






Saw your double bed in two, 1998
Mattress, wood, doona, pillows, hand-made macrame hangers, video projector, VHS player, video projection.
Full title:
Saw your double bed in two, lengthwise. Fix it to the wall, high up, end to end. Sleep with your lover, toes touching in the night.
The video is a silent, looped VHS transfer of a super8 film shot from my backyard in south Newtown (Sydney), showing aeroplanes coming in to land.
The technology (projector, VHS player) are explicitly incorporated into the display with hand-made macrame rope hangers.
The bed was my own. I was prompted to split it in two after exhibiting in the exhibition Pillow Talk (1997) at South Gallery, curated by Chris Fortescue and Simon Barney.
Saw your double bed in two was first exhibited at 151 Regent St Gallery, Sydney in an exhibition presented in collaboration with Paul Gifford called Absenteeism: Bath Tub Ring. The directors of 151 Regent St Gallery were Bec Neill and Rohan Stanley.
The installation was later shown as part of Technics, curated by Estelle Barrett, at Craftwest Gallery, Perth Festival, 1998. Also exhibiting in Technics were Barbara Bolt and Helen Britton. See exhibition catalogue here, PDF 9MB.
Saw your double bed in two was presented as part of Space YZ at Campbelltown Arts Centre in 2021. This exhibition, curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, brought together artists who had studied at University of Western Sydney. A web publication is here, with a page about Ihlein’s project here.
In the exhibition catalogue for Technics, I included the following four poems, in lieu of an artist statement:
1. I went to do the grocery shopping. I took the blue vinyl shopping cart, like the one my nana used to have, with me. I filled it with all heavy things: pumpkin, potatoes, pineapple, and a big tub of yoghourt. The cart made it easier to bring all this heavy stuff home from the fruit market. Halfway home I discovered a book shop I had never seen before, but which was closing down soon. On the corner, at the traffic lights, two men were posting something into one of those charity clothing bins. They were having some difficulties. Both men had beards. One was dark, the other ginger. I smiled at them as I wheeled my blue cart full of fruit across the road: each of the bearded men carried in his arms, curled up in his strong hands, a white rabbit.
2. Take a four-litre-tin of neutral white paint, a roller and tray, some spackle, a trowel (small). Remove any signs that you ever inhabited your room. (Also available: vacuum cleaner).
3. There were particularly beautiful skies that summer, and he spent more time looking at them than at his sweaty boots slapping the pavement. Either way, he couldn't have seen his boots - he remembered that he was always carrying boxes, fruit boxes full of things he was shifting from one house to another and it was always threatening to thunderstorm. The pollution was bad in the heat. It was a good time to look at skies.
4. It's a constant clearing of everything to one side before I can even sit down and look at you. So much distraction. It takes seven or eight or nine ripe oranges with the pithy peel sliced neatly off in tangents, then cut into chunks small enough to feed into the kidney shaped opening in the electric juicer to make enough for each of us to have just one small glass.