Volume 15 Issue 1 » 95
MINI RIDE
Austin MINI Cooper roofs, car parts
Full scale - 1983
You chopped MINI roofs to create
this work. Tell me about the
reconfiguration and history of that
piece.
MINI Ride, 1981
Photo by Mike Lalich
KA: In 1979 I wanted to do something for
my birthday and so I went to New York for
the first time. A friend lived there on the
eleventh floor and I kept looking down and
I saw all these yellow cabs going by. Their
roofs looked like Smarties, like candy tops.
They were so smooth. They were beautiful.
I came home and went to an auto wrecker
and looked at all the roofs. I just started
cutting the roofs, bringing them into my
apartment and looking at them as shapes
and colours and sizes. I had one MINI
roof and it was just perfect like a turtle
shell. From that point I just kept cutting
up nice roofs and trunks just for the shapes
and then bashing them together to make
bigger shapes. That’s what started it. Then
I realized I wanted to get a second MINI
roof and put them together as one. I had
to wait for a second MINI crash and there
were very few on the road at that time, so
I had to wait for another original Austin
MINI Cooper. I got a call just three days
later and he said, “You’ll never believe this,
there’s been a crash and the car is a write-
off, but the roof is good.” (laughing) So I
got a second roof and I cut and trimmed
it so they could weld together like a candy
shape. You could stand inside and I put
wheels on it and made a track for a garbage
dump, and we’d travel on it. It became
kind of like a very basic amusement ride
for mostly homeless people and weekend
drinkers, myself included at that period.
SURFER RICK
Model kits, plastic parts
5” x 6” x 13” - 2001
Surfing comes up in one of your
series. Is surfing from your days
visiting California? And who’s Rick?
Surfer Rick, 2001
Photo by Kim Adams
KA: It goes back to Australia. It popped
up when I moved to Toronto because the
idea of Toronto and surfing was absurd.
The windboards are changing that now,
but not at that time. When I moved to
Toronto, that’s where Surfer Shack came out