The Blackmail

Vertical Sleep

tristan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:01:51 +0000

Words: Tristan Ceddia Images: Joshua Petherick

Joshua Petherick definitely has more than one leg to stand on. Artist, illustrator and founder of the recently opened World Books store at Y3K Gallery in Melbourne, he has shown work at the Tate Modern in London and colette in Paris. His work is like a puzzle consisting of elements that have been pulled apart and re assembled messing with your perception like a good inside joke. Tristan Ceddia asks Joshua some questions, and in turn, he answers.

Tristan Ceddia: On your website you are described as an artist and textile designer. Over the past few years, from what I can tell, you have moved your focus more into the art world. Was that always the plan?

Joshua Petherick: Not a plan, I’m not a good planner. My interests just pulled in that direction. It seemed the only place for what I was wanting to do, and it was my direct surrounding. It was becoming increasingly difficult to let the things I was thinking about (and making) breathe within any commercial “day jobs” I was doing for years. Apart from a few great people I work for in publishing and textiles (sadly, aside from projects with other artists and friends, they are all in European countries), it seemed next to impossible. Let’s face it, outside of some isolated exceptions, the state of contemporary Australian design is dull, at best. Sorry for my lack of tact. It would depress me though. So my activities developed more and more off to the side of my bill-paying jobs, yet were still very much informed by and concerned with my fondness for applied and graphic arts. Very much so, though I was starting to look at it from a particular angle that had me more interested in the potential of it’s “failings”, if you will – what comes from the breaking-down and the inadequacies of graphic and linguistic communication. The myths and fictions that accompany that. I was already thinking about these things through exhibition pieces and music projects.

Anyway, there is only so much just getting on with it you can manage when met with unthoughtful commercial clients. It feels to me right now that a very simple, radical thing one can do within this phantom standard of all-out economic pressure, is to stop and think about what they are doing and consider their positioning. To politely stop industriously getting on with it and size things up.

There was also a matter of energy. I wanted to explore the performative aspect of the image, of patterns, sequences, and all those accompanying questions of presentation, distribution, attribution of meaning. I had a real need for my work to pull back and loosen itself up. To make it both heavier and lighter at once. Does that make sense?

TC: Your work has become increasingly abstract, but not without purpose. If a person who had never seen your work asked you to explain it, how would you respond?

JP: My reflex would be to not. If pressed to respond in regard to any particular work I would probably talk around it – frame it’s becoming (theoretical, anecdotal, whatever it might be), but never speak for it. Artwork for me is not explanation; what excites me about a work of art most of all is what you can do with the areas of silence in-between what is gathered. It’s that subjective space that endows the viewer with a role in giving it it’s legs. A speculative bringing to life, if you will, beyond the meticulous play of material, process and gesture. That space is very important to me.

I think on a more general level any abstraction comes from what I said before about wanting to consider the performative nature of images – it brought on a real necessity a few years back to clear the board and reduce everything I was doing so that an idea can breathe and take shape anew. For me that shape has been about unraveling and exploring all the things I was thinking about and making in the margins of my commercial work. So the “clear board” became the support for bringing together a whole lot of mediums (drawing, audio, sculpture, print-production, painting, video) I’d been using to make, collaboratively and independently, seemingly disparate things and grasp their relationship for the first time. More and more I’ve been understanding these multiple lives in my practice and their operating and re-circulating throughout each other. Folding ad infinitum!

So I think the abstraction perhaps starts with the disruptions and interactions of those various elements after being brought to a completely reduced, unified point. It was conscious, but not an explicit decision in any way. I started to let technical processing that I was using a great deal in my graphic and audio work already play a clumsy and crucial role in the outcome of what I was making. So too these habits of gathering and layering. And chance. I started to let these procedures I enjoyed so much push the work around, and vice-versa, so that their functions and translations from media to media became an important factor in the weaving and abstracting of, say, the audio, with the transfer painting, with the sculpture, with the drawing, etc. It added to this contingency between all things I was using in my work.

TC: I know you lived in the Netherlands for a while recently. Did your time in Europe change they way you practice?

JP: Oddly enough, I went to a country of exorbitant arts funding for production to produce very little. Quite a paradoxical experience. For that reason it had a great lasting impression on what I was doing. By doing little. Being in Amsterdam and Rotterdam was more the instigation of my partner at the time, while I very willingly took the opportunity to take hermitage from a too-familiar setting and become the flâneur of an unfamiliar one. The sheer volume of projects, event-making, public programming, publishing going on there (for large quantities of better or worse) gave me a perfect setting to become an actively participating detached observer for awhile, and take myself some time, experiment with my work and be in dialogue with those around me. That pushed me forward a great deal. I didn’t realise it as it was happening; it was a strange time. A fruitful coma. I was voraciously looking and reading the whole time. The great thing about being in an unfamiliar place is that you look so much harder. I got back to reading anarchist literature because of the impact groups like Provo, Dolle Mina, even Dutch Fluxus, etc. had had on everyday life and law in The Netherlands. I read and walked a lot.

TC: Who or what would you say has had the biggest impact on you as an artist?

JP: The fact that you can sit and look at the same thing differently over and over again. Also, learning to use error.

TC: You recently had a solo show at Tolarno gallery in Melbourne and were in a group show at the Tate Modern in London. Is it intimidating showing at such big institutions?

JP: Not intimidating, possibly challenging, but mostly interesting.

TC: What is a typical day in the studio like for you?

JP: At the moment I don’t have a typical day, but ideally it would revolve heavily around the morning. I’m all for mornings. I dislike working at night-time. The quiet of working before lunchtime I find very satisfying. No-one hassles you in the studio, it’s a good time for meeting deliveries, reading, and it has the best light of the day. I’m quite dull in that I desire pretty steady business hours. The reality of that is not so straight forward however. My studio is behind our book shop, and also Y3K, so there are days made up of the various tasks of shopkeeping. It’s also a very social studio. Other days are more choreographed active work days – constructing things, checking on things, designing, moving piles about, all that. There are a surprising amount of days that feel like business, though. Email or meetings. I am really quite bad with telecommunications and I encourage it to some degree, otherwise those business days would stretch into every hour. There seems to be an excessive amount of reaching out going on between people.

TC: You recently launched World Food Books with James Deutsher in the foyer of Y3K Gallery, Melbourne. What is your involvement with Y3K?

JP: Officially, apart from a lot of things, nothing. I do sell books there, I show there, grow flowers with Chris there, amongst other things.

TC: World Food seems to be an ongoing, evolving concept. I know it is also a studio… What is the idea behind World Food?

JP: Oh, let me clarify that convoluted history. You are right, it was the title of a studio, but just in the spirit of say, naming a yacht. We didn’t even break a champagne bottle on the door.

It was somewhere to have our mail delivered when a group of us were occupying a space together in the city. We threw a couple of spontaneous exhibitions and limbo dances, there were some screenings, not much else. It was nice though, important – it’s good to name things. We were receiving a great deal of mis-directed post that revolved around international cuisine and travel photography.

