Bored in the Suburbs by Luke Letourneau

Claudia Howard, Pins Killing Time â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Pin Paintings (Untitled No.1), 2013. Board.

CONTENTS BETWEEN YOUTH DECADENCE AND THE PERCEIVED HOMOGENEITY OF ADULT LIFE

BUILDING “CUBBIES” AND THE NEED TO HOLD ON

GOLDEN BEUGS Alison Groves

YOUR MEMORIES ARE LIES AND YOU ARE A LIAR

PAINTINGS ARE MYSTERY Alyce Neal

THE FLUIDITY OF LABOUR AND VALUE

PINS AND NEEDLES Micheal Do

LET’S JUST SIT AND DO THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

GAY PORN IN THE SUBURBS Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

EDITED BY LUKE LETOURNEAU

Miranda Samuels, Plans For Pictures (No.1), 2014. Housepaint and oil on canvas.

BETWEEN YOUTH DECADENCE AND THE PERCEIVED HOMOGENEITY OF ADULT LIFE

Bored In The Suburbs is an investigation into the escapist fantasies of those existing in the limbo between suburban adolescence and adult life. The exhibition sees artists who live and work from a range of outer Sydney suburbs embracing and undercutting their individual suburban experiences. What is exposed through the work of these artists is the way living in their respective regions has contributed to the style, subject matter or concerns of their specific practice. Tom Mason is an artist drawing heavily from his own experience with surf culture. He and his friends often escape to the dunes surrounding secluded beaches, where they then extract raw resources from the site to construct cubby hangouts. What Mason then exhibits are the objects of this culture; the materialisation of an adroit evasion. For this exhibition, Miranda Samuels is remembering her childhood. These 7

Between Youth Decadence And The Perceived Homogeneity Of Adult Life

autobiographical works are filtered through an ever-changing mindset, eventuating in amalgamations of truth and fiction. While the works look to express a former mentality, they are always constructed from hindsight, and thus at a level always confabulated truths. Pins, corks and foam are frequently utilised objects in the work of Claudia Howard. What these works look toward are the shifting values of skills and labour, while also presenting boredom in the everyday being lived and played out through creative means. Due to the desires of efficiency, Terrence Combos revels in repetition, order and the boredom that follows it. His work is constantly cataloguing and compartmentalizing time, as an indulgence of rigid structures. By highlighting a recognized rigidity his work is ultimately allowed to escape that which he recognizes in the everyday. The resulting work sees the artists revel in time (wasting), memory, gender norms, and hedonistic behaviour as an entry-point to scrutinize both youth decadence and the perceived homogeneity of adult life. These notions are illuminated through painting, drawing, ceramics and a range of mixed media, inviting audiences to bare witness to all that the shifting contexts of suburban life may yield.

Terrence Combos, Bless this mess, 2014. Acrylic and adhesive letters on paper.

BUILDING “CUBBIES” AND THE NEED TO HOLD ON

In 2012, Pittwater Council commenced extensive bush regeneration work around Bungan Beach and Betty Morrison Reserve1. Taking advantage, surfers began to occupy these newly accessible spaces in the sand dunes, fabricating their own environments to suit hangout sessions by introducing couches, fire pits, decking and mattresses, as well as cutting away flora for the ultimate purpose of creating “cubbies” to achieve a comfort in the space.2 While the creation of the cubbies is beneficial for the extension of the surf culture, the introduction of the foreign objects is seen as detrimental to the environment by local residents and the council. Subsequently, seeing it as rubbish, the council remove the objects that occupy these spaces, which ultimately destroys the cubbies. It can be argued that these cubbies perform an integral function for the beach and dune life. Consequently, by destroying these cubbies the council is encouraging the abandonment of the beaches by the surfers. One person who makes this argument is 10

Building “Cubbies” And The Need To Hold On

Tom Mason who aims to re-furnish the cubbies through sourcing materials that already exist in the dunes. Specifically, clay sand and straw are mixed to create cob, a hard natural building material. By reclaiming the cubbies not only does Mason generate a new space for surfers to hangout, he also gifts the next inhabitants the opportunity to share his experience. The culture of the dunes is offered the opportunity for longevity, with Mason’s structures encouraging an evolution of the space by new inhabitants over time. What this response signifies is a desire for the materialisation of escapist fantasies. While these new ‘natural’ cubbies will degrade over time they will also evolve into the surrounding environment. As long as future generations continue to engage with the natural environment, the cubbies, and the culture it is predicted the on can continue and exist as an evanescent sanctuary away from the everyday.

