If you've ever passed the corner of Johnston St and the Crescent, or looked at the header image of this newsletter, you know Mickie Quick's work. Mickie built the troll under the light rail bridge in 2009 for the TV show Guerrilla Gardeners, where he was the ‘covert ops’ expert inventing official-looking cover stories so the team could transform neglected patches of the city without permission. He was once on file at the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘culture jammer’, and for the past 13 years he has been a publications manager at Honi Soit, Sydney Uni's weekly student newspaper. When WestConnex wanted the troll refurbished, they tracked him down. I sat down with him at the artist-run printing press (Bad Press) he helps run in the light rail arches near Jubilee Park, where the troll spent its time being refurbishment.
The troll has become a loved icon in Annandale. When you're standing near it now, all these years on, what goes through your head?
Longevity has become this super powerful thing. That was 2009, so 17 years. I didn't even really realise until I was refurbishing it. I had it delivered here, and passers-by would go, 'Oh my God, there it is, we thought it had gone.' And then outpoured these stories of, 'My kid was devastated when it disappeared. Little Johnny was three when we first discovered it, and now he's 13.' It actually really delayed my work, but I loved it.
Why do you think people connect with it like that?
It was never designed and council approved. This was just DIY, plopped into place, and that creates a magic. All it had was some metal bars underneath with a ball of concrete, so somebody couldn’t lift the whole thing up and take it away. And kids really responded to the idea that you didn't have to go through adult permission and all the boring bureaucracy to bring your idea into things. You just do it.
The original "have you paid your troll?" sign never came back. What happened?
I was chatting on the Facebook page that I'm bringing it back (the signage). And WestConnex rang me up, monitoring the socials, and said, 'You won't be doing that.' I'm like, oh, come on. I know you’re bringing in tolls, but it's just a sense of humour.
The Original Troll (with sign)
Does the troll have a name?
I have old notebooks where I first drew it. I might rummage through them just to see if I tried to call it anything. But no. I never even really thought of it as the Annandale Troll until that developed. It was like, the one in Annandale. Oh yeah, I know the one. I still don't have a name for my bike.
So we are putting it to readers: send in your name suggestions. Mickie's response: 'I will have opinions once they roll in.'
Where does an idea like the troll come from? A bridge is a long way from a white gallery wall.
I'm really inspired by a brief, and the brief is the location that gets me going. It's like, well, it's under a bridge. On Guerrilla Gardeners they would find the sites and say, okay, this is the site, what can you do with this? All the green thumbs were like, not much will grow there, so we'll do stones. I was the mad-scientist/crazy-artist character within that team. I'd be like, bridge, troll, let's go. The site picks the spark, the idea.
There's a really great book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and my favourite moment is where a writing professor has a class with no ideas where to start. He says, write about this city, and they're like, what can you say about this city? It's all generalisations. Then he goes, go out to the front of this building and write about the very top left brick. I love this little lesson, because in order to do that they all had to go there, and something would have happened while they were observing the top left brick. A bird swooped them, or a car crashed out the front. You've got spark, and it's all because of the specificity of that one little thing. That's the difference between a blank gallery. What will I do? I don't know. But how could I make that fence over there more interesting? Well, I'd weave something through it. It just gets you going.
A young reader wrote in asking whether the troll could be lit up at night. What's your take?
One of those lightbulb moments, pun intended. I was going past at night within days of reading that in your newsletter and went, oh my goodness, look how dark it is. That kid is so onto it. A couple of spotlights, and kids would be able to spot it in the car on the way home.
We're sitting in the arches where the troll was restored. What goes on in these spaces?
You've got the men's shed, a hockey and an AFL club, and down the end is a band practice space. People tell me they just love hearing bands practising. And we're the only artist space here. We've got a printing press and a dark room, so it's not like we’re only in a bubble of artistic community. We're in the mix of community in a broader sense.
How does an artist-run printing press work?
It basically happened by accident. We got tipped off about this offset proof press. It cost $310,000 in 1989. In 2004, only 15 years later, it was $50. That was my starting – and only – bid. What it's good for is limited edition prints. The City of Sydney understands we're essentially non-commercial, so we've got a peppercorn rent. No wedding invites, no commercial jobs, thankfully.
The Proof Press, under the Arches
On Guerrilla Gardeners you invented the cover stories. What was the troll's?
I went and got orange jumpsuits, and all the gardeners were prisoners out on release doing community service. The comedy guy in the show was the prison guard. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel by then.
What kind of kid were you?
My mum had this word that I hated. She'd say I would be gallivanting around town. In hindsight, it was exactly what I was doing. I grew up in Ireland, and one of my favourite summers ever was finding nobody's land down by a railway track, making huts. The other thing I loved was making my own newspaper, cutting and pasting existing bits of stories, and I would ask the local newsagent to photocopy it. Which is interesting, that I ended up being a publications manager of a newspaper.
If a kid in Annandale wants to make things for a living, what would you tell them?
Not focusing on the pathway to the commercial end but just bringing something into the world for the sheer joy of it. I think professionalism happens accidentally. You're so busy creating that maybe people tap you on the shoulder and go, 'Could I buy what you've made?' The world needs to see everyone's creativity, not just the super skilled or the super well-funded. Just create and see what happens.
If there was no chance of failure and you could put up any sculpture anywhere, what would you make?
I can’t respond to a blank canvas but I can see two things within sight here, the White Bay chimneys or the Anzac Bridge tower. Let's go the chimneys. First idea coming to mind: two giant elastics coming off the twin chimneys, like a catapult. And maybe once a year there is a huge ceremony where something is catapulted. Again, specificity brings the idea.
Last one. Anything else around Annandale we should keep an eye out for?
It is a little bit of magic community keeping that's being done down here. People love the beautiful brickwork of these archways, but they don't necessarily know what goes on in them. So just people knowing that this mix is here is worth doing.
Bad Press under the Archway (men’s shed in the background)
(with thanks to Mickie)
Other articles/References:
Did I mention, Mickie’s a Swans fan