Actually, back then, I suppose three or so years ago, we had planned to use part of our studio as a shop-front to sell books we liked. Now that we have a mildly stable position to use (Y3K) and we are all not on the other side of the world, James and I have decided to put the World Food idea into play. We designed a book trolley, powder-coated it Smurf blue, and opened in the gallery alongside Marco Fusinato’s Stolen Library project in early April.

The idea is a simple one: to introduce a selection of intelligent and inspired books, journals and artist editions to Australian audiences, with the hope of encouraging intelligent and inspired reading, writing, book design/production/circulation, reflection and discussion. Well, that seems simple. We focus particularly on printed matter from small publishing houses, artist-productions and critical text, especially in the arts, as this is what we are involved in ourselves. It seemed like a smart thing to do – rather than order the one copy of a journal we would be getting for ourselves (considering the embarrassing void of such publishing in any shop here in Melbourne), add some more copies to the order and pass on the good word! We are building it from there, and the response has been encouraging. We also get to work with and support a lot of our friends overseas as a result. It is also a mobile shop, a shop on the internet, a book club to follow for the Winter, and the best book shop in Australia.

TC: What can one expect to see from Joshua Petherick in the future?

JP: I’m adjusting to the bitter cold of my studio after being in Mexico by stretching some linen, and messing around with plotting these ‘scanner videos’. Just working towards some shows late in the year and early next, and finishing up a footnote-type book to posthumously accompany my show with ACCA. Also running this series entitled Screens with Nicholas Mangan, designing new fabrics for Worthis, and selling good books!

Joshua Petherick

Next story: I Scream, You Scream – Van Leeuwen

Bringing In The Books

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:21:57 +0000

Words: Kat Hartmann Images: Even Books, Will Reichelt & Stephen Hyde

I thought I’d been attending the Even Books parties since day dot. I was wrong. As I found out mid-party – a revelation that inspired a moment of simultaneous disbelief and awe for, yes, there had been more before – I actually jumped on this literary bandwagon during its fourth incarnation: the debauched lane-side affair more widely known as Even Books #4: Motley Crue’s THE DIRT!

It was a mid-winter in June of 2008, that fateful night. A group of still-intelligent Sydneysiders converged on a small white-walled room in Chippendale with books in hand and bags full of booze. The purpose? To engage in largely undisclosed rock-inspired activities including rock trivia, Guitar Hero, a performance by raucous Sydney band Chain Gang and, of course, readings of The Dirt. Needless to say, it was a wild night that ended with one of my muso mates filling the laneway gutter with rivers of her stomach contents (see below to find out what became of Angela that night). Rock ‘n’ roll.

These days Alice Fenton and Angela Bennetts, the duo behind the soirées, have a total of 11 Even Books parties under their belts. Not to mention last month’s multi-event, multi-venue Le First Ever Readers Festival (yes, festival), hosted to coincide with the Sydney Readers Festival.

The series of one-off parties has developed a strong local contingent of devoted followers. Quite simply, Even Books reached out into the gapping Sydney-literary-event void and filled it with a series of at-times haphazard, ever chaotic and always entertaining booze-fuelled affairs. It was as if Sydney didn’t know what it was missing until Alice and Angela discovered the solution to their own boredom and begun combining books, booze and brains to the most interesting of ends.

God bless you motivational ennui, God bless you.

Kat Hartmann: I realise this question is rather pedestrian but am too interested in the answer to attempt to intellectualise, so… What inspired you to start Even Books?

Alice Fenton & Angela Bennetts: A few years back, every time we met up we would end up talking about how we were bored. Eventually, we realised the best way to deal with this was to start creating things (yes, we were a little slow). Our first thought was an online magazine full of all kinds of writing (fiction, non-fiction, long form and short), but then that took a really long time to get going, so in the meantime we thought we’d start an event somehow related to reading and writing, in order to build a community which we could then launch our li’l mag into. We had a look at what else was out there and discovered a night called the B-Club in London, which merged books, bands and bellinis and had actual authors along, like Will Self, and famous performers, like Paloma Faith. We ditched the bellinis and the razzle-dazzle big names, instead erring towards up-and-coming talent, low-brow booze (plain old beer suits us fine), and other random elements. Then we realised that we really enjoyed putting on the events, and the magazine fell by the wayside. Pieces of it actually exist on the Internet, but it’s so old now that we’ll probably never launch it.

KH: Originally the parties were pseudo-book-club-inclined soirées – in that they were themed around one particular novel and involved readings of said novel. These days they have diversified a little – namely with the recent Le First Ever Reader Festival. Post LFERF do you plan to go back to the book-club hybrid events and continue down the path of heterogeneousness or can we expect further future event mutations to occur?

AB: Aww, our own little mutants. Yes we want to keep growing and expanding, and the LFERF was one of the steps towards that this year – it was exciting to experiment with new kinds of concepts – but no we will not give up on the book hybrid freaks. Also in the works is an Even Books-curated exhibition and catalogue at Firstdraft in November. Creating and curating is something we’re definitely interested in for the future. People often ask what kinds of books we publish – it’d be nice to have an answer to that!

AF: We love the book club hybrid weirdo events, and really, the opening night (Friday) of the Readers’ Festival was exactly that. But as Angela says, we are branching out a little to do some curating, and one day we’d love to actually publish something. If we can get some sort of funding or sponsorship next year, we’d like to make The Readers’ Festival a proper, planned festival, rather than just two-girls-running-around-trying-to-do-everything. But in the meantime, yes, expect more of the drunken geek parties.

KH: Speaking of Le First Ever Readers Festival, what motivated the creation of this reader-based event?

AB & AF: It was a bit of a last minute decision, a culmination of a bunch of ideas. We’d had plans for a readathon waiting on the shelf for a while, but never found the right setting; we’d also wanted to recreate cult author Richard Brautigan’s Library of Unwritten Books; and we had been asked to join the Sydney Writers’ Festival line-up but didn’t feel like we quite fit in – the Writers’ Festival was so serious, so about writers, not about readers. Even Books is about readers, about reading books, and celebrating everyday creativity. And is very much not serious. So it made sense to combine this all into a very tongue-in-cheek Readers’ Festival. What surprised us was how everyone took it at face value. Another festival in Sydney? Sure, why not! We’re thinking we should start calling everything a festival. “Want to come over tonight for a festival of Bolognese?”

KH: The exploration of books through television and film became the premise of the second night of LFERF, Read This Screen and among other things included some hilarious screenings of Feminist Bookstore. Would it be safe to say this is an ongoing theme at Even Books’ affairs? What are your thoughts on the at-time controversial relationship between these two mediums?

AB: Between books and screens? I quite like the cross-over between the mediums (although I should point out, we were featuring clips that had books in them, not remakes of books). Maybe one day people will write novels about advertisements and poems about sitcoms, who knows. But it’s safe to say, Even Books likes to embrace all types of pop-culture crap, including 90s classics and Saturday Night Live clips.

AF: Is it a controversial relationship? People already write novels about advertisements (Max Barry’s Syrup) and poems about sitcoms (some awful poetry slam somewhere). Video games make great movies (hello Resident Evil!) and sometimes toilet paper ads (that one with the dog!) move me more than classics. We love books, which is why we focus on them, but we’re into all mediums of storytelling and love to combine them.

