TEXT&IMAGE
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ISSUE FOUR_05.14
BNE
T&I
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_DANE BEESLEY Photo Editor dane@textandimage.com.au PICS * Avalon *Tim Page portrait *House of Ezis portrait *The Danger Ensemble *Fat Ankle
_BEN MARKS Managing Director ben@textandimage.com.au
_ANAIS LESAGE Art Director anais@textandimage.com.au
_TOM WEARNE/ Karl S Williams Tom Wearne is a part time chandelier cleaner, musician and seeker of the peace. _JON WEBER/ Nic Plowman+ Alex Gillies Jon Weber is an artist, illustrator, writer who plays in Gazar Strips. He studied fine art at QCA before moving to London to run 100 Greenfield Gallery. He has since returned to his home city of Brisbane. His artworks can be found at www.jonweberart.squarespace.com _JANE MAHONEY/ Brizine Jane is a freelance writer and is currently studying a Masters of Journalism at QUT, More of her writing can be found at www.violentzine.blogspot.com _ ZOE PORTER/ Fintan Magee
Senior Writer michael@textandimage.com.au
Zoe is a Brisbane based cross-disciplinary artist, she exhibits regularly overseas and in Australia and recently completed a Doctor of Visual Arts at QCA. See her work at www.zoeporter.tumblr.com
_JONATHAN BOONZAAIER
_MARTY CAMBRIDGE/ Avalon
Online Coordinator, Writer jonathan@textandimage.com.au
Marty is a writer turned anthropologist turned construction worker. He really digs writing about cultures.
_MICK NOLAN
Interns
_BEN HIGGINS/ Blank Realm
_CHRIS TIERNEY Chris is the T&I Music intern. He is studying Music Production at Southern Cross Uni and he plays bass in Tin Can Radio.
_ADAM LOWE Adam is the sole survivor of the T&I Design internship. He has recently graduated from CATC.
*T&I is subject to copyright in its entirety.
The contents cannot be re-printed without permission of the publisher. The views expressed within are not necessarily those of T&I.
Ben studied fine art at QCA before doing a postgraduate program Art History. He is a practicing artist who enjoys writing about art.
about
Creative Editor grant@textandimage.com.au
contributors
team
_GRANT MARTIN
Welcome to T&I May. First up we’ve got a tale about tales: Avalon, the house of thousand spilled secrets. T&I doesn’t have enough pages to catch them all, but we’ve given you a taste. The splash for May feature the work and wisdom of Tim Page, a veteran war correspondent who has been shot at, blown up and on hand to document some of the hairiest conflicts of the past 50 years. We’ve got a photographic spread from Jashan Prasad. His work plays on the contrast of sprawling, chaotic urban landscapes and the ethereal calm of a skaters frozen in time. The fine art section looks at the tormented portrait work of Nic Plowman along Fintan Magee’s ominous murals. Inside you’ll can also find some of Alex Gillies woodcut prints. To break-up the seriousness we’ve included some illustrations for comic creative Fat Ankle. It seems the lads from Tin Can Radio have hijacked our music section. We’ve got their lead singer Tom Wearne interviewing Karl S. Williams while their bass player Chris Tierney come one board as our new music intern. Capping of the music section we have Ben Higgins talking with experimental post-rock outfit Blank Realm. Jane Mahoney has been looking into the past of Brisbane’s Zine community while our new fashion writer Emily Lang bonded with House of Ezis designer Andrzej Pytel over fabric and form in the lead up to his retrospective show. Finally Jerath Head caught up with Brisbane’s infamous fourth-wall breaker Steven Wright to discuss his latest piece of experimental theatre. Enjoy.
_EMILY LANG/ House of Ezis Emily studied fashion and public relations at QUT before interning as a publicist for George Wu, the Powerhouse and Lynch Fashion. _JERATH HEAD/ Danger Ensemble Jerath is a well travelled writer. He just returned to OZ following a stint working and writing in Ireland.
If you want to contribute or advertise, or just find out more about T&I, please visit our website, blog, or email us at hello@textandimage.com.au www.textandimage.com.au Printed by the Omne Group // www.omne.com.au
8HISTORY Avalon
10ILLUSTRATOR Fat Ankle
14ART
Nic Plowman
18FEATURE Tim Page
WALLS 24
Fintan Magee
FASHION 28
House of Ezis
HANDJOB 32 Alex Gillies
PRESS 34 Brizine
MUSIC 36
Karl S Williams
FEATURE 38
Danger Ensemble
PHOTOGRAPHY 40 Jashan Prasad
MUSIC 42
Blank Realm T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _3
www.textandimage.com.au
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _5
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _7
AVALON THE DARK PAST OF A BOHEMIAN BUILDING
HISTORY _Avalon
“FUCK, ARE YOU ALRIGHT? I THOUGHT YOU WERE OD’ING IN THE HALLWAY LIKE A TENANT 20 YEARS AGO.” A meth lab. A makeshift brothel. A gay porno and blackmail racket. A smack den. A suicide in the lobby and some of Brisbane’s best visual artists. Welcome to Avalon. Perched on the corner of Brunswick and Harcourt streets in New Farm, Avalon apartment building has collected some of Brisbane’s dirtiest laundry since 1929. Designed by the same architects and opened in the same year as Brisbane City Hall, the apartment building was the first in Brisbane intended to cater exclusively for singles. At the crossroads of New Farm and Fortitude Valley, Avalon has always balanced perilously on the edge of affluence and sleaze and was affectionately known as ‘prostitute corner’ until the early 2000s. Walking into Avalon for the first time it envisions Hank Chinaski’s first apartment where he nearly killed Fastshoes, it smells like my greatgrandfather’s sports coat that hasn’t been worn in a century, and I sense if the walls could speak they still wouldn’t disclose their darkest secrets. The 26 apartments are lettered A through Z rather than numbered and have a distinctly art-deco interior with wide hallways and romantic architraves. Resident and local artist, Ben Werner still remembers his first visit to Avalon nearly two decades ago as a 20 year old. “The first time I came here my friends were dealing heroin out of flat W. There were all these junkies there and guys who had come straight out of jail looking to score. One of the guys was also selling his girlfriend down the street but honestly they were the loveliest of people.” “There used to be a guy cooking meth and a guy who was letting homeless kids stay in his apartment at night, then would send them out dealing during the day. I used to say hello to a guy who was always sitting in the hallway, turns out he was waiting for hookers to finish using his room.” Avalon is not unique for having a dark history. It is unique because it has it’s own biography; Avalon: Art & Life of an Apartment Building edited by former resident, Ricardo Felipe. The book is an eternal piece of Brisbane history. It takes the reader on a journey through the history of the building, inside the apartments and has first hand accounts from past and present Avalon residents. One of the more scandalous stories took place in flat G.
