Vacuums suck, blowers exhale. This is the corporeal economy at work in David Attwood’s Dust Blaster. The hot-box space at Savage Garden is crowded with only three people on a summer’s afternoon. Savage Garden occupies the backyard of a share house in Carlton North, constructed from offcut materials from MUMA. In the white, sunlit space, there is an irritating whir coming from the piece on the wall opposite the entrance.
The show consists of three works. The most prominent is a leaf blower fixed on the wall in front of two fluorescent tubes, Post New Ryobi RESV2200T (2022), heavy and grey but gracefully quiet. It dangles as it would in any suburban shed, muted for most of its life from its urgent task of shifting leaves from one patch of path (the owner’s) to the next.
Dust Blaster (2022) is a revelation if you didn’t know that some people need dust blowers for the cracks between the keys on their computer’s keyboard. It is the source of the irritating whir, and it is plugged in to the gallerist’s computer via a USB extension cable. It is small and hangs at a hopeful tilt away from the wall, as though trying to grow to full tumescent prominence. Its visual rhyme with the larger leaf blower form invests its persistent emission with pathos.