KH: Even Books soirées are multifaceted affairs involving too many user-related props to mention here – shortlist: guest-dressed mannequins, Polaroid photo booths, life models, Guitar Hero gamming and zine stalls all instantly spring to mind. Where do the ideas for the book and prop pairings come from?

AB: From our minds. We want our parties to be interactive, so we just think of ways to achieve this.

AF: We just throw ideas around until something feels right, then reign them in a little once we look at boring things like budgets and venue restrictions.

KH: You’ve had your fair share of guests, in the form of fancy performers and Jo Publics, at your events. Any particular bad behaviour bringers or over-partiers you want to use this opportunity to publicly name and shame?

AB: It’s probably normally me. Stress + no dinner + free beer = crazy lady! After the Motley Crue party, I got kicked out of two pubs for unruly behaviour. What can I say, I was really carried away by the theme? Nikki Sixx 4eva!

AF: Yeah, Angela was rabid that night. There was also the time that I stormed out of the Russian party in tears… But enough about us and how super fun we are to party with! There were some drunk Frenchies who broke our friend’s really expensive photography table… And also one of our regulars once decided to perform an impromptu strip show, then lost confidence half way through and began yelling at the audience “No, we should ALL take our clothes off”…

KH: Sydney has been undergoing a rather intriguing, slow-paced transformation of late in which creative endeavours and slightly left-of-centre events seem to be receiving a little more public attention. Recent changes to council-level regulation have been widely touted as being responsible for the progression but I personally think it runs a little deeper. Seeing that Even Books has been hosting literary, booze, band and film based events for a few years now I am interested to know your thoughts on the matter. Has there has been any trickle-on effect? Have you noticed a shift in numbers and/or media attention during the past 12 months?

AB: I don’t know if Sydney seems to be bubbling with new creativity-ness because I am paying more attention now, or because it really is. While the council regulations have changed (for example the permit for public entertainment being dropped) I actually think it is still quite hard to find an affordable venue in inner-city Sydney. The artist-run studio Even Books lives in (Bill+George in Redfern) has had numerous difficulties with the local council and residents, even though it is a quiet, respectful space. There seems to be a tension between what, for instance, the Australia Council wants to promote and what the local councils will allow. That said, we have a really vibrant fringe culture that’s exploding at the moment – it just seems to be a build up of the right people at the right time.

AF: I think Sydney’s at an exciting point right now – lots of things happening and lots of people keen to support new ideas. As Angela mentioned though, it’s still really hard for us to find suitable venues. We have received a lot more media attention in the last little while, but that could be because we’re more established now, rather than because of any societal transformation. At the beginning it was only people who were really looking for new things, like TwoThousand, and people who sorta knew us, like Dom Alessio from The Brag, who wrote about us, because it was too much of a weird concept for everyone else. Our numbers jumped hugely at the beginning of 2009 and have remained steady since then.

KH: What impact, if any, do you think events like Creative Sydney have on the above-outlined transformation?

AB: Creative Sydney was useful in collecting a bunch of disparate events/organisations/ideas under one officially sanctioned umbrella. I think it helped with critically coming to terms with the transformation, and bringing ‘underground’ things out into the light. Like us! Also, like mushrooms.

KH: While we’re on the subject of Creative Sydney: You are involved in one of the generally inspiration creative cluster fucks that are the Sydney Sessions at this year’s festival. Now, I know and you know, but not everyone knows – so for the sake of greater insight – what exactly will be going down at your particular Sydney Session?

AF&AB: The party is called I, Robot – You, Jane and is based (quite obviously) on Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi collection of short stories, I, Robot. There will be strange techno-gadgets, robot dance-offs, musical performances, short plays and more.

Who will you be collaborating with on the aforementioned Sydney Session?

AF&AB: We are teaming up with Dorkbot (they are bringing the techno know-how) and also the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP), who are re-interpreting some excerpts from the book. What we are bringing to the table will have to remain a mystery.

KH: Since we opened all pedestrian, I feel it’s only fitting we finish proceedings up that way: What does the future hold for Even Books? More specifically, will the cancelled LFERF Readathon be given its time to shine, in the sun?

AB: Yes! It’s ridiculous how dejected I was after we had to cancel that event. I wanted to show the world my exxxtreme reading skills! And beer-sculling skills! (unrelated, but whatever).

AF: Yes, once Creative Sydney is done and dusted we’ll start thinking about the Readathon again. Then I guess we’ll have another ‘do’ of some sort, then we’re really looking forward to getting to work on the exhibition at Firstdraft.

Even Books

Next story: A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow – Jasper Knight

Unknown Pleasures

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:13 +0000

Words: Laila Sakini Images: Max Doyle

In the world of fashion design establishing a difference whilst retaining accessibility is a coup that is often attempted, yet rarely achieved. So when the creative minds behind the cult label PAM manage to strike gold for a second time with their new womenswear line, you know that something magical is going on. The label Pop! Eyes, beget by Misha Hollenbach and Shauna Toohey, is now running in its second season strong. Inspired by the exotic leisure time pursuits of its creators, and by way of shiny fabrics and sharply tailored finishes, it re-contextualises the PAM fan to a new (fancier) place. To uncover some of the secrets of their success Laila Sakini asked Shauna Toohey to shed some light on the creative process(es) they’ve employed to deliver the goods, twice.

Laila Sakini: One would think that directing PAM, one of the most celebrated fashion/art/book/toy companies in Australia (and beyond), would be both personally fulfilling and time consuming. Why go on excursion from P.A.M with Pop! Eyes?

Shauna Toohey: We have been doing PAM for 10 years. I love designing PAM, it’s always fun but of course there is an aesthetic and feeling which is always definitely ‘PAM’. Pop! Eyes is an avenue to experiment and make more dressy clothes. I absolutely hate to say it because it’s so cliché but I did want to make clothing I wanted to wear. I wanted dress up clothes that had credibility (in the same way PAM does) and that touched on cultural references, interesting documentaries and artistic endeavours.

LS: The Pop! Eyes prints are routinely rich in colour and mood as standalone pieces, (they could be sold as flat garments and would still be cool) at what stage does garment construction/pattern making step in? Are the prints designed for the pieces or vice versa?

ST: It all happens together. But I was definitely trying to make new shapes and a new aesthetic for ‘dressy’ items. I wanted to offer something completely fresh – not a derivative of a current trend. I hope that the pieces will therefore be a bit timeless, and also relevant, and not a rehash of the past. The prints heavily reference tribal cultures, but present them in a modern way, we love the idea of cross referencing cultures, of mixing them, and coming up with something new.

LS: The shapes that Pop! Eyes presents appear as bold statements that play with volume and simultaneously reject and emphasise traditional notions of femininity and the female form. Who is the Pop! Eyes woman/girl?

ST: It’s for women/girls who like to look good but are interested in more than fashion: film, art, music, bikes, pets… They have aesthetic interests: not just for clothing but also for the things they surround themselves with.

LS: Technically there’s a lot of unique detail and cool features in everything you produce. What are your imperatives when designing patterns for Pop! Eyes?

