Author Archive for Damian McDonald

Pushing up daisies- a mortuary table

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Powerhouse Museum: Collection

This mortuary table was used in the mortuary at St Joseph’s Hospital, Auburn, in Sydney’s western suburbs in the 1940s and 1950s. It was used for both teaching and medical purposes. It was also used to prepare bodies for transport to funeral homes. The mortuary at St Joseph’s was little used after the 1950s, as post-mortems were being done in specialist centres by then. The mortuary was converted to a laundry in the 1990s and one of the graduate nurses of St Joseph’s, Lorna Higgs, rescued the table and it was installed as a potting table in her backyard at Yagoona. When she passed away, her daughter, Pauline Higgs, also a graduate nurse of St Joseph’s was renovating the house at Yagoona and asked if the donor would be interesting in taking the table. Ms Cosgrove did rescue the table; and is also a graduate nurse of St Joseph’s. Provenance has been kept from installation at St Joseph’s up until this time.

To save the table from damage, and to have the object’s importance recognised, Ms Cosgrove donated the mortuary table to the Powerhouse Museum in 2010.

The practice of post mortem, human dissection and embalming has been recorded as far back as 3,000 BC in Ancient Egypt. Autopsies and body preparation have been a part of nearly all cultures for religious, legal and educational purposes. Some cultures are resistant to the practice of post mortem as they believe it is disrespectful and impinges on funerary rites.

Mortuary practice is an important part of human culture. It is the final aspect of medical, pathological and cosmetic activity performed on the human body. The table is an essential component of the mortuary. Along with other mandatory aspects, such as cooled body storage, appropriate instruments (of which the Powerhouse Museum has some excellent examples), good lighting, adequate ventilation and personal protective equipment, the mortuary table must be maintained to the highest standard of repair and cleanliness. This model is made from porcelain – an easily decontaminated material – and is designed to allow liquid material to drain easily away.

The table’s manufacture and design are coldly utilitarian, and yet have a soft aesthetic. The drainage channels and large sink leave little to the imagination; however, the porcelain that allows extreme ease of cleaning of body fluids and matter is also an attractive piece of craftsmanship. This is why the mortuary table has survived five decades: people who had worked with the table saw its beauty and value and saved it. The table began life as a part of human dissection apparatus, but went on to be a potting table in a suburban backyard. It fulfilled both roles superbly.

Stick this in ya fuse box: Bon Scott 9 July 1946 – 19 February 1980

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© Newspix, all rights reserved.

 Hello, Howard, how ya doin’ friend; next door neighbour. Get your f#%*king jumbo jet outa my airport… Says Bon Scott in the end refrain of the 1976 song off AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap ‘Aint No Fun (Waitin’ ‘Round to Be a Millionaire)’. You could be forgiven – if you were unaware of the impact Ronald Belford Scott had on the international rock music industry – for thinking Bon Scott a profane and trivial lyric writer. Because, well, he did use profanity, and he did write about fairly trivial things. But it was Bon Scott’s voice, both in an auditory and a literary sense that spoke to, and for a large section of Australian culture.

Irony. Something that may often be lost on certain overseas audiences, but something that drills straight into the core of Australian working class language. Bon Scott’s lyrics are chocka-block with irony. Bon’s lifestyle and proclivities were well known. So consider the lyrics of the song ‘Overdose’ off the 1977 album Let There Be Rock (and consider how Bon died): I never smoked me no cigarettes, I never drank much booze, but I’m only a man don’t ya understand, and a man can sometimes lose. Never drank much booze? C’mon, Bon! But he isn’t trying to deceive his us. We’re in on the joke. We know he’s being ironic. Even the theme of the song is both ironic and a clever use of nomenclature. The metaphor of a drug overdose as an overdose of love. The character in the song is clean of drugs, but addicted to sex. (Of course this is now a theme song for wealthy, high profile men when they get sprung as multiple philanderers.) Another example is the above song title: ‘Aint No Fun (Waitin’ ‘Round to Be a Millionaire)’. Waiting around? To be a millionaire? Only an Australian would make such a statement. The idea of waiting around, doing as little as possible, but in the hope of one day coming into big money. And this not saying that Australians are not hard workers. It’s just an ironic statement. And Australians get it.   

