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The Gallery Talk is the official podcast of Bendigo Art Gallery.
This podcast brings together artists, curators, educators and creative thinkers to explore the stories behind the art. From blockbuster exhibitions and collection highlights to creative practice, cultural trends and behind-the-scenes moments, each episode offers a fresh perspective on the ideas shaping our world.
Whether you're a passionate arts lover, a curious learner, or discovering Bendigo Art Gallery for the first time, The Gallery Talk invites you into the conversation.
What happens when an artist turns himself into the artwork? Welcome to the very first episode of The Gallery Talk, where we sit down with New Zealand born Melbourne based artist Ronnie Van Hout, a man who has spent decades creating work that is poignant, funny, sometimes unsettling and always thought provoking. From the giant hand sculpture that sparked strong reactions across New Zealand and now resides on View Street in Bendigo to uncanny self portraits and supersized doppelgangers, Ronnie's work explores themes of the self, the other, pop culture and nostalgia, and the human condition. In this episode, we explore how he revisits old ideas, reimagines past works, and uses humor as a lens for understanding the world. Along the way, we uncovered the story behind Kwasi and the surprising inspirations behind it.
Speaker 1:This podcast was recorded outdoors, including on View Street in Bendigo where the Gallery redevelopment is currently underway. So you may hear some background noise during the recording. And most importantly, we acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung people. We recognize and extend our appreciation to the Dja Dja Wurrung peoples of the Kulin nation as the traditional owners of this land. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people listening to the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Lauren Ellis. I'm the curatorial manager at Bendigo Art Gallery. And I'm here with artist Ronnie Van Hout, creator of Quasi, who has come here to View Street in Bendigo. Thanks, Ronnie. Great to have you here in Bendigo.
Speaker 2:It's great
Speaker 3:to be here. Beautiful day.
Speaker 2:It's very noisy.
Speaker 3:And very loud, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Ronnie, I'd love to ask you a little about your past work with Bendigo Art Gallery. Yeah. Even before we worked with you to bring Quasi to Bendigo, let's start with something about the work Surrender. Yeah. So this was, we actually worked with you on this project in 2018 to make these two also very large sculptures.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us a little about what Surrender is all about.
Speaker 3:Well Surrender really is a, it's based on a model kit set, like a military model kit set that I bought that was called Surrendering Germans. So I was kind of intrigued with the idea, the concept of surrendering and what it kind of meant and the idea that perhaps maybe we all need to learn how to surrender to things rather than try to dominate them or control them. That in fact, there's a lot of value in concept of surrendering, you know, and just the kind of, I guess it's the sort of a whole hands up the kind of the defeated sort of, but the kind of, what the position of the body is and the mind is in terms of the concept of surrender and I've just had that song in my head all the, you know, what is that band? You know, Mommy's all right, daddy's all right They just sing a little more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a golden head classic. Surrender. And the two surrendering soldiers
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Are in fact Doppelganger, of you.
Speaker 3:Yes. So, yeah. So when I kind of use myself, it's also that it's the idea of maybe projecting yourself. So sort of becoming, adopting the position of surrender as well. But I kind of also wanted to, I think I was thinking about ideas of sort of control and power as well, you know?
Speaker 3:So the idea that I would, and anyhow, it was kind of like a thinking about sort of colonization as well and who has the power and who's controlling the situation. So I sort of wanted to, it's kind of like the idea of the German World War II as a kind of a negative image, then it's kind of like sort of seeing yourself also as being that person. Yeah. Being actually part of the, you know, the bad guys.
Speaker 2:Which kind of goes back again, maybe to that idea of empathy that you play within your work and that quite certainly invites reflection on. It's like, you know, who's deserving of our empathy or what can trigger or prompt us to
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's a complicated concept empathy because I don't think I really understand it. I think it was me kind of going, how does it really work? You know, like, because I think we only understand it from a position of being in power. Because it's an idea that you give, you sort of give empathy to things below you. Yeah.
