Not long ago, a ‘call to action’ floated across my social feeds. “Gondola. Need one. Anyone selling theirs? Or could help hook a sista up?” It was from Melbourne artist Laila Marie Costa, an old friend of a friend whose art I’ve seriously admired for many years. Given her line of work it wasn’t unusual. She wasn’t kidding either. Reaching deep into her Italian heritage and harking the call of refused, obsolete, junk objects – the addiction fever-grip to which she’s been answering her entire artistic life – I intuited she was in the throes of (another) new upcycling project… While the self-described “creator of art stuff… curator of collections, riffage musician and champion weeder” later told me she “wasn’t…
