Never mind the election, here comes the Revolution!

Media Release - Tuesday 3 October

Never mind the election, here comes the Revolution!

Revolutions come in many shapes – but how about a ‘pop-up shop’ in the form of a camping trailer?

Timed for the Dunedin School of Art’s Art and Revolution Symposium later this month, Wellington artist Barry Thomas has ignited an idea from 1978 for a travelling pop-top trailer that he has called the ‘Want Mart’, with partial funding sourced via Givealittle from fellow artists and supporters.

Thomas has designed his ‘Want Mart’ as a venue for the exchange of “people's dreams, meditations and musings on how the world can deliver a much more healthy society, environment and future life”.

“I’m embarking on a quest-driven road trip from Wellington to Dunedin this week and will be using the pop-top trailer’s recycled woolen blanket awning as a place where people can post their thoughts about our current society - on paper, hand sewn or embroidered,” says Thomas, who plans stop-offs in Nelson, Christchurch and Timaru.

“The ‘Want Mart’ doesn’t sell anything. This is my ironic counter to our consumerist society and represents a signal point of therapy for people weighed down by the recent decades of neo-liberal government and the soul-less state of capitalism”.

The Art and Revolution symposium on 13-14 October will commemorate the 100thanniversary of the Russian revolutions of 1917. It will explore various forms of revolution and ask what threats and opportunities the “unfolding of revolution” presents for art and artists. The ‘Want Mart’ will double as an associated exhibit from 9-21 October.

Thomas will be speaking at the symposium on the topic of Revolution, Art, Leadership. He is well known for Cabbage Patch - a scene setting public space artwork that occupied a vacant building site in Wellington almost 40 years ago (see http://eco-publicart.org/vacant-lot-of-cabbages/)

Responses to the ‘Want Mart’ can also be posted via Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/WANT-MART-145777132594041/

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