Speaker 3:In a sense that it's like someone who's with, you know, who is in a weaker position or something like that. Whereas empathy really should require you to actually see yourself in the position of the wrongdoer and actually feel for position as well. It shouldn't just be like, oh, I empathize with, you know, how bad you feel or how sad things are, also, you know, that maybe you also then have to empathize with the evil person, what we consider the evil or the whatever. You know what How do you do that?
Speaker 2:Tell me a bit about the way that you use doppelgangers and alter egos and your own face appears in your work frequently, including other works in our collection and on Quasi. But you also kind of inhabit sort of different characters as well as, you know, just literally representing your own features and face.
Speaker 3:Yeah, guess with Doppelganger's whatever, or use of my own face, it's sort of, know, God, I'm reading the book at the moment. I've just now got a stack weirdly of books next that I've got that are about that idea.
Speaker 2:So let's pick this question
Speaker 3:I'm sort gone back to it or something. It's like, well, I didn't think about it in that sense. I think I thought about it in two ways, maybe a bit like, I just wanted to see what it was like if I made a lot of work that just had my face on it or the image of me in it so that it would be like, what happens when you do that for a while? You know, when you have a room full of doppelgangers, whatever. And it's essential so that they're not me or, you know, that they're just actors, they're substitutes.
Speaker 3:They could be the, you know, like with Doppelganger, it's not you. Yeah. It's a version of you that's not you as well. But, you know, it's like a mirrored thing, but it's not a mirror because, you know, it's like a lot of the films that where they have doubles of people. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's often they're the evil version of or they're, you know, they're a kind of a reflection in that sense that they're not exactly, they're a copy but they're, you know, another, you know.
Speaker 2:It's often a sinister sort
Speaker 3:of. Yeah, sinister thing, yeah. That the two cannot be in the same room. And I kind of recently thought about in terms of that I probably grew up with those ideas of alternative worlds. You know, like episodes of Star Trek where they would go to another planet or they'd go to another universe and there'd be the other versions of themselves that would be opposite to them.
Speaker 3:Like the Spock and a bad Spock.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sort of Bizarro world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Bizarro Yeah. That's exactly right too. Because that was like probably my favorite homage was the Bizarro Superman world, you know. So, you know, which is often included art within it. So Bizarro Superman were artists.
Speaker 2:Oh, they?
Speaker 3:They made art. They used often go to the art museum in the comics.
Speaker 2:So literal anti heroes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And kind of, and also their art was kinda like trash. So it kinda looked a bit like contemporary think, and I think, but the, you know, obviously the comic they wanted it to look like, it was just, you know, not
Speaker 2:It very supposed
Speaker 3:look like
Speaker 2:rubbish, yeah. Actually, it could be a
Speaker 1:mere Yeah.
Speaker 2:So what is it like looking back at your past Doppelganger's, revisiting, for example, revisiting Quasi after ten years or surrender in our collection, you know, it's heading for its tenth birthday in a couple of years.
Speaker 3:Well, think it's, I have been thinking about a lot of that risk because as you get older, you do reflect a lot more, but it's like, so you know how things change? And I reflect in a little like, as soon as I've even made something and I presented it, I think I think about it very differently. And often you think, as often as the thing about forgetting a lot of the reasons why you made something and you kind of replace them with these new thoughts, which is sort of, but also then because you're sort of seeing how other people react to it, that sort of affects the way you understand your own work. But I do, you know, so I am thinking about it differently now and I'm kind of, you know, I guess that's why I'm kind of looking at the history of the double in literature or in things, know, and how the double's kind of represented in the past, you know. Like it actually is a kind of a concept that's been around, you know.
Speaker 3:And also I think it's because we kind of live in a society now where we have a doppelganger of ourselves. Yeah. That's that we were talking, you know, we were talking about in terms of one that the internet tells you you are. Yeah. And it's sort of control, it's sort of, and you kind of imagine it as another you in there, but it's actually just all numbers and dots and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:But it's a kind of a version of you that's in through that screen and I'm kind of interested in that. I guess that's kind of made me think about it again, you know, that I see another version of myself being created, you know, through my use of the computer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, and it's kind of reflecting back on me and I'm going, know, it kinda, and it's like the evil you as well, you know?