ST: F.R.E.S.H. I want to offer something unique (in the good sense of the word) but still timeless and effortless.

LS: Could you highlight some design achievements from the current season?

ST: No – it feels strange to big note… Sorry – but I am really pleased with how it [all] turned out.

LS: Some might not realise that you are also a writer, an artist, a mum, and one hell of a cook. Being that you have many creative talents at what point did you decide to focus on fashion design and why?

ST: It appealed to me because you could get results quickly (not waiting years to have a building built) and it has a practical application. I couldn’t justify making stuff for my own pleasure so although I was attracted to art, being an artist didn’t suit me. I’ve softened a bit and now I can totally understand the value in making stuff for your own pleasure so I have been dabbling a little in some picture making. I suppose being creative is key, clothing is something I could explore, and also have a practical purpose.

LS: Both PAM and Pop! Eyes are noticeably independent from the rest of the fashion community in Australia, no fashion runway shows etc, which is probably why so many are intrigued by the labels… What are your reasons for remaining detached from ‘the scene’?

ST: It’s not intentional. It’s just that we try to do things for the right reasons and that feel right. We don’t start with a business plan we start with a desire to make stuff and a feeling that the people who will want to see it will find it. Runway shows have never felt right as a way to show what we do. We have done lots of exhibitions and I think we are part of a scene but it’s not a strictly fashion scene and it’s not only Australians or humans for that matter! Plus we aren’t detached, we have our own scene!

LS: Where are you going on the next excursion? What’s the next adventure for the PAM/Pop! Eyes team?

ST: Your guess is as good as mine. It’s an organic process so I think Pop! Eyes will lead us…

I’m taking a break from Pop! Eyes for a season. I still want to continue to make Pop! Eyes but not every season just when all the planets are aligned and the vibe is right. Fashion can be very quick and the schedule is rigid but Pop! Eyes has to dance to it’s own beat. So look out for more offerings in the future. PAM of course can’t stop!, it has a life of its own: more collections, books, music, prints etc!

Pop! Eyes is available at Some Day in Melbourne.

Next story: Vertical Sleep – Josh Petherick

Everyday Objects

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:11 +0000

Words: Melissa Loughnan Images: Matt Hinkley

Matt Hinkley applies his distinct, highly refined hand renderings to materials including newspapers, graph paper and found objects. The meticulous yet subtle nature of his work promotes at once a quiet solitude and sense of chaos. Referencing 60s Op Art and the working methods of artists such as John Nixon, Hinkley constructs his works on paper with reverence to the qualities of his materials. Patterns and compositions are minimised and exploded, inspired by the characteristics of his paper stocks and found imagery. A recent transition to the production of 3D work has extended this sense of craftsmanship further through a series of intricate plaster impressions.

Hinkley completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Queensland College of the Arts in Brisbane in 2000 and has exhibited across such spaces as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art @ Mirka at Torlano, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Artspace, Sydney and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. In 2009 he exhibited at Frieze Art Fair in London through Neon Parc. Hinkley has participated in group exhibitions across Australia, New Zealand and Los Angeles, he completed an Australia Council studio residency in Los Angeles in 2009 and is a current studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. He is represented by Neon Parc in Melbourne and Sarah Cottier Gallery in Sydney.

Melissa Loughnan: Some would say that your most recent exhibition at Neon Parc marked quite a departure from your previous work, however each of your recent bodies of work are unified in their subtlety and level of detail. Could you describe the thought processes in your transitioning between your 2D and object-based works, and the development of your practise since your first solo exhibition at Neon Parc in 2006?

Matt Hinkley: I think the 2006 show at Neon Parc was pretty much just straight drawing, but since then I’ve been shifting towards using mainly found objects, at first 2D and lately 3D, letting the materials dictate the mark making and trying to embed the drawing a little more subtly so that on first glance it may look like everyday smudges or creases. I think the biggest difference between these new works and some in the past is the tools I’ve been using to draw; engraving, drilling and cutting, which just naturally came about due to the fact that ink and pencil wouldn’t work as well on the things I was finding at the time.

ML: For those of us who didn’t make it to London last year, could you tell me about the work you exhibited at Frieze Art Fair through Neon Parc?

MH: The primary work for Frieze was a collection of found objects with various drawn interventions including books, magazines, newspapers, computer equipment, large sheets of paper etc, quite similar to the recent Neon Parc work, the main difference between the two was that at Frieze all the work was shown in two large vitrines, had a more considered museum aesthetic and were collected together as one large work.

ML: How was it received?

MH: Well I think! I found it hard to tell personally only being there on the opening night but the gallery got some good interest, which will hopefully lead to some more opportunities overseas.

ML: Does the work that you make for an institutional/not for profit space vary from the exhibitions that you’ve produced in commercial spaces? i.e. Neon Parc or Sarah Cottier Gallery in comparison to your ACCA @ Mirka at Torlano show?

MH: I think its pretty much the same approach no matter where I’m showing, I usually just try to keep it simple.

ML: Back to the object-based work that you made for your recent exhibition at Neon Parc, a series of intricately detailed plaster impressions and ornately penned found objects, was this work aiming to comment on the resurgence of anti-skill art, or of the rise of readymade sculptural assemblage?

MH: I wouldn’t say I’m making a comment on these trends, I enjoy a lot of that kind of work but lately I’ve been getting into very skilled traditional crafts things like traditional Japanese metal work and industrial design of the 80s and 90s where pattern and tactility were really important in the design of everyday objects. As far as the readymade goes I’m less interested in the art historical references than the way it fits with an overall pragmatic approach of making do with what’s readily at hand.

ML: Has your involvement in graphic design influenced the way that you make work, and your conceptual and aesthetic concerns?

MH: My involvement in graphic design as a day job doesn’t really influence my work, I actually came to that just by designing invites to my own shows, but I have had a long running interest in design and there is definite common territory. I am interested in the possibility for some of the work to be seen almost as propositions to be used within the design world.

ML: Yes I find cross overs between design, art and various other creative disciplines really interesting and think that spaces such as The Narrows, where you have previously exhibited, have investigated this really well. Apart from your recent Japanese metal work and 80s and 90s industrial design influences, what other references have you cited in the production of your work? Previous writing on your work has referenced an association with 60s Op Art, are there other artists or art movements that inspire or have inspired your work?

MH: John Nixon has been a real influence, his simple ‘punk’ working method makes real sense to me, but also people like Katherine Huang whose work is completely instinctual; Stan Brakhage’s film Mothlight, which was made when he was completely broke by using the remains of dead moths stuck to the film strip, is a great example of art being made with limited means.

ML: Looking forward, what’s next on the agenda?

MH: I’m looking forward to experimenting with some new materials like porcelain and the colouring and patination of metals and I’ve got shows solo shows coming up later this year at Sarah Cottier Gallery in Sydney and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in Melbourne.

Next story: Bringing In The Books – Even Books

Unbridled Enthusiasm

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:09 +0000

Words: Sinisa Mackovic Images: Rene Vaile

Considering it was his naivety that made him open a gallery and his lack of a formal art education that has allowed for a progressive method of operating, it’s completely and utterly accurate to say that Darren Knight would unknowingly fall into his own definition of a committed amateur. His life long objectives give him an individual approach. Bearing in mind his success, Darren is unassuming and professional. The only thing he has in common with an amateur is his unbridled enthusiasm.

