I was in Coburg going from the library to the deli to do my shopping when I encountered Ria Green and Aliça Bryson-Haynes applying gold leaf to a telephone junction tube. Green and Bryson-Haynes were wearing matching tops in a gold fabric. As well as applying gold leaf to the normally grey utilitarian telephone junction they were also applying gold leaf to other functional and non-functional items along Sydney Road in Coburg. Green and Bryson-Haynes were also conducting a survey about the colours and styles that we wanted to see more of in Coburg.
Encountering the object covered in gold leaf made me question if I could remember it before this transformation. I must have walked passed it thousands of times but this was the first time that I actually saw it. The gold leaf was a continuation of Ria Green and Aliça Bryson-Haynes earlier work, Everyday Monument in MoreArts 2014. That time a nineteenth century iron lamp post outside the Brunswick Town Hall is covered in gold leaf.
Ria Green and Aliça Bryson Haynes, Everyday Monument, 2014
The gold leaf application reminded me of Bianca Faye and Tim Spicer’s Welcome to Cocker Alley. Welcome to Cocker Alley part of the City of Melbourne’s Laneways Commissions 2008 where gold leaf was applied to the external pipes of the Nicholas Building in Cocker Alley. In both urban interventions the gold leaf was applied to remind Melbourne that it was the gateway to the Victorian gold fields. Likewise the shops along Sydney Road grew with the gold rush.
It was part of Colours of Coburg, “an initiative by”/“collaboration” (?) with the Coburg Traders Association. There was some idea to identify ‘what colour or colours are Coburg?’ but really to create some atmosphere for the trading strip. It appears, from their Facebook page, that the choir that was singing softly in the Victoria Street Mall was also part of Colours of Coburg.
Coburg traders have been trying to create some atmosphere for the shopping strip over fifty years. At least this interactive urban intervention is more tasteful than being the location for Victoria’s first go-go dance marathon, won by 15 year old Sue Grewar in November 1966.
Black Mark 