When you leave the hippie shack you enter what was the forest walk which was dedicated to the Terania Creek Forest Activists.
Rene Bolton turned the old colonial hallway into a forest walk using his cardboard trees recycled from the Spring Arts Ball in the Lismore Town Hall.
It was initially a forest with paper leaves hanging from the ceiling. The first fire inspection finished that! then we hung a collection of old wooden deck chairs in the roof with hundreds of neckties hanging from them. Elspeth had painted skulls on most!
The cardboard trees with a 44 gallon drum in the base of each handled probably a millon people walking their path untill eventually their easy “tearability” to make stash holes finally made them too tatty.
A couple of years ago in one short morning session the entire forest, with it’s canopy of ties, went out the back door! The hallway felt naked but Burri immediately erected the scaffolding and began work on a painting of the forest as it may have been not so long ago. More aboriginal dreaming.
We planned to papier-mache trees back in to put shape into the forest but it never happened and the hallway remains one of the few walls left where information is easily read. That’s why this website will be so good… Zero tearability, no one can paint over stuff, no graffiti, no desecration, not even the slightest interference is possible without “too much” nerd knowledge. No Dealers!
It’s been a creative challenge to keep the museum adapting to the changing environment around it.
The more tourists, the more dealers, the more dealers the more complaints, the more complaints the more Police, the more police the more dealers have to hide and the museum is a favourite sanctuary.
The main street outside now has camera surveillance. This puts even more pressure on the museum as a place for people to hide their black market activities. Another reason to put it all in cyberspace …. how long will we survive is a real question these days.
Follow the serpent to the next room in the tour
