<< back | MERL: Art Happening, Emptying a Bag of Animal Feed
The MERL invites MA Fine Art students to show work annually. I submitted three pieces of work:
I have created 3 pages to describe each one. Of which, this is the second. The text below is from the proposal which was sent to the MERL staff in early 2026.
Jan 2026
Have you ever emptied a bag of animal feed? Bags can weigh anything from 20 to 50 kilos. They are not light and depending on the type of feed and size of hole cut into the bag they can take a while to empty out. Like a sand-timer. The mundane activity of emptying a feed bag is durational and requires physical exertion but performs a crucial function in a rural environment where animals are concerned. The feed from the bags can be emptied into buckets, wheel barrow(s), or directly into feed troughs. It is a mundane unglamorous job but is part of a larger local/national/international process of farming which provides food products (meat/milk/eggs etc..) for our plates.
This proposal is for a bag of animal feed to be emptied in to a wheel barrow. I currently have two suggestions:
1. The activity of emptying a feed bag could take place in the museum and be videoed and presented in the gallery space on a timed loop.
2. Alternatively the carrying and emptying of a feed bag could take place in the grass area at the back of the museum where the space could be used for different activities like emptying the feed bag, filling the feed bag, moving the feed bag around the grass area. This could involve more than one person, since the process of animal feed production and distribution involves different agencies/companies and ultimately farms. Again, the process could be filmed and edited into a looped video for the gallery area.
The MERL staff were happy to have me do the activity in the museum space. I chose the 'X' hall because of the existing exhibits in there (an old wooden wheel barrow and a wicker horse) and the space and lighting.
Below is a video of an animal feed bag being emptied inside the MERL. I setup the video equipment and did the performance myself. Julia Hopkinson (a fellow MA Fine Art student) gave feedback on my efforts. I chose different locations in the same museum hall space to see how it looked. In the end there were 7 takes of emptying the feed bag. The final take was the one chosen for the actual video:
The wheel barrow I used belongs to me, I have had it for approximately 10 years. I have used it in my garden to move soil and mix concrete for my patio and BBQ. It hasn't been used for a couple of years and during that time in my garage it has developed quite a loud squeak on the wheel when it is moved. My first thought was to oil the wheel and dispel with the noise but doesn't working on farm involve creating and hearing noise from machinery? When I edited the video I added the squeak to when I start pouring the feed, it is like a factory horn to indicate the start and end of the working day like the ones in mills where I grew up.
Below are some stills from the video, in case there are problems with viewing the video above.
On the 8th June 2026 the MERL had a 'Student Showcase' of the work presented by the Museum Studies students and of the MA Fine Art students. I performed the emptying of a feed bag in the same museum space as previously. Approximately 50 people witnessed the performance. The stills below are from a video taken by Birhanu Menter during the performance (MA Fine Art student).
The reception of the performance was surprisingly good. A visitor asked about the squeak and how did I make the wheel barrow do it. I said by neglecting it. They said it sounded like a musical instrument.