Originally hailing from Brisbane, Darren Knight started his career on a path that very few successful gallery owners have gone down. He studied economics at Queensland University straight out of high school and from there started working at BHP Steel. Soon growing tired of the tedious and structured corporate environment, he broke free and lived every 22-year-olds dream. “I travelled to the UK and around Europe. Backwards and forwards, working in London a bit. I really wanted to just get away, look around and listen to music over there,” he recalls.

It seems that this stint was all that he needed to point him in the right direction. “I made a break from the trajectory that I was on. It probably came from my parents too, but it was there that I realised that if you’re not doing something that you really interested in, you’re probably not going to be good at it”.

At this point, Darren saw himself with two choices, music or art. Although, he did not aspire to be a practitioner in either. Upon returning to Australia, Darren got a job in a record shop and soon after a job at Ray Hughes Gallery in Brisbane.

This environment provided a similar freedom that he felt while traveling and the gallery context could fuel his fascination for understanding art from the practitioners side rather than just looking at something on a wall. “I wanted to get to know and understand the thought processes, motivations and all those things that go into making an artwork. The end object is just part of it. Art is a whole way of approaching things. The way of thinking and attitude to everything. It’s the part that interests me the most because that’s where progress happens.”

And progress is what it’s all about. After working at Ray Hughes for six years and traveling to America, Darren was ready to open his own gallery. “It was the depths of the early 90s recession and Melbourne was as bleak and recessed as you can get, but that meant there was a space available for $180 a week or something like that,” he remembers. Confident from the advice of a friend, he took a chance and opened his first exhibition in September 1992 in a small, single story terrace on Smith St in Fitzroy. Although, things don’t always work out the way you want them and unable to support himself through the gallery, Darren got a second job working weekends and nights at another record store.

This persistence that he had in keeping his gallery alive is a trait similar to what he looks for in artists. What interests Darren the most is a persons ability and determination to make art for a lifetime. A curious example of this is recently exhibited artist, Robert Kinmont. Kinmont had a slightly different trajectory.

He stopped practicing art in the mid 1970s, only coming back to it 30 years later. However, there really are no rules to a lifetime art practice. “I don’t think you actually have to make art objects to be and remain an artist in some kind of way. It’s your approach to life,” he observes. “It’s what you’re thinking about and you can considerably make art in your head, couldn’t you? For your whole life and no one else would know about it. Only you would know about it and you could be imagining these things and might not even be imagining objects, you might just be imagining ideas.” He adds “He obviously had things that fulfilled his creative curiosity, whether it was Buddhism, carpentry, dancing or his love of the countryside that he lives in.” But Kinmont’s success in returning to art is a rare thing. It comes back to the idea of progress and sometimes the timing just has to be right.

Music is another ever apparent aspect of Darren’s life and practice. Collecting records, magazines and fanzines throughout his formative years, he still keeps up to date, although in a less complete way, with contemporary music. Always trying to hear new musicians that are just as exciting as the ones he listened to when he was 18, and encouragingly, he still does. He believes that the internet, with developments like YouTube and MySpace, has made things much more interesting for todays musicians. Similar to the punk aesthetic of his time, amateurs of today can quickly reach an audience just by doing something themselves.

This is not always the case in terms of visual art because of the different demographics in art and music’s respective audiences. However, in terms of creativity, Darren believes that there is a very fine line between the two. “The committed amateur is where all the interesting stuff happens and hopefully the best artists will stay committed amateurs,” he says.

With no formal art education, Darren, in some ways, is a committed amateur himself. “Those courses were a bit too structured and slightly tedious. Back then I just wanted something unstructured and contemporary art was where that was,” he says. “Art history is so concrete,” he adds. Understanding the importance of history however, he educated himself, but again, on his own terms. This liberal view has been what has made his gallery so interesting over the past 18 years. It has been a reflection of his character, his tastes and more importantly his personal connections with the artists and their work.

Most of the artists that Darren decides to represent are new and consequently they have not made a lot of work. At this point he has to formulate an opinion that they are going to be a lifetime artist, which in his view, has got more to do with their personality and approach, than the art. The process is more important than the object. The object does need to initially attract his attention, but after that its about the honesty and evolution of the practice and a common approach to progress and accomplishment.

Darren Knight gallery in its current form resides in Waterloo, Sydney and represents over 30 artists from Australia and New Zealand. Darren’s positive and honest outlook on the current state of art in Australia is extremely refreshing. Believing that right now is an important period, not only because every period is important but that we really are in a significant time.

“That’s what contemporary art is. Everyone that’s involved adds to the energy that is contemporary art. It’s the period where Australian artists are trying to be as contemporary and connected to the rest of the world. There now seems to be less talk and emphasis about an Australian-ness in art. Which, I think is outstanding because art is an individual thing, not a collective thing,” he says. “Sydney, now is a lot more interesting that it has been at any other time than I’ve had a gallery here. I just think there is a dynamic about the young people and artists of your generation that are doing stuff. There is an energy, that seems to be happening here. I don’t even know why. But it’s great, it’s fantastic,” he adds.

He compares this trend to what happened to Melbourne in the 1990s when commercial galleries seemed non-existent. Artists coming out of art school felt compelled to take advantage of the times and start artist run spaces, doing so without any commercial drive. He declares, “What they’re doing is keeping a continuous energy going and it’s really, really positive”. He goes on to say, “It probably feeds into my theory, which is not a dramatic theory, that it’s all about the artists. Everything else just follows out of that.”

Darren Knight

Next story: Unknown Pleasures – Pop! Eyes

I Scream, You Scream

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:07 +0000

Words: Caroline Clements Images: Mario Camilo

Dancing in the dark and scooping ice cream for lickable New Yorkers, it’s all in a days work for this Melbourne girl. Caroline Clements talks to Laura O’Neill, of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, in the Big Apple.

My first meeting with Laura O’Neill was at a church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It was just before 8pm on Tuesday night. It was cold evening in May, given that summer was only weeks away and ice cream season had just begun. Fifteen minutes later music was turned up loud and the church hall was filled with almost 20 people dancing around in the dark. This is No Lights No Lycra, a one hour dance party, held every Tuesday night in New York, Berlin and Melbourne. O’Neill is one of the New York based Australians who run it.

“We do it here because I have a relationship with the pastor here, and we’d been doing some baking in the church before we opened the cafe as they have three ovens,” O’Neill explains. “So we’re pretty familiar with the space and he’s pretty open to community activities. They have a market there for Greenpoint foody people and a handful of bands that rehearse up in the chapel (apparently Grizzly Bear is one) so I couldn’t think of anywhere more perfect do it than there.”

But when she’s not dancing around in a dark church hall, O’Neill can be found sitting on one of Brooklyn’s main drags in an ice cream truck, scooping delicious organic Van Leeuwen Ice Cream. O’Neill is one part of the ice cream team she helped build with her husband Ben and his brother Peter, nearly three years ago in New York. A Melbourne girl originally, O’Neill was working as an event producer while holidaying in London, where she met American Ben (Van Leeuwen). One thing led to another and they decided to move to New York together.

