Concept Drawing Ghost House+ Paul Hastie's psychiatrists couch

Ghost House. 1994
Fine white hat elastic construction
approx 5 x 4 x 4.6m
Screaming Envelope, First Draft Surry Hills Sydney

A number of ideas informed the development of the work, Ghost House was constructed out of fine white hat elastic and secured from nine points with fine anglers line to corner floor and ceiling points of gallery two. The form was derived quite literally by the idea of joining four envelope outlines together which created a simple house form. The envelope shapes also roughly emulated the facade of First Draft. a sidelong referencing the idea of gallery as a container an envelope where art is packaged for consumption.

The intention of the work was to work with the exhibition thematically and I was surprised to see few artists in the show utilising the large floor space available. Most of the works interesting as they were clung to the wall space and were lost in the space itself, that from my point of view appeared much larger than its 5x6m size. Perhaps it was the unusually high and interesting ceiling space that gave that impression. I made the work a particular size which made it awkward for people to negotiate the space without stepping inside and outside the Ghost House to view other artists works.The construction was very fine almost invisible and I was told by a number of people who experienced the work that they had the feeling of being inside a form before they had consciously perceived that it was there.

Just before the opening the curator of Screaming Envelope Paul Hastie decided to place a psychiatrists couch in the centre of the Ghost House. The couch was split open like a gaping mouth at one end and stuffed loosely with rough cotton wool and ruptured Prosac capsules that also leaked cotton wool spilling everywhere. Note: if Paul has any slides of the exhibition I would appreciate him contacting me,