The Gate
Fanciers is a series of screen prints on paper reproducing drawings of three gates; the first from
the Governor General of Australia’s residence in Canberra, the second Australia
Gate at Buckingham Palace London gifted by Australia on the death of Queen
Victoria and the third is the entrance gate to Long Bay Goal in Sydney.
The text adjacent to each drawing is borrowed
from actual online marketplace listings selling gates where gate fanciers go to
scroll. The text and drawing in combination with the sellers thumbnail image, make
visible the persistent narratives of colonisation found in the symbol and
function of the gate whether civic or domestic.
The resulting series of prints operate in the satirical traditions of The
Onion or Mad Magazine etal presenting the ridiculous impossibility that current
structures of power could be reduced to a garage sale, as a joke.