Ben grew up in Conneticut where he had driven an ice cream truck when he was home on holidays from college in San Francisco. “When he’d come back he’d rent this ice cream truck to drive around, and it turned out to be incredibly lucrative and in one summer he was able to take himself around the world for nine months with the money he made. So he has the entrepreneurial spirit, but obviously it’s not very inspiring to be selling ice creams on sticks.” He wondered why people weren’t selling nice ice cream out of trucks, why the trucks weren’t beautiful, why they had these tiny little dark windows and why are they were noisey and dirty, and the idea for Van Leeuwen grew from there.

So began their mission to find the most delicious, organic ice cream they could serve from their ice cream trucks. However, they quickly learnt that all the ice cream in American, and also even in Australia, have all these additives in them that don’t need to be there. Turns out they’re only there to cut corners and costs and mainly just because it has become the norm in the process of industrial ice cream making. They wondered why they couldn’t make an ice cream just like ice cream you would make at home – with milk, cream, cane sugar, egg yolks, and whatever you’re using to flavour it – but on a large scale.

“We found this place upstate,” O’Neil explains. “They were sort of reluctant to make it this way, not because it wouldn’t work, just because no one else is doing it. They were making a lot of other ice creams there that were using a lot of guar gum and thickeners, stabilisers, milk powder and condensed milk, and we just wanted to do it simply, which is just how they do it in any good restaurant with a pastry chef making their ice cream.”

So began Van Leeuwen artisan ice cream. They cut back on the sugar content and the flavouring, they wanted every ingredient to be as pure as the ice cream base. “The chocolate we use is Michelle Cluizel, which is a really wonderful family business in France. Ben has actually just been over to a cocoa plantation in the Dominican Republic because we buy so much chocolate from them, so they took him over there to visit, which was really cool for him.”

That might explain why chocolate is O’Neill’s favourite flavour at the moment, “but last week it was earl grey, it always changes, I really love the affogatos too.” O’Neill admits she’s not a real sweet tooth, but likes Van Leeuwen because it’s not too sweet, with about 40% less sugar than most ice creams. “Though it’s tempting, I don’t go crazy, Ben does a bit, he loves sundaes, it might be an American thing though.”

Now three years later, Van Leeuwen have five large ice cream/coffee trucks (serving Intelligentsia Coffee), and a store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which opened earlier in the year. Their ice cream is also stocked in a number of foodshops and delicatessens around New York, and in pints in Wholefoods in the US (the world’s largest natural and organic retailer, with stores throughout North American and the UK). So some pretty great scooping for the first few years of business. I wonder if they have plans take Van Leeuwen down under? “Maybe,” ponders O’Neill, “I think it would be nice to have a store at home in Melbourne, but I feel like whatever happens in New York sort of trickles down into the rest of the world. When we opened two years ago I was like, ‘no way would Melbourne ever have fancy food trucks’. At that time all they had was was Mr Whippy, who occasionally comes out, and the donut truck at South Melbourne Market. I think it could work but it would be more of a weekend operation to begin. I think in Sydney at Bondi it could work.”

Thought it’s not the sort of truck that brings children running from their homes at the faint sound of a tinkering nursery rhyme, it certainly draws the crowds. Considering it is only really hot in New York for about four months of the year, you would want to make sure it was hard/fast business during that time. “Actually, we still have two trucks out in winter and people do still buy ice cream, believe it or not… we don’t have music though, you’re not allowed to in Manhattan. But we’ve actually been thanked by people for not having that annoying music anyway.”

Back at the church, O’Neill is dancing all the ice cream off in the dark, where the music is certainly welcome. She was leaving back to Australia the following day, and was looking forward to seeing how No Lights No Lycra was going back in Melbourne. So why no lycra? “Well you associate lycra with looking good, you’ve got to be in good shape to wear lycra, and people who dance, like professional dancers have legitimate dancing gear (often made of lycra) and NLNL is not about that at all. People can wear lycra though, that’s fine, but with the lights off it’s just about having fun and not being looked at and not feeling like you have to look right. I think the name is quite perfect, it says a lot in a few words.”

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream

Next story: Sofo So Good – Charlie Sofo

Big Beautiful Tomorrow

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:05 +0000

Words: Gabriel Knowles Images: Tristan Ceddia & Jasper Knight

Jasper Knight’s contribution to as a young pop-artist and curator cannot be underestimated. As an artist his deceptively detailed depictions of our industrial and urban landscapes are as striking as they are bright. As the curator and founder of Sydney’s Chalk Horse Gallery, Knight has created a community and platform for up and coming artists and curators to show their wares, which arguably is his greatest achievement. The Blackmail dropped by Knight’s warehouse studio in the lead up to his latest show for a quick tour.

“I paint vertically. It’s a gloss on gloss thing. I know I’m painting well when they background is doing as much for me as the foreground.”

“It’s quite sculptural really, I would like to think. I used to plan it quite meticulously but it doesn’t matter so much I think.”

“It’s about the 1964 World Trade Fair in New York at Flushing Meadows. They had a lot of pop artists at the fair, they commissioned a lot of artists including Warhol, he had a work called Thirteen, it was about the 13 most wanted men in America at the time. It also launched the muscle car in America which interests me because I paint a lot of cars.”

“I don’t think a lot of artists place enough importance on showing overseas, it’s criminal. I place a lot of emphasis on showing overseas, it’s very important to me.”

“I was meant to have a really big show in Thailand which I’ve had to cancel obviously.”

“It’s great, I don’t have to sell for a dealer and I get to show with interesting artists.”

“We’re not precious about maintaining the integrity of the white cube.”

“It works like any other gallery these days, there are three or four artists that are paying the bills and then the rest are genuinely good artists doing solo shows.”

“It’s a lot of hard work, I’m there until midnight most nights.”

Jasper Knight
Chalk Horse

Next story: Ace Of Spades – Lemmy

Mars Attacks

gabe — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:03 +0000

Words: Gabriel Knowles Images: Gift Of Gab

“It’s important for me to express my views, I don’t know if I look at it from a standpoint of needing to express things that other artists or musicians aren’t expressing. At the end of the day as a rapper and an artist with a voice – I’m an observer, so when I observe, I interpret what I observe. I’m not going to put anybody else down or talk about how hip-hop sucks or it’s dead or any of that shit!” If he wasn’t such a gifted lyricist Gift Of Gab you’d have to wonder if the voice behind Blackalicious is cut out for hip-hop. He’s nice, perhaps too nice, illustrated by his reluctance to outright criticise the vacuous path that mainstream hip-hop has taken, despite my best attempts.

“At the end of the day I see what I see and I interpret what I interpret. It’s important to me that when I do my music I’m being who I am.” The rapper explains from his Oakland home in northern California.

“I don’t ever want to come off like I’m trying to preach but as an artist you need to have things to communicate about. You need to be an observer of people, places and things. It’s not like I sit down and say I want to be political or socially conscious. I’m just a human being and if I see something and it moves me I’ll probably write about it. I just think it’s important for us to raise the level of consciousness and consideration of these things.”