Brothers Sid and Dalham Affleck and Ernest Barker were arrested for conspiring and attempting to blackmail a man in 1937. The man was picked up by Dalham and brought back to the apartment where he was knocked unconscious and photographed performing oral sex. When the police raided the house they uncovered a concealed camera focused at the bed, along with negatives and photographs of other men in similar positions. The men admitted their flat was for jaded business men to come and be photographed in the nude but denied any blackmailing took place. All three arrested men ended up in Boggo Road Prison. But it’s not all sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Avalon has been somewhat of an inner city sanctuary for some of Brisbane’s best visual artists. Former tenant and Blake Prize winner Leonard Brown lived in flat B while Sandra Selig, whose work can be seen in the Brisbane Magistrates Court and at QUT, was a resident in the early 2000s. Prominent local artist Luke Roberts still lives at Avalon along with practising artists Ben Werner and Sebastian Moody. “I guess artists have always moved here because it was a relatively cheap place to rent and most of the galleries are close by,” Ben said. “There’s still a couple of us here that are practising but there’s also a number of tenants who work at GOMA, are lecturers at the Queensland College of Art and part of the art scene in Brisbane.” But there’s definitely a certain enigmatic energy surrounding Avalon and once inside it’s clear the memory of its dark history isn’t lost on current residents. After seeing T&I photography editor Dane Beesley lying down in the hallway, his feet poking past the wall, a woman pushed herself through the entrance and panicked. “Fuck, are you alright? I thought you were OD’ing in the hallway like a tenant 20 years ago.” But 20 years is a long time in a city that is less than two centuries old. As I leave a tenant enters the building with his five-year old son, a reminder of how this area has evolved in recent years. A reminder of how Brisbane is desperate to become ‘Australia’s new world city’. A metaphor for a city sick of its stigma, covering its scars and begging for a seat at the back of the bus.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _9
FAT ANKLE
ILLUSTRATOR _Fat Ankle
FAT ANKLE IS A BRISBANE BORN ILLUSTRATOR KNOWN ON THE COMIC-CON CIRCUIT FOR PHATTSVILLE COMIX. WHILE THE SCRAWLING DETAIL OF HIS GRAPHIC NOVELS HAS GENERATED RESPECT FROM HIS PEERS FAT ANKLES’ REAL TALENT CAN BE FOUND IN HIS LUSCIOUS STANDALONE ILLUSTRATIONS.
Comic artists are known for their love of ink on paper. Do you think the business can survive in an online world? Websites have become a conventional way for people to get to know you. Unfortunately I sit in front of a computer all day at my job, so I haven’t brought myself to update my site in a while. But the internet has been great for networking and keeping in touch with people who have similar interests. It’s become a lot easier to find out about what’s happening and who’s contributing what and where. It’s encouraging for the industry to have that available. Does Brisbane support its graphic illustrators? Do you think we’re ready to see graphic art hanging in a gallery? Personally, I’m not really into the gallery scene. I’ve been interested in the underground, graffiti, lowbrow artist movement. Those events were always tight knit and something was always on. The turn outs would always be big, and you knew people weren’t there for the free cheese and biscuits. Though, they used to be rare, but are happening more and more over time. What are your tips for getting started as an illustrator? In my experience, you just do it and people will come. If you keep doing it for long enough there’s no foot in the door, you just do it for yourself and keep right on with it. I enjoy drawing comics, but don’t read them all that often. I just like how they’re about making fun of life. It’s funny how we’re able make up a story of a band, create a comic about their adventures, and then have people calling up and asking for the band to play at their shows.
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PERSONALLY, I’M NOT REALLY INTO THE GALLERY SCENE.
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What topics or themes do you find the most appealing? I don’t find myself sticking to any theme in particular. It’s more something that I find interesting, that will usually come from the television, internet and other media. Phatsville Comix has been quite a success, there’s crazy amount of detail on the pages. How much of your daily life does it consume? We sell it at conventions here and there, but haven’t had enough time to put into it. So Phatsville is kind of a hobby that pays for itself. It’s easy to think that you can make it in comics, but it’s really time consuming. I’ve been doing it for 12 years now, enjoyed every one, but have made no money from it. What part does the deformities and oddities in your subjects play in your works? I’ve been drawing my whole life and I find that I always turn to quirks, and trying to draw something different. There’s so much out there that’s better than you, but I feel it’s about how you execute your quirks.
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YOU KNEW PEOPLE WEREN’T THERE FOR THE FREE CHEESE AND BISCUITS.
