I was in Welling­ton, my first time back since I left in April, and I was furi­ous­ly catch­ing up on things. I got the bus out to the Hutt and vis­it­ed the Dowse Art Muse­um.

It was choice, but as I left the gallery, I spied some­thing much more intrigu­ing across the square. Over at the Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Hall, a ban­ner adver­tised a show of the Welling­ton Porce­lain Doll­mak­ers Club. A doll show!

I’ve always want­ed to go to a doll show, that secret world of ladies and fake babies, so I excit­ed­ly went inside. The lady at the door looked at me like she knew I was an out­sider, a per­son with­out dolls. But my mon­ey was still good. She took my $5 and I entered the world of dolls.

I was expect­ing one spe­cif­ic thing — uncan­ny val­ley baby dolls. The show did not let me down. There’d been a com­pe­ti­tion so the best baby dolls of the region were on dis­play. Some looked impres­sive­ly real, though with an eerie still­ness; oth­ers looked a bit odd. I mean, if an infant doll looks more like the Dowa­ger Count­ess of Grantham, some­thing has­n’t quite gone right.

There were also peo­ple sell­ing old dolls, the sort of dread­locked orphans that nor­mal­ly lan­guish in the 50c bin of an op shop. But unlike the op shop dolls, these ones won’t end up part of an art stu­den­t’s sub­ver­sive recon­tex­u­al­is­ing of wom­en’s roles in soci­ety. The doll show is an irony-free zone. Dolls are just dolls and if one has chipped face paint, you skil­ful­ly repaint it. If the hair is mat­ted, you replaced it with silken locks.

But there was a strange­ly goth­ic feel­ing to it all. I came to realise this when found an actu­al goth doll, “Rose Red: a goth­ic bal­le­ri­na”. Some­how this dra­mat­ic pale-skinned, eye­lin­er-wear­ing young lady seemed more ordi­nary and live­ly than the corpse-like baby dolls.

This is a sub­cul­ture that spe­cialis­es in tak­ing arms and legs and scalps and eye­balls and putting them all togeth­er to make a baby, a girl or a woman. It’s way more goth than any­thing a black-clad sub­ur­ban teen could come up with for their art port­fo­lio.

Back in the city, I stopped by Deluxe cafe. Deluxe is a cute lit­tle cafe that has been around since the late ’80s. It has­n’t changed much and is odd­ly start­ing to feel like a ’90s theme cafe.

As I sat with my lunch, I realised that a Nick Cave CD was play­ing (I googled it — it was the 1998 best-of.) And I sat there think­ing that in the ’90s, this would have been a very cool expe­ri­ence. Sit­ting in a cafe, lis­ten­ing to Nick Cave, drink­ing spir­uli­na smooth­ies or mochac­ci­nos, feel­ing cool.

But things are dif­fer­ent now. I’ve been to the doll show. I’ve seen the dark side. I’ve seen the scalps, the arms, the tor­sos. I have seen the baby with scrag­gly orange fluffy hair pulled into two pig­tails, in an attempt to make the hair look cute and not like a Scots­man­’s pubes.

Maybe the goth pop of Nick Cave has to exist to have some­thing that’s obvi­ous­ly dark and alter­na­tive. Some­thing that exists so that the ladies paint­ing eye­balls in their spare rooms don’t feel like weirdos. Some­thing that makes a lady in her 30s sit­ting in a cof­fee bar feel edgy and cool.

Orig­i­nal­ly post­ed as Nick Cave dolls at Robyn Gal­lagher.