1 Facilities And Services At Beaches. Pitwater Council. 07 Sept 2012. Web. <http://www.pittwater.nsw.gov. au/council/major_projects/completed_-_2013/dune_restoration> 2 Cherry, Benton.“Cubbies” with million dollar views to be removed by Pittwater Council. Manly Daily. 20 Sept 2012. Web. <http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/cubbies-with-million-dollar-views-tobe-removed-by-pittwater-council/story-fndo28a5-1226477844282>

Tom Mason, Liar-beug, 2013. Earthenware with gold glaze.

GOLDEN BEUGS Alison Groves

When I was a kid we’d go surfing and just hang out, hang out in the sand dunes, make shit, go for a surf and yeah hang out all afternoon. The Ritalin is either biting or spurring his flow. I’m fishing in a bag of CDs for an illusive ‘blank one,’ while Tom drives down Cleveland St, taking us to a Hare Krishna curry-feast, and there’s that usual kinda frenzied, and completely beautiful, Tom Mason vibe. He’s been making bricks, experimenting with cob, and moving away from ceramic bongs in favour of an imaginary ethnography of the Long Reef sand dunes. The classic Gatorade-bottle-and-garden-hose engineering project referenced in Tom’s gold glazed Gatorbeugs were a highlight of the COFA kiln last year; pretty much everyone ‘wanted one’—pretty much everyone knew of them. One of Tom’s friends proudly displayed her newly acquired ceramic bong (and yeah, fully functional but not recommended) on 13

Golden Beugs

her mantelpiece, and on inspection day found herself desperately defending its service as an art-object. But forget the perils of uncultured landlords: Tom’s current direction seems set to challenge local councils, and seriously question the whole colonialist land ownership ideology. We just missed the free curry service, so Tom leads me to the anarchist bookshop across the street; we’re invited to join a discussion on resource based economy which is about to start, and though it’s strangely relevant, we opt for the quieter, and philosophically opposed, Newtown Oporto across the street. Tom draws a diagram: So there’s a dune right, there’s the beach, there’s the clay, at the bottom of this cliff, there’s the kart, that’s me, pulling it, I’m wearing a raincoat, sometimes I’m wearing boots as well but sometimes I just take them off, and there are some little bushes here, around this bit, this little bush camp. A group of kids would move in, make like a camp, a bong-shack, smoke billies, make little wells. People would bring furniture in there, make it like a courtyard. And yeah then I guess everyone grew out of it, except for me. Oh, I guess they’re still into it but…yeah they’re still into it. I’d carve the clay out and take it back up to this clearing and make stuff— furniture. We keep it hidden because when the council find it, they have to destroy it. But when they destroy it, the people just clear another spot and start again. But if they just left it it’d be fine, more sustainable. So who owns the dunes? I’ve been looking at colonialism a bit. Well, I don’t really know about it yet—but I’ve got all the books. What ‘owns’ this place is the Council Management Plan, and that has an emphasis on ‘preserving bushland values’ and ‘to provide for use of the land’; they’re the main two points. You know Adverse Possession Law? Then this kid, I guess around twenty, saunters to our greasy-elbow table, ‘What are you guys studying?’ 14

Golden Beugs

‘Adverse Possession Law.’ Says Tom ‘What. I know nothing about that.’ ‘Me either really.’ ‘Yeah we’re just about to learn.’ ‘Oh can I learn too? I’ve just spent the whole day window shopping an-,’ pausing for a sip from a poorly disguised repurposed juice bottle, and sliding a packet of Coles Malaysian themed tofu to the table. ‘Well when you go to an abandoned place right, and you…you should do a check first on who owns it—’ ‘To be honest with you, I’ve spent the whole day window shopping on beautiful rooftops—’ ‘Oh you’re drunk?’ ‘You’ve got it! Drinking—and—tofu!’ he cuts Tom off and downs a rubbery brown square. ‘Oh, aren’t you meant to cook that?’ I say with a restrained and slightly downer vibe of concern and repulsion. Tom Mason, Comfy and Finger Criminal Intent, 2013. Photograph