ILLUSTRATOR _Fat Ankle
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _13
“Pope II - A Little Bird Told Me”
ART _Nic Plowman
A KING AMONGST FOOLS Nic Plowman is as much an icon in the Brisbane art scene for his character as he is for his dazzling, wonderfully expressive paintings. And that is not to take anything away from either. Anyone who’s met Plowman with his blue suede boots and roguish charm will know what is meant by that. And it is that very character when combined with his sweeping technically adept style - that gives him the edge over being just another pretty mark maker on canvas. With Plowman’s collection of freshly released paintings, presented in the show “Kings, Popes and Other Fools” (by Anthea Polson Art), the artist has his conceptual gloves off and is not afraid to get down and dirty when tackling ideas of religion, power, society and historical iconography. When media notables such as Fry, Gervais, Hitchens and Dawkins took the blade publicly to religion in particular at the beginning of the past decade, it could not be ignored that advanced ways of digesting social and religious structures were developing and that a new style of social analysis was coming out of the closet. It could be offered that Plowman’s paintings are visual aftershocks of their pioneering words. “I have always been fascinated by icons and the great religious works of art, as well as royal portraiture. Their strong narratives and use of symbols intrigued me. I wanted to attempt to make a ‘religious’ painting. Looking at masters like Valesquez, Caravaggio and contemporary
artists who have subverted the religious such as Bacon and Chris Ofili.” Though the artist himself digresses that his interest in such a process was multi-faceted and embroiled in personal reflection. “This was the launching point, this combined with being brought up a catholic and having two lots of open heart surgery, plus a near death experience a few years ago also has all contributed toward the thinking in my last show. But how do you make a religious work when one’s inherited beliefs no longer measure up and your experiences with death hold no great ‘other’ knowledge?” Plowman has rather brilliantly layered imagery over a considerable smattering of symbolic use to really inject his talent, skill and compositional power to create something beyond the sum of its parts. And all with a sense of humour. When asked what a fool is to him - perhaps the spanner in the conceptual works when considering his new collection’s subject matter his answer is very much reminiscent of his art. “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” William Shakespeare - sums it up pretty well I think. This thinking should be applied to the current fools running our state and country.” Regarding the latter it can’t be ignored that Shakespeare was perhaps the greatest master of the tragedy in the English Language.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _15
“Pope I - The Great”
ART _Nic Plowman
“The Fool”
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _17
FEATURE _Tim Page
TIM PAGE
Tim Page is a man riddled with shrapnel. He’s had a chunk of his brain blown away and suffered over 200 wounds after being peppered by machine gun fire from a US fighter pilot. Half his body is in a state of partial paralysis and he walks with a limp. He’s been bitten by a rabid dog, blown up, shot at and had his pelvis broken twice. These wounds are the price he’s paid in exchange for being at the front line of the biggest conflicts of the Cold War era. Following a road trip through Europe and India, Tim found himself working for USAID in Laos. With a camera in hand he was able to capture exclusive images of an attempted coup. After hocking the shots and their story to the Unite Press International Tim was offered a job as a staffer in Vietnam. It was early 1965, the war was just heating up and the Allied powers were unaware of the consequences of allowing the press free reign on a battlefield. “It was up to you where you wanted to go, there was no need to be ‘embedded’. You’d call up the press information office and find out which units were stationed where. You say ‘I want to come out and do a shoot,” Tim said. “The dichotomy in Vietnam was that the government didn’t know whether to let the media have free reign or to control it. There were big arguments in 1964/65 and they decided to let the media have full reign. “The leading papers and their Pulitzer Prize winning writers had slammed the war and labelled it as unwinnable. These people were young but very wise.” There was still a form of censorship and editorial oversight. This happened back in the world and generally in the editing suites of the magazines and wire services. “There was a constant battle over the gruesome. How many editors are going to run on their front page somebody holding up a decapitated head? Not many. Because I was freelance I shot torture half a dozen times and three times it got published.” This vivid and unrelenting stream of images and film coming out of South East Asia had significant effect in turning the public against the war. At times even Tim admits some of the most gruesome images weren’t necessarily his strongest. “When Horst Faas & I were editing ‘Requiem’ we found these incredible pictures of Cambodian government troops about to execute Viet Cong POWs. The execution is not photographed but afterwards there were half a dozen female Viet Cong being violated with bamboo poles. I found these pictures in an archive in Paris and we just made a decision, you’d never run those pictures, it proves nothing except how awful something is and the state of how bad humans can be.”
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Once the world’s attention was focused on Vietnam, there was little the government could do to control the story. Citizens demanded to know what was being done in their name. “It was Eisenhower who said, ‘If you want to win a war ban the media.’ It’s hard to win a war if you’ve got the media stomping all over the front lines. On the other hand if you’re paying for a war through tax dollars than you need to know what’s going on. As human beings there’s a right to know, a right to information. Back then we started breaking all the fucking rules.” The absence of highly disciplined media departments meant Tim and his contemporaries could go wherever they like, shoot what they wanted with a level of access that photojournalists today could only dream about. Like many young men fighting in a war for the first time Tim threw his self into the conflict. Initially he felt invulnerable. “When you are young you feel bulletproof. You don’t think about anything bad happening because if you do you start to freeze. Think about those clowns at the Winter Olympics hurtling down the side of a mountain at 100km an hour on two planks of wood. They’re not thinking about crashing and breaking their neck, they’re thinking how can I go faster?” As the war escalated and Tim started to take the hits, his perspective changed. The last time covering a dust-off in 69 Tim jumped out of
a helicopter as one of the troopers in front stepped on a land mine. Tim was caught in the blast. A wedge of shrapnel lodged in his skull, he was D.O.A. and an apple sized piece of his brain was removed in surgery. The injury left him bedridden and partially paralysed for a year. “I found it very hard to go back out in the field. I was too nervous, I was more aware of the dangers, I suppose I was still fresh with pain.” “If you’ve had pain you’re more likely to be cautious and I must have only done another half dozen jobs. On the last one it was a pretty hairy retreat under fire. I was with Sean Flynn and we were shelled by the North Vietnamese. We were taking causalities all day long. We were marked. The forward observers got it wrong and they dropped napalm on their own troops. Everything was going wrong and we were constantly being tracked by North Vietnamese Artillery. It was bad and I didn’t think I was going to get out of it alive and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” He left Vietnam soon after. TIME/LIFE gave him $1000 to start his life over with work in Paris. But the war had left its mark. Nowadays Tim’s time is spent tracking down the final resting place of the many friends and colleagues who died during the war. He has published a raft of books and documentaries tracking his search. But he is particularly moved to resolve the fate of his friend Sean Flynn and the other missing media in Cambodia.
FEATURE _Tim Page
“We lived together for 2 years, we were birds of feather, we’re old tokers, did a lot of O together, got into a lot of nasty places together, shared wine, women and song together. We became inseparable buddies.” Tim believes Sean was taken while driving along the road between Saigon and Phnom Penh during the Cambodian Incursion in the mid-70s but his search has been hampered by a resistant Vietnamese government and the declining memories of witnesses. “We’re trying to trace their movements by looking for Khmer Rouge and Viet Cong safe houses. I know they were taken prisoner by a Vietnamese detachment.” “There were rumours they were both sick and needed medical attention and Flynn was given a lethal injection of morphine. There is a witness, but he’s not reliable… He’s dead.” The violence inflicted upon the region during the war has made it impossible to track where the body is buried. During the Cambodian Incursion detachments from 11 different factions, from VC to Khmer Rouge, to Americans to South Vietnamese, to drug barons and native rebels, fought on a front 200km long. The Americans rippled the area with B52 strikes and the civilian population was routinely displaced. Add to that subsequent purges by the victorious K.R. and you find a people and landscape blistered beyond recognition. “You can’t go to Facebook and ask for a 70-year-old who may have seen two foreigners taken prisoner 40 years ago. If you want to find anything you’ve got to get out there and sniff around. That means walking to a village, spotting an old boy and asking him what he did during the war.” “Will I stand up in a hole holding a skull like hamlet? No. It would be marvellous to find some old American passports, some cameras and some film, remains, DNA and the rest of it. I’ll find memories.”
