Curators are always looking for interesting formats to unite community-based group exhibitions. The familiar dimensions of a matchbox have been used before, for example in 1996, World in a Matchbox, at Grand Central Gallery, Melbourne. The matchbox is small, easily packed, and transported for international travel. Leanne Shedlezki and Naomi Shedlezki’s Match Box Projects has been running since 2006 with the help of various grants.
As I looking at Match Box Projects’s current installation in Vitrine at Platform I was approached by one of the Shedlezki sisters. She asked if I would like to take part in Match Box Projects. She also asked a mother with two children if they would like to take part. We all agreed and were given empty matchboxes. Like all contemporary art projects there is plenty of digital documentation, photographs, numbers and details of all the people involved. We were told to do something that represented Melbourne to fit in the matchbox. It could be 2D or 3D. We could put anything non-organic in the matchbox, as the boxes to pass through customs.
The Shedlezki sisters have created elegant Perspex briefcases to transport and exhibit the matchboxes. Along with specially printed matchboxes featuring the project logo, URL and a color photo of the Shedlezki sisters with Perspex briefcases with the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background. The project is partially aimed at an international (Japanese) audience and this explains/excuses to its corny aesthetics. And besides the objective of the project is more about communication and interaction than aesthetics.
I returned my matchboxto Vitrine today. Inside I’d added a small panoramic drawing of Melbourne.
Black Mark 