A couple of weeks before we were due to start working on a project together, Sandy had called me to arrange this meeting. It all felt very organised, which was a fairly alien concept to me - mostly my life was shambolic, often chaotic. But Sandy was a very organised woman, and she also understood and appreciated the importance of relationships. She was determined to forge one with me.
At that café I was pleased to encounter a warm humorous woman who was thoroughly intelligent and disarmingly frank. Sandy was softly spoken, and in the time that I knew her I never heard her raise her voice, even in moments of anguish or frustration, preserving her vocal volume for moments of laughter. And there were many of those moments during our time working together.
We worked together on a project celebrating the 150th anniversary of the achievement of the Eight Hour Day in Victoria, sharing office space first in the Melbourne Museum then later moving into the grand Trades Hall building in Lygon Street Carlton.
On day one of the project Sandy’s top priority was joining the CPSU. She’d always been a union member, but never a member of that union. The CPSU were located in Trades Hall at that time, so she raced up and grabbed a couple of forms for us both and got our membership sorted. Once that important formality was out of the way we started work in earnest.
Sandy was the project curator and she created exhibitions and found iconic (and unexpected) images with which to brand the project. She took delight in aesthetics and I remember the way she sighed delightedly upon seeing our re-worked logo “Look at those eights. Such exquisite curves.”
She was right, they were exquisite. And kudos to Melbourne Museum designer Luisa Laino for her meticulous work on the logo.
It was hard going sometimes, convincing trade union officials to support and embrace the arts & cultural programme of events the Eight Hour Day committee had developed, but we persisted. For Sandy, this was not new territory. She had encountered the same hesitance from some unionists in the 1980s while working on the Art and Working Life programme.
This programme encouraged and assisted cultural activities in the Australian trade union movement, including a project that enlisted artists to work with unions on the creation of banners. The union I currently work for, the Finance Sector Union has one of these banners; created by Megan Evans-Griggs for the then Australian Bank Employees’ Union in 1988.
The Victorian union movement in conjunction with the government of the day celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Eight Hour Day with 22 events staged over most of 2006, and Sandy and I were involved in most of these to varying degrees. Sandy was heavily involved in the exhibition of trade union banners at Melbourne Museum and an exhibition that travelled around the state called It’s About Time!
The research, writing, and location and selection of images for these projects fell to Sandy, and it was Sandy who suggested we track down and use images created by Melbourne photographer Ponch Hawkes for the overall branding of the project. It was an inspired suggestion, and although it wasn’t a popular suggestion in some quarters of the union movement I still believe it was the right one.
There was so much about this project that was fun that it’s quite difficult to nominate a favourite event or moment, but I do have fond memories of Sandy and I travelling around the state scouting exhibition locations for It’s About Time! In particular I recall an overnight stop in Albury where much wine was consumed, much laughter occurred and much shit was spoken. How either of us managed to drive a vehicle the next morning is unfathomable. We took turns, but both felt equally seedy. It was a pretty quiet drive to Shepparton, that’s for sure.
During the latter part of the project, Sandy became ill with cancer, and began treatment.
She continued to work throughout her treatment, even though it was clear that chemotherapy and radiotherapy were taking their toll and sapping her energy. The treatment worked though, and Sandy entered a period of remission and regained her energy and zest for life.
By then the Eight Hour Day project was over, and Sandy and I went our separate ways in search of our next challenges and adventures.
The last time I saw Sandy she was being cared for at the Caritas Christi hospice. A new cancer, this time a brain tumour, had invaded her body. Her left ear could no longer hear and left eye could no longer see, but when I visited she was listening to Radio National with her good ear and working on The Age crossword using her good eye. Her bed was draped in colourful scarves; artworks and images covered walls and shelves. Sandy’s room overlooked a garden courtyard and she was at pains to point out that it wasn’t a bad place to die, especially as the staff were keeping the religious crap to a minimum.
Sandy trained her good eye on me and it pierced through my façade as it always had done in the past. And just like she had done in the past, Sandy asked me the questions I didn’t want to be asked, on all the things I didn’t really want to face. Are you still in the same job? Are you still painting? How’s your love life?
The period I worked with Sandy was one of the most tumultuous of my life – marriage breakdown and divorce, regular separation from my children, a new relationship, lost friendships, new friendships, developing as an artist. I consider it my very good fortune to have spent this time in the company of such a wise, funny, good natured, challenging and caring woman as Sandy Kirby.
Sandy was a life partner to David, a mother to Alexander, a feminist, a writer, an historian, an artist, a teacher, a researcher, a builder, a communicator, a unionist, and a helluva woman. She was my colleague and my friend, and I feel blessed to have known her.
She taught me a lot and introduced me to ideas and artists that I may not have encountered otherwise, and she put up with me when I was being bitchy or tiresome. She encouraged me, in fact she never doubted me. I liked the way she questioned my reasoning when it needed questioning, and the way she gently steered me in a different direction rather than telling me I was wrong. And she infused me with a passion for Sudoku that I am yet to shake.
Sandy impressed upon me that cultural pursuits and art were integral to organised labour’s aim of communicating and engaging with the wider community, and I still passionately believe this to be the case.
It would be a fitting tribute to the life and work of Sandy Kirby if the Australian union movement made more of an effort to celebrate and promote union culture and to never forget the significance of union history or that history’s relationship with current struggles.
Vale Sandy. Rest in peace.