Golden Beugs

‘Apparently it’s pretty healthy for you. And I’m pretty sure it’s not meat, to be honest with you. And my mate in the bathroom, he’s done it plenty of times. I really hope you don’t have to cook it though,’ he insists, still chewing. ‘It just tastes like teriyaki. But it does concern me. I’ve been eating it all day.’ Tom turns to me, ‘What’s it called when you put your worries into something else? Do you think he’s diverting his anxieties into dying, into the tofu? Like when there’s really something else he’s worried about?’ Death by tofu would be a pretty major concern, but he’s drunk and fine and is having a pretty great day, right? Tom’s cherub forehead looks furrowed as the wasted tofu-crew head out: maybe he’s concerned about something; maybe he lost his chain of thought; maybe he’s made some huge/tiny revelation. It’s hard to know. Maybe we’re not bored in the suburbs, maybe we’re just trying to figure something out.

YOUR MEMORIES ARE LIES AND YOU ARE A LIAR

All autobiographical material is at some level totally lying. The academic Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang has reflected on the autobiography as a product that intends to display a person changing and being changed by life’s experiences; however, in the process of recounting there is always a ‘selection’ of material1. No doubt, this is a product of transplanting lived experiences into a discipline of art where there are rules and limitations regulating a final product. There are simple truths that can’t always be expressed through a direct recount of all relevant events, then in condensing a breadth of experiences confabulation inevitably must arise. However, it has to be asked, is that a bad thing? At its core, confabulation is a form of ‘honest lying’. The brain does not like for there to be gaps in memory so it confabulates truths spontaneously as a way of preventing confusion. There is a small portion of brain-damaged people who, instead of admitting their lost memories, invent new events, often absurd and implausible in nature2. This is known as chronic confabulation, and in most cases is done in total earnest. 17

Your Memories Are Lies And You Are A Liar

While this is an extreme case, confabulation more commonly occurs as a result of the influence of clues and suggestions where there is a memory lapse. As Kathy Pezdek points out, “due to poor strategy for retrieving information, individual may be highly suggestible and utilize external cues for memory”3. Memory confabulation is an area where the work of the artist Miranda Samuels often draws from. Primary materials presenting both the moments of importance and the seemingly mundane have been used as the starting point for unpacking her personal histories. By transforming these experiences Samuels is forced to not only condense the memories so to fit her medium’s limitations, but she also has to invent a way of representing feelings and emotions that may not have had a direct representable counterpart. In these works, confabulation is a requirement. In the distortion of realities the past is able to occupy new truths. This similarly links to the notion that all art will be a product of biases, and the clues we employ to remember will prejudice the direction of our perceptions. I must then return to my original question, is it bad that autobiographical material is not entirely truthful? Quite simply, no. Art has always transforms life as a way of reveling something deeper for audiences. Where the strength in art lies is in the ability to unlock an understanding of the world to a person beyond its author. Or put more elegantly by Tom Wingfield in the opening monologue of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie4: “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” 1. Opoku-Akyemang, Kwadwo. Shifting Paradigms: Graves Without Bodies: The Mnemonic Importance of Equiano’s Autobiography. Beyond Survival: African Literature and the Search for New Life. New Jersey. Africa World Press Inc, 1998. Print 2. Leslie, Ian. Are Artists Liars? Intelligent Life. 13 Feb 2014. Web. < http://moreintelligentlife.com/ content/ideas/ian-leslie/are-artists-liars?page=full> 3.Pezdek, Kathy, Shirley T. Lam, and Kathryn Sperry. “Forced confabulation more strongly influences event memory if suggestions are other-generated than self-generated.” Legal and criminological psychology 14.2 (2009): 241-252. Web. < http://www.cgu.edu/PDFFiles/sbos/Pezdek_Confabulation.pdf> 4. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie: The Deluxe Centennial Edition. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2011. Print. p,58.

