GRUFFLING (aka The Great West Brunswick Goat Walk), 2011.


GRUFFLING was a project about goats. It was part of the West Brunswick Sculpture Triennale (wBST).

GRUFFLING began as an intuitive response to visiting one of the wBST sites, a slightly shabby, middle-sized, grassy suburban backyard. I had always wanted to work with a goat, but had never had the opportunity, and I figured this might be the right time to begin.

I thank Claire Orrell for the word "GRUFFLING", which she introduced to me here. I like GRUFFLING's undertones of snuffling and browsing around the feeding trough, which I find akin to the rough but sociable "research methods" which this project employed...

The project evolved through a very long blog entry - and took on board personal stories, poetic analysis, chance encounters with goats, and many contributions from readers passionate about goats.

Goats seem to draw up strong feelings within people. As my friend Raquel says, "I believe that there are two types of people in the world - those with a goat story and those without."

As it trotted along, the GRUFFLING project wended its way towards the phenomenon of keeping goats in the inner-city. A meeting with Steve and his goat Maxi in Sydney's Darlington was particularly enlightening in this regard.

At the wBST, I took a walk with a goat through the suburb of west Brunswick on the weekend of March 21-22, 2009.

You can read about the eventual walk, with Bob The Goat, here.] Listen to the radio broadcast with Red Symonds, on ABC Melbourne, in which I met Bob's owner Stephanie, live on air.

Acknowledgements: big thanks to Steph and Tim from Sugargum Farm, Stuart Harrison, Lisa Kelly, Scott Mitchell, Bianca Hester, Terri Bird, Daniel Van Cleemput, Claire Orrell, Brad and Red from ABC Melbourne, Deborah Kelly, Charm Watts, Farmer Darryl, the folks at Ceres, Toine the eight year old goat wrangler, and of course, Bob the Goat.


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