Floating thoughts...
111 George Street Brisbane Australia
Medium: abandoned newspapers. - Jan 2002
 
My trip to Australia was my first travel experience to another country with a similar colonial history like India’s. But these two countries are very different. The assimilation policy of government, an attempt of genocide of aboriginal culture followed by the guilt. The moment I landed in Australia I was told to beware of aboriginals as they are drug addicts, alcoholics and violent.

That made me thinks about my own colonial history and me in one of the most modern, metropolitan city Mumbai.

I found the contemporary life and culture in Australia is more International Multicultural, and this was a new experience for me where in India we have many different cultures but not many international communities. My interest in Media and consumerism Local news papers, magazines, shopping centres pull my attention towards the impact of globalisation and modernity in two different countries.

I found lot of discarded newspapers in trains, telephone booth, parks and many public places,( where as in India newspapers are recycled ) And I started collecting these discarded news papers from different sites wherever I went. The collection of news paper gave me lot of information about their popular culture (for example first time I ever saw a news paper for the gay community).

I started making boats of each news paper I have collected and it seem each boat was carrying different messages from Political reporting, Commercial advertisements, Comics, Sports, Films, Culture reviews, and local, national and international news.

News papers hold a strong influence on society and it is informative about the local culture. The Boat was the main transport to bring foreigners into both the country.( India and Australia, hence becoming the Boat becomes a symbol of colonisation, exploitation . power and suffering. And images on it show the power of media today and it influence in our daily life and contemporary culture.

After two months of collection and making I displayed all boats at 111 George Street Brisbane Australia. The work was open for interaction and rearrangement, viewer were allowed to take boats (as many they wanted) with them.