Miranda Samuels, The Crystal Room 2013. Installation view.

PAINTINGS ARE MYSTERY Alyce Neal

Miranda Samuels discusses the enduring nature of painting as a medium that cannot be defined. Intrinsic to her practice is memory confabulation and the shifting identity of Australian art. Through increased access to information, Samuels cites a loss of mystery in everyday life, and reflects on her past as a means by which to explore what it is to be an Australian painter in an increasingly globalised art world. Alyce Neal: Can you unpack the enduring quality of painting? Does it hold a sense of mysticism? Miranda Samuels: I think that painting occupies a really interesting space in the context of artistic production today. There’s an idea that’s resurfaced in recent years that painting has suffered (yet another) death, giving way to an ‘expanded’ reincarnation of itself. Despite the fact my undergraduate studies in painting have been largely based around this idea, it never resonated particularly well with me. There’s something innately engaging about a painting that keeps the medium from disappearing for good and I find that really fascinating. I think the reason for this is dependant on the context 20

Paintings Are Mystery

in which work is being produced. Part of the reason I find painting so relevant today is because it offers audiences such a different experience from other ways we receive and interact with information and output. For example, having high speed internet at our fingertips means that we have an immediate ability to find answers, debunk ideas and get to the bottom of things (see: google searching in the middle of a conversation). As a result, mystery is rare in everyday life - we’re not used to being faced with situations that can’t be instantly understood. Painting, however, is imbued with mysticism. What is presented by a painting is an inherently mysterious experience that cannot be easily deciphered by the viewer, or that which necessitates a different way of thinking about the organisation of information. Painting points vaguely in the distance instead of submitting clear answers and I think there’s enormous value in this experience today. It’s nice to not know what’s going on sometimes. AN: Have you reached a definition of painting through problem solving? MS: The way I make work is quite project based and definitely resembles a kind of problem solving. When I paint, I like to work backwards from an idea so that I’m almost filling in the gaps. I think this way of working has developed alongside my interest in memory confabulation and the way our minds are constantly substituting and inventing information to fill in gaps in our memory. I began thinking about memory confabulation after becoming interested in my paternal grandmother’s background. She escaped persecution in Egypt in the 1940’s and moved to England without any money, a birth certificate or any official documentation. Her family established a new life for themselves in London and my grandma almost completely disassociated herself from her time spent in Egypt, never really acknowledging that she was Egyptian and never talking about it - despite mine and my younger brother’s curious efforts. She created out of nowhere a new background for herself so I made a parallel between this and the ability for painting to be used as a means of inventing situations and conjuring up new experiences. A lot of the time I paint objects and other subject matter when it’s not sitting in front of me or doesn’t even exist in real life however other times I’ll paint from life and organise paintings so that made up subject matter sits alongside a bowl, plate or plant from my bedroom. AN: How does painting sit within an Australian context? MS: This is a really loaded question and something I think about a lot. Historically, geographically and anthropologically there’s so many interesting things that have influenced the development of painting in Australia however there are a couple of 21

Paintings Are Mystery

factors that interest me the most. Australia’s distance from the traditional epicentres of the art world meant developments in painting spawned from poor reproductions of European paintings that somehow found their way over via boat and into the art schools. The implications of this geographic distance don’t exist to the same extent today as art students and artists alike are now clued in to what’s going in within different circles of artists all over the world. AN: How is your work situated within the curatorial premise of Bored In The Suburbs? MS: I think about my childhood growing up in suburban Sydney in the 90’s a lot and look to the stack of diaries I kept throughout this time for inspiration. I often borrow motifs, symbols and ways of depicting things from my former self as I find the temporal slippage really interesting. For example one work in the show ‘March 2000: We Had a Lovely Room’ uses a collage from one of these diaries that depicts the view from a motel room one school vacation as the basis and focal point for a painting on canvas, facilitating a conversation between my 8 year old self and my adult self. This process enables me to tease out and play around with some of my ideas regarding the relationship between memory and painting today. The to-ing and fro-ing between past, present and imagination and my interest in combining observations from all three is what anchors my work in this show. 22

Miranda Samuels, March 2000: We Had a Lovely Room, 2014. Housepaint and oil on canvas.

