Twee Twenty-Eight Year Old (Exhibition)
Paper Mountain
What a joy it was to attend the opening night of this wonderful exhibition, so conveniently located in the loft above one of William St’s most expensive cafes. Over the past months, I’ve had the pleasure of indulging in many of Perth’s premier gallery events – a celebration of Leederville street fashion, a thirty day long zine festival, and a retrospective of graffiti found in the men’s toilet at Amplifier. All of these fell short of the latest offering from the erudite artists of Paper Mountain, ‘Twee Twenty Eight Year Old.’
Perhaps my favourite piece was ‘My Unfinished Thesis’, a Xeroxed copy of an unfinished PhD thesis about internet poetry. As I perused its tear stained, typo-ridden pages, I realized with sudden clarity that my life has been a privileged one, and that some people have real problems. A needlepoint cushion cover depicting the message “all my friends went to Melbourne and left me here” moved me, as did the several spoken word performance pieces featuring Taylor Swift lyrics, ironic hashtags, and a number of teary odes to “my recently departed beloved cat, Rufus.” Many of the artworks were just printed off Instagram photos from house parties in North Perth, a classic example of Paper Mountain’s signature gritty realism. It was difficult to talk to other gallery-goers as I perused the exhibition, as the National’s album ‘Trouble Will Find Me’ was playing extremely loudly – perfectly complementing the critically high levels of late twenties angst that filled the room. A magical night, and certainly not one that compelled me to end it all before my twenty fifth birthday.
Words by Ariana Gomez