AC/DC were a very hard working band. They weren’t waiting around. They were slogging it out in pubs throughout the mid 1970s. And Bon, who was quite a bit older than the rest of the band, had already been doing it for a decade with other bands. The hard work paid off. Each album sold better than the last, and with the release of Highway to Hell in 1979, the band became internationally successful. And ironically, this played a big part in Bon’s death. The band was by no means an overnight success, but playing in pubs in Australia, making just enough money for a feed and a few bottles of Stones ginger wine is a long way from living in London, rehearsing in state-of -the-art studios and having access to as much booze as you want.

Those close to Bon say although he was happy with his success – it was his life-long dream – he was not entirely on top of the world while in London writing for the follow up to Highway to Hell. He was drinking heavily – waking up late and starting the day with a glass of whiskey – according to his Japanese girlfriend at the time, Anna. The week of his death, Bon had asked Anna to move out of his flat in Victoria (London) so he could concentrate on writing. On February 18, 1980 Bon had been drinking all day and went out with an acquaintance, Alistair Kinnear, to a bar where Bon downed glass after glass of quadruple scotches. Kinnear could not rouse Bon from his car when they arrived back at, first Bon’s flat, and then Kinnear’s flat, so Kinnear left Bon in the car to sleep it off.

Circumstance conspired against Bon. It was freezing, he was passed out and his body alcohol poisoned. And Kinnear didn’t go down to check on him until part way through the following day. Bon was pronounced dead on arrival at Kings College Hospital. Acute Alcohol Poisoning was the official cause of death. No other drugs were found in Bon’s system.

No one would argue that Bon Scott joined Jimmy Hendrix, Mama Cass, Janis Joplin, John Bonham and others in that ironic hall of fame. Amazing, original talent claimed by the lifestyle that enabled that talent to flourish. 

Bon’s voice is still as loud and clear as it ever was.

A final and maybe bitter irony is that AC/DC, with Brian Johnson singing, has become one of the most successful rock bands of all time. Certainly Australia’s most successful rock band. For many though there are two AC/DCs – Bon’s, and the other one. 

The Powerhouse Museum has in its collection not only one of Angus Young’s Gibson SG guitars, but this very cool original iron-on transfer from 1976, and a rare picture disc record which is on display in ‘The 80s are back’ exhibition.

Scopitone: the iPod macro

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00204707

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

 

Video killed the radio star. Television killed the coffee bar. Or at least fatally wounded it in the 1960s.

In post WWII Western Europe, the US and Australia, people were staying home to watch the telly; and milk bars, cafes, arcades and nigh clubs began to suffer. Juke boxes and slot machines had become old-hat by the 1960s, and something new and amazing had to be found by entertainment establishments to keep customers away from the box and in their places of businesses.

One such impressive machine was the Scopitone video juke box. This model, made in the early 1960s, was one of several that were imported to Australia from France and the US and used by Italian coffee shops in Lygon Street and the Garrison Nightclub in Elstenwick, Victoria, in Surfers Paradise at the side-show ally on the country show circuit and, in New South Wales The Newport Arms Hotel, The Macquarie Hotel (now the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel) and in a laundromat in Oxford Street, Paddington (now Ariel Bookshop).

The Scopitone used 16mm film reels with a magnetic soundtrack. The reels each contained many clips, and each clip was accessed mechanically – literally fast-forwarding or rewinding after a selection was made by a customer. The film clips themselves were of quite rudimentary production, and largely from little known artists – mainly French and North American; but there were plenty of very scantily-clad female performers which made up for the lack of production value.

Breakdowns were common, and most of the machines imported to Australia ended up having to be cannibalised to sustain slightly better working models. For this reason, their success, and presence was quite brief.

Despite this, the Scopitone is an interesting object on many levels. It is an adaption of older technology – 16mm film and projection machinery that had been around for decades; and it is a precursor to the (solid-state electronic) video juke box, and to the music video clip itself, particularly the use of almost-naked female performers – such a major part of music industry machine these days. It is also a very cool looking piece of vintage audio-visual technology.