THE FLUIDITY OF LABOUR AND VALUE

In 1984, nearly 5 per cent of all women working full-time were employed in the textile industry - the 7th biggest employer of this kind. Now, in 2014, the industry represents only 0.5 per cent1. In many cases, the fall of this industry is attributed to the reduction of import tariffs introduced throughout the 1980s by the Hawke/Keating governments. In the recent interview series Keating: The Interviews, reflecting on the tariffs reduction, Kerry O’Brien posited to Paul Keating “But many of those working people were now staring at lost jobs ... gone.” To which Keating aptly responded with “Yeah, gone. You know what they found? A better job a week later.” What Keating suggests throughout this debate is that needs are never fixed and that there are both economic benefits to opening the Australian economy to overseas industries, yet also a need to rescue these laborers from the repetitive and menial tasks of this kind of employment. However, it must be asked, what becomes of the skills developed over the course of the production of such materials? And also, how does 23

The Fluidity Of Labour And Value

our value and attitudes towards the everyday goods produced through these industries change when we no longer have the same attachment? Not confined to the textile industry, we continue to bare witness to the movement offshore of industries that have attributed to the makeup of this country. One need look no further than current reports of the Holden manufacturing plant leaving Elizabeth in South Australia or the news that Toyota will cease manufacturing in Australia by 2017. In many ways objects such as pins, corks and foam have become relics of an age we continue to be removed from. The skills needed for these industries are becoming increasingly useless, resulting in the objects employed to create the end products similarly no longer having worth. Unwilling to allow these objects to continue to dissolve into worthless throwaway artifacts of the everyday, artist Claudia Howard reclaims these readily available materials and reanimates them. What is produced are arrangements that are at once an authentic representation of the object, while also constructed through a participation of a labour that is highly unique to this manufacturing. Yet, if history continues to tell us that there is no direct correlation between labour and value, then indulging labour becomes what: a fully executed waste of time? Similarly, given that we continue to be rescued from this kind of labour-heavy work, indulging it must only come from having the luxury of excess time. What one can then read from Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is that this indulgence is boredom in the everyday, lived and played out through creative means.

1 Jericho, Greg, What Happens Next For Holden Workers? The Drum. 11 Dec 2013. Web. < http://www. abc.net.au/news/2013-12-11/jericho-what-happens-next-for-holden-workers/5146848>

Claudia Howard, Pins Killing Time â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Pin Paintings (Untitled No.2), 2013. Pin on board.

PINS AND NEEDLES Micheal Do

Raconteur Micheal Do sits with artist Claudia Howard to discuss her artist practice. Proclamations of great art aside, I’ve always thought that a good artist is someone who is able to capture and acknowledge the haphazard histories and use this inspiration to forge ahead to create new and exciting work. When I first saw Claudia Howard’s work a year ago, I was instantly transported to my childhood - watching my seamstress mother work fabrics on a mannequin, locking her drapery with a series of pearl finished tipped pins. Overwhelmed by the association, I had to pause before commenting. It’s therefore fitting a year later when I sat down with the artist ahead of her upcoming show Bored in the Suburbs, curated by Luke Letourneau, that I delved into her past – and what associations the works held for her. A child of the 80’s, but a soul of Modernity, Howard’s work is deeply informed by Marxist dialogue. She notes that her pinscapes form a postindustrial wasteland, “The object, 26

due to lack of ‘real work’ put forward by many people during this era has become a lost object. One with no real use anymore now that machines take over and people are rendered useless.” When asked whether parallels could be drawn between this post industrial wasteland and the sullen streets of Suburbia, she was quick to note that her experience of the suburbs was a great one – noting that it’s a comfortable existence. According to Howard, “Boredom stems from having as excess amount of time in your daily routine, which I guess, is a lucky thing or option to really consider. I don’t define being ‘Bored In The Suburbs’ as it first reads. To me, [it] expresses a type of positivity… Each pin reflects a moment past where nothing really occurs … a static time in all our lives.” My time with Claudia was brief, but meaningful. Before she left me to return to her work, I asked her first to describe it to me. With a soft whisper, she pauses pensively and replies, “ Uncertain of the now, hesitant.”

