In ‘Play it Again’ Simon O’Carrigan and Marcel Feillafe explore the excess in Western culture.

For the past two years Simon O’Carrigan has been obsessively collecting Alan Gardiner Accordion Bands’ 1968 album ‘Play it Again’. This record is commonly available in Op Shops for prices from $1.00 - $4.50, or procured online for as much as $25.00. Marcel Feillafe had never heard nor seen the album before this year. It is a ludicrous album comprising easy listening covers of popular music from the 50’s and 60’s, played by Alan Gardiner’s Accordion Band. It is ‘easy listening’ by genre only: neither artist has managed to sit through the whole record.

Fifty years later, in 2019, it is unclear whether the cover songs were meant to be serious. The sea shanty vibe and the cover image of the band after the party has finished (crumpled paper hats and semi-deflated balloons in an ill-decorated room) leave us wondering whether there is a joke to be in on.

O’Carrigan felt that there was something to be explored here and proposed to Feillafe a collaborative exhibition. Curious about this strange obsession, Feillafe agreed.

On the surface, the work produced for the show is about play. All of the artworks are samples of the cover art and album, extracted colours and forms: covering the covers. Feillafe is always open to an experimental approach to art making, and O’Carrigan has said he “just really wanted to paint something yellow”.

But there is something else going on here too, bigger questions that are raised without answer in the show, but note the same concerns which linger fifty years after the album was made. Looking more closely between the works on exhibition, there are implied questions around mass production, excess, capitalism, and ‘pointed nonsense’ – especially in a time of great social upheaval such as 1968 (or, hopefully, 2019).

O’Carrigan and Feillafe use the album as a prism through which to examine some of these things in our culture.