TEXT&IMAGE
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ISSUE FIVE_08.14
BNE
T&I
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10HISTORY
Red Flag Riot
12PHOTOGRAPHY Netal Lucas
16
ART Simon Degroot
about Welcome to T&I Issue 5. Up front we have a piece revisiting the 1919 Red Flag Riots, a bloody period in Brisbane’s history that saw members of the early RSL fighting a pitched battle on Victoria Bridge against Russian immigrants flying the Communist flag. Along with a profile on Simon Degroot, our fine art section takes on a darker tone with a trip inside the high security gaol at Spring Creek. We went there to talk to a convicted murderer about how art helps him come to terms with his new life behind bars. Our in-house veteran war correspondent Tim Page has written a gonzo piece about a weekend he spent with Hunter S Thompson and Bill Cardoso watching the Watergate Trials. The piece accompanies some personal shots from his archive.
20FEATURE
Netal Lucas has filled out a photography spread with her visceral yet intimate series on the world’s last traveling boxing tent.
24FEATURE
Brisbane super group Halfway and the mismatched three-piece Some Jerks grace the music pages while the burger-obsessed Bad Teeth is our feature illustrator.
Barred Art
Ironlak
30PAGE’S PAGES
Hunter S. Thompson
32TATTOO Jon Ftw
34MUSIC
Halfway
36DESIGN
Frank & Mimi
40MUSIC
Some Jerks
42DESIGN
Bad Teeth
44SHORT STORY Ghost Boy
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
We’ve drawn together a business profile on the team behind Ironlak. In a detailed interview the company’s founder talks of the brand’s origins, the chemistry behind it and what it takes to legitimise graffiti as a respected art form.
In a consolidation of graphic design and the handmade we’re profiling the old-world style of sign writers Frank and Mimi. Their gilded placards and flowing free-hand type styles are steadily taking over the city and well worth a look. Closing out the edition we’ve got a manic tale of a twisted night written by David Stavanger, aka Ghostboy.
contributors _JON WEBER/ Simon Degroot 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 _CHRIS TIERNEY/ Halfway / Some Jerks Chris is a graduate of the T&I Intern program but we’re keeping him anyway. He studies Music Production at Southern Cross Uni and plays bass for Tin Can Radio. _TIM PAGE/ Page’s Pages In a career spanning 50 years Tim has covered conflicts from Vietnam to Bosnia. In the 70’s he worked for Rolling Stone but now spends his days tracking down the final resting places of colleagues’ lost in conflict. www.degreesouth.com/tim