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _21
FEATURE _Tim Page
Tim was at the forefront of what he describes as the golden age of photojournalism and he fears the changing nature of the newspaper and magazine business could spell the end of his profession. “Two years ago we were in the States and 136 newspaper folded. Each ofthose papers had four or five staff photographers, what do they do? Weddings?” “I mean the death of the paper in a sense spells a lot of doom for photography. During that golden age of photojournalism, the time of Vietnam, the 60’s and 70’s, when Life Magazine had a circulation of 7 million you kept each copy in the dunny. It didn’t get destroyed, it didn’t get put out in the bin, like the Brisbane News.”
Social media has gone part of the way to filling that void, but it lacks the oversight and objectivity provided by the big media organisations. While it allows the public to get a better understanding of the overall carnage of war, it has also taken war off the front page and out of the nightly news. Today, images like Tim’s would be more likely to be found in NSFL Sub-Reddit than in the Courier Mail. “When I was young if some grandmother was raped and robbed on the street, until the case was solved it was front page fucking news. Nowadays, it’s on page 26 and the story is an inch long.
As the big magazines fold under financial pressure it will create a void that reduces the media’s ability to hold governments to account.
“We accept violence. The average child of eight sees 800 virtual deaths a year according to the Guardian.”
“The power of the media to change things, to document them, has changed radically. I grew up on the perfect wave, on the perfect surfboard, I mean it was a dodgy surfboard but you’ll never see images like that published again.
“The reportage of Vietnam changed public opinion. Demonstrators around the world were holding aloft the same war pictures. In put a war in a place that nobody knew about firmly on the front page of people’s minds.”
“With Syria, I can turn on my computer, go to Facebook and see the most incredible stuff. There are the most incredible images coming out but there is such a tsunami of images that you lose track of what was good.”
“It started people questioning the military-industrial complex. It was the start of the demise of communism and I suppose it was the first nail in the coffin of the American Empire.”
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _23
FINTAN MAGEE HAS GAINED A MASSIVE FOLLOWING FOR HIS LARGE-SCALE MURAL WORKS PAINTED ON THE STREETS BOTH OVERSEAS AND THROUGHOUT AUSTRALIA. HE CUT HIS TEETH IN THE TRAIN YARDS AND WAREHOUSES OF BRISBANE AND NOW MAKES A CRUST IN THE LEGAL SCENE. HIS WORK IS HIGHLY ENGAGING AND FREQUENTLY MAKES REFERENCE TO QUEENSLAND, DEPICTING SURREAL NARRATIVES THAT ARE BASED AROUND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, INCLUDING CLIMATE CHANGE, POLLUTION AND DISLOCATION.
MAGEE When did you begin painting large murals in abandoned buildings? Probably 2010 when it was really difficult to find public space to paint on the street in Brisbane that was sanctioned, so a lot of street artists were kind of pushed into the shadows. A lot of those works produced in Brisbane during that period were seen due to an online presence and through social media. A lot of people saw these works overseas but haven’t actually ever been seen by people in the flesh. Guido Van Helten and Anthony Lister were other Brisbane artists who were also producing work in abandoned buildings that were making a name for themselves outside of Brisbane, but then when you go to Brisbane you’d never actually see any of the work. Through an online presence we’ve been able to build an audience outside of Brisbane city, which is important. While you were in art school you were painting images of urban landscapes and then you went on to actually paint in these spaces. Is this something that you were conscious of? Yeah, a lot of the landscape paintings were of abandoned spaces or they were interesting places I had been, particularly nightscapes that I’d come across while I was painting on the street. So there was definitely a relationship between the two. Are you self-taught when it comes to your large scale public works? Yeah, when you’re a graffiti writer you always learn from your peers, I think when you’re doing any kind of work you learn from your peers. A lot of the technical aspects I had to work out for myself, it’s kind of hard to learn some of those skill sets, the institutions don’t teach them. There are definitely no part-time courses you can take on muralism, you know what I mean? Some of it I learnt at art school but I’ve just applied it in a different context, you’ve just got to take what you’ve learnt and transfer it to a different arena.
WALLS _Fintan Magee
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Does your work have a strong political message in its subject matter or is it the actual act of painting on the street that allows your work to transgress boundaries between public/private and artist/audience?
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IT’S KIND OF HARD TO LEARN SOME OF THOSE SKILL SETS, THE INSTITUTIONS DON’T TEACH THEM.
There is a broader social impact, I think that the act of graffiti or street art or making that kind of work in a public context has a certain political statement or social impact. Even if the work doesn’t have a specific political message there is still something politically or socially relevant. My work is kind of pseudo-political [compared] to artists like Blu or Banksy, whose work is much more politically direct with their messages. Your work often features recurring themes and images of water/floods can you explain why you chose to reference the Brisbane floods of 2011? My work makes reference to Queensland, I grew up in Brisbane, born and raised in West End/Highgate Hill. The theme around the floods came about because I was in Brisbane in 2011 and it was a crazy time for graffiti art. People just went crazy; it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The trains were taken out of their holding yards and it was basically a free-for-all. The holding yards are usually heavily secured, you’ve got barbed wire fences and you’re usually painting under pressure and when they were basically left for a week with no security there was certainly a lot of graffiti done during the time of the floods. It was a kind of explosion that happened. It was an interesting time for graffiti culture and it was interesting week for graffiti culture in Brisbane, and it was also an interesting week for me in general because my mum’s house went under. We had to stick around and deal with the aftermath and the clean up, it was an emotional time for a lot of people in Queensland and it was kind of eye opening. It was a surreal time to be in the city, because when you’re in a city of 2 million people you see the devastation that the floods caused and also the disruption that was caused to the everyday routine of life. No one was working that week and you’d go out at night and see people lighting bonfires on the edge of the floodwaters and just jamming, no one had work the next day… It was a surreal time to be in the city. My work explores that experience but also comments on the broader issues of climate change within my own personal experience of what I think is becoming an international experience of more frequent natural disasters and strange weather and just a crazy time to be on the planet.
