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Last weekend, in Dane Mitchell’s show Letters and Documents at the Adam Art Gallery (on until 16 August 2020), I encountered my past in the form of a relic—Artspace’s old sandwich board. It had become an artwork, titled Artspace Totem.

I became Artspace Director at the end of 1996. I was only thirty-three, but I’d already worked as a curator in three museums and was seen by young artists as ‘the establishment’—fair game. It didn’t help that in Metro I was accused of corporatising Artspace—which will seem ludicrous to anyone who has seen how I dress. That said, one of my first acts had been to tart up the Artspace logo, reversing out Mary-Louise Browne’s original type from a black box to make it ‘smarter’. And, I did love the daily ritual of putting out my branded sandwich board on K Road, like a grocer.

In January 1999 or thereabouts, the sandwich board disappeared. I had no idea why. It turned out that two young artists, Dane Mitchell and Tim Checkley, had stolen it and taken it on a road trip. They photographed it at various stops—at Lake Taupo, the Desert Road, Te Papa, and somewhere between Westport and Arthurs Pass on the West Coast—before publicly presenting it in an old railways cottage in Otira as part of the exhibition Oblique: The Otira Project. After they’d had their fun, Mitchell phoned me, fessing up and proposing to return the sign to ‘neutral territory’—whatever that meant. I got impatient, stroppy, shrill. I didn’t know he was taping the conversation.

Later that year, Mitchell featured in Artspace’s emerging-artist show Only the Lonely. He presented a DJ desk, where visitors could mix a record of our phone call (with some added beats) with one of another prank call to Auckland Art Gallery Director Chris Saines. I insisted on using the Desert Road image for the exhibition invite, as I wanted to look like a good sport. But I did get tired of pretending not to care when the kids took potshots.

Actually, I took the mockery personally, even though it wasn’t clear to me what Mitchell and Checkley’s issue was or why this should be so funny. Perhaps the sign was my Achilles heel, and I was the last to realise. Maybe that’s why they redesignated it a ‘totem’, suggesting it had been mistakenly invested with mojo.

It was odd to see the sandwich board again. I’m surprised it still exists. Where has it been all my life? It may be a shadow of its former self—the vinyl logo has gone, leaving ghostly traces—but I’d know it anywhere. Reunited with it in Mitchell’s show in Tina Barton’s gallery, I was tempted to steal it back, wipe the smirk off both their faces, and take it on a road trip of my own. But I can’t run as fast as I used to.
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[IMAGE: Tim Checkley and Dane Mitchell stealing the Artspace sign, 1999.]
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