From the Slacks Archive: Cosmic Love Wonder Lust on ABC’s The Mix (2015) Vale James Valentine
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Vale James Valentine — 1961–2026.
I’ve been steadily pulling together video, photos and writing from the Slacks years (1999–2002) and the 2015 Cosmic Love Wonder Lust reunion that followed, and putting them online as I go. The clip above is part of that — a segment from ABC’s The Mix, first broadcast on 15 August 2015 with , in which Lea Donnan and I walk back through the Surry Hills warehouse where the Imperial Slacks Project was based.
It was the first time most of us had been back inside the building. The grease was still oozing through the ceiling from the tailors above. (“It’s also coffee. It’s burnt coffee and beer.”) The shower was gone, but you could still see where it had been improvised into one of the cubicles, and where people had wandered through the gallery in their bathrobes during opening hours.
“Oh, it was the best time. We just didn’t know it at the time.”
About the project
Imperial Slacks (1999–2002) was a Surry Hills warehouse that worked simultaneously as home, studio and gallery for a group of artists at the turn of the millennium. At one point there were sixteen people living in there, with the landlord turning a slightly blind eye and tailors still operating on the floors above. The Slackers — an ironic label given how relentlessly active the group was — were Shaun Gladwell, Angelica Mesiti, Emma Price, Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy, Wade Marynowsky, Alex Davies, Techa Noble, Michael Schiavello, Chris Fox, Melody Willis, Lea Donnan, Simon Cooper, Laura Jordan and Monika Tichacek.
About the exhibition
Cosmic Love Wonder Lust: The Imperial Slacks Project was the 2015 reunion exhibition, co-curated by Nicholas Tsoutas (Zelda Stedman Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts) and Michael Dagostino (Director, Campbelltown Arts Centre), and presented across both venues — SCA Galleries and Campbelltown Arts Centre. Alongside works first shown at the warehouse, each artist made new pieces that responded to that earlier moment: an aeroplane fuselage bound in community-made crochet (Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy), an embroidered sculpture made from garments donated by each of the Slackers (Simon Cooper), a room of robotic bats speaking to one another by mobile phone (Laura Jordan).
My own contribution was a return: a recreation of a piece from 1998 — the first thing I made after moving into Imperial Slacks — which extended directly out of the electrical cabling that came out of the ceiling. As I say in the segment, the new version was a tribute, a homage, to that time.
Further reading
• University of Sydney — The Slackers reunite for Cosmic Love Wonder Lust: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2015/08/17/the-slackers-reunite-for-cosmic-love-wonder-lust.html
Video credit: ABC News / The Mix, 2015. Re-shared as part of the Imperial Slacks archive project.
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