WALLS _Fintan Magee You have recently worked on a number of collaborative projects. You produced a collaborative mural with Indonesia’s Ruangrupa at the Asia Pacific Triennial in 2013. How has collaboration changed the way you work? When I was in Indonesia I was mainly just doing street work on my own but they certainly influenced me and affected me at the time. I recently collaborated with Hoxxoh, a local artist from Miami (US) during Art Basel week. It’s challenging collaborating, but I definitely enjoy it. That’s probably one of the things I really miss about being a graffiti writer, it was incredibly social because you’re always working with other graffiti writers, particularly around train bombing, setting up missions and planning etc. It’s quite social [whereas] when you’re working in the studio you’re alone. Also the other thing about collaborating is it takes you out of your comfort zone – you’ve got to compromise and think how can we make our two styles work together? You’ve previously mentioned your interest in the Mexican Muralists, including Diego Riviera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. These artists produced monumental murals that were strongly political and which impacted greatly on the Mexican public, largely due to where they were situated publicly. They were really hardline communists those guys, so I suppose they were really dedicated politically. It seems no one in the modern street art movement has really mimicked this yet, except for maybe Blu or Escif? Do you think Australian street artists need to be more aware of the Mexican muralists and the social impacts that their murals had on the public? Definitely, I think part of the problem is communism has been a massive failure and we’re certainly not as passionate about a specific political cause in Australia as the Mexican muralists were. A lot of those ideals of social impact and the idea of art being for the people still carries across even if it’s unintentional.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _27
OF HOU SE
EZIS Pic: Florian Groehn
FASHION _House of Ezis
Andrzej Pytel began his career as an architect but he felt too constrained by the real world realities of turn a conceptual design into a concrete structure. “My creativity felt supressed and I found that really frustrating”, said Andrzej. The highly regimented reality of architecture as a career, contrasted with the creative freedom he experienced as an architecture student and motivated him to experiment with new mediums. What began as a hobby, designing printed t-shirts, soon grew into something much bigger and he transitioned from skyscrapers to silhouettes. Pytel’s Boutique, House of Ezis, has garnered a loyal following of young woman seeking innovative, custom-made formal wear. Inspired by the sculptural possibilities of womenswear, over the past seven years Andrzej and his design team have experimented with the female form to create unique, one off, handmade gowns from their Brisbane studio.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FOUR _29
Pytel immerses himself in the design process. He works intimately with fabrics and materials to reach a medium between his innovative concepts and commercialisation.
His designs explore the fragility and grace of materials, through their response to the body and how they react when they are draped on the human body.
“The balance is finding something in between. Where I can learn from the experimentation and water it down to something closer towards what the client wants.” said Pytel
“I like to listen to the fabric and feel what it wants to do. With every material I work with I try to express whatever it is that is unique about it. Echoing its voice, or extending it, or amplifying it. It’s like it has its own soul in a way.” said Pytel
His experimentation triggers an emotional response from the fabric, giving the designs a life of their own. Due to the range of works and projects Pytel is involved with, his creative process is an eclectic combination of structure and freedom. This is shown in Pytel’s, ‘Edible Veil’ an exploration of architectural space through rice paper and its response to texture, emotion and moisture. Pytel acknowledges this as the more extreme side of his creative process but by freeing up his creativity it opened his imagination to new possibilities.
A recent project, ‘The Unit’ tapped further into the Japanese design influences. A plain envelope (rectangle) of fabric was draped around the body, encouraging freedom and expression of the fabrics natural for. This experiment parallels the art of Japanese origami, however unlike origami the process for the unit was natural and free – unlike origami, which is guided by predefined steps.
“Maybe that’s my strength that I can find that happy medium where it is very wearable but with an artistic edge.” said Pytel
“As the unit envelops and develops through a performative act, it simultaneously screens and displays the body of the subject; it encompasses movement as a response to draping, during the act of clothing a body”, he said.
Alongside his passion for design, form and architecture he opens up about his appreciation of Japanese aesthetic. He attributes influences to the awareness of materials in the Japanese culture and what he describes as a ‘minimal quietness.’
Pytel is hosting a Retrospective at Studio Thirtyfour, in Newstead. The showcase will debut the ‘Edible Veil’ from the 2012 International Venice Biennale, street wear from Hong Kong and recent projects he has been working on.
FASHION _House of Ezis
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WHEN I DECIDED TO PURSUE THE FASHION IN A VERY SERIOUS WAY, SOMEHOW, WITHOUT KNOWING HOW, I HAD A FEELING; I’M JUST GOING TO DO A FULL CIRCLE AND COME BACK TO ARCHITECTURE AT A POINT THAT IS SIGNIFICANT. THE VENICE BIENNALE MARKED THAT POINT.
Pic: Florian Groehn
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HANDJOB_Alex Gillies
FROM THE DEPTHS ALEX GILLIES WALKS A TIGHTROPE THAT ALL ARTIST WOBBLE UPON FROM TIME TO TIME. IS A WORK OF ART ABOUT THE PROCESS OR THE END PRODUCT? AS A VISUAL ARTIST THAT WORKS LARGELY IN AN ALMOST MEDIEVAL METHOD OF WOODCUT CARVING AND PRINTING, HIS SET OF CHALLENGES TAKES ON AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT DYNAMIC OF APPROPRIATION.
“Every artistic medium has its constraints. It is the constraint within woodcuts that at times gives it the greatest appeal to me,” Alex Gillies states. It seems that Gillies hides an almost secretive obsession with making life hard for himself when it comes to his practice. But it’s not all bad, and not truly accurate. “The hours spent carving and working away have become my quiet time, my personal time when I sit and think and work through all the noise of my life.” It’s hard not to think of the old Japanese swordmakers or the European Dark Age calligraphers when considering Gillies’ work. While his method is laborious Gillies concedes that if the work looks good than it’s time well spent. “My most difficult works are the ones you’ve never seen. Physical difficulty or the challenge of technique can be hard, but is usually logically surmountable.” But it’s not purely rawness and simplicity of the medium that he enjoys. His methodical and time-consuming approach is at odds with a society infatuated with new, the immediate, and the disposable what makes his work so
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relevant and fresh is his attachment of the woodblock to modern matters. Frequently he references the punk ethos, social dissent, and darker touches of a tarnished modern way. It is interesting to consider where exactly he sits within the art world. Although Gillies avoids the established art circles his work undoubtedly can be counted as High Art when it’s in primal force. Here the age old question of what is art and what is craft sits front row and centre. “I reject the premise that artists are not craftsmen and so forth. The tablemaker is an artist if his skill set is given the time and freedom to develop in such ways. The artist is the person who should be constantly trying to hone their craft. Again it comes down to the conversation. A craftsman is likely to be the tablemaker who only sees a utilitarian object at the end of process. The artist is the person who wants to visually say something important to them and makes or uses the table to achieve their end.” Alex Gillies is both but whatever the case, you can be assured each work he carves out from the depths is likely soaked in blood, sweat and a hell of a lot of time.
