Well, there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Sham Artist Refuses to Push Boundaries“:

Ihlein is reluctant to admit it, but while he wanders the streets with Wolfie – meeting people and learning local stories – his project is starting to look suspiciously like community building.

Damn, she got me. For some reason, I have a real aversion to this “sense of community” stuff. Ah well.

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Then there was this one by Lawrence Conway in the local Inner Western Suburbs Courier, “Bounded by Creativity“:

Teetering on the edge of the ‘Sham is an occupational hazard for local artist Lucas Ihlein.

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I was featured in Ciao Magazine as a “local celebrity”, but I still have to scan this one in.

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And Sarah McInerny wrote a “local boy makes good” piece, again emphasising the community thing which is vaguely irritating, but fair enough, until I develop a stronger argument as to why it bugs me. The Glebe and Inner Western Weekly, “Artist Finds a Friendly Connection in the ‘Burbs“:

Along the way he has found that a sense of community still exists in the suburbs and that people are still connected.

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I also spoke with Mayhem on radio 2ser, the first Monday of the project, and to Sophie and Anna at FBI on the 14th of May, on their show.

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This blog entry, in Life as Daddy is particularly fun. Seems he burst out laughing when he read Sunny’s article in the Herald! Here’s an excerpt of his post:

It’s fascinating to read the comments on the blog posts, and it looks like the Petersham and near petersham community is getting behind the project.
The project’s funded by a grant from the Marrickville Council. We used to live within the Marrickville council area.
I think this is a pretty cool project. And I’m glad my money’s not being spent on it.

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And another blog entry, where I’m described as “Mr Ihlein”! from j-lem:

Mr Ihlein is having a go at staying in Petersham for a couple of months, adhering to the council defined borders in an attempt to relate this experience to that which he has previously experienced in the wheatbelt of W.A. An interesting read and an interesting fellow. I wish Lucas luck in this project and urge you all to check it out.

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The Art Life not only plugs the dinner and exhibition, but also makes the rather absurd prediction that I will be “our country’s representative to the Venice Biennale in the very near future, possibly the 2009 exhibition but certainly no later than 2013.”

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I went to Melbourne a few weeks after finishing Bilateral Petersham, and was a guest on Richard Watts’ radio show Smart Arts, 15 June 2006, on radio RRR. The interview runs about 14 minutes, is just over 6mb, MP3 format, and you can listen or download it here:
http://users.tce.rmit.edu.au/stuart.harrison/lucas/RRR_15Jun2006_LucasIhlein.mp3

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An even better radio spot, with Anna Burns on FBI, went to air on 6 August 2006. It’s got some great tracks like “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and also Smog’s “I was a stranger” and an excerpt from John Cage, plus, of course, me crapping on.
You can hear the mp3 here:
http://lucazoid.com/media/audio/ihlein_fbi_interview_aug_06_edit.mp3
[29 mins, 12mb, MP3 file]

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Reuben Keehan, a curator at Artspace, invited me to come to the gallery in Wooloomooloo in mid August to give a short narrative about the Petersham project. I spoke alongside ISE and Yuken, two artists in residence from Malaysia and Japan respectively. I played a few whimsical songs, and read out a piece of text by Kurt Vonnegut that Anne Walton had sent me. It was a rather eclectic affair, much as I dislike using that word…And no documentation was made, naturally. (Reuben had come to visit me in the ‘sham on 18th May 2006 – read the story here.)