Texta Dreams: I’m Hunting and Pecking: Feed Me Your Troubles, Arlene TextaQueen and Olivia Edith, Seventh Gallery, 2007

First appeared in The Art Life, 2007

Arlene Textaqueen, Somethings never change (Leah), 2007, felt tip on paper

I am lying on an old golden velvet couch, dreaming. I am in a far away land, with swirls of bright light, where everything is light and airy. There are women who are not so much solid forms of flesh but curlicues of whites, pinks, pale greens and golds, they float around me as light as lace. A voice is making a melodious sound. It sounds like Coleridge’s Abyssinian maid, high and clear. I can’t decipher what it is saying; and I don’t want to, it is too nice to be on this couch, in a warehouse in the city of Melbourne, fast asleep with my white lights and pretty pink swirls. But the voice grows more insistent, and comes closer, and I realise it isn’t saying ‘misty’, as I thought, which went nicely with my magical world, but ‘Christie’, the name of my friend upon whose couch I am sleeping.

It isn’t from within my dream, but outside, in the lane. It is the voice of Keg, the sister of the artist Arlene TextaQueen, whose felt-tip drawings have infiltrated my dreams. The swirls are the arabesque lines from her drawings, her palette supplies the colours. Her work has somehow seeped quickly into my sub-conscious.

Keg, who is also an artist, is staying in the warehouse, and she has returned home after seeing The Slits play at The Corner and needs to be let in. And she has a voice that somehow reflects her sister’s drawings, even whilst yelling up to a warehouse from a dirty laneway at 2 am on a school night.

Earlier that evening we had been at Seventh Gallery, one of Melbourne’s most popular artist run spaces. Situated on Gertrude St, Fitzroy, it is in the heart of Melbourne’s  contemporary art world, across the road is Dianne Tanzer Gallery, down the street, Gertrude Contemporary. TextaQueen’s exhibition there was held in conjunction with her penpal, American artist Olivia Edith.

Arlene Textaqueen, If I ever go to another social engagement…, 2010, felt tip on paper 76.5 x 111.5cm

Arlene TextaQueen is an artist intent on keeping the genre of The Nude alive. She has taken an art form previously relegated within Australian art to Lindsay’s ‘galumphing nudes’, still bought by businessmen for the purposes of private titillation in their offices, and dragged it kicking and screaming into the present. She has blithely and cleverly ignored the limitations of the academy and gone about courageously drawing life models in her own distinctive style. By doing so, she has intentionally recaptured the nude female form away from the male gaze, and broken with the traditions of the ‘chaste nude’, exemplified by artists such as Janet Cumbrae Stewart. She has brought the nude into a more inclusive, yet fantastical world.

Arlene Textaqueen, I shouldn’t have put it there to tempt you (Dana), 2005 felt tip on paper 77 x 112cm

TextaQueen has neatly side-stepped O’Keefe’s financial concerns by drawing her friends and contemporaries, which works in her favour, as the drawings all have an intimacy and personality which lets the viewer feel in on a secret. It’s like you’ve been invited into her lounge room, there’s a female MC, there’s a female performance artist, and they are friendly and offer you a cup of tea with organic honey. Or maybe vodka.

She brings this aspect to her exhibition openings also, I have memories of her opening at Gertrude Contemporary in 2003, where there were two naked young ladies covered in tinned spaghetti, with TextaQueen drawing them, oblivious to the crowd around her. At Seventh that she had repeated this performance, complete with her TextaQueen outfit that makes her look like an Art Superhero, so that the viewers at her openings are invited into the lounge room with her, and the opening becomes a three-dimensional performance art created here, now, rather than just 2-dimensional drawings created in an unknown ‘studio’ space.

And the drawings themselves are distinct and appealing. They are colourful yet contain enough white space not to fall into garishness, they fuse a naive, almost child-like style of drawing and perspective (often TextaQueen’s figures have oversized heads, for example), with an understanding of the human form. They are social documentations of interesting, talented and strong women who are rarely documented.

Arlene Textaqueen, There’s always a sacrifice, 2010, felt tip on paper 111.5 x 76.5cm

What I particularly enjoy about them is their inclusion of text; the artist, Kahlo-like, includes a line that gives the viewer some indication of the personality or life of the sitter. Often witty, or humourous, perhaps they cheat a little in opening up that person’s life to us through the direct access of words, whereas traditionally a portrait painter would have to rely purely on imagery to do the same, but I nonetheless applaud the idea. Mostly it’s because I love the lines themselves, which are always taken from the conversation between the artist and her model. And with the proliferation of text-based art around us, I see no reason why the artist cannot fuse images with words, even in a previously conservative genre such as portraiture. Or perhaps especially in a previously conservative genre such as portraiture.

