they forgot, 2016
It’s 89-91 commercial road in Port Adelaide.
It’s this brilliant bare square patch along a main stretch of road.
It seemed odd to me, I always thought of commercial road as the equivalent of a main road and having such a prime spot, it’s baffling that it’s bare.
But in port Adelaide it’s not that rare.
The town is riddled with bare spaces and empty places.
No one really knows that much about this one. No one really cares.
I managed to find out that it was a shop front building. And it burnt down in 2006.
It used to be many things. In 1954 it was a drapers, a salon, a dentist, a chemist. In 1935 it was an auctioneers, a billiard room, a bookmakers, a cake maker. At one point it held this Temperance hotel. I found that rather interesting. And a little bit cheeky of a temperance movement to open a “hotel” for their meetings against alcohol. I just became fascinated with this space.
I figured out that the building must’ve been built around 1930-1931. And when it burnt, it was actually heritage listed.
Then in October 2006 it was deemed too damaged to remain, so they just demolished it. Even though it was heritage listed. That makes it seem so sombre, the entire affair.
2006. it’s been empty since 2006. That’s 9 years. I started to think of it as 9 years since the creation of the space, rather than the destruction of the building. It’s nicer that way.
Even though no one cares. I kind of do. So I recognised it’s 9th birthday. But no one else came. And that’s kind of the gloominess of the whole situation. A building with such a vast history and the fact that it was cherished once, now there’s just rubble and the space it took up and everyone’s just disregarded it.
They Forgot is a homage to this. The balloon is to celebrate but it ends up casting a very lone figure. It’s kind of beautiful in it’s solitude though. It goes unnoticed. And remains dismal and despondent until someone approaches it.
You have to care a bit about it for it to respond back. Otherwise it’s just an abandoned birthday, a forgotten life.
I came to think of it as entirely that. A little life, the way that it struggled about with the wind and it’s strings within this precarious frame. It really does want to be noticed.
We had one pair stop, a man and his boy. He talked for a bit. And even just that, made it seem like something was important there again. Just for a moment.
Images courtesy of the artist and Ella James
