Zane Trow

BRISBANE, Australia—Zane Trow is an Australian-based sound and performance artist who makes up part of the Room 40 stable. He performs all across Australasia and collaborates with a small group of site-specific live artists calling themselves Throwing Stones. He also curates, directs, writes and teaches at Queensland University of Technology.

In a departure from our normal My Collection columns, Trow tells ArtInfo about his current collecting habits and the tragic demise of his earliest art acquisitions.

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My First Acquisition:

In the early ’90s, I was director of the Melbourne Next Wave Festival. Kate Daw, a local conceptual artist of note, was the festival’s visual arts curator, and when we finished working together she gave me a small text painting. When I moved to Sydney I thought that this gave me a great incentive to start a collection of interesting, small conceptual works, especially as I was directing The Performance Space, which is in the midst of the artist-run gallery scene in Sydney. Alas, this collection never came to be.

One day as I left for work, I stopped off at the bank. As I approached the counter, two fire engines went past. I arrived at TPS to find the phone on my desk ringing. It was a member of the Board, who told me that my apartment was on fire. I thought he was joking; he wasn’t. He drove me back to a heap of ashes. My partner’s piano—ashes. The living room—ashes. And the Kate Daw—ashes. (Interestingly, my CD covers melted, but the CDs have proven to be perfectly playable to this day).

I had left my mobile phone charger plugged in, and the sofa cover caught fire from a faulty wall outlet. The sofa had gone up in about 30 seconds.

My Most Recent Acquisitions:

These days I tend to “collect” CDs (funny, that). Mostly from the smaller, independent art music, electronica and sound-artist-run sites.

Some of these are beautiful limited-edition objects in their own right. While the sound art presented by these imprints might operate purely in a digital zone, the packaging design that objectifies and contextualizes the digital product is often both imaginative and thoughtful.

Advice for Beginning Collectors:

Don’t leave your mobile phone charger plugged in.