BRIZINE A DISCUSSION ABOUT ZINES WILL USUALLY START WITH AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE WHAT A ZINE ACTUALLY IS. WORDS LIKE “CUT”, “PASTE”, “DIY” AND “PHOTOCOPIER” GET A MENTION BUT THEY FALL SHORT OF CAPTURING THE CREATIVITY AND THE PASSION THAT SPILLS FROM THE PAGES OF A ZINE. FROM THE CLASSIC BOOKLET CRAFTED OUT OF BLACK AND WHITE A4 PAGES, TO POSTERS, POSTAGE STAMPS AND PIÑATAS, THE MODES OF DELIVERY AVAILABLE TO ZINE CREATORS ARE ENDLESS AND THEIR CONTENT SPARES NO SUBJECT. SYNONYMOUS WITH SUBCULTURE AND SUBVERSION, IT’S A MEDIUM BOUND ONLY BY IMAGINATION.
The first zines are acknowledged by most to have originated in the 1930’s as a means of science fiction fans to communicate with one another and to publish their own short stories. During the late 1970’s the medium saw a revival in the hands of the punk rock movement and has held captive the minds of creatives, rebels and dreamers ever since. Many famous magazines found their humble beginnings amongst a Xerox and staples, including i-D, Dazed and Confused, and Vice. Brisbane offers its own rich chapter in the history of independent media’s favourite form of sedition. Notable titles amongst Brisbane’s early zines were publications such as Maggot Death, which ran from 1979 to 2000, and Shit on Brisbane, popular in the mid 1980’s. The 90’ presided over titles such as BUMS and 15th Precinct; while the early 2000’s saw zines like Bizoo gain a name for themselves. Of course, there were thousands of zines that have come and gone through the years and these are but a few examples. As one of Brisbane’s longest running zines, the story of Maggot Death speaks for all those faced with the passion and plight of independent media. Maggot Death found its inception in a series of single page flyers that were what creator Fabulous Sebastian describes as mostly adolescent ramblings about the stupidity of the human race. Maggot Death was about ideas. “We called it an ‘Unperiodical Communication’ and, eventually added the tagline ‘More Important than the Bible’,” Sebastian said. The zine took off once the team gained regular access to a photocopier. They could afford larger runs of each issue and Maggot Death became available in the independent record stores like Rocking Horse. They continued their guerilla journalism tactics. “We also liked to leave copies inside other magazines in newsagents. That way, there was a surprise for people who took home Dolly or NME.” Shit On Brisbane was another prominent zine of the mid-80s. The name poked fun at Shine on Brisbane, a slogan Channel 7 used in 1982 to promote the Commonwealth Games. Though Shit On Brisbane ran for only a few years the zine was astoundingly popular with its final release clocking in at 500 copies. An impressive number for an Australian zine. “There was even another zine editor that produced a ‘bootleg’ issue of Shit On Brisbane,” adds Creator Paul Hanlon, “he basically took the piss out of us for about 20 pages... Good stuff actually.”
PRESS _Brizine
Shit on Brisbane and Maggot Death found themselves part of a wider community with roots that ran deep through Brisbane’s underground music, art and theatre scene. “Being involved in music and zines meant we were part of a national and international network of record, cassette, and zine trading,” Sebastian said. Paul explains further, “Back in the day there was a whole community of people who used zines to find out about new bands and what was happening around the world.” Music magazines and even local street press were bound by the restraints of advertising and bottom-lines, so could never quite capture the voice of local artists the way zines could. Many bands in their early days were otherwise starved of media coverage and had no means of putting themselves out there. Of course, this was a time that pre-dated social media, so zines, flyers, posters and community radio stations like Triple Z were the only way of knowing what was happening locally. Zines fostered a sense of community in Brisbane’s underground and offered invaluable information sharing for anyone who fell outside mainstream culture. As the internet grew toward the end of the 90’s the humble zine faced new competition. Blogs and social media took the ethos of the zine and connected it to a global audience. According to Jeremy Staples, creator of Bizoo and The Zine and Indie Comic Symposium (ZICS) they provided more opportunities than threat.
“The difference with mass media and us little guys, is we can adapt quickly.”
“A lot of people thought the Internet would kill zines but in a lot of ways it did the opposite. It connected more people together and built stronger networks.” He’s not wrong. Blogs like Brisbane based Paper Cuts Collective connect zinesters nationally and internationally; they offer a melting pot of culture and a marketplace to trade inspiration and ideas. Though Brisbane has a reputation for struggling creatively compared to its interstate cousins, we can boast the only council run space, Visible Ink, which helps under 25’s to create, produce, photocopy and distribute Zines. “Zines are an ever-changing vehicle of expression that easily evolves with cultural shifts”, Jeremy said. A sentiment that’s reflected beautifully in Brisbane’s zine scene. From stealing school resources in the late 70’s to distribute dissension; to last year’s ZICS, a 2day symposium that saw around 2000 people through its doors.
Zines are to blogs what film is to Instagram. The pictorial ramblings of an Iphone app may satiate your creative hunger for a time but it just doesn’t satisfy in the way that tangible media can. There’s certainly something far more fulfilling in the finite. Creating a zine takes passion and their makers are quick to point out that there’s no money in it so a certain number of shits need to be given. It’s a mentality that culminates in a finished product more thought provoking and meaningful than its digital counterpart can hope to muster. It seems Brisbane’s own Zine scene is under no threat of extinction any time soon.
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WWW.KARLSWILLIAMS.COM.AU
MUSIC _Karl S. WIlliams
We are in the midst of one of Queensland’s late summer afternoon rainy spells and I have arranged to meet Karl S. Williams street-side at a coffee shop in West End. Arriving early, I listen once more to the second half of his debut LP Heartwood: a no-frills blues masterpiece, it is unguarded and raw. Taking the listener out to the bayous, where travelling preachers sing out their prayers. It’s the kind of music that makes you want to drink before midday.
“I always say that I play blues, even though the music may not necessarily stylistically fit into that category. It can be a bit of a dirty word sometimes and I have to kind of give people a disclaimer. It’s about the feeling. That is, in my mind when I say I play ‘the blues’ I’m trying to play music which gives you that feeling, which I feel is a universal thing that all people can connect to. It’s something really fundamental and that’s why I’ve been saying that it’s blues.”
