Vale Chris Mann

Just heard today the sad news that Chris had died last month. I last spoke with Chris at the ANU Art School around 2013, I think. Before that, I caught up with him in New York in the early 1990’s. In the late 1980’s we spent weekends at Launching Place with Katie and Oscar. In 1989, I performed with Chris and Larry Polansky in “Birth of Peace” at ACCA in the Domain gardens in Melbourne. What a production that was! 

Sad to know that his creative genius has gone but of course, is far from forgotten. I feel very lucky to have some of his creative work from those days. Particularly, the Cybernetics, glass, box, matchbook and napkin package. One of my strangely vivid memories of visiting him at his home in Barkly St, St Kilda was of a loaf of bread. There was always bread in the kitchen, easily acquired from Acland St. There was something very comforting about that. It was a simple part of living. Chris and I also hacked into a wall of a room (the old paymaster’s office) at Launching Place to put in this rather large metal framed window. I guess it is still there. Opposite that room, across the entrance courtyard, there was another rather disused room. Through the window, one could see the complete set of the Oxford English Dictionary randomly scattered among dust and debris from the decaying room. Vale Chris Mann.