ART » SOLOMON TOILET
Solomon Toilet was born when Sarah Moor read for Vic McEwan's Bible project. After Sarah gave a moving reading of the Solomon chapter from the Bible, the pair giggled and giggled over the words in this chapter. The thought of installing Solomon's in the toilet as a sound piece was developed this fateful night; the beautiful marriage between God and Shit forever bound to grace this fine Earth, with Sarah and Vic blessing this holy union with many glasses of whiskey.The project proceeded in grand ways. Vic took the installation to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in July 2006. It was installed in the Edinburgh College of The Arts toilets for two weeks, until it was deemed an OH&S hazard by the art school due to the speakers and cables in the cubicles.
"What if someone bites through the power cable and dies?" they said.
"Well, if they were stupid enough to do that, then maybe they deserve to go," replied Vic.
It was later installed at The Cad Factory on 20 October 2006. It survived a heavy night of toilet use and was not damaged by any drunken misdirection. It was consequently not deemed an OH&S hazard by the powers that be at The Cad Factory.
The Solomon Toilet project continued to be installed in all the finest of establishments, with or without their permission. The highlight of the Solomon Toilet project was the renegade installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Even though the Solomon Toilet exists as an artwork in its own right it was used in this way as a social and bureaucratic experiment. And what the hey, sometimes it's just fun to be naughty and provocative!
Picture the scene... The opening of the Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965-2005. A mild Wednesday evening on 12 December 2006. An unsuspecting, high falutin' public gathering calmly at the MCA to enjoy the free wine and a preview of the Centre Pompidou exhibition. Little did anyone realise a Solomon Toilet was about to be unleashed in the ground floor toilets.
Vic, Sarah and Jilly preparing for the renegade install
During the speeches Vic and Sarah installed Solomon Toilet, while Darrin filmed the process. Following is the fruits of all of our labour.
YouTube video
Incidentally, on the closing weekend of the exhibition (24 February 2007) Vic and Sarah continued their renegade onslaught on the MCA by replacing one of the Pompidou videos with the video you have just watched. It lasted three and a half hours before the staff changed it back.
The true artwork of the renegade installation was to observe the way in which the MCA would respond: their art bureaucracy was like gaffer tape over their mouths and they couldn't say anything about the project. MCA staff tried to keep it from the higher powers of the Sydney contemporary art world and Vic was warned that "if certain people found out the consequences would be very, very bad". They said that they could justify on our behalf that the first installation was a beautiful example of interventionist art but that we went much to far with the second part of the project.
Our response was that we knew that the first bit was beautiful (and safe, in a way) but the whole project was about taking things too far, which is why the second part had to happen.
