the stuffed collective

stuffed exhibition....open for business

2006-10-03T02:18:00.000-07:00

opening night

2006-10-03T01:55:00.000-07:00

maggie, tristan, mai le, estelle, beck, jake & emmelene

2006-10-03T01:51:00.000-07:00

tristan jalleh

gillian bencke

looby lu

wendy june

maggie pereyra

2006-10-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

beck wheeler

gemma noble

maggie pereyra

beck wheeler

my paper crane

2006-10-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

tristan jalleh & beck wheeler

"almost finished"

gillian bencke

tristan jalleh

jake henzler

2006-10-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

"estelle poses....aint she pretty"

cathy parry - boxy ladies

beck, tristan & estelle shuffle things around

tristan works some magic with maggie's work

tristans sushi rocks the front counter

call back soon

2006-07-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

this blog is dedicated to the stuffed collective and the first show that we put together. There are a million photos to come, but this is a start.....call back soon for the whole process of the exhibition and also some sweet as shots of the finished product....nice work by all involved, it was brill!

the toys start rolling in

2006-07-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

this is a pic from a couple of days before opening day, it is of the back part of the cafe....Darrens artwork is in the background....the mountain of white furniture is being installed and the white toys are being arranged

maggie and Lyndal

2006-07-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

this is Maggie Pereyra, and other than having a very cool name....she is a creative lady that sews kooky skeleton toys (image at the top of post), and faceless elephant-men (they are my fav).
this is Maggie painting the props white with Lyndal. Lyndal made these giant stuffed letters for the front window of the space

tristan

2006-07-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

introducing....tristan jalleh...tristan rocks. he is such a talented fello....he helped paint and install the show. he has got a great eye for display and can precariously suspended things while dangling from a ladder....this boy should be in the circus....he makes wonderful toys too...the hammerhead rocks almost as much as he does.

per square metre

2006-07-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

the illustrators at per square metre (darren, emmelene, sam and bernie) painted there beautiful and wacky characters on the back walls of the cafe.

2006-07-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

beck

2006-07-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

introducing.......drum roll....beck wheeler: curator of stuffed and illustrator/plush toy designer.
heres a few shots of my work in the kitchen space of the cafe/exhibition space. I tried to incorporate all the objects in the kitchen space into the art work, the floor included...it looked sweeeeet when all the toys started pouring in...

dont miss that flight...

2006-07-04T16:43:00.000-07:00

about a month after first inspecting the space, Darren, Sam, Emmelene and Bernie were on board. These guys took a few weeks to design a section of the wall each. Em and Bernie took the left back wall, Darren and Sam the right wall....and Beck (me) had the kitchen to create in.

The team drove up from Melbourne and I flew....unfortunatly missing my flight and waiting 5 hours for the next one....from now on I am gonna get to the airport extra specially early.....waiting in airport foyers for 5 hours is on my top ten list of how to have a really really really shit boring time...

We got paint donated, and spray paint at a discount...the work for the dole chaps went on strike the day we got there so the work we were promised ended up being done by us and a very helpful tradesman that just happened to be in the hood at the right time and eager to help a bunch of struggling artist.

god bless tradesmen and their tool belts

in the beginning there was no stuff

2006-07-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

this is where it all began. me in an abandoned cafe, checking out the state of what was to be the exhibition stuffed....as you can see the space is pretty damn ugly....originally we wanted to pull up the carpet and paint the whole back area white and install white toys in a kind of sterilisation room, but when we found the carpet glued to the concrete this idea got shifted around a bit.
at this stage there were no benches in the space, no lighting, no electricity and no water.....oh and no paint....all the artists hadnt been found yet and the budget was $1000....