I linked to Peter Huyghe’s installation in the Sydney Opera House the other day, under the impression that I would be able to visit it in a few days time and post some photos on return. Closer inspection — ie. actually reading about the project — reveals that it was only in place for 24 hours. So there you go, I missed it. Not to worry. Maybe next time.
The work involved filling the Opera House with a forest of 1000 trees transforming it into an inverted time machine; bringing a landscape long distant to Sydney’s foreshore to an interior space sitting over reclaimed land.
There is an element of the post apocalyptic to the work — landscape infiltration, the engulfing of the ruins of a cultural edifice — and put me in mind of a slightly less ethereal but equally intriguing premiss for the occupation of the Opera House.
Y The Last Man is the story of Yorick Brown, the last man on earth and his search for Beth who is stranded in Australia. On his way there, he finds himself on board a submarine that is running drugs between the USA and Australia; the Americans having found a healthy market for its opium trade. We are told of an industrious American that “decided to start growing the same crop that all poor, starving nations decide to grow” and since the Americans were running out of resources to barter with, they started trading with Australia, who we are told still had its act together. At least until it became a nation of junkies.
Thus the Opera House becomes a convenient and lofty venue for Australia’s capitulation to the importation of illicit and addictive American produce.
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