Speaker 2:Optimised, go shopping and
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a reflection of you, but like a not, I mean, must, it's like a part of you, unlike all the parts of you you don't particularly wanna know about, you know, and like, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, all these, oh, so I'm really into stupid stuff or, you know,
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all the things that you quietly look up on your phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. It's suddenly
Speaker 2:Aggregating you around this Yeah, other yeah. So what about another work in our collection of yours is one of your crawling figures looking over a mirrored surface. That's yet another set of alter egos. Tell me a bit about that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think they sort of came out when I was doing a show about the standup comedy called, it was a show called Stand Up and I made kind of doubles. So I made all these works and I made mirrored versions of all of them. So in some ways that work is like a figure, it's like a narcissist kind of figure, kind of looking at itself and not in the mirror exactly, but kind of into a pool or something. It's like a drop, you know, golden kind of droplets in its pajamas and it's sort of
Speaker 2:He has a funny scale.
Speaker 3:It's because No, It's it's because sort of
Speaker 2:a child body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. But that's because I just cast my hands. So I make the bodies, the child bodies and, but I cast my hands and feet and stuff like, and head full size, so just off my body. And then I attached them to the child thing. So there's a kind of a out of scale thing.
Speaker 3:And I think that those ones I was kind of really just chopping and gluing them on. So I wasn't really trying to make them into
Speaker 2:You weren't deliberately trying to them
Speaker 3:into sort of, so you could see that they were assembled, you know. So it's just.
Speaker 2:But there is an uncanny effect in the way that you use scale in your sculpture, even if sometimes it's maybe inadvertent. Yeah. Yeah, so we talked a bit before about how, you know, maybe a tendency with public art or a frustration with Kwazi's life out in the world is that it's maybe easy to see him sort of written off as just a punchline or a sort of simple gag shot or something. But that said, do, humour is in your work, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 2:your work sort of has this interesting blend of humour and sadness or strangeness or that
Speaker 3:Melancholy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, melancholy. Yeah. So tell me about trying to hit that balance.
Speaker 3:But I kind of think that's just part of my, it's kind of my youth as well. So when I was young, I was really into Monty Python and the Goons and stuff. And my kind of cohort of friends, that's what we were really into. And then I think I gradually, sort of, I discovered Samuel Beckett. So Samuel Beckett's kind of always looms because he's kind of like a mix of humor and kind of sadness as well and the melancholic kind of, kind of looping language as well.
Speaker 3:That really influenced me. I think, and I sort of see the Goons and multiply them. They're kind of similar in a certain way, you know, this sort of hapless person that sort of, you know, that's kind of, you know, finds himself in the world and they're kind of, you know, burdened by language particularly, you know, so that language is sort of controlling them to a certain point, you know, so language is always a big part of it, you know. So I think that's probably where it comes from in some ways, you know, so I can't really help myself. That's how it always turns out.
Speaker 2:That's just in your creative DNA.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. I don't know, you know. I guess it's serious but not serious at the same time, you know. Don't think, I don't, you know.
Speaker 2:Dopamine is a joke.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but I guess it's kind of weirdness or strangeness, maybe that's the word for it. Which is probably just, you know, I don't, you it's just probably how I see the world, you know, how I feel in it. I've always thought of it, you know, from a child, you know, from, it all starts when you're a child, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3:Don't have to think that anything's changed much, you know. I think I had a certain position, you know, relationship to the world and I think that it just stayed the same. I probably have understand it a bit more than when I was, you know, this little. Yeah. But I think that's the thing.
Speaker 3:I think it's the idea that it's like I'm probably still, that's why they're probably like children, they're probably, I'm still dealing with that stuff.
Speaker 2:Still processing childhood trauma. Totally. Brilliant. We should talk about the fact that Quasi is not just your face, which we'll get to in a minute, but also your hands. Yes.
Speaker 2:This is really like an amalgam of bits of you.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So could you tell us a little bit about the process of cast your mind back to creating Quasi?
