POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Shoe on tricycle from Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony

Object No. 2001/84/11

This tricycle shoe has significance in material culture due to its role in the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games, an important event in the recent history of Sydney and NSW. It has the potential to communicate in exhibitions and publications about the Sydney Olympic Games and has significance in its design, making, use and the cultural meanings ascribed to it. The closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games took place on Sunday 1 October at Stadium Australia, Homebush Bay. It included solemn formalities, an informal parade of athletes and a farewell party that took the form of an unregimented parade with floats that celebrated and often mocked aspects of Australian popular culture. The intention was to conduct the ceremony with decorum until the extinction of the Olympic flame, and then to unleash a party. The artistic director of the closing ceremony David Atkins explained 'The athletes have finished competition, and are ready to party, and we have set about creating a party to end all parties. We have decided to invite everyone into our giant Australian backyard - fully equipped with Hills Hoists, barbecues, an eclectic mix of music, performers and all manner of Australiana. Australians have a tradition of throwing great parties, and this one will be imbued with a sense of fun, larrikinism and goodwill.' According to Ric Birch (speaking on Channel 7's 'Olympic Sunrise'), the opening ceremony was to represent Australia at large, but the closing ceremony was Sydney's show. Irreverent humour was evident from the opening (untelevised) sequence, in which the sports satirists Roy Slaven and HG Nelson welcomed the crowd and coached them in how to use the contents of the small eskies that each of the 110,000 audience members could find on their seats. These contained essential Australian backyard barbecue equipment including fly-swats which, when held aloft, gave a distinctively Australian flavour to the Mexican wave. This shoe tricycle appeared with the final float in the 'Parade of Icons'. Based on the Australian film 'Priscilla Queen of the Desert', the float took the form of drag queens Vanessa Wagner and Cindy Pastel riding the Priscilla bus, accompanied by 62 drag queens, some riding designer-shoe tricycles. The inclusion of drag queens had been revealed to the public in August and was condemned as offensive by some critics including Rev Fred Nile. Kylie Minogue concluded the 'Parade of Icons' with her hot song 'On a Night Like This'. Licorice allsorts is the name given to a well-known confectionery assortment first created by the Bassett company in England in 1899. They include a variety of colourful fruit and coconut pastels each with a sweet licorice centre. The three-layered, multi-coloured variety is dominant in the design of the shoe. There is no obvious connection between licorice allsorts and Priscilla Queen of the Desert. As well as the licorice allsorts tricycle, there were others based on flowers, striped fur and a thong. The wit and quality of the 'Parade of Icons' showed the influence of the late Peter Tully as artistic director of the Mardi Gras in, for example, the 'pit chicks' in silver hot pants who carried the eyelashes, stiletto shoes and giant mascara for the Priscilla bus. The opening ceremony told a mythic story of nation-building that dwarfed individuals. It was evocative and subtle. The closing ceremony, however, celebrated personality, celebrity and attitude. Loud and brash, more like a rock concert than a profoundly theatrical event, it was an extravagant send-off -- fun, festive, shamelessly excessive and decidedly weird.