Beyond the obvious prank, the NUCA cards documented a range of ephemeral art practices from around the country – practices which usually slip into obscurity and miss out on the chance to enter the history books. For Melbourne’s NextWave Festival, a group of four of us produced a series of these collector cards. For the cards we formed the Network of Un-Collectable Artists (NUCA) and organised a nation wide call out where people were invited to submit their various projects to be featured on “Australia’s Most Un-Collectable Artists Bubble-Gum Collector Cards”. Each project was ranked on a range of somewhat arbitrary statistics such as; Was it done for love or money?, Was it legal or illegal?, Was it ephemeral or permanent? etc these ranked their “uncollectabilty” and determined the top 50 that made the cards.
Each card contained an image of the work, a short description and their statistics showing how they were ranked and was packaged in randomised packs of 8 with a stick of orange flavoured bubblegum. To collect all 50 you had to swap doubles with others to collect all 50.

During the festival nomadic NUCA vendors sold the cards out of clear pockets sewn into the inside of jackets with the NUCA logo printed on the back- to make it easy for the frantic punters to find us in a crowd. Soon after the festival, the cards were sold out and we decide to plunge the surplus back into the Network and offered the UNCO grants, where people were invited to submit proposals of their outlandish uncollectable projects that needed a little start up fund. 

The cards weren’t the end of NUCA. NUCA continues to operate as a nation-wide affiliation connecting those who gravitate towards ephemeral projects, participatory experiences, illegal art actions, and activities that oddify everyday life and we run an e-list where members can post information about their up and coming uncollectable activities, collaborate on new projects and connect with Un-Collectable others.

Somewhat ironically, the NUCA cards are held in the Wollongong City Gallery Collection and were featured in the Multiplicity exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.