Speaker 3:Think I it's the thing, it's kind of like casting, yeah, it's remembering things and I think it was kind of like more, almost the haphazard way things come together because I was, I had done another previous work for Christchurch Art Gallery and where I had myself scanned all of myself. But then as I think because I traveled from Melbourne to Sydney to do it, I thought, well, while I'm here, just, you know, I said, I'll just
Speaker 2:scan my hand, do a few shapes,
Speaker 3:see a few shapes because I was doing, I don't know, I've made a video which was kind of my hand as kind of like little people and, and you know, for any good reason apart from the fact that I was actually testing a camera out so I thought I'll just get, just in case while I'm here, I'll get my hand scanned doing different things.
Speaker 2:Just in case I ever need that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, as if they were little people then it was sort of when I was asked to do this thing for the Christchurch Art Gallery and you know propose something, I kind of proposed something and they rejected it and then I went, oh well just I'll just and I went away and this is my memory of it and kind of I went five minutes later I kind of I'll do the, I'll get my hand and I'll put my face on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's sort of like all bets are
Speaker 3:off now. Yeah, I'll just do that, try that out and see if it's, you know, I didn't really have any particular connection to it, commitment to it, it was sort of and then it was just like they resoundingly loved it. Reflecting back I think it was because it sort of matched kind of an idea that they had of something that would draw attention, which I think is probably a part of public art as well. It's not that it's supposed to be enlightening or, you know, whatever, you know, art itself isn't the thing that's changing, it's the fact that it's something different in space, you know, that
Speaker 2:The sort of surprise of discovering this strange or unexpected thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I always think it's just the thing that stops you when you're walking to somewhere else and you kind of look up and you go oh what's that?' you know and whatever reaction you have to you know because then I think you know people just go 'what's that?' and then depending what kind of person you know you either go 'bloody who paid for that?' or you go, wow, that's, you know, oh, I love art. How interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This must be a meditation on beauty and morality. Let me ask you, though, about people's reactions. Yeah. Because Quasi has caused a sensation everywhere he's gone. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And sort of developed a cult following, but also, you know, one of those outlets that people love to hate, which is very typical of public art, isn't it? That it's very kind of divisive and a great topic for social media debate and Can public you tell me a bit about the responses he's had and how that struck you as an artist or surprised you?
Speaker 3:Think the surprise was how quickly stuff like that, it was a new thing for me in some ways it was kind of it was kind of I guess even early on for that kind of the social media kind of stuff and you know that's not the news news you know like I was probably still the TV news kind of person, you
Speaker 2:know, Legacy media.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But also how much it kind of went around the world and became a kind of a symbol for either for what's wrong with the world, you know, but it was kind of also positive as well. It was sort of interesting because it was almost concocted, I felt like this is the kind of a It was
Speaker 2:kind kind of Sensation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, became, I think it was sort of like what we're much more familiar with now which is kind of clickbait, you know? Yeah. Well that sense that, whereas in fact you know, my aim was to perhaps, you know, for people to reflect because I think that's what artists try to do, you know what, you want people to reflect on their own reactions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Whereas it doesn't that you can't really control that, you know, so you can't say, well, you know, you're actually right when you say you don't like it. Yeah. But you got to but you say, why don't you like something? You know, what is it? That's what was interested.
Speaker 3:But I want people to go, well, why don't I like it? Or, you know, why am I thinking the way I'm thinking about it? And yet that doesn't, it's, you can't really control that. So really, so that's why you get divided, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, so for me, it was at the beginning of that kind of world, you know, where it was like, so things become polarised and, you know, there's a real sort of, oh, do you like it or not like it? You know, thumbs up, thumbs down and, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very much the kind of type of conversation that social media can hold. This is very like binary, antagonistic sort of conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, So you really, yeah, yeah. So, like there's, in America I've seen it used by kind of sort of traditional trad, it's a guy called, or a site called Trad West, which is about families, you know.
Speaker 2:Old fashioned values.
Speaker 3:Yeah, old fashioned, supposedly old fashioned values, know, kind of, and that is an example of the, you know, the decadence of Western civilization.
