competitiveness with other Tasmanian artists is thought to be one of the main factors in the development of Cruxism.[3]
After poor reception of his post-Cruxist work, O’Halloran attempted a career in music. He founded The Rainjackets in 1983 with long-time friend Chris Peard. O’Halloran left the band in 1987 a week before the release of its debut album.[4]
Exhibitions
O’Halloran’s work has been the subject of 13 solo exhibitions and over 20 group exhibitions, mostly with his Cruxist peers.
The National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective of O’Halloran’s work at the Ian Potter Centre in November 2014, titled ‘The Crux of the System and the Man who Could Be King’. The retrospective was opened by his son Xavier Wilcox.
Personal Life
In 1965, O’Halloran had twins, Xavier and Partridge, with his first spouse, Marjorie Wilcox.
After Wilcox and O’Halloran divorced in 1972, O’Halloran committed himself to be ‘an artist first, husband second, and father last’.[5]
O’Halloran later married Deirdre Pugh in 1985. They had one son, also named Xavier, in 1987. They divorced in 1990.
In 1983, O’Halloran appeared in a campaign for Xerox photocopiers.[citation needed]
Feuds
O’Halloran was well known in the art world for his longstanding feuds with other artists.[6] [7] He often discussed how fellow Cruxist artist Jong Dae Park ‘hated [his] guts’, although he remained complimentary of Park’s work.[8]
Late in life, O’Halloran maintained an ongoing public feud with politician Jim Bacon. O’Halloran, who had met Bacon ‘several times’, considered Bacon’s abandonment of communism to join the Australian Labor Party ‘a great personal betrayal’.[9] After Bacon became Premier of Tasmania, O’Halloran returned to painting. Many art historians consider these late works to be a low point in O’Halloran’s canon.[10]
Death
O’Halloran died of a heart attack in an apartment in Potts Point, Sydney on New Years Eve 1999. He was buried in a cemetery plot in Creeton, Tasmania, which he purchased after the sale of his sculpture I Will Never Die to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1981.
O’Halloran’s friend and fellow artist Maxine Moore was convicted of vandalism in February 2000 after pouring concrete over his grave.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maxine Moore (born 1943) is an Australian artist, sculptor and signwriter from Hobart, Tasmania.
In 2001, her sculpture Recycled Cement was a runner-up in the City of Hobart Art Prize.
She was a participant in the Cruxist art movement.
This article about an artist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cruxism was a 1960s art movement concerned with recurrence, perspective and competition between artists. Cruxist artists created many iterations of the same work, often painting or drawing the same scene thousands of times.[1] The movement spawned from a small group of collaborators and colleagues who exhibited small shows together around Australia, New Zealand and China.
Cruxism was pioneered by a group of Australian artists, including TK Enocha, Jong Dae Park, Gideon O’Halloran and Maxine Moore, who operated between Hobart, Tasmania and Creeton, Tasmania.[2]
The term ‘Cruxism’ is believed to have derived from a conversation between Park and O’Halloran, who thought that artwork should spin on an axis in an effort to better capture the ‘social, physical, and metaphysical world’ (Park).[3] [4] This is disputed by the family of Maxine Moore, who suggest that the term Cruxism derived from the name given to the constellation commonly known as the Southern Cross.[5]
Manifesto
The Cruxist Manifesto was a short document created in January 1963. Beginning as a single phrase on a typewritten page (‘Cruxism is’), the manifesto was an ad hoc collaboration by participants of The Academy of Cruxism.[6] Forty-four typewritten pages are kept together in the Draft of the Manual of Cruxism, which was exhibited alongside a ‘public consumption’ version of the manifesto at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 1964:
Cruxism = competition breeds invention. Cruxism = achieving new and different views via recurrence. Cruxism = forcing self-evolution by overcoming obstructions between you and your vision that have been constructed by your fellow artist. Cruxism = creating boredom in the artist to evoke submerged ideas. Cruxism = a meditative art to trick the self into entering a new realm.[7]
In 1969, both the draft manual and the public manifesto were burnt in a bonfire held by Enocha and Park to celebrate the failure of the movement.[disputed]
Cruxist School
The Academy of Cruxism was an informal group of artists located at a farm in Creeton, Tasmania who challenged one another to create hundreds of artworks on the same subject. Hosted by O’Halloran and his partner Marjorie Wilcox, the group were housed in an empty silo on the property. The school encouraged stays of between six and eighteen months, during which an artist was expected to create ‘the same or similar’ work one hundred times.[8]
In 1990, the farm and silo were converted into a museum by O’Halloran’s son Xavier Wilcox.
