The Collectors
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Friday 12 October 2007
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The highly talented and well-known Tasmanian artist, furniture-maker and collector Patrick Hall likes nothing more than giving a new lease of life and meaning to old, discarded objects by using them in his fascinating creations.
Visiting garage sales and tip shops is just one way Patrick sources materials for his projects. While he says it can be frustrating trying to find that specific item he needs for a particular idea, he also finds many other things in the process that inspire completely new works.
A piece Patrick calls When My Heart Stops Beating was inspired by the birth of his baby boy. Featuring a series of pulsating peeled vinyl records, he says it represents the mystery of cells multiplying and dividing, and ultrasounds.
While the materials Patrick uses are often not worth a great deal, he believes they all have a story to tell. His recent focus has been on making highly-original looking cabinets including one he calls Bounty, featuring small ships bobbing in a sea of bones, and Stack, covered from top to bottom in hundreds of second-hand books. Much of the inspiration for these creations comes from imagining the history behind the objects and materials he uses.
Patrick finds it ironic that his highly collectable creations, sought after by museums around Australia, are made from things that were originally considered not worth collecting.
