Annette Douglas
Past Artist In Residence
1996

For four months, the Australian mixed media artist Annette Douglas, joined 18th Street as an artist-in-residence through the Australia Council for the Arts. While at 18th Street, she began work on her installation ‘Smile We’re Going To The Mall’, in which her first images were made in the form of a constructed plastic wall, with stitched and assembled plastic and paper sketches of signs and symbols generic to mall culture, including the fantasy of Disney icons such as blue birds and black mice. The neon styled stitching evolved as a method of advertising the excess of products and the sameness along the mall corridors adorned with endless patterns, directions, and information. Douglas tried to convey her belief that regardless of the artificial environment of the mall, individuals continue to make their work place special by including images and objects they hold sacred in their lives.