A tribute to Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hoffman (1963) by Jimmy Nguyen

The Locksmith gallery space is a petite and cozy shop front, carefully placed within the artistic niche of Redfern/Alexandria. It is a space that attempted to recreate Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hoffman (1963) in a contemporary Australian context. The work creates a participatory situation where visitors can experience the tensional dynamics of spatial strategies that critique the socially charged atmosphere of the urban spaces. The contemporary white cube setting is disfigured and transformed into an anthropological place—a place that acquires history, urban relations, and more importantly, identity. Rather than creating passages that constrict the viewers to particular modes of viewing art, the visitor is encouraged to create their own place, a place that imbues a sense of history, relations, and identity through the act of depositing and rearranging furniture or junk. Each subjective microcosm attempts to expel and retrieve characteristics through their relational aesthetics which are essentially, shifts of urban places and non-places.

            Zanny Begg’s COFA class attempted to instill in the space, a collaborative movement which resulted in a tower of furniture and junk within the centre of the space. The students were able to go on their own accord to create their own places and contribute to the assemblage of objects. The dynamic quality of the installation saw the students writing, drawing, stabbing, nailing, gluing, and moving texts around the space to create their own aesthetic place. The harmonised movement of the class did not actively demonstrate the conflict between opposing microcosms that the space could have manifested; although, it was clear that a new relational dialogue between the space and the objects resulted. We formed a space that exemplified the binaries of place and non-place. The imposition of piling the objects within the middle of the room entailed identity, history and relations within it. Although, the fragility and tenuousness of the teeming tower generated an unquestionable visceral sense of fear in regards to moving the furniture and junk furthermore. The negation of place generated from the fear of safety that the work resonates; regulates the movement and interaction of the individual, and thus, can distance future participants from the installation. Effectively, the class has prescribed a passage to view the space similar to one created by curators of the white cube.

It was interesting to note that some objects around the room were not removed from their previous positions. They were spaces of a homogenised personal aesthetic and spaces where artistic energy was clearly developed and materialised. These examples included the homage to Warhol—a can of soup taped to the wall with black tape, the reminiscent colourful pages from a children’s nursery book, poems, artistic narratives, and scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle arduously glued above head level onto the wall. Personally, I would have liked to see the interaction between all the people that had brought objects into the space and have others repositioning them else where, to view the struggles of opposing ideas, and preferably arguments of conflicting interests. Even though the class’ interaction with the space was controlled by an assessment associated with the space, it nevertheless resulted in establishing how these contemporary shifts within non-places and places disseminate everywhere.

Consequently, Push and Pull seeks to dissect the universal politics of human relationships in respect to the divergence of power. Using Augé’s theory of Supermodernity as a framework to understand Kaprow’s installation, it sheds some light on the complexities of today’s ever changing urban landscapes, and does suffice in critically analysing contemporaneity within the social realm starting with the art space.