Found object lost

The sign is gone, replaced with a giant keyhole and a tiny notice instructing me to ‘Ring bell next door’. I did – after all, this was a mission. A man dangled out of the window above and I told him we were seeking the Museum of Modern Oddities. He looked bemused, said it was closed, sighed and said he’d be right down.

This is the studio of artist Neil Thomas and former home of ‘ephemeral’ museum and performance installation, Museum of Modern Oddities, which has also briefly appeared in Holland, Switzerland and Belgium. Thomas is the man hanging out of the top floor window and, as like we like to claim of most things in Melbourne, is incredibly understated. When I google him later I find he’s the man responsible for the Urban Dream Capsule and recipient of numerous international awards.

Excited by the ringing of the bell. Thomas starts rifling through precariously balanced boxes on overflowing shelves in his workshop for evidence of some of the Museum’s ephemera. He finds the pocket remnants, which saw visitors donate items from their pockets and describe them on a clunky old typewriter. He also finds the register of nicknames scroll from 2001, on which people revealed short, remarkably personal stories about themselves and their monikers.

Thomas gets increasingly energetic, telling us about the plastic animals he buys at Camberwell Market and the tall tale bike tours he’s been running in the Wimmera, all the time piling up stacks of souvenir take-aways. There are the collectable cards from the (mis)Information Bureau at the City Gallery, the ‘Lost & Found’ postcards from the Melbourne Town Hall exhibit in 2005 and old Museum of Modern Oddities cards, promising Urban Anthropology (disappearing worlds), Surface Archaeology (rubbish removal), Taxidermy (DIY mounting), Shop and Special Events (guided tours).

Making something out of someone else’s rubbish; taking a grain of truth and turning it into an urban myth were central to the Museum of Modern Oddities, so I’m not sure what will be there when next I wander past. Found object lost?

Museum of Modern Oddities, formerly at Queens Parade Clifton Hill. Something else appearing somewhere else at some other time.