Claudia Howard, Pins Killing Time – Pin Paintings (Untitled No.3 & 4), 2013. Pin on board.

LETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S JUST SIT AND DO THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

The grid is an imposition of rationality; it is order, it is predictable, it is equipoise. When presented in a representational field, the act that follows is one of limited deviation and demanding repetition. There is labour involved, but it is not in the performance of the task, but in baring witness to time passing. In social space the grid is a tool for control. The construction of an environment privileging standardisation is one where the involvement in time is only as a passenger. To participate in the grid is to experience in repetition. This is a social order at play. What this neutralisation of unique experiences of time equates to is a lack. There is an apathy, a languor, an ennui; this is boredom. An artist revelling in the grid - and the boredom that follows it - is Terrence Combos. In sections of his work he fills representational fields with grids of one-centimetre boxes, ultimately taking the form of squares and rectangles. The works presents flat saturated 28

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Just Sit And Do The Same Thing Over And Over Again

colours, each filled in by hand with paint markers. Surely, given the apparent simplicity, there is a range of avenues the artist could enter to produce the works, yet he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. He, by hand, rules up every grid, and colours each individual box himself. The act of completing this task is laborious and repetitive in its consumption of time. Partaking in this activity is an embrace of both the social order it is born out of and the boredom that it produces. Within these structures the artist injects short quips, referencing both his own practice (oft self-deprecatingly) and the depiction of the grid in representational field1. While the grid constantly appears in his practices, it is done so with an ambivalence and at times dissatisfaction toward its very presence. Ultimately given the structures that exist, boredom is ever-present, so instead of attempting to escape you must embrace it.

1The grid presented in representational field is undoubtedly most well recognized in the works of the ubiquitous geometric abstractionists Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian.

Terrence Combos, Shiny shit for your stupid wall, 2014, Paint marker on board

GAY PORN IN THE SUBURBS Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran

Terrence Combos: Hey Ramesh, even though there’s only one gay pornbased work going in the show it’d be cool to speak about it, or gay porn in general. Because it’s gay porn. People would probably much rather read about gay porn than abstraction and text...if you can see something else worth talking about at length, I’m all for that. Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran: No, I just want to talk about gay porn too. Disclaimer: The sections of ‘interview’ that appear in this ‘essay’ were conducted off the cuff. The artist told me a lot of this shit over Facebook chat and email. Ironically, by planning the interview we didn’t really need to have an interview. It’s noteworthy that Terrence gave me permission to include these conversations in this ‘essay’. Irony in the Suburbs RMN: What is the significance of shiny shit? TC: I think people just like shiny shit. 31

Gay Porn In The Suburbs

RMN do you like shiny shit? TC: Yeah I do. RMN: but you’re critical of people liking it in your work? TC: it confuses me…. It seems borderline novelty. RMN: Well, why do you like it? Can you proceed from there? TC: it’s just easy to look at. RMN: Ok. For as long as I can remember, irony has been fashionable. Expressing scathing and critical perspectives with signs and symbols typically used to signify the opposite has potential to produce meaning(s) that are emphatic and/or humorous. Additionally, if executed well and with clear intent, irony is a cheeky and clever route for an artist to take. It has the potential to expose: hypocrisy, double standards and the normativity that informs ‘taste’. If presented badly, the artist seems misinformed, self-important and vexatious. In Combos’ work, irony and artifice are central. His drawing shiny shit for your stupid wall is a painstakingly laborious (and shiny) work, comprised of a grid fastidiously produced through the use of Posca pens. In some postmodern, self-reflexive way, the work almost performs itself. Particularly, as the text ‘shiny shit for your stupid wall’ is overlaid upon the grid. This heightened performativity makes the implicit type of truism as we are told what the work is and what to do with it. Speaking about the work, Combos states the work “is about being cynical of mass taste”. That it’s a dig “at the idea of art playing a role in the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality that informs the suburban household.” This sentiment is extended in works such as Bless this mess. Here, the artist constructs a ‘big mess’ (takes a big dump?) to criticise people’s love of the crappy paintings you find in Freedom furniture. Combos calls these embarrassing filtrations of abstract expressionism: ‘domestic kitsch shit’. This sense of veneer is extended as Combos ritually speaks about his work with a surface layer of self-deprecation, often referring to his work as ‘bullshit’. Daddy Flies Solo in the Suburbs Combos likes gay porn and sometimes makes work about gay porn. So do I actually. In his work, Jackson and Jack, stills from the pornographic Daddy Flies Solo series are recontextualised. In the original ‘movies’, various middle aged men masturbate to the camera. Combos appropriates footage from these films to present two hairy middle32