Speaker 2:The kind of rot of the modern world. Let me ask you about that, Ronnie, because Quasi, obviously, his name alludes to deliberately or otherwise to Quasimodo, which is a kind of social moral novel about, you know, lots of things, a commentary on corruption of power and so on. But that Quasimodo is a kind of moral tale figure who, you know, the viewer, the reader of that book is invited to look past the kind of shocking appearance of Quasimodo to, you know, see that he's been unjustly persecuted and that he's actually this kind of pure moral kind soul.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Is that remotely of interest to you with this quasi to sort of prompt people to reflect on their response, their first impression or?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because like in the story, you know, that's not even his real name, you know? Yeah. It's like that's the name given to him by the actual monster of the story, you know, whatever the-
Speaker 2:The corrupt.
Speaker 3:Priest guy, whatever, you know, like who's, and I guess that was part of that kind of romantic, the romantic idea, you know, it's kind of like what's inside is what's important about it.
Speaker 2:And what's the true nature of beauty, you know, is it the surface or?
Speaker 3:And the whole thing about the crowd, you know,
Speaker 2:were
Speaker 3:kind of, you know, just going along with it, kind of like baying for his blood, you know? And, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it might sound a bit earnest, but that is an important cautionary tale for our time, it? In a time of kind of whipped up moral panic or groupthink on the internet
Speaker 3:to sort of
Speaker 2:pause and reflect like, I do I want do to get swept along with this tide of outrage?
Speaker 3:So it's always, know, I always want to have the question of why do I respond to things in that way? You know, where does it come from? You know, it's like, you know, rather than just being outraged. Yep. You know, cause as I was saying, I think at that time, I think, and I've said this before, that I think I was probably most interested in the concept of empathy, you know, of how you empathise with something or that it can it, can you, can you put putting yourself in the place of the thing so that in some ways, you know, quasi and all the hating of it or whatever people feel about it, they have to imagine themselves being the victim of that kind of attention, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, you know, I just for mostly what I saw a kind of total lack of it.
Speaker 2:So that, if I may ask you, that idea of, a kind of victimised figure or maybe an outsider, as you've described in your practise, whether or not they're sort of victimised or they just sort of have a weirdness or a sort of misfit quality is a recurring interest in your work.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which maybe we
Speaker 3:can talk about separately in relation
Speaker 2:to other things. But you know, Quasi is sort of another incarnation of the outsider. Yes. And yeah, maybe if you could talk a little bit about that idea of, you know, what what does coming face to face with an outsider cause us to do? Or, you know, what do you hope that people will, you know, reflect on or?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I think it's kind of like, I guess because the Kwasi is literally outside, it's a way, you know, that it was kind of not in the gallery, it was not considered sort of art in that sense, so it sort of operates between just a sign and art, you know, and so it's sort of in between being included and excluded at the same time, you know, so and, you know, or thinking differently, you know, like being an artist as well, like an artist, it's kind of like you go, you know, that's why artists, I think, just tend to hang out with other artists because they seem to talk. I guess I was always thinking this is the normal. So I was thinking my position was the normal position because often I go, you know, it's like people go, Oh, that's really weird. And I'll go, No, no, it's just what, you know, I would go, well, I thought this is what artists do.
Speaker 2:But maybe you should just tell us briefly about the work's origins. So it was commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery. Tell us that story a little bit.
Speaker 3:Okay, so people might know that in Christchurch there was a big earthquake and as a consequence, when I was living there, I wasn't, was still living here. And so the Gallery had closed down. And then after many years, they were about to reopen. They'd been, you know, they'd made everything stronger, stuff like that, but they needed to have a sort of a sign so that people would know that the gallery was open and to draw their attention to it. So, you know, curator at the time there asked me to come up with something because I was quite good at backing big things for a little, not very a lot for not a lot of money.
Speaker 2:As you talked about, an unfavourite brief to receive. Yeah, you go,
Speaker 3:you know, and so, you know, so in some ways it felt like we kind of came to this together in some ways. So the idea of quasi was to sit on top of the gallery to say the gallery is open, you know, so that people walking past would see that something had changed and perhaps be drawn in to look at, to see what was going on. And, you know, you know, really achieved it's achieved the brief, I think in some because it was kind of instant and there was a lot of, as I said, it was like all this new stuff. There was a they had a kind of a what do they call it? Like a quiz sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, like, do you like it or hate it? Oh, yes. And it was like
Speaker 2:Like a poll?