Legacy
Mostly considered a minor movement in Australian art, Cruxism has recently been reappraised by several art history scholars.[9] [10] Although there was little critical writing about the movement at the time, Marjorie Wilcox’s The Heart of The Matter (1978), along with interview transcripts and research notes created by Wilcox, have become a valuable reference point.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marjorie Wilcox nee Callaghan (born 8 August 1942) is an Australian memoirist and historian, best known for her book The Exalted (1968). She participated in and documented the Cruxist movement with her second husband Gideon O’Halloran, her experiences of which are recounted in The Heart of the Matter (1978).
Biography
Wilcox was born in Zeehan, Tasmania. Her father Robert Callaghan worked in the nickel mine, and her mother Clarissa worked in a cafeteria nearby. The family moved to Creeton when Wilcox was seven.
Wilcox learned Transcendental Meditation with her mother in 1958.
Marjorie married Samson Wilcox in December 1959. He died in a hit and run while protesting the closure of the Creeton Mine Museum in December 1960.
Wilcox met Gideon O’Halloran at a flower show in 1961. They married in August 1964. In September 1965 they had two children, Xavier and Partridge, who kept their mother’s surname. Wilcox worked as a nurse through most of the 1960s. In 1969, she co-founded the Lapidary Society of Tasmania.
Wilcox and O’Halloran separated during 1972.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Wilcox taught history and social sciences at the University of Tasmania.
Wilcox currently lives with her partner, Libby, in Fern Tree, Tasmania.
In 2014, Wilcox confirmed that she suffered from an acute form of agoraphobia.[1]
Books
The Exalted (1968)
Wandering & Lost (1971)
The Heart of the Matter: The Cruxism Years (1978)
You Couldn't Pay Me To Live Like That (1980)
Vanishing Acts: On The Pugh Affair (1994)
Opalescent: A Brief History of Precious Minerals in Tasmania (2001)
Other work
In 1997, Wilcox and Deirdre Pugh, who Wilcox had previously interviewed for her book that recounted the Pugh Affair, collaborated on aftermath/s, a video art series. This work featured Wilcox as a destitute painter competing in a dating show.
In 2010, she appeared in Exorcism, an award-nominated short film directed by her daughter, Partridge Wilcox.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A History of Loam is a 2007 Australian drama film written and directed by Partridge Wilcox. The film is adapted from a story included in Hiro Thompson’s The Lonesome Border, and stars musician Paul Dempsey in his only screen role, alongside Miranda Otto. The soundtrack was composed by Christopher Peard.
It was screened at the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival.
Plot synopsis
Set in the early 1990s, the film follows out-of-work actor Vincent (Paul Dempsey), recently returned to his regional Australian home town, as he tries to convince the community’s only theatre company to stage a production of A History of Loam, an infamous play written by his controversy-embroiled father. When Vincent learns that the theatre’s producers intend to award its theatre space and grant funding to local playwright Clare (Miranda Otto), he plots to undermine her, hoping to win back his chance at directing his father’s play.
Channelling the con artist character he played for several years on television, Vincent’s attempts to undermine Clare are at first contained to social and psychological warfare. Frustrated by a lack of clear progress, Vincent escalates his campaign, hiring an ex-felon to ransack Clare’s property with the intention of disposing of her in-progress script. Although the theft is successful, Vincent and the burglar tussle over payment and whether any copies of Clare’s script remain.
In the film’s final scene, Vincent introduces himself to Clare for the first time, asking her to ghostwrite a novelisation of his father’s play.
Cast
● Paul Dempsey … Vincent
● Miranda Otto … Clare
● Jess Fowler … Jess
● Simon Wong … Simeon
● Libby Pomery … Jessica
● Patrick Frost (Voice) … Marc McDonald
Critical reception
In The Age, David Stratton wrote that the film was ‘both illuminating and well-lit’ but that it was often ‘too meandering for its audience’s wellbeing’.[1]
Production
In an interview with Metro, Wilcox revealed that on discovering Thompson’s book in a second-hand bookstore in the early 2000s, she was ‘immediately struck by the cover’ and that, flipping through the pages, she landed on a story that she felt ‘an urgency to film’.[2]
A History of Loam was filmed primarily in Bendigo, Victoria, although the film’s opening scene and credits were filmed on location at Stutkins Fall, near Wilcox’s place of birth.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stutkins Fall is a geological landmark located near Creeton, Tasmania. Known to locals as ‘The Fall’ or simply ‘The Rocks’, the landmark comprises three tall limestone rock faces collapsed against one another, resulting in a teepee-shaped monument above a cave opening.
