SLIDE PROTOTYPE GRID LAYOUT Conceptual Design Documentation
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E L P M SA E L C I T AR #17
Issue #17 R.R.P $14 USD
R.R.P $20 AUD / NZD
DEUS EX MACHINA
LA JOLLA + ALEX KNOST AQUASHOT + WALES + JOHN CHERRY VINTAGE HAWAII + HEATHER BROWN + EAST COAST NEW ZEALAND
DEUS EX MACHINA Photography by Simon Perini Words by Damion Fuller & Perini
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Nestled amongst the gritty, urban landscape of Sydney’s inner west is a heaving, greased-up motorcycle garage. This is not your average twowheeler joint, though, which will first become obvious when you take a seat in the Deus café. You won’t sit down to a typical burger and fries; instead, you’ll order “Duck Ragu” and a quality brew off the gourmet menu. Then, as your lunch settles, step into the boutique-style Deus shop – decked out with the finest of threads, art books, rich motorcycle memorabilia, “fixie” bicycles, and racks of classic surfboards – and you will soon conclude that Deus Ex Machina exists for and appeals to anyone with a free spirit and an appreciation for a unique aesthetic.
Opening Spread: 1
1. “Loversland” W650. This Spread:
“The spirit, style, passion, and rebellion that originally drew Dare and Rod to motorcycling had all but vanished.”
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1. Deus Retro and Vintage Surf Swap. 2. Boards and bikes. “It’s all the same juice.”
While it specializes in building unique, individual, and well-crafted motorcycles, Deus is not just a motorcycle company. Deus is actually just as much about surfing as it is about motorcycles. You only need to roll up to one of their regular surf swap meets packed with surfers of all shapes and varieties to see that this is more than the case. The usually drab Deus carpark morphs into a thriving outdoor surf market, wedged with vendors selling anything from new and used surfboards, surf art and photography, retro bicycles, boutique and vintage style clothing, accessories, to surfing memorabilia – basically anything that will enhance your love for sliding. Damion Fuller of Deus Ex Machina gives us more of an insight to what Deus is all about – what makes it tick, where it’s from, and where it’s heading: Let’s start off with exactly who and/or what Deus Ex Machina is. The three characters behind Deus are primarily Dare Jennings, Rod Hunwick, and Carby Tuckwell. Dare was the founder of Australia’s
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most influential independent record label, Phantom Records, and also owned the coolest, hippest record store, Phantom Records, which became a hub for the whole indie scene. These were the guys who would import, in the brown paper bags, all the vinyl hot off the streets of Los Angeles and London, and they were an integral part in the formation of Australian bands like The Hoodoo Gurus, The Saints, and The Sunny Boys, each having their first singles pressed by Phantom Records. It was this motley crew hanging around Phantom Records at the time that Dare was playing music with, surfing with, and, more importantly, creating art with, that formed the basis of Dare’s second venture: the founding of Mambo. Mambo was the avant-garde surf brand and was always the black sheep of the Australian surfwear industry. But it was the art, music, and existentialism of this surf brand that made it a quintessential part of the Australian surf scene throughout the ’80s. In the commercialization boom of surfwear brands in 2000, Dare was lucky enough to sell Mambo to a large Australian rag trade conglomerate.
After taking a couple of years off, Dare’s interest returned to one of his earlier passions: motorcycling. With this rekindled enthusiasm, he went to see his good friend Rod Hunwick, who owns Sydney’s biggest motorcycle shop. Rod is a bit of a technical genius and had developed the very first V-Twin motorcycle engine 10 years before Harley Davidson did, using his own money and mortgaging his home to do so. Rod is a real-deal motorcycle enthusiast. When Dare went to see Rod, he said, “Rod, I love riding my motorbike, but I absolutely hate your shop!” And Rod said, “I hate it, too!” Modern motorcycling had become all about mass-produced, unbelievably lethal, pricepointdriven Japanese motorbikes, and the spirit, style, passion, and rebellion that originally drew Dare and Rod to motorcycling had all but vanished. And so began the long conversation between the pair about how to bring back the love of what drew them to motorcycles in the first place: that love of motorcycling around in the ’70s, when every surfer had a motorbike, and customizing was king.
During this period Dare was also hanging out with Carby Tuckwell, one of Australia’s leading creative directors. He’s the one guy I know who has watched a team handpaint a 747 aircraft to his design, when he was involved in the rebranding of Qantas and Jetstar airlines. He is undoubtedly a genius in his own right. So it was only natural that Dare and Rod brought Carby, and his unique graphic flare, onboard. It was at this time that the Australian surfwear brands that were so punk rock in their day – Quiksilver, Rip Curl, Billabong – were going public and evolving into giant, corporate enterprises, becoming completely pasteurized and homogenized. All the spirit, life, and anarchy that had made the Australian surf scene great in the ’70s and ’80s was now being rinsed out, the exact same thing that was happening in the world of motorcycling. Motorcycling, an activity that should be absolutely unique and individual, full of passion and spirit, now looked like a line of ice cream machines – all plastic and shiny, all looking identical – just like the surf market. And so they pondered on this question: “How do we bring back the spirit, life, and, most importantly, fun back into these two passions?”
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“In Australia, if you’re going to make or design anything, you’re either in the surf industry or you don’t exist.”
