Local artistic duo Snapcat, comprised of Renae Coles and Anna Dunnill are taking to the streets every fortnight throughout May and June with their ongoing performance piece ‘Tiny Parades’.
Coles and Dunnill will be championing unlikely causes in the parades, which will take place on alternate Saturdays, kicking off at midday at Stirling Gardens and taking a route through the city. The piece has been commissioned by the Perth Public Art Foundation as part of PerthFLUX, a progression of temporary art installations taking place in the Perth CBD.
The pair’s first parade took place on Saturday and was a “mournful protest” imploring locals not to leave Perth.
“It’s quite tongue in cheek, really. We’re quite happy to be here and happy for people to go on to other adventures of course but it’s always a contentious point in any small city, everyone goes on to bigger things.” said Coles.
Each parade will be complete with a small entourage of banners and placards. For its inaugural installment, Dunnill and Coles were assisted by four people and a dog bearing sandwich boards with slogans such as “But it’s a dry heat” and “We like it here”. Armed with an enormous paper maché swan, the pair wore robes and paper hats with a gold and black colour scheme.
Dunnill said that they were hoping to achieve a humorous yet slightly tragic tone in each parade, which was exemplified with the first installment’s ‘Don’t Leave’ theme.
“Renae had a drum that she was beating and I sang the ‘Ship to Shore’ theme song mournfully through a megaphone every slowly and in a funereal kind of way.” she explained.
The protest gained an unexpected reaction from a pair of observers who mistakenly thought the parade was serious.”These two people we didn’t know had this long conversation about what might convince people to stay.” Coles said.
As artists, Coles and Dunnill are always happy to be starting conversations. “It was kind of sweet that anybody thought that we thought that we might think that a parade of two people with a paper maché swan could change peoples’ minds about going to Berlin, or somewhere similar.” Dunnill said.
For the rest of the parades, the themes are yet to be decided. The artists will be taking suggestions from the public, which can be submitted on their website until May 18th. The Snapcat team are open to parades of protest, celebration, anniversary, memorial and community visibility, as long as it’s an issue that wouldn’t normally be given its own parade.
“We’re asking people to think about small things. …Ideally things that can also be somewhat universal so there’s that kind of balance. We felt like ‘Don’t Leave’ was a little bit like that, it came from a really personal place, with our friends leaving, but also it was a broader thing that we know a lot of people have.”
While each parade will have its own theme, they will all walk the same route at the same time of day. Coles said that their main aim is to create a spectacle and put a little more whimsy into the everyday.
“We want to disrupt peoples’ days with something unexpected and intriguing.” Coles said.
Catch ‘Tiny Parades’ on Saturdays May 2nd, 16th and 30th and June 13th and 26th. To see the parade route and submit your idea for a parade head to the ‘Tiny Parades’ website.
Sophie Joske
Image: Emiko Watanabe
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