a "turd with attitude".

My favourite recent opinion piece from "The Australian"
I think there's a lesson in it somewhere for me.

Bill Leak: To a conceptual artist, dog doings are a nice little earnerTHE WRY SIDE
June 19, 2006

I'VE known some artbags (ratbags of the art world) in my life, but a bloke I met in Paris in 1978 was one of the greatest. Mort hailed from Canada and realised his potential as a conceptual artist one freezing day when he accidentally kicked a dog turd in the street and, instead of making a mess of his shoe, it rocketed off like a small piece of concrete and landed a couple of yards in front of him. Mort described it as a "turd with attitude".

"It just sat there, defying me to kick it again," he said.

So he did. And not just once. He kicked it all the way down the block to his home, wrapped it carefully in plastic, placed it in the snow and, the next day, took it off and had it cast in bronze.
When he took receipt of his objet d'art a few days later, he was so pleased with what he saw he amassed a pile of photos of it and paired them up with copies of a page or two of the most impenetrable drivel imaginable. He then came up with a reasonable price, doubled it, got out the envelopes and fired off his first once-in-a-lifetime offer to every gallery he could find an address for in Canada, the US and Europe.

A few weeks later he was back at the foundry, placing orders. His cold turds were selling like hot cakes and Mort was looking at a stellar career in art. When I told him I couldn't work out whether he was a bullshit artist or a dogshit artist, Mort just laughed, and said: "What does it matter? Shit sells."

While in Paris, he went through a phase during which he wasn't capable of selling quite enough of it to keep body and soul together. It was time to come up with another Mort rort. Once again he set off in search of a foundry, this time with a set of dessert plates, all of different sizes, and had them cast in brass. He instructed the metalworker to attach little hooks to the bottom of each plate and, back in the studio, constructed a frame from which to hang them, upside down and in a row.

A couple of weeks later he invited me to come along to the second performance of Mort's Evening of Meditation. "Promise not to laugh during the show," he insisted.
He'd hired a dingy church hall and advertised widely. I duly turned up, paid my few francs at the door, received my complimentary candle and went inside. When I saw the other meditators squatting around all over the floor I remembered Mort telling me to bring a cushion. Too late. The lights illuminating the little stage went out, leaving me clutching my candle and wondering what to expect.

Looking around, I could see the others were veterans of this kind of thing. Most of them had their eyes closed, presumably already half the way to Nirvana.
Mort could have probably left it at that and not bothered to appear at all but no, after what seemed like an eternity, he glided out on to the stage, whopping big candle in one hand and a couple of mallets in the other. Dressed only in a white robe, he looked as though he might have left a camel parked outside.

He calmly took his place, knees crossed, on the floor behind his ominous looking line-up of bowls and proceeded to do absolutely nothing except bow his head and keep the punters waiting for another 10 minutes or so.

Then, with a slow but definitive gesture, he bonged the biggest bowl with one of the soft mallets. The sound went on for quite a while before we had silence in the room again. A minute or two later he bonged one of the smaller bowls, waited for its tone to disappear and then bonged another one. He kept this up - and I kept a straight face - for almost 90 minutes. I was glad I could stop maintaining control when afterwards we both laughed uproariously, drinking the proceeds in a pub.

Soon the place was getting so packed on Sundays he had to start doing matinees.
The money he made was enough to tide him over until he had a brilliant idea for another conceptual artwork too tiresome to describe here, originals of which he managed to flog off to 15 galleries in America, thereby getting his art career back on track. He even had the gall to call the piece Money because, as he said, that was what it was all about.
So, if you're visiting a conceptual exhibition or happen to find yourself wandering about in the Sydney Biennale, look at the artworks themselves and try to avoid reading the gibberish on the walls beside them or in the catalogue.

That way you might be able to work out for yourself if you're in the presence of great art or if another Mort is behind it all, gleefully pulling your leg.

and to top it off, here's Bills cartoon for the day.