Karl interrupts my True Detective daydreams. His shaggy hair reaches past the shoulders of his velvet jacket while a grizzled hibernator man-beard is framed on his chest by long hanging necklaces and glass beads. He is softly spoken and emanates a certain calmness to his ways, pausing to carefully consider my questions before he answers.
“It’s all about that emotional weight or impact that it carries, something that is fundamentally human... A label can’t really express a feeling that you get out of something. That’s why blues is I guess the most convenient way to describe music that punches you in the guts.”
“I picked up a guitar when I was 19. That was the first time I really picked up an instrument with a good idea as to how I was going to go about figuring it out. I had a couple of piano lessons when I was a kid, but my parents couldn’t’ really afford to buy the music books,” Karl said. “I never played in bands, I sort of came up through just jamming, playing some open mic nights. But I have always kind of ended up being solo.” A groundswell of support was built off the back off Heartwood. An 11 track LP recorded live in one-take with Yanto Browning at his mountainside Airlock studios. The album is timeless, dripping with authenticity. “For me, that’s the only way I could do it. My facility as a musician is not that great. To try and track things separately or to work with a click track would be beyond my abilities. I’ll certainly be doing the next album the same way because it feels like the best way to make an album for me.” You’d classify his music as ‘blues’ music, but Karl infrequently pulls out a harmonica and has never shared a bill with Blind Dog at the Boundary.
There is a sadness inside this blue music that feels so comforting, one that Karl is keenly aware of. “The thing to me that is really essential, is to capture the fact that, yes there is this universal sadness to human existence. If you get into various schools of philosophy, it says that all life is suffering. But it’s the music. It gives you a similarity. The music gives you that feeling that it’s a shared experience and that I think is the comforting part.” It is this final point which explains why good blues music so universally likeable. It is why we go out of our way to listen to music that makes us feel sad. When fully enveloped in that familiar sinking feeling, there is a certain tranquillity; a peacefulness and an insight into something greater than ourselves. In feeling this, we are tapping into a universal sadness to which we are all connected. Whether it is the job you’re enslaved to or the life decisions that imprison you. You don’t necessarily have to be a slave living 100 years ago to feel the same feelings. We are connected in our sadness. It is something that great songwriters know, it’s what makes Karl S. William’s blues feel so good.
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T HE DANGER ENSEMBLE
THEATRE _Danger Ensemble
Steven Mitchell Wright wants to bring our view of experimental art back from the periphery of public cringe and professional aversion. As the founder and artistic director of Queensland’s leading experimental theatre company, The Danger Ensemble, and having been immersed in contemporary and progressive theatre for the better part of a decade, Steven is well-situated to try. Steven brings a professionalism to his trade. He cut his teeth as the associate director of Brisbane’s physical theatre company Zen Zen Zo before looking for an international audience. In 2007 he directed Amanda Palmer’s punk-cabaret piece Magic Tent Tour for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before running a world tour of Who Killed Amanda Palmer. The Danger Ensemble was a vehicle to develop his experimental style. In 2009 the troupe launched with The Hamlet Apocalypse that was well received for its exploration of theatrical form and what constitutes acting. They have since created and performed a number of controversial shows, including Loco Maricon Amor, Sons of Sin, and most recently, a darkly psychological adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. “We injected a metanarrative that sat beneath the fantasy and the dreaming [of ‘The Wizard of Oz’], that was all about our roles in other people’s fantasies.” His work is inward looking. He is trying to understand the psychology and philosophy of artistic expression and how they influence society-at-large. This critique of his contemporaries is not always greeted with open arms. “In an industry dominated by commercialism, you run the risk of people dismissing your work as wank. I think there is a difference between making experimental work that is indulgent and experimental work that is accessible. At present, there are some general nods towards experimentation and radicalism, but the trend is for the independent companies to take the risks.” It is a trend that Steven and The Danger Ensemble are happy to oblige. It enables them to embody on a modern stage the ideas of artistic fringemovements that have emerged from preceding generations. He starts from a dark place by drawing inspiration from the inter-war artists who rallied against fascism. Their rebellion culminated in the Surrealist movement that mocked the powers that controlled expression.
Whether 2014 Australia and 1920’s Europe are the same and would be a matter of perspective. For Steven the public’s indifference toward authority is strikingly similar. “I definitely see similar trends and patterns emerging now, both politically and artistically. At the moment there is a lot of talk from artists about needing to be more outspoken and more political with our work. More than this though, the current culture makes me want to explore stories of repression, of revolt, and of absolute freedom. Not necessarily to inspire revolt but to inspire radical thinking.” He is set to continue this exploration with Albert Camus’ Caligula that launches at the Judith Wright Centre in July. “For me, the best way to encourage shifts in perspective is to give voice to the things we shouldn’t talk about, rather than the things that are constantly being talked about.” “I want the show to have a strong element of sexual revolution, so act one will be based on some rules I found on the internet relating to group sex. They’re about giving up your social identity in order to enter into an orgy. The starting point will be Caligula arguing with that, and our entry into the first Act is this idea of entering the orgy for too long and losing your social identity. Literally or metaphorically, I’m not sure yet.” At the heart of ‘Caligula’, and of much existential philosophy, is an opposition to nihilism. In Caligula, “tries to exercise, through murder and systematic perversion of all values, a freedom which he discovers in the end is no good.” While the nature of Steven’s practice means his show won’t bear any resemblance to previous versions, he wants this argument against nihilism to be at the core of his second act. “Caligula believes that nothing has any meaning, but wants people to prove him wrong. I think this speaks culturally at the moment, particularly of young people. They know so much so soon. They just want to feel something, and this act is partly about the lengths we go to in order to feel alive.” Though the final structure of the show is pending creative development, the themes it elicits are as relevant now as they have ever been. In a disembodied and increasingly repressed society, identity and meaning can be perpetually explored through the experimental and the radical. By probing at the fringes we can, as Camus said of Caligula, arm those who will eventually replace us.
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JASHAN PRASAD Over the past three decades skate photography has grown exponentially. What started out as a niche way to document the escapades of skaters has developped into a standalone art form. It would be hard given the millions of shots, covers and mags out there to add something new to the genre, but Brisbane’s Jashan Prasad seems to be onto something fresh. When you first started photographing skaters where did you see your career going? Once I started shooting a lot, my goal was obviously to land one of my images into a magazine. It took a long time, but I remember my first photo was just a little exposure photo in Slam. It was no bigger than a postage stamp in the magazine but it definitely inspired me to keep going and get more.