What got Deus started? I was lucky enough to be working with Dare through the glory days of Mambo, and he and I would travel around the world for inspiration and to see our different licensees and stores. We spent a lot of time in Tokyo. In the ’90s, Tokyo was the hub of custom motorcycle culture, but it was like no other motorcycle culture that existed anywhere else. It wasn’t like the Southern Californian hot rod culture or biker style or Hells Angels style, or the stuff we see today such as South Coast Choppers. The Japanese motorcycle culture of the ’90s was a true example of post modernism. It was young kids, girls and guys, buying simple, basic bikes and customizing them in their own unique way. They were drawing on aesthetic elements from the past, elements of retro styling, and yet being completely happy to embrace modern technology – disc brakes and electric starts on girls motorbikes, for example, while still creating a look that was
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completely retro and vintage. This was revolutionary from a style point of view, because they weren’t obsessed with being authentically vintage; all they were interested in was having fun, creating their own look, and were happy to borrow from any era and any period in time to do so. Walking around the streets of Harajuku and Shinjuku, Dare and I got completely inspired by this from a design point of view. It was this that was the catalyst that led Dare to the meetings with Rod Hunwick. It was observing the way that these Japanese kids had embraced their own style that led to the formation of Deus. Plus, add to that mix and inspiration the unique graphic talents of Carby Tuckwell. Dare now had a team that was authentic, passionate, incredibly talented, and ready to take on a whole new slant of what surf culture should be about. Deus is an alternative surf brand. It’s an alternative surf brand with the throbbing heart of a singlecylinder motorcycle at its core.
Like Herbie Jefferson – Australian Flat Rack Champion, big-wave legend, and hero of ours – says, “It’s all the same juice!” The elements of style that go into the custom surfboards we build are exactly the same elements that go into the custom motorcycles we build. So Deus is primarily a surf brand, not a motorcycle brand? Very much so. Coming from Australia has a lot of downsides. We are a long way from everything. But what Australia does have is the longest coast in the world and, in Australia, if you’re going to make or design anything, you’re either in the surf industry or you don’t exist. Deus is very much a surf brand, but a surf brand that is looking broader than the WCT for inspiration. Was this the motivation for the surf swap meets that Deus holds regularly?
This Spread: 1
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1. Luke Farquhar cuts loose on a Bonzer. 2. Deus mural. 3. Barefoot in the inner city. 4. Shop goodies. 5. Deus cafe. 6. Jeremy, the french surfing mechanic. 7. Surf art and petrol. Following Spread: 1
I am a passionate collector of vintage surfcraft, and I write about old board design on my blog, boardcollector.com. The surf swap meets were a great way to bring
1. Deus custom speed shop.
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This Spread:
“Mark Richards is the classic poet warrior, for he not only shaped his own surfboards and rode those boards to four worldtitles, he then hung around and cleaned up the carpark at Bell’s after the event.”
together all the people from the online community and to introduce our passion to a wider audience. The swaps have grown to become festivals in their own right, and we now have live bands and plan to screen alternative surf movies after dark. During the ’70s in Australia, there was a much more DIY aesthetic in surfing, motorcycles, music, and art. In the music industry, you could knock over a couple of phone boxes and put out your own single. In motorcycling, custom culture was more necessary than it was done for style, as people pulled together parts from World War II motorcycles to create their own choppers. And in surfing, many of the greatest Australian surfers to come through that period were all shapers and designers in their own right. Be it Wayne Lynch living in a teepee on the clifftops of southern Victoria;
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be it Mark Richards reinventing Reno Abellira’s twin-fin and turning that into a practical design of his own; be it Cheyne Horan and his experimentations in design with Jeff McCoy and Ben Lexcen. All these elements came very much from a “Do It Yourself” aesthetic. One thing I find both really heartening and also really sad at Deus is that we hold technical nights where guys come in to learn how to change a spark plug. When I first heard of this I was shocked and mortified. I thought, “What idiot doesn’t know how to change a spark plug?” I attended one of the nights and there was a room full of guys deeply passionate and excited about getting their hands dirty with oil and grease as they learnt how to use a spanner and change a spark plug.
This is the beauty of the custom motorcycle – it’s about becoming a “poet warrior” in the classic sense. It is both about creating a style and creating a function and doing it for the thrill and for the love of it. Cyrano de Bergerac is the classic poet warrior who was a sword fighter and wrote the love letters for his comrades. We believe very much in this. Mark Richards, to me, is the classic poet warrior, for he not only shaped his own surfboards and rode those boards to four world titles, he then hung around and cleaned up the carpark at Bell’s after the event. This is the poet warrior. This is who we are aspiring to be and this is why it’s important for us to get our hands dirty with grease, oil, and the smell of burning rubber. What’s next? Deus Bali will be the next big thing for us. We are building a compound
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1. Pile o’ logs. 2. Damion at Sandon Point lefts.
with a 100-year-old joglo (big Indonesian building) that will house a dedicated art gallery, restaurant, and courtyard with a shaping bay, motorcycle workshop, and an art studio. So you can sit back after your surf at Echo Beach and watch a whole lot of activity happening. In your mind, what’s the attraction to Deus? Why should anyone care about Deus? Because we are interested in the beauty. Deus Ex Machina means “God is in the machine,” and that says the beauty is within the object. Be that the beauty of a handcrafted surfboard, the beauty of a customized single-speed pushbike, or be that the thump of a 400cc SR engine. God is in the machine. To learn more, go to www.deus.com.au.
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