And then there’s the notion that the man christened as Timothy Parker is a sci-fi nerd, a concept based the titles of his solo albums including his latest release Escape 2 Mars and his first 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up as well as early Blackalicious tracks like the prophetic Sky Is Falling. True to the form of all good online rumours, it’s not quite true. Fortunately there’s a deeper meaning behind the constant references to deep space.

“I’m always interested in consciousness expansion. I’ve always been interested in what we know and what we don’t know and how much we know and at the same time how little we know. And what else is really out there? What do we not know?” Gab poses. “We live in a universe with infinite expansion, with no beginning or end. If you look into the sky it has no beginning or end. When you look into the sky you’re looking into infinity. So what do we really know? How limited are we? People like to think the-be-all-and-end-all is to be a human being on planet earth. Where have we really been in the span of the universe which is limitless? So I’ve always been interested in consciousness expansion more so than space, higher awareness.”

Existential questions aside, Gab has never quite received the same acclaim for his solo work as he has for his role in Blackalicious, despite his rapid fire rhymes remaining a constant. Perhaps it’s due to audiences finding the Blackalicious collaborations with Chief Xcel slightly more palatable, or maybe it’s just that hardcore fans haven’t taken to futuristic, electronic tilting beats from Hednodic and DNAE BEATS. In any case you get the sense Gab sees it as all part of a bigger picture anyway, a metaphysical picture to be precise.

“A solo record is a different experience for me because I’m working with different producers and I’m getting out of my Blackalicious comfort zone” begins Gab, “I kind of equate it to travelling, I mean I live in the Bay Area which is one of the dopest places in America but I still love going to New York, Chicago, Sydney, Brisbane, I still love to travel but Blackalicious is home. We’re actually working on a new Blackalicious record right now, we’re like seven tracks in, it’ll be out in 2011. It’s always good to be able to travel and experience other things and musically work with other producers and vibe off of their chemistry, it’s always a healthy thing.”

It was on his actual travels that the seeds of Escape 2 Mars were sown, with Gab becoming acutely aware of the role that we all have to play in protecting the planet.

“On Escape 2 Mars, the title song, which is really about global warming came about when Blackalicious did a fundraising tour for global warming and around that time I saw an Inconvenient Truth and that’s when I wrote that song. So at that point that’s what was in my head.”

“I think it needs to be a world thing. I think that countries that are all about themselves, it’s like a gang mentality, it’s like gangs flying flags. At the end of the day we’re all part of the human race and we’re here on this planet. I think that America has the same role that Australia has, or Mexico, or Cuba, or all of Africa, everyone has a role to play. It’s our planet.”

Gift Of Gab plays Oxford Art Factory in Sydney on June 11, X&Y Bar in Brisbane on June 12 and The Corner Hotel in Melbourne on June 13

Gift Of Gab

Next story: Everyday Objects – Matt Hinkley

Sofo So Good

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:05:00 +0000

Words: Millie Stein Images: Charlie Sofo

Some things are fundamentally meaningful. They don’t require didacticism or a grand narrative to make them so. Charlie Sofo, like his work, is one of these.

The Melbourne based artist has made an extensive practice of collecting, arranging, displaying and – now perhaps more than ever – noticing. A recent update on his blog entitled ‘Contact’ is a Google map of street-side condoms. Other favoured things to observe include discarded furniture, reactions, and objects that are just as they seem.

In turn, Sofo himself has been noticed. His work is currently held in the collections of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art and Artbank, and he has had solo exhibitions at Darren Knight and Melbourne’s Heide and Utopian Slumps.

“Simple” is a misleading word for Sofo’s art because it implies a lack of depth. If you’ve been to one of his shows you will know this to be untrue. His practice is constantly expanding in logical, natural trajectories. Sometimes works are designed to be hung on walls, sometimes to be watched or listened to. The recurring theme is a distinct lack of intrusiveness – a reminder of what can be the immense impact of the small.

Millie Stein: What’s the first thing you’d want people to know about your work?

CS: Charlie Sofo: That’s tough because it’s always a struggle with words. I think because my practice is more about arbitrary facts, traces, sometimes it’s difficult to talk about it thematically.

MS: Well, that can be the first thing!

CS: Yes, that’s it: I’m more interested in talking about the things than the ‘work’. I’m interested in objects as some kind of connection between events and people. I don’t have a strict fetishistic approach to objects. I’m not obsessed with them, but collecting is a big part of my process.

MS: You also collect images on your blog?

CS: Collecting can happen in a natural way. It’s pursuing an interest in phenomena. I just [collect something] for as long as I am interested in it, or until I feel like it yields a result, and then I’ll finish. There are a few things that I’ve kept collecting for years. I have this collection of combs with my ex-partner, and we broke up about six months ago but for some reason we’re both still collecting them. I see the blog as an ongoing thing as well. I am actually putting together a book with a shitload of images that I originally thought were for research, but which turned into an artwork in themselves.

MS: A lot of your art seems to be about a process and its natural end.

CS: Yes, it’s like it gets to the point where there’s enough of it. A few years ago, in a different stage, I made an image by just rubbing my fingers over the paper. When I started, I was thinking about my trace, but then I wondered if I could build up enough of the material to actually create something. The natural end of it was when something actually became visible – making something small into something significant.

MS: Can you tell me a bit about Colour is Knowledge?

CS: I thought it was about time I had a think about colour. I was going out and sanding different buildings and collecting colours from them, and thinking a lot about minimal colour field paintings and trying to come to terms with that. The colours in ‘Colour is Knowledge’ were all linked to real things; I documented probably sixty different types of buildings and took notes on all of them. It was almost like building up a knowledge bank. That was how the title arose. It was also a bit silly, because everything can be considered “knowledge”.

MS: Was it their regularity that appealed to you?

CS: Yes, I’m really interested in the idea of standards. It’s a different type of language, like the language of Office Works, and stationary. I’m interested in found colours, and standard colours. I don’t mix colours and I don’t paint. If you think of a pack of standard pencils, those are the colours I’m interested in.

MS: I read once that you said your work has “a quietness”. When you call something “regular,” does that imply quietness? Is there something about everyday objects that is quiet?

CS: I guess if a thing is regular, it doesn’t stand out too abruptly because it’s already part of a language – so in that way, yes. Maybe I like to think that they’re quiet, but there’s also a lot of chattering. It’s not loud, but it’s in there. When I started using circles a couple of years ago, I was definitely thinking of quietness. You know, the Zen side of minimalism – not “minimalism” in quotation marks, but literal minimalism.

MS: What is the connection between your use of colours and shapes?

CS: The shapes fit in with the regular colours. That’s why I started using regular shapes as well. Recently it’s expanded a bit: I’m not using squares and triangles and circles any more, so much as organizational tools. I was just thinking that by organizing objects in a particular way, I could maybe keep their physical integrity in tact. I had a work in Utopian Slumps of bookmarks that I’ve collected. I laid them on top of a table and thought to myself, “this is probably the simplest way I can organize things now”. Not even sticking them down, not creating works, just displaying the materials as they are and letting gravity do its thing. With a couple of projects I’m doing now, they’re not even about materials. They’re about one particular action, like sleeping in people’s beds, which is something I started about two months ago.

