Ben Frost: Interview
Originally appeared in The Scene 2007
| Ben Frost, Quick Draw, 2006, acrylic and aerosol on board, 25 x 20 cm. |
Ben Frost’s paintings have taken collage and pop art into the next era, that is: now. A kaleidoscope of skewed Disney images and brand names compete with horror elements to create a visual cacophony of a world gone mad, where ratings and sales figures matter more than true emotions or genuine relationships.
Frost has taken on all the Big Cheese Companies, from Burger King to Lego, fusing their logos with images taken from our childhood: Hello Kitty, Bambi, Snow White and The Simpsons all feature, albeit in a distorted fashion, in Frost’s world. He has cleverly reminded us of how labels and brand names are taught early, and thus how much our lives are in fact carefully constructed by marketers wanting us to buy their products.
I interviewed Ben Frost by email from an internet café with dial-up in a sleepy village lying at the foothill of the Scottish Highlands, en route from the London Book Fair to visit my family’s Clan McLeod home of the Isle of Skye. Slowly my questions filtered through to Frost’s Sydney studio in sunny Surrey Hills. This was our exchange.
| Ben Frost, Dawn of the Dead, 2007, acrylic and aerosol on board, 120 x 120 cm. |
EMC: Tell me about your title image for the exhibition, ‘Dawn of the Dead’. What I loved about is that you have Lurch from The Addam’s Family with ‘MySpace’ scratched into his forehead. I have a friend who believes that MySpace is the work of Satan. Perhaps it is perpetuating our zombie-ism to a degree, and of course it was recently acquired by the Murdoch empire, so is now just a part of another major corporation. And of course it provides a wonderful tool for gathering information about us (I found scary evidence of this in a BBC article “And most importantly, Myspace has detailed logs of its users’ preferences, online behaviour and personal information”. Is this referenced in this work of yours?
BF: This was today’s television program content of ‘Mornings’ with Kerry Anne Kennerly April 18th, 2007 9.20 a.m to 9.50 a.m : 80 year old woman starts smoking, Is your man a metrosexual?, Lose weight with the Magic Bean Deluxe, Virginia college student kills 32 fellow students, Food prices set to skyrocket due to Australia’s greatest water shortage on record, commercial for window cleaning product, commercial for juicing machine, Debate on adoption rights for celebrities, Should Britney’s mother be blamed for her bizarre behaviour?, commercial for cheap home loan, commercial for life insurance, commercial for caravan and camping supershow, news update on reasons why Virginia college student kills 32 fellow students, commercial for Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.
I listen to all of this in the background whilst viewing Myspace on the internet. During the day, Myspace has more ‘upbeat’ content – this morning I notice advertising pop-ups in this order: Free ring tone, animated commercial for a ‘listening lounge’ sponsored by a vodka company, Free ring tone, Lady with large breasts offering free t-shirts, the new Spiderman movie, Free ring tone, New energy drink, Broadband special offer, Free ringtone, Cheap ring tone, Ski in New Zealand, Free ring tone.
I often have to wipe the dribble from my chin as my brow extends and I groan like a zombie, but I’m not feeding on brains, I’m feeding on friend requests and revolutionary new weight-loss programs. This is only the first half hour of my day and my eyes have already glazed over from the constant technicolour barrage of banality that looks more grey with every mouse click.
Like Frankenstein’s monster we have become undead – neither contributing nor being provided anything of value, aimlessly participating in a vast advertising campaign that thinly masquerades as entertainment.
EMC: Your latest artist’s statement describes nightmares, the paranormal and other such matters. I was interested to read your experience of the ‘Old Hag’, which you describe as “a troublesome event where one awakes in the middle of the night unable to move or call out whilst a feeling of evil and dread fills the room”. You say you have suffered from this from childhood into your adult life.
How does your art provide an expression for this? Do any worries and anxieties go out into your art, then perhaps back into your mind? Or are you perhaps capturing a mass fear of where we are on this planet right now and where we are heading?
| Ben Frost, The Fear, 2006, acrylic and aerosol on board, 20 x 25 cm. |
BF: I’m definitely trying to capture a sense of hysteria in my work. The way the media whips up perceived threats and fears from terrorism, oil shortages, bird flu, incompetent doctors, ice epidemics and nuclear war, sometimes it seems safer to stay in bed with a cup of tea.
