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| One of many Mintox inventions, both imaginary and real |
This exhibition is my second collaboration with Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, following the successful weirdness of 2009's Odditoreum, with which I was invited to write fake histories for various strange objects found in the vast museum basement. This project takes a different tack, being a more cohesive survey of the work of one Henry
Archibald Mintox – an inventor so ahead of his time he could only be fictional and, by his own account, grossly unrecognised.
The exhibition will feature actual
mechanical inventions from the Powerhouse archive, re-imagined as
creations by Henry A. Mintox, and with accompanying text from the previously published book, The Oopsatoreum: inventions of Henry A Mintox.
Aside from being fun, a deeper concept behind the project involves the importance of play in creativity and technical advancement, raising the important question: is success necessarily a measure of true originality?