The landmark is named for General Archibald Stutkin, known as the first British man to survey the area.[1]
A car park and walking path were added to the site in the mid-1980s to allow greater access to the landmark.
Deaths and disappearances
Several deaths and disappearances are associated with Stutkins Fall. Although the exterior of the landmark is fairly safe, the cave mouth at the centre of the landmark can be dangerous for tourists and children.
In 1912, local headmaster Elvis Kevin Sherman went missing during a field trip to Stutkins Fall. Although no records indicate that Sherman actually fell into the cave, for many decades the site was colloquially known as ‘Sherman’s Fall’.[2]
Over the span of several years in the 1950s, the bodies of three miners or former miners, all residents of Creeton, were found near Stutkins Fall. [3]
In June 1986, a German tourist holidaying in Tasmania was reported missing from her tour group. Her body was recovered from Stutkins Fall. [4]
In July 2001, two local school students were reported missing after last being seen at the landmark. The students were found two days later taking shelter in a disused silo.
In art
Stutkins Fall was a regular subject for many local artists, including Jong Dae Park, Gideon O’Halloran and Deirdre Pugh.[5]
During the art thefts known as the Pugh Affair, one of the four canvases comprising Pugh’s In Flux was discovered inside the cave system of Stutkins Fall in June 1986. Photographs of the retrieval of this canvas, taken by news reporter Jacinta Golding, were later exhibited in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. [6]
A small monument to O’Halloran was installed on the site in 2000, paid for by O’Halloran’s son Xavier Wilcox, the curator of Creeton’s Cruxism Museum. The monument was later torn down by the council after it was revealed that it had been installed without formal permission.
The landmark was the focus of Ben Quilty’s Fall in 2008. A reproduction of Fall was later used as set dressing for the mansion in season four of The Bachelor Australia.[why?]
In culture
Stutkins Fall was featured on the travel magazine series The Great Outdoors in 1997.
A detail of Pugh’s In Flux, featuring the words ‘AAAAH!’ graffitied over photographs of the landmark, has appeared in various media, including print advertisements for the Tasmanian International Airport, a TV campaign for the Museum of Old and New Art, and as the cover to Hiro Thompson’s The Lonesome Border.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lonesome Border is a collection of short stories by Australian author Hiro Thompson. It was first published in 1995 by Wattle House. The book follows the trials of a series of ‘makers’ and artists in rural and remote areas of Australia. The stories are loosely connected by way of recurring characters, recurring locations and allusion.
In 2006, coinciding with the premiere of the Australian film A History of Loam, the book was republished by Text Publishing as A History of Loam & Other Stories.
Subsequently, the book was a set text for Victorian Year 12 English students in 2007, 2008 and 2021.
Artwork
The cover for the book features a detail from In Flux by Deirdre Pugh. The first print run of the book was pulped after Pugh’s lawyer claimed the publisher had infringed the artist’s copyright. First edition copies of the book can now sell for over $105 online. The cover of future printings features a detail of Stutkins Fall from In Flux, as chosen by Pugh herself.
Themes
The novel’s themes are resentment[1], small community[2], recurrence[3],dangerous obsessions[4] and the corrupting influence of pride[5].
Several of the stories feature the theft or disappearance of a personally significant object.
‘A History of Loam’, the longest and final story of the collection, follows a ‘family’s struggle to cope with their successes and successors’. [6] In an interview with Australian Book Review in 2020, Thompson revealed that he felt ‘burnt out’ [7] after writing this story:
It felt like, with [A History of ] Loam, I was unravelling a story, rather than writing it – which was, perversely, much more exhausting than my usual mode of writing. This was just before my first child was born, and I was so overcome with anxiety about the possible reception of this book, and this was the one last story I had to conjure. This family I wrote about – horrible, fascinating people. So the book came out, eventually – to no fanfare, there wasn’t even anyone wanting to tear it to shreds. I guess I made a choice after that book, and that choice was family. It’ll always sting, feeling like you’ve exhausted yourself for the attention of a black hole. But I don’t regret it. I don’t regret the choices I made.[8]
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First published in Island #161.