4P visits the Art Gallery: a blast from the past

The other day I was going through some boxes of children's drawings (all my children are adults now) and I came upon one of my daughter's exercise books from grade 4. I'm posting an excerpt here because it describes a school excursion to the Art Gallery of NSW. (It is exactly as written – no corrections.)

4P lerning to Look

tues 29th may  4p visits the art Gallery

The art Gallery is a place were you go to enjoy your self and thats what 4p did when they went to the art Gallery.

4p got the train at Tempe and got off at St James. 4p ate recess at Hyde park in front of a wishing fouwntane. After recess we went on the moving walk way. It was fun. We had to walk on the wet grass all the water skwerted up into our shoes. When we got to the art Gallery we went on a chair that went up and down when a man bangs down a hamer. Then 4p was split into three groups.

My dad took one group and two volintir gids took the two other groups. I was in my dads group of cours. There is lots of interesting thing to see at the art Gallery but your not aloud to touch. If you do touch you will get into BIG trouble. My dad and the two volintir gids talked about what the shapes the people in the painting would like and what colurse too. Dads group went down to the aberigenal exerbision then 4p had to leave. We had lunch on the bottom floor of center point then we went in the Queen Victoria bilding were mum took one group and miss poulos took the other. It was fun there to. Then the two groups met each other agen and we walked down to central station were we got on a train that would take us to Tempe station and we walked back up to the school.

Why Doctor Dada?

In the mid-1990s, I created two interactive performances at the Art Gallery of New South Wales: Doctor Dada's Time Machine and Just Jack the Garbage Man. In Doctor Dada's Time Machine, I became a 'mad' scientist who invited visitors to travel back in time imaginatively to the studios of famous artists. In one part of the performance, one member of the audience, acting as a nineteenth century academic painter, and another, acting as an Impressionist, would argue about what makes 'good art'. In Just Jack, I assumed the character of a garbage collector whose calling in life is to arrange junk on the floor of the Art Gallery so that the 'authorities' (i.e. director, curators and cleaners!) would treat it as a work of art rather than junk. To achieve this, the styles of various paintings and sculptures nearby were studied and copied. The audience was invited to help and by so doing, learnt first-hand some of the principles of composition.


Since that time, when I was asked to do a presentation for fellow museum educators or trainee guides, I was often asked to do a "Doctor Dada", meaning something that involves the audience in a fun, imaginative way, including the junk-on-the-floor routine. Then, before long, Doctor Dada became a kind of alter ego for me.