Project: WE RECRUIT
Year the project commenced: 2004
Year it became impossible: 2010
"Here is a very rough mockup for a project I loved but which never came off. It was a commission for a significant LGBTI organisation in Victoria, who asked me to dream big. Ish. We're not talking projections-on-clouds big, but budgeted for boldness, I was led to believe.
So I had the idea of lenticular bus shelter ads, that would change as you approached them or moved your head, like those 3D postcards from childhood. Some people call them 'winkies'.
And since the forces of the Christian Right and their pusillanimous toadies in the government insist that there is a Gay Agenda, (not to mention 'gender whisperers') and that We Recruit, I thought it would be amusing to actually try to conjure a campaign to corrupt unsuspecting heterosexuals.
Suddenly, some way down the track, the organisation stopped returning my emails and to this day I have NO idea what happened. Or even if they still exist.
But I'd still be DELIGHTED to do this, one day. I'm sorry that it still seems so relevant. Since (the gender and sexuality inclusive anti-bullying educational program) Safe Schools has been pilloried, mocked and crushed, since religious schools have fought for the right to discriminate against us. I'd just love to drive them absolutely out of their tiny minds.
I never finished the artwork or the copywriting- it didn't ever get past the simplest draft. I've mocked it up here as a mini quicktime so you can see what I mean. Lenticular printing is like a tiny movie, two or three frames that seem to animate when the viewer moves. It's really very simple and old fashioned, but it still looks like absolute magic."
Deborah Kelly, 2019.
Artist: deborah kelly
collaborators: For the rough draft presented here Kelly is using Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, but she doubts the image would make it beyond mock-up stage!\
