Milk the Crate

Two artistes are having a stoush over very, very large milk crates. One in Sydney and one in Melbourne.

First up though, they (the art works) are each described as ‘a generic milk crate that has been scaled up (three stories up) and sited on grass as a place for contemplation and repose’.

They (the artists) are clowns; here is their thinking:

Step 1 – take an everyday item that has been with us for ever and yet which everyone takes for granted

Step 2 – make it really, really big so we are forced to contemplate it

Step 3 – get either the Sydney or Melbourne City Council to waste some money and build it

Fucking genius. I have also seen this done to the Hills Hoist and other Australian ‘icons’. So no points for novelty.

I am not sure why a giant milk crate is an obvious place for contemplation and repose though? But what I can say is that the normal sized milk crate really is a place for contemplation and repose; normally with a beer or coffee and a fag in hand. Not in a park though – rather hanging out in the back lane.

Milk crates can be, and have been used for just about anything. I once joked that if the Chinese had milk crates they would made whole cities out of them. They don’t. 

Australians pretty much just steal milk creates. They make great storage units, bookshelves, kitchen bench supports, and all sorts of other household and portage functionalities. Lego for grown ups. 

Heading off to a music concert? Pinch a milk crate on the way for a viewing platform.

The point of the milk crate is that, like many things Australian, it is irony personified, On one hand we have the milk distributors doggedly making and losing them for half a century. And on the other hand we have us – happily stealing them and misusing them without ever thinking twice about the item itself.

So, firstly to the artists I say fuck off – we don’t need you popping our lovely bubble of pretence on this subject. It ruins the nice ironic in-joke.

Secondly, knowing that you artists probably have no truly good ideas and that you have to eat, if you have to make art works about milk crates can you at least make reference to their true role in society – the irony of misuse and theft, and our complete lack of gratitude.