Collector

HAVE A GANDER AT SEAN RAFFERTY’S COLLECTION OF CARDBOARD FRUIT CARTONS.

I have a couple of ongoing packaging-based collections. One is of Australia ‘map logos’ (think Tip Top or Golden Circle), and the other is a collection of corrugated cardboard fruit and vegetable cartons. I have about 1000 fruit cartons so far, 627 of which have been catalogued in a project I call Cartonography. I flatten them out and, once they’re photographed, store them according to size. I live in a Queenslander with a room underneath that was built for a drum kit; it has three layers of plasterboard to keep the sound in, which also means it’s pretty stable temperature-wise. I’ve claimed it and called it ‘The Collection Store’.

I used to work in fruit shops while I was at art school, and fell in love with the artwork on the cartons I was handling. I even made an elaborate, collaged installation with them – it was a bizarre, character-filled imaginary world, which led me to be curious about their origins. I’m pretty sure one of the earliest I collected was the Srhoj Citrus carton from Dimbulah, Far North Queensland. It has a very Alice in Wonderland vibe. Overall, there’s quite an array of styles. There are open-top trays, two-piece cartons and wax-coated boxes in a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on the fruit. I mainly find them in shops or markets, but when I do a field trip to a region I can collect a few very quickly from smaller farms.

I think when a farm is a family-owned enterprise rather than a big corporation, there’s a desire to project an idea, expression or identity via the carton. Many of the artworks are created by the art departments of the carton manufacturers. They’ll have a conversation with a farmer about what they need and work together to arrive at a design. Some, though, are made by the farmer’s artist friends or family and translated to the carton later.

It’s hard to say what I love so much about these designs. Part of the process of collecting is to answer that. Initially it would have been aesthetics – the peculiarity of the artwork and whether it could tell us anything about a place. More recently, it’s that I consider them to be like portals, or access points to other worlds. There tend to be more anthropomorphic characters the further north you go. Maybe it’s something to do with the sugar content of the fruit, or the tropical otherworldliness of the landscapes. I’ve made a couple of trips to Far North Queensland and the banana, citrus, mango and avocado cartons up there are among my favourites. I really love Darven Exotic Fruit for its simplicity, and the Darveniza family (whose carton it is) have been kind enough to let me visit their farm a couple of times.

One day I would like to build ‘The Big Fruit Carton’, probably somewhere in the Lockyer Valley. It would be a collection store/ café/community and exhibition space. My wife thinks I’m joking.

See more of Sean’s collection at cartonography.com