Patrick Hall
Hi, my name is Patrick Hall and the mall sort of only became a mall in 96 and I along with a whole lot of Tasmanian artists were sort of commissioned to do various things in it. Oh, here we are. Here’s Thompson

Joel Rheinberger
Thompson the dog the the timber dog that’s in the middle of the mall that every kid in the mall comes and sits on

Patrick Hall
Yes, and this is actually Thompson mark 2 So yeah, Thompson mark 1 rotted away and was taken away by the council. So they said can you make another one? But Thompson number one was this lovely Stump that a mate of mine Mark he and I shared a workshop. When I got this commission The idea was to make these three sort of kid orientated sculptures and each with a different sort of material that sort of related to the personality of the Object in a way so I wanted a wooden dog a cement pig and a sort of shiny scaly Bubbler water fountain thing so the dog was basically a stump off of the farm next to where our workshop was I was I have great memories of that and I was hoping to actually take him back as a ritual back to the farm, but The council it just disappeared somewhere on the back of a ute and I never saw him again So I did another.

Joel Rheinberger
What is this Thompson made from where did this timber come from?

Patrick Hall
Well this timber came from a mate of mine Kevin Perkins who’s a renowned furniture maker and artist is sort of was actually the guy that really stimulated a lot of the furniture culture in Tassie really with my brother-in-law John Smith. So it came from his block. Yeah he had a couple of trees down so but Thompson number two is two bits of wood laid on top of each other rather than one.

Joel Rheinberger
Does it give you joy to see kids interacting with this sitting on it and playing around it

Patrick Hall
It does ten years after I did this Di and I had our own boy and he’s sort of grown up with them, you know every time we come into town, he’ll slide down the nose. Oh, he doesn’t now he’s 19. Oh Well, he might!

Joel Rheinberger
I did have someone saying that Thompson the dog was named after her grandfather who was the chief engineer of the Hobart City Council when it was put in, any truth to that?

Patrick Hall
Well, it’s a lovely story, isn’t it? But I just named him Thompson because I if I had a dog that’s what I would call it but hold on to that story. The chief engineer stories a good one

Joel Rheinberger
Okay So it’s Thompson the dog and Maurice the pig and Morris has lasted well

Patrick Hall
he had a very checkered early career actually like the about a week after we we put him in the mall He got Tasmanian police scratched into the side of him. So we had to pull him out and Refurbish him and then the the Mercury did this big series of stories Where’s Maurice, you know and and then they’d have him with them Well, who what was the name of the guy who got stuck in a yacht bulimore, you know So they’d have a little picture of Maurice and Bulimore and Maurice meeting the Pope. So yeah And then he came back and I’m sure he’s had this well you can see he’s had a hard life

Joel Rheinberger
You can see that he’s been a little bit beaten and torn

Patrick Hall
But he’s stoic

Joel Rheinberger
We have your fish out of water bubbler and again this has lasted the distance hasn’t it?

Patrick Hall
Yeah. Yeah. So this is probably The only one that was made out of a super durable material This was cast aluminium and Skills and Perkins they have casters down near where in cat are and they do a lot of that in cat casting so I made up the plug and and they helped me cast it and we welded it together and Work the plumbing in and there’s some sort of and we put this little botulism sort of thing here That water gathers in

Joel Rheinberger
See there we go the bubbler works. Yeah, I don’t know how close I’d want to put my mouth to the botulism reservoir.

Patrick Hall
As long as you don’t put your tongue on it, it’s okay. Yeah, it’s like Harrison Keeler don’t don’t lick the pump handles.

Joel Rheinberger
So I just remember my childhood friend Danny who took great joy in digging up worms and sticking them down bubblers Watching the next person get a mouthful of worms Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that because there’s gonna be a nine-year-old in someone’s car hearing that and going what a great idea