With our current level of globalization our world is presented to us in an interwoven tabloid form where everything works on extremes. Extreme weather conditions in America that are the ‘biggest’ and the ‘worst’ juxtaposed with extreme children’s programs where the characters are the ‘cutest’ and their associated toy range are the most ‘fun’ and ‘entertaining’.
If we weren’t so desensitized, every day would be this rollercoaster of amazement, ecstasy and sorrow that would leave us completely exhausted by nightfall.
But what is the answer to all this? There isn’t. We have devolved into mindless consumerists that tout freedom by force, our understanding of freedom dictated to us during commercial breaks of Big Brother (Ten Network, Mon-Fri, 6 till 6.30, live evictions every Sunday night at 7.30).
EMC: You have talked about appropriation before, which is a really hairy issue in the art world. You’ve said that you liked the side of it as being “kind of like a ‘fuck you’ to art and the supposed preciousness of it” (Ben Frost, interview, Chief Magazine, Issue 4, 2006). Most of your work involves appropriation of brand names and images, which I think, considering how much they have been forced down our throat, it’s about time artists started messing with this imagery. But where would you draw the line at appropriation? How do you feel about copyright issues? Would you, say appropriate another artist’s work?
BF: Culture jamming brings the power back to the individual, in a world where the individual feels more leadership from corporations than it does their own governments. People buy what they are told, but they won’t do what they are told. There is then this perceived sense of fear that the Special Branch of the Kellogg’s Squad is going to raid an artist’s studio to confiscate the highly illegal use of the words ‘Corn Flakes’ in a painting, where the letter ‘C’ in ‘Corn’ has been replaced with the letter ‘P’. I can just see Snap, Crackle & Pop dressed in head to toe leather with oversized handcuffs and big colourful batons knocking the beret off the poor shocked painter.
I do appropriate other artist’s work and I think there has always been a great tradition of this. But I don’t go sifting through the work of my peers. I most often lift and manipulate artwork from obscure sources like old sixties comic books.
| Ben Frost, Portrait of GG Allin, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 90 cm. |
EMC: In an interview you said that you were inspired by Julian Opie, Warhol, Jamie Reid, Ron English, Robert Williams, all the Judge Dredd/2000AD comic artists. I am most interested in the last reference, the 2000 AD comic artists. How do you think they have influenced your work?
BF: 2000 AD was such an amazing and revolutionary tome of the fantastical and the absurd. Stories like Judge Dredd, whilst telling macho stories for young boys, had this British comedic sensibility where everything was tongue in cheek and bizarre. It was set in this future world where Judge Dredd had to cruise about keeping the order in the out-of-control, overpopulated and media influenced world, that in retrospect was really quite prophetic. I remember this funny story called ‘the fatties’ where every year scores of morbidly obese people would gather for a type of overweight Olympics. The fatties would compete in sports such as fast-eating and sprinting (with various ‘gut-barrows’ to help them along) – which is not much different from any episode of ‘The Biggest Loser’ really.
I think as a young boy, 2000 AD drew me into drawing superheroes, which realistically started me into art, and the way they presented the future I guess I’ve always stayed linked to this idea of our own future and how ridiculous and bizarre it’s going to be – if it isn’t already.
| Ben Frost, Let’s Be Friends, 2007, acrylic and aerosol on board, 120 x 120 cm. |
EMC: I am interested in how your work combines images of sex and horror, even gore. I suppose I would read this as a way of commenting on the ways in which women’s bodies are used to sell, the ways in which, despite the (3) feminist movements, sex still ‘sells’. Or is it something different?
BF: I have the constant urge to paint naked women and guns. At first I thought it was because I am a man – which I think has a lot to do with it, but there is also a huge element of indoctrination involved. My process of art making involves sifting through countless images, whether they are on the internet, in magazines or in comics and in these forums the depiction of women is almost always the same. In comic books, the female is the ‘innocent’ in magazines a ‘commodity’ and on the internet, a desirable ‘object’. I play with these representations and mix genres to create surreal dialogues that bring to the surface more darker consumerist motivations.
EMC: You’ve described your paintings for your new exhibition as “punk-pop mash-up”. Which sounds more like a band description than an art one. Excuse me for asking the old question about music influencing your work, but seeing as you actually are in a band (Danger of Death), does it and how so?
