Curation — Have You Ever Seen A Bunch Of Fixed Gear Bikes Hanging From A Ceiling?
I guess most people haven’t unless you were in Sydney in June 2010 and at The Galeries mall in the City.
From around 2009—2011, I was heavily involved with the fixed gear scene in Sydney… until I cooked my achilles riding from Melbourne to Sydney on the Joyride. That was it for fixed gear riding for me.
At that time, in Sydney, fixed gear bikes were blowing up so all the “cool” marketing companies wanted to get in on it. My memory of the time has faded a little but I think the story goes: Joseph Allen-Shea, the curator of Monster Children Gallery was a mate of mine through skateboarding and me lurking around the gallery. He was approached by a marketing agency representing The Galeries (a semi bougie shopping centre in Sydney City), they wanted a “cool”, mall wide, exhibition of “cool”. The “coolest” thing at the time was fixed gear bikes so Joe hit me up. I was co-running these massive meet ups of cyclists every Sunday, so the exhibition was built around that with some history of fixed gears thrown in there and a spotlight on a famous Australian track cycling family - Pete and Jim Bundy - who I was friends with.
I shot portraits of a bunch of cyclists friends that went on display with their bikes to be hung from the ceiling in the centre. My friends at Incu kindly let us use their window for the spotlight on the Bundy’s who I also shot in Jim’s backyard workshop. We had a huge opening event which was super daunting as I was the man in focus. I hid most of the night with my Mum and Great Aunty feeling quite overwhelmed. The whole exhibition and surrounding events were received really well, having my name attached to it and working with Joe were great for my street cred at the time ;)