MS: How did that come about?

CS: I put a message on my blog and a few people distributed it as well. The whole idea was to spend a night together in a bed. I was thinking about some sort of action, some drastically different thing, that would be totally non-sexual and simple but challenging. I’ve been doing it, and it’s turned out to be a good thing. Mostly, it’s not about sleeping together. It’s more about having a night with someone who I wouldn’t usually have a night with. It’s a bit of a leap, considering I’ve been making a lot of quite introverted work. There’s no trace other than that we did it – we spent a night together. And everything that has happened has happened on a personal level between me and someone else. I think it’s completely consistent with a lot of the other work I’ve been making, but it’s definitely looking outwards at people as the subject.

MS: How are you documenting it?

CS: Well, this is the thing: I’m not. I was told that there are artists who have done this before and photographed it, but all mine is, is a date with someone’s name written on a piece of paper. That’s the record. When I started, I thought there was no way I could document it because everyone was so different and lot of people who asked were actually very sensitive about the whole thing; about being misrepresented and, sometimes, being represented at all. So I don’t feel comfortable taking their image. It’s an event that happened, it’s a sentence written on a piece of paper.

MS: So that you’re completely preserving the intimacy of the act.

CS: Yes, and the respect and the trust that is involved in inviting someone to your house. It’s totally not part of my personality, in a way. I think that’s why it seems to be working, because it’s new for me and it’s new for most people who have agreed to it.

MS: I have a question for you from Steve from Bababa. He wants to know how you reconcile the smaller, more personal quality of your art with what he terms your “outspoken liberal politics”.

CS: I don’t find any conflict there. It’s all the same thing. There’s one way of expressing views, in making a direct statement, but it’s stronger to state that I don’t know. I just think about it in terms of honesty. Not truth, or any of that shit, but I don’t talk about anything unless I think I can talk about it honestly. It is a question mark, but I feel that it’s a continuation of what I think.

MS: What do you mean when you say honesty but not truth?

CS: I mean not Truth with a capital T. In this book that I had in the Heide show, there were things that I did and wrote down a single sentence about. If you read it and didn’t believe that I’d done those things, then it didn’t work. Maybe it’s got something to do with trust as well, but I think it’s important that I haven’t tried to confuse or deceive in the process of trying to communicate an idea. That question of honesty is more something to touch base with now and then, rather than a guiding principle. It’s difficult territory. I’ve always seen my work as being honest in a material way, and that’s a continuation of some of those modernist concerns with materials. In terms of art history, I respond to that sensibility of just letting things be themselves.

MS: Your work says exactly that: that the existence of an object is its meaning.

CS: Yes: the thing in itself. Looking at things like that is good because you clear away all the crap, but an object immediately starts to take on meaning once you’ve done that. So you can still offer up these objects in their present state, but the immediate next step is for them to take on meaning. I don’t even like commenting on the meaning of my work, because it suggests that that is important. At the same time, I’m not going to exclude meaning and especially not exclude people making meaning from it. They’re meaningful for me, so that’s a good start.

Charlie Sofo

Next story: Mars Attacks – Gift Of Gab

Ace Of Spades

tristan — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:25:28 +0000

Words: Gabriel Knowles Images: Lemmy The Movie

Lemmy Kilmister is, quite possibly, the only true proponent of rock ‘n’ roll on the planet right now. The man most well known as the frontman and bassist of Motörhead is a throwback to the time before marketing mattered most – a Jack and Coke drinking, Marlboro smoking, straight talking rock star in the every sense of its definition. He also, quite literally, actually plays rock ‘n’ roll music with his rockabilly band The Head Cat. At 62 years of age Lemmy still tours and records non-stop, which for filmmakers Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski has its ups and downs as they spent three years documenting him. Gabriel Knowles talks to the two New Yorkers about working with one of music’s greatest characters.

“Greg and I were working on another project in 2006,” Orshoski explains of the project’s roots. “I have a past as a music journalist and I’d interviewed Lemmy for Billboard magazine and what interested me at the time from talking to him, wasn’t Motörhead even though they had Kiss Of Death out. It was that he’d just re-released this rockabilly record with The Head Cat. I couldn’t stop listening to it, man, it was all the songs he grew up loving like Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash and Kyle Perkins and it opened up a whole new realm in my head of who Lemmy is.”

“We’d made a pact while we were working on this other project and we happened to be in Ireland so we went to this pub to come up with ideas and it wad the very first idea that popped into my head. And it just became perfect the more we talked about it and even better as we worked on it because Lemmy is one of a kind. By the time we finished the film that point was driven home even more, how unique he is within that rock scene. I know it sounds cliched but he’s the last of a dying breed. He’s one of the last great rock stars.”

“He only does what he wants to do all of the time. You don’t know a single person like that who lives entirely by their own rules, it’s impossible to do that in todays society but he does it.”

And so with their subject locked in Olliver and Orshoski spent months trying to track the great man down for a meeting that, according to Olliver went surprisingly smoothly. “We met with him and his people to pitch him the idea so we had a business meeting at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Los Angeles. That meeting consisted of us all drinking heavily and listening to Lemmy tell stories and it went really well and he gave us the green light.”

“We spoke about five minutes of business and then we spent four hours straight drinking,” Orshoski adds, “Lemmy had to excuse himself at one point and Todd, his manager, said that’s the longest he’s ever seen him sit in a business meeting.”

While that very inability to sit still has seen Lemmy drive Motörhead for 35 years and exert a lasting influence over heavy metal, it’s not much good when you need him to stay put according to Olliver. “Lemmy’s always on the road, we shot so much stuff with him on the road we realised we needed some shots of him at home which was hard because those days are few and far between. He never has downtime, he comes home from touring for a few days and then he gets bored and goes and plays with his other band.”

Fortunately when it came time to call in the interviewees Lemmy’s four decades in the music industry, which included stints as Jimi Hendrix’s roadie and as a member of the pioneering space rockers Hawkwind, they had no problems.

“There’s some obvious people like Metallica, Guns N Roses and Dave Grohl that he and Motörhead have influenced. But we also tried to go outside the box, we got people like Jarvis Cocker and Peter Hook from Joy Division and New Order. At one stage Peter Hook told us about how New Order would rip off Hawkwind.” Orshoski recounts.

But the hardest part for the filmmakers was yet to come, for they still had to show Lemmy the finished product.

“We had to take it to his apartment in Hollywood to show him. To be honest we were nervous because he can be so unpredictable with his moods and his mood dictates what he likes a lot of the time. He watched it and we were watching his face the whole time and he was smiling, laughing and miming himself in the movie. In the end he was really happy and gave us a big hand shake and said ‘good job boys!’.”

Lemmy The Movie

Lemmy premieres at the Sydney Film Festival on June 4

For your chance to win a double pass to Lemmy just email prize@theblackmail.com.au and tell us what Lemmy’s real name is.

Next story: Unbridled Enthusiasm – Darren Knight