THE TUMBLE DRYER EFFECT

Post 2.

For a few more days I was tossed about between the assistant registrar and education and totally lost my ‘raison d’être’. I wanted to work towards my goal of leaving my internship with a new skill set in education and public programs, being able to walk away and step into paid employment. As it is in most arts organisations, they are underfunded and short staffed and having worked with installation and registration previously, the assistant registrar valued my assistance. She was fun to work with and in her very humorous way, her parting words were “you have been very useful!”

I spoke to the education and public program manager about this tumble dryer situation and she completely understood and informed the registrar that I was there to work in Education.

There were many days of research, from commercial kids characters to local historical concepts, have I mentioned the football collaboration proposal? Farming, migration, settlement…

Some days there were 4-installation crew bussing around, they were fun and interesting, most of them were there part time, some being artists and others worked for other galleries. Occasionally I would have lunch with them on the platform overlooking the river and listening to the blue bells tinkering. Was I really still in Sydney?

What a great work environment… until the summer heat kicked in. The arts centre is NOT air-conditioned. That’s not completely true, the collection room and one of the smaller galleries are air conditioned. I was told the office is air conditioned, but is not effective due to the design of the build – we had serious melt down for a few days in December and Jan/Feb. Fortunately I didn’t get the worst of it, as my brain shuts down in that heat.