At least one of the quilts soon to go on display in this year's Canberra Quilters Inc Members' Exhibition will, as well as being a spectacular thing to look at, give off a faint whiff of strawberries.
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We blush pinkly to discuss condoms in this family column, and blush an even brighter shade of pink (almost magenta) to discuss flavoured condoms, but here is a festive work of art that puts these rubbery items to use in an almost respectable way.
Elizabeth Rose's Celebrating The Canberra Way in which effervescent bright bubbles erupt, sparkling, from a just-opened champagne bottle, is one of many spectacular quilts to be seen in the exhibition. And her quilt's bright champagne bubbles are (gasp!) flavoured condoms.
''This year's Challenge [competition] theme is Canberra - Celebrating a Century,'' she explains to us (between our shared giggles), ''and I got to thinking about what we do when we're feeling celebratory.
''And so I thought of fireworks [the quilt's bubbles are stylised fireworks, too] and champagne and sex.
''I couldn't use plain condoms for this [for quilts are quintessentially brightly coloured] and so I went online and did some research and found some that come in many colours.''
Thanks to the godsend of the internet she was able to avoid the ordeal of going to a progressive pharmacy or to a sex shop to ask a smirking shop-assistant for the coloured condoms across a counter. Instead she was able to order a big box in multi-colours online.
She laughs that they came, thank goodness, in a plain brown box with nothing on the wrapping to announce what the contents were.
It emerges (this columnist leads a sheltered life and knew nothing of this) that condoms are more likely to be brightly coloured if they are flavoured too, and this is why some who get close enough at the exhibition may, Rose says, ''get a bit of a whiff of chocolate, strawberry or blueberry from the quilt''.
She discovered there are glow-in-the-dark condoms, too. Alas, the quilts will be shown in a brightly lit room that would have negated these sorts of condoms' bright personalities.
The condoms in the quilt have indeed retained some of their fruity aromas in spite of the fact that Rose had to wash them (''I rinsed them under the tap''). They come lubricated, she points out, and the lubricant has to be washed off before they're stable enough to use in a quilt.
We wondered if this was the first known use of condoms in a quilt and Rose thinks that,
yes, it might be, notwithstanding that there is a quilting tradition of ''embellishment'' making use of things other than traditional materials.
Her uniquely embellished and, alas, not Vatican-approved quilt will be seen in the exhibition as part of the Expertise Events Craft and Quilt Fair running from Thursday, August 8, to Sunday, August 11, at EPIC at Mitchell.
Living archives of 1982, come forth
It probably won't be one of your fondest memories of school but if you were there it will be one of your very weirdest.
Were you at Campbell Primary School in 1982 and do you remember that night (well after your normal bed-time) when you and 59 of your (year 6) schoolmates went, in uniform, to the school of art to take part in a work of performance art?
Do you remember having to sit absolutely still, looking at a blue light bulb set on a chair, while, nearby and out in a yard, a weird man (his name was Mike Parr and he was then, as now, one of Australia's foremost performance artists) maintained a crackling fire?
Barbara Campbell is centenary artist-in-residence at the ANU School of Art and is hoping that you were there and remember it because that will make you ''a living archive of the event''.
For you were taking part in a work of art which, in a sense, has never stopped and has just kept going, so that whatever memories you have of the 1982 occasion and whatever lasting effects it had or didn't have on you, are, in a dreamy, arty way, a part of Parr's grand performance plan.
For example have you dreamt about it? Dreams seem quite important to Parr because in another of his 1980s performances he spent the night alone in a boat on Lake Burley Griffin, just dreaming. Meanwhile people on the shore made a ''telepathic connection'' with him. Some of his bigger and more public performances at and around the lake, some involving nice big bonfires, will be well-remembered by Canberrans of those ancient, bonfire-permitting times.
Campbell is about to ''reactivate'' Parr's 1982 School of Art performance, with his help, and she and Parr are ''very excited about the idea of making contact with as many of those original children as possible and inviting them to assist us''.
''Living archives'' of the eerie performance of 1982 (in your 40s now, you dear old things), are urged to contact Campbell at barbara.campbell@anu.edu.au