Looking Forward
Text: Gabriel Knowles
There are only a few out there who could front a band like, say, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, in their spare time. Brendan Huntley does just that because the rest of the time he’s in his studio painting and sculpting, in fact there are certain influential people who reckon his art is that good he shouldn’t even bother playing music. Fortunately the man himself doesn’t see it that way and so he continues both practices. His latest offering Looking Forward, an exploration of the human psyche, opens this Thursday in Melbourne with his trademark array of inanimate, yet personified vessels. His ability to render the complexities of human life so simply is refreshingly honest.
I like my work to be able to stand up on its own. Eventually the whole show will be separated, so most importantly the work needs to be able to stand on its own, as a singular sculpture and secondly as an intstallation. Unless they’re being presented as a couple or a group, in which case they go off as a couple or a group and stay that way. I guess, without over analysing things, it has to be that way. It’s like a set of cups or a group of people. It’s that certain feeling you get from a group, a certain energy is coming at you. Are you going to be able to walk past with no hassles, or do you need to cross the street? It’s a different situation, but its the power of the group that I want to capture in those certain pieces. It comes across as a set of jugs, or as a group of people. It’s a feeling. Sometimes it’s different depending on what time of the day you approach them. When they are walking down the street, whether it’s a safe time, at a certain point they have a certain feeling.
Read a full interview with Brendan Huntley from Issue Three of The Blackmail…
Looking Forward by Brendan Huntley opens at Utopian Slumps, 5/25 Easey St, Collingwood, on September 11 from 6pm and runs until September 26.