BF: My first exhibition I did when I got back from living in Japan was painted over a 4 month period listening solely to a band called Arab On Radar. After first listening to one of their albums I committed myself to try and paint in that style of music, which I pretty much did. Their stuff has a nervous frenzied, math-rock kind of style, with perverse poetic lyrics. I lifted some of their song lyrics to name some of my paintings at the time like ‘Judy Garland Never Wore Tampons’ and ‘Yahweh or the Highway’. I like using words and titles, and music has that ability to explain things in a way painting can only ever come close to.
I look at my artwork as being punk, and I extend that to my contribution to my band Danger of Death. It’s fun to express yourself to a beat, get in fights on stage and generally make everything that I’m about in a more performative and physical form.
| Ben Frost, Yahweh or The Highway, 2006, acrylic and aerosol on board, 120 x 120 cm |
| Ben Frost, Exxon, Painted rubber duck, 2006. |
EMC: I saw somewhere recently, I think it was the school’s test on some tabloid tv show, like Today Tonight, that children can now spell brand names better than they can the names of items of clothing. I think your work alerts us to this fact, although you probably examine the issue with a bit more complexity than tabloid tv shows do.
BF: I’m obsessed with Today Tonight and A Current Affair – they are the best shows on television, and I get totally annoyed they are on at the same time, because I don’t know which one to watch. It’s like watching Bill O’Reilly on Fox News – he’s so repulsive and you can hardly keep from gagging on your own vomit, but there’s a type of message that is being broadcast that you don’t see with as much passion anywhere else.
I think I remember this program about the kids, and I think they had another spin on it where the kids now who Ronald McDonald was but not John Howard. It relates to the power that the corporations have attained as the real seats of government. Politicians are so damn boring. Though they weren’t like this in the 80’s. Mikael Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Bob Hawke and Margaret Thatcher were all in power at the same time – and despite their points of view at least they had some charisma. It’s quite possible that our current leaders are dressed by the corporations to look old and dull, so as not to draw any attention away from the tampon commercials.
EMC: Being interested in ephemeral art and projects such as Peter Hill’s imaginary ‘Museum of Contemporary Ideas’, I was fascinated to read that you faked your own death in 2000. Unfortunately it coincided with the death of an art world luminary. I was overseas at the time and missed all the hoo-hah, has the art world(s) forgiven you yet? Is it part of an ongoing project that you are going to continue, I can see a theme here…is your upcoming exhibition ‘Dawn of the Dead’ Ben Frost returning as a zombie?
BF: When I faked my death, the newspapers picked up on it and thought I really was dead, which just goes to show how easily the media can be manipulated and makes you think just how accurate reporting really is. For me the use of ‘death’ as a motif, is not about morbidity but about change and transition – like the death of the 20th century gave birth to the 21st.
I think as an artist too it’s good to kill off parts of your practice that aren’t relevant anymore – much like when they kill off boring characters in tv-sitcoms. Lots of artists find a groove and stick with it all of their lives and feel they can’t step out of it, because the market won’t understand. But I think there is a lot of room to express yourself in different genres and avenues like music, performance or illustration that help make up a bigger picture of what you’re about.
| Ben Frost, See Inside Box For Details, 2008, acrylic and aerosol on board, 120 x 90 cm |
EMC: You are now also working with sculpture; sadly one of your sculptures was broken, with a resulting court case. I recently witnessed a similar event at an opening where an extremely valuable Koori possum skin cloak had red wine spilt on it. I am an advocate for getting up close and personal with artworks, how do you feel about that? Do you have to put barbed wire around your sculptures now at openings?
BF: I can understand vandalism and destruction for a reason, but in the case of my Self-Regenerating Bambi, the girl who knocked it down was just really drunk and had to be carried out of the gallery. I guess I should probably have less debaucherous openings in retrospect, but it was just a stab in the guts that she could stand there like a drunken zombie and try and tell me to my face that she hadn’t done it. But my lawyer captured her and we feasted greedily on her corpse.
My girlfriend has had her work stolen from exhibitions on about 4 separate occasions, which I’ve never personally experienced, but yeah it seems like you’ve got to screw the work down these days just to keep it safe and in the gallery.
Websites:
| www.benfrostisdead.com www.stupidkrap.com www.pastemodernism.com |