Shriya NevatiaEdnaville at the Arts Centre
November 22nd 2006 04:54
How I found out about Ednaville was via my train ticket. When you see an event advertised on your metlink card you can’t help but think, well, it must be good!
The new ticketing system that will come in to effect next year which uses just the one card for all trips will be a great disappointment for me. I still have train tickets with images of the yodelling man from the 2004 International Arts Festival and tickets with stuff about the Commonwealth Games. Tickets are not only souvenirs but they are memories of the travels and adventures you experience on your train trip.
When I buy my ticket and head off to the city I often kill time in the Arts Centre. Their exhibitions can be hit and miss, but when I walked passed the half installed Ednaville and saw a pink toilet sitting askew in a recreated 50s bathroom waiting to be put in place, I thought, this has to be a hit!
Now I’m not so sure. There’s something sort of rude about a spoof of a spoof. Dame Edna Everage is a send up of Australian suburban culture. Suburbia is sacred in Australian culture and perhaps that is why we enjoy taking the piss about it so much. Ednaville is a recreation of Dame Edna’s suburban home on 36 Humoresque Street Moonee Ponds. It is a brilliant looking exhibition with a brick veneer entrance complete with crazy paving and lyrebird security door. But it is a stage set like many of the exhibitions at the Arts Centre. In effect it is a façade recreation of something that doesn’t really exist in the first place. It wouldn’t take much for the pink toilet complete with crochet dolly toilet roll cover to fall through the floor and reveal that there is not much substance to the exhibition.
I was very surprised to discover through the traditional display section of the exhibition that there was a time when Dame Edna didn’t shave her legs or even, shock horror, wear a purple wig. There is no doubt that despite insubstantial jokiness of the exhibition, it must have been a blast to create and it certainly is fun to experience.
The new ticketing system that will come in to effect next year which uses just the one card for all trips will be a great disappointment for me. I still have train tickets with images of the yodelling man from the 2004 International Arts Festival and tickets with stuff about the Commonwealth Games. Tickets are not only souvenirs but they are memories of the travels and adventures you experience on your train trip.
When I buy my ticket and head off to the city I often kill time in the Arts Centre. Their exhibitions can be hit and miss, but when I walked passed the half installed Ednaville and saw a pink toilet sitting askew in a recreated 50s bathroom waiting to be put in place, I thought, this has to be a hit!
Now I’m not so sure. There’s something sort of rude about a spoof of a spoof. Dame Edna Everage is a send up of Australian suburban culture. Suburbia is sacred in Australian culture and perhaps that is why we enjoy taking the piss about it so much. Ednaville is a recreation of Dame Edna’s suburban home on 36 Humoresque Street Moonee Ponds. It is a brilliant looking exhibition with a brick veneer entrance complete with crazy paving and lyrebird security door. But it is a stage set like many of the exhibitions at the Arts Centre. In effect it is a façade recreation of something that doesn’t really exist in the first place. It wouldn’t take much for the pink toilet complete with crochet dolly toilet roll cover to fall through the floor and reveal that there is not much substance to the exhibition.
I was very surprised to discover through the traditional display section of the exhibition that there was a time when Dame Edna didn’t shave her legs or even, shock horror, wear a purple wig. There is no doubt that despite insubstantial jokiness of the exhibition, it must have been a blast to create and it certainly is fun to experience.
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Comment by Joe Blogg
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Comment by ephemeron
great thoughts on the dame edna exhibition - and i am so with you on the bumming-around-the-arts-center stuff.