TextaQueen’s fantastical world is a joy and delight to view, believe me, it’ll give you better dreams.

Arlene Textaqueen is now represented by GallerySmith, Melbourne and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney. Flickr here.

Interview with Ben Frost

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 18^th, 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 20^th century gave birth to the 21^st.
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

Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, review for The Scene, 2007

review for The Scene 2007

The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award is probably most famous for its controversies, from the provocative t-shirt worn by one of its winners to the allegations that a winning painting was not entirely, erm, Aboriginal.

This year however it wasn’t the art, nor the winner’s t-shirt, that was in the political spotlight (although co-judge Djon Mundine did attempt a bit of t-shirt humour by wearing a slogan that read ‘Aboriginal All the Time’, officially advertising an exhibition he is curating, unofficially perhaps alluding to his questioning of the 2006 Queensland Xstrata Coal Aboriginal Art Award winner’s Aboriginality?).

The award is normally a celebratory event highlighted by Friday night’s ceremonies where the public and the art world gather on the picturesque lawns of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), overlooking the stunning sunset, to listen to live music and applaud the winners. Everyone looks very relieved to be out of the southern winter, and to be appearing, sans winter coat (and hat, gloves and scarf), in the evening.

But this year the award was overshadowed by a dark sense of forboding. There may be tough times ahead for Aboriginal art.

Arts Minister Marion Scrymgour gave an impassioned speech at the inaugural Aboriginal Art Market, a wonderful art fair featuring twenty art centres. She told the crowd of the terrifying steps the Government was taking: removing the permit system, destroying CDEP (government funded Aboriginal workers, many of whom work in art centres) and compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal townships.

Her fury at this was echoed by her stand-in at the announcement of the Award, Deputy Chief Minister Sid Sterling, after Minister Scrymgour had to rush to Canberra to battle the proposed acts. The Chief Minister urged the crowd to ‘take a moment out from art to see politics’, and sadly, that is what may be required.

But back to art for a moment. The NATSIAA is really most famous for being Australia’s oldest and most prestigious Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art prize.

Founded in 1984 by then MAGNT Indigenous art curator Margie West, the NATSIAA (or The Telstras as it is often known) has become the most important event on the Indigenous art calendar. During a frenetic week in Darwin, artists, dealers, curators, writers and collectors gather to see who won what and to check out the many high-quality art exhibitions that abound in the galleries and rented art spaces around town. It is an exciting time, and the art world literally whips itself into a champagne and mango juice fuelled frenzy. Aside from the often excellent art, which gets everyone’s pulses racing, the week is full of long dinners where the conversation is art, art and more art, and the winning choices are debated with a passion reminiscent of one’s first great love, or perhaps, football team. Be careful what you say and to whom, as the winning artist may have ten dealers representing him or her, and before you know it you may have deeply offended a battle-scarred art dealer as much as if you insulted their children.

There are many bloodshot eyes at the openings over the following days, the result of all-night celebrations with the winners or simply partying at the mostly free events of the Darwin Festival.

This year the big prize of the NATSIAA was awarded to its youngest ever winner, 33-year-old Torres Strait Islander Dennis Nona. Nona is the first Torres Strait Islander winner of the award, and his huge bronze sculpture is indicative of its current nature, where works can be bought by collectors instead of being automatically acquired by the Museum and Art Gallery. This means that the winner gets $40,000 and is also able to sell their work, which has led to larger works being included, such as the Tjanpi Desert Weavers Grass Toyota that won the award two years ago.

Nona, who is well known as a printmaker, required $90,000 to make his 3.5 metre, 650 kilogram sculpture of a mythological crocodile and tattooed man, entitled Ubirikubiri. The work is part of a series of six works, the first of which was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia for $190,000.

There are 104 works in the prize, ranging from painting to new media, displaying the diversity and sophistication inherent within contemporary Aboriginal art.

The exhibitions that feature around the award are also significant, from the stunning master works of Bidyadanga shown at Raft and Northern Editions, to the cross-cultural exhibitions at 24hr Art.

Despite the Government’s attack on Aboriginal culture that will most definitely impact in a negative way on the Aboriginal arts industry (an industry, might I add, which turns over an estimated $200 million each year, and is hugely respected internationally), Aboriginal art is hopefully going to continue in the direction it has previously taken. A direction, as the annual Darwin events display, that has led to it becoming a major player on the world stage of art.

The 24th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award is on at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory until 18 November 2007.