Speaker 3:Poll. That's an opinion poll and the paper, whatever, you know, online. It was like and it was like, you know, the guy from the who's now the director of the gallery came and he was in the publicity. He went, Oh, you know, he went even though it kind of didn't come up positively, was But quite he said he went, 5,000 people in a small town.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of people actually did the poll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is brilliant.
Speaker 3:Brilliant. He said it's just, you know, he was really happy. He was going, Oh my God, you know, so many all these people are looking at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they were open. I should say for the record, Quasi's tenure in View Street in Bendigo will be while the Gallery is closed, not open. So he'll be watching over the construction, the transformation and yeah, also a signal that New Street is open and a cultural hub of the city where there'll be lots of other things happening as And
Speaker 3:that things are changing and that too. Yeah. Also just to think about what's going on. Yeah. The Gallery is a big part of the community
Speaker 2:as well. Totally. Yeah. And yeah, again, you know, interesting rereading Hunchback of Notre Dame and Quasimodo is from his rooftop in Paris, overlooking a lot of change in the city. A lot of that novel is about architectural change and the redevelopment of the city.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's the image I kind of had on top of the roof looking down. Yeah, watching over. Yeah, watching over and yeah, kind of connected, but disconnected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, brilliant. Well, I want to ask you one more thing, which is just because it's something you've talked about a lot with Quasi, which is the reference to a sign, the idea of a sign, which is kind of echoed in the hand's position, is almost sort of suggestive of sign language or, you know, a hand sign of some type. So what do you mean, Ronnie, when you describe something as a sign as much as or even more than a work of art?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess in a kind of a, you know, an advertising kind of way, rather than that kind of a, you know, philosophical or, you know, theoretical way.
Speaker 2:It's a
Speaker 3:sort of a, so I think I once said that, like being from New Zealand, and I think I kind of started to see that a lot of New Zealand artists work with signs. You know, like we've got the famous Colin McCahon, who basically was inspired by a sign writer, you know, to make his kind of text based works. And I kind of started to see that maybe you could start seeing art as a kind of a it's not a signifier in terms of pointing to something in that sense or a stand in, it's more like it's sort of, you know, it just, it sort of, guess it does, it just points to something that's And I'm kind of obsessed with things like mascots and, know, people-
Speaker 2:the Like symbols of things?
Speaker 3:Or the people inside those costumes, blah, blah, blah. They're kind of like people, but they're, you know, like Disneyland and stuff like that, but also the football kind of mascots and, you know, or the people who have the job where they have to dress up in a costume and sort
Speaker 2:of a moat. Basically a moat.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And it's kind of like I find it quite strange. It's kind of an uncanny thing. So they're kind of signs as well. They're sort of but they're kind of live.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, they're kind they're sort of advertising, but they're they're they kind of have another quality of kind of uncanny, you know, animated sort of piece of fruit or something. Yes. It's like, you know, I find that I was and I kind of empathize with the person whose job it is to do that.
Speaker 2:I think that's fascinating. And also because it is a weirdly like emotional labor heavy job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 2:huge feel like you're always seeing them comforting children and you know, meeting super fans. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Having to
Speaker 2:give hugs and take selfies.
Speaker 3:But they're kind of an odd, you know, I guess it's part of that thing of kind of an, you know, holding an odd position in society, you know? So that's why I've kind of looked at stand up comics and as well, you know, and sort of guess the UFO thing, you know, they're kind of so with stand up comics as well, they're kind of not part of us, you know, but they're sort of in between us and them. They're kind of a sign that points to language and how we use language, you know, so that, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they come to sort of represent something. Yeah. Know that idea of something that's sort of not chosen is interesting, kind of not within. Brilliant, Ronnie.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this first episode of The Gallery Talk. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and that it offered some deeper insights into Ronnie's work. We'd love you to visit us here in Bendigo to come and experience in person as he watches over our building site from his rooftop on View Street. Until next time, thanks for listening.