How have you seen skate photography adapt in response to that? Well the cycle trickles down to everybody in the line, if the businesses struggle then they can’t really afford to advertise in a magazine, magazines rely on these advertisements to run and if there is less ads, they then have to cut down their content to afford to run and that means less photos from photographers. So it does trickle down the lines. In saying that, skate photography should not be about the money, if you do it for the money, you will lose your love for it as it turns from a passion into a struggle for money. I like to look at anything I make from skateboarding as a bonus. I go out to love what I am doing and not lose the reason I got into skating to begin with. If you look at it like that, you will love it forever. How accessible is the industry to young photographers trying to get a foot in the door?
Having my photos on the front covers of magazines a few years later was obviously a big milestone for me too. Sometimes the greatest feeling though is when you snap a photo and just immediately know that you’ve nailed it before you even look at the photo. Those are the moments I strive for.
With the internet these days, it is very accessible. Especially in the skate industry, it is such a tight knit group of people, you can go on to websites like skateboard.com.au and start your own blog, enter competitions, talk to skaters all over the country. You can add all your favourite skaters/ photographers/ companies on social media and directly interact with them. All the top photographers got advice from somebody at some stage, hit them up directly with your questions and get advice/critique from them.
What magazines did you read growing up and when did you start skating?
What are picture editors looking for when choosing cover photographs?
Skateboarding for me started in about grade 8. My brothers and I all kind of got into it at the same time and I’m sure the Tony Hawk’s PlayStation games the few years prior would have had a lot to do with that. When I was younger, we would always get skate magazines for our birthdays or Christmases so I would always be flicking through them. No particular one at that stage, just any that were in the newsagents. As time went on, I started following the Australian magazines more as it was always exciting to find the guys in them which we would see around at skate parks etc.
I think the main thing they would be looking for is something that is going to make people look twice. Whether it is a crazy handrail, a dangerous spot, or simply a creative photo. Obviously the photo will need to be able to work well in regards to laying out text and cropping to size so the photo can’t be too cluttered or tight for space.
How has the skate industry changed over the time since? What drove that change? There have been a lot of changes since then, technology moves quick and especially things like the internet really drive the industry these days. Online stores never used to exist and the industry was run through our shops and local distributors. With options to buy the same skate products for substantially less from overseas online stores, it’s not surprising that many people turn to those options. It definitely is a struggle for our Australian businesses to keep in the game.
What do you look for when on a shoot and how do you incorporate the skater’s environment? When I get to a spot, I always firstly look around me to see what the scenery looks like, a lot of the time, there is always something that could make a photo a little more interesting, whether its people, a cool building, reflections or anything. Best thing you can do is challenge yourself to make any place look good. Some spots can be reallyhard as there may not be anything of interest, but use what you have and see what -you can do. I once shot a photo of Danny Gluskie doing a heel-flip on flat in -20 degrees, it is possibly one of my favourite photos I have ever taken and it also got run in a magazine even though it was just a flat ground trick. You don’t always need an amazing skate spot or trick to get an amazing photo.
PHOTOGRAPHY _Jashan Prasad
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MUSIC _Blank Realm
“
WE JUST WANTED TO THROW MORE ENERGY OUT THERE, LIKE WHEN YOUR DRIVING ON THE FREEWAY LISTENING TO A BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SONG. THAT EXCITEMENT AND ECSTATIC FEELING YOU GET, WE JUST WANTED TO DO THAT.
Unmetered and unrestrained, and over an aero-press brew Text & Image’s Ben Higgins sat down with Luke Walsh, guitarist from Brisbane’s own Blank Realm. Luke mused upon the band’s earliest days, their melodic evolution, and the internal dynamics essential to their music. The band started during the summer of 2003. Then apprentice sound engineer, Luke Walsh and siblings Daniel, Sarah and Luke Spencer ventured into recording studios of UQ. Seizing the opportunity for total immersion into the high-end studio equipment, these impromptu late night sessions laid the groundwork for Blank Realm. It was there they explored the saturated textures of analogue synths like the SH-101, and began experimenting with loops and sampling devices. Blank Realm emerged amid the flourishing experiential noise scene in Brisbane during the mid 2000’s. They worked alongside artists like Lloyd Barrett, Joe Musgrave, 6 Magik 9, and Sky Needle with their homemade ‘un-instruments’. This contact with likeminded performers proved their isolated rehearsal could find a place in a larger movement. “It was more of a coincidence, we were operating in our own zone, jamming in the suburbs in our houses with our headphones on, trying to make things uglier.” Many of the songs from albums like Heatless Ark, Go easy, and Deja What? originated from off-kilter cerebral improvisations condensed from 2-3 hours of recorded material. As a band they share diverse but mutual interests, ranging from 70’s English pastoral folk to Japanese noise music from the 80’s. In particular, American psychedelic rock from the 70’s caught the band’s attention. “It was that kind of proto heavy-metal with heavy distortion and screaming vocals, but where these bands took it wasn’t macho-istic, it was more dark and internal, and that’s what interested us at the time,” Luke said. A point of departure for Blank Realm came after the addition
of a drum kit in 2006. Their growth took the form of a disciplined rehearsal regimen married with a desire to add more energy into the mix. They took inspiration from what Luke called ‘gateway bands’ like Can, Les Rallizes Dénudés, and Amon Düül II. There is a clarity in the band’s latest releases though it remains a tortured form of lucidity and still inherently Blank Realm. “We just wanted to throw more energy out there, like when your driving on the freeway listening to a Bruce Springsteen song. That excitement and ecstatic feeling you get, we just wanted to do that.” The energy they foster in their music today is symptomatic of the band’s experience and the bonds they share. More so now, there is an immediacy that occurs after everything syncs up and the instruments align. As Luke defines, the real trick is capturing this. “We try and keep that immediacy, you don’t want something to sound laboured, people aren’t interested in that,” Luke said. It could be that this immediacy has something to do with the dynamism they unleash, and feed off, during their live shows. Playing more now in a rock context, Luke reminds me, that the rhapsodic energy generated as they perform for their audiences, is something only music can achieve. A little over a decade since forming, the band has cemented their significance in the Australian underground music scene. Going abroad, they have signed on with UK’s Fire Records and will undertake a European tour in June, with a second American tour planned for the near future.
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DESIGN / ART / PHOTOGRAPHY / STREET PRESS
TEXT&IMAGE
WWW.TEXTANDIMAGE.COM.AU