Does anyone remember using one?

Meet the curator- Damian McDonald

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Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Damian McDonald

What is your specialty area?
My academic background is English literature, and I’m obsessed with guitars and rock music; however, my path to curator has been more one of Museum knowledge rather than specialist of a particular collection area. I have worked in several departments across the Museum, and as a curator, across several areas of the Museum’s collection: transport, communication, health and medicine, and Australian social history. I’ve become interested in every area I’ve researched.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Seven years

What is your favourite object in the collection?
Ibanez ‘Iceman’ electric guitar. This guitar was used by Australian Indigenous group NoKTuRNL from Alice Springs. This particular model is from the late 1990s, though the ‘Iceman’ guitar design is originally from the mid 1970s.

Ibanez, though obviously a Spanish name, is a Japanese guitar maker. Hoshino Gakki bought the Spanish guitar company Salvador Ibanez in 1935, and began using the name Ibanez to break into the European and US markets in the 1950s. By the 1970s, Ibanez guitars were almost all copies of American Fender and Gibson guitars – the market leaders of electric guitars and basses. The copies were very good – in most cases equaling the original Fenders and Gibos in feel and performance. Artists began using and endorsing Ibanez guitars, and the American guitar makers got nervous. Following a lawsuit over Ibanez copying a Gibson headstock, Gakki began designing unique Ibanez guitars in the mid 1970s. One of these was the ‘Iceman’. The body shape is striking and unconventional, yet comfortable to play – rather like the iconic Gibson ‘Explorer’ – and several musicians have adopted the ‘Iceman’ as their signature axe: Paul Stanley from rock group Kiss, and Steve Miller, who used his ‘Iceman’ on the album ‘Fly Like an Eagle’ in the 1970s, and more recently System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian.

This guitar is an ‘Iceman’ ICJ100WZ, and was co-designed by J, guitarist of the metal band White Zombie in 1996. It features a tremolo system: something previous models did not.

This guitar shouts rock with its design, and is at the same time a serious instrument. The Ibanez story is also one that echoes that of so many rock groups: beginnings in copying or ‘covering’ the masters of their art, and then honing and creating something original and worthy of reputation.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in the Museum?
I guess the diversity of objects I’ve researched: from computer control systems that administered the New South Wales high power electricity grid, to boxes of sex education material and douches, to a polygraph, or ‘lie detector’.

Sweat, Lies and Heart-rates

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Grass 7D Polygraph machine 2008/184/1. Collection, Powerhouse Museum

One of the coolest objects I have acquired for the Health and Medicine collection is the Grass 7D polygraph machine.

A common deus ex machina devise for Hollywood script writers – Polygraph machines, or ‘lie detectors’ are one of those objects that are so embedded in the public consciousness by popular culture that to see an actual example ignites curiosity. Upon seeing it though, one realises that it is the drama surrounding the need for the polygraph that is captivating – not so much the machine itself! Nevertheless, this is an impressive looking piece of scientific equipment, and one’s curiosity immediately switches to ‘how does it work then?’

The polygraph works by recording skin conductance response, evoked cardiac response, reaction times, respiratory response, and orienting response. That is, it measures and records your sweat, pulse rate, breathing, and how much you stammer and think about your answers. These can be very subtle variances though, and the machine and its highly practised operator can read these.

The High Court of Australia is still yet to decide on the use polygraphs as substantial evidence, though it is doubtful they will ever be held admissible in Australian criminal courts. Regardless, there are private companies in Australia providing a polygraph service for use in lie detection. Australian tabloid style current affairs television shows often engage the services of such companies, and there is even a North American ‘reality games show’ television production, ‘Moment of Truth’, that uses the polygraph as the crux of its entertainment.

As important as catching cheating partners, lying criminals, and entertaining the masses are, this particular polygraph was used by researchers at the Psychology department of the Macquarie University in Sydney. And although this machine is yet to make an appearance on the big or small screen, it has featured in medical journals!

Damian McDonald