Gay Porn In The Suburbs

aged men masturbating while facing each other on CRT monitors. Yet, (sadly) we see no cocks, balls or arseholes. Combos has cropped them out and all we see are faces. In this work, the artist attempts to ‘strip’ the pornographic content from pornography. Yet, he has found this nearly impossible as he contends that ‘the pornographic sheen always seems to remain.’I was curious about this work, so we discussed it quite frankly. Unsuprisingly, the conversation deviated at points. RMN: Solo porn is boring. I don’t like it. Why do you? TC: I find solo porn more interesting than anything…when it’s just one man looking at you; he invites you through his gaze. I find there’s a more voyeuristic element when there are 2 or more participants… RMN: Really? I don’t know if I agree with that. But why that film? Why daddies? TC: I guess it’s going against the acceptable form of porn. RMN: There’s an acceptable form of porn? TC: I guess I’m trying not to use the generic twink1 archetype. I’ve seen enough of twink porn. It’s not interesting, too fabricated. And, Daddy Flies Solo is in my collection… don’t put that shit in the catalogue. RMN: OK, but you realize the daddy archetype is probably just as fabricated as the twink category? If you squint, all the daddies look the same. They are of similar body type, style and are groomed uniformly. They’re all white too. Perhaps you just like daddies over twinks? If you really want ‘reality’ porn you should look at platforms such as Xtube, which is populated with user generated content. Here, the ‘stars’ are people of varying races and body types, they even have pimply arseholes and stretch marks. TC: I have lots of unqualified opinions about porn. But I’m not trying to be overly critical of a certain type, but that’s contradicted by me saying I don’t like twink porn because it’s too fabricated. RMN: It is. But if you’ve watched heaps of porn, you’ve by default done lots of research in the form of primary source analysis. Sometimes it’s hard to be critical of the porn that gets you off. But back to the theme of this exhibition, for you, what’s the relationship between porn and boredom? TC: Porn is escapist…it’s occupying time. RMN: So occupying time by masturbating? TC: Yes. RMN: If you see too much daddy porn, does it become boring? TC: No. 33

Gay Porn In The Suburbs

RMN: But don’t you think the monotony of studio-based porn, in its mass produced, archetypical normativity can produce boredom? TC: No. Albert Camus states, “the truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.” On this note and in concluding this piece, it is important to realise, as Combos shows us, that boredom can extend beyond non-productivity and general wastefulness. It can be utilized as an adequate source for creative and intellectual pursuits… producing habits responsible for the creation of subversive and critical content. 1If you don’t know what a twink is, Urban dictionary defines a twink as: An attractive, boyish-looking, young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18-22, slender with little or no body hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 10:00 AM, and is not particularly intelligent. A twink is the gay answer to the blonde bimbo cheerleader.

Terrence Combos, Jackson and Jack, 2013. 2-channel video (still).

Tom Mason, Paradise Surfers (No. 1), 2013. (Photo: Josh Simpson).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This exhibition is the product of support from Arc @ COFA. Thank you to Alexandra Clapham, Penelope Benton and Dara Gill for your backing and care from the inception to the completion of Bored In The Suburbs. Thanks must also be paid to the artists and writers; Terrence Combos, Micheal Do, Alison Groves, Claudia Howard, Tom Mason, Alyce Neal and Miranda Samuels for the work you have contributed and the thoughtful discussions we have all engaged in. Furthermore, thank you to Louise Zhang who has always been willing to offer feedback and suggestions. This project has benefited from funding courtesy of Arc @ UNSW Limited.

BACK COVER ILLUSTRATION BY LOUISE ZHANG, 2014