Sunday, 5:40pm
25 April 2010
New Aussie anthems
‘And he leveraged his assets as he sat and liquidated by the billabong’
As part of a project at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts in Brisbane, visitors could insert new words into Australia’s national anthems via SMS.
Designers Inkahoots then incorporated their inventions into illuminated typographic sculptures made of neon, optical fibre and fluorescent lighting, recycled cardboard, wood, steel and LED displays. These were hung in the street-facing windows of the Centre.
Over the course of a year, three texts were modified.
Above: The installation.
Top and below: ‘Australians all let us (rejoice) for we are young and (free)’ became ‘Australians all let us privatise everything for we are young and shortsighted.’
Below: ‘I love a (sunburnt) country, A land of (flooding) plains’ became ‘I love a submerged country, a land of climate changed plains.’
Below: from Waltzing Matilda:
See Rick Poynor’s ‘Form follows purpose: Inkahoots’ in Eye 46, the Australian special issue (a small number of back issues are still available from the Eye shop).
Inkahoot’s own site.
Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts, Brisbane, Queensland. Photography © Stefan Jannides.
Eye, the international review of graphic design, is a quarterly journal you can read like a magazine and collect like a book. It’s available from all good design bookshops and at the online Eye shop, where you can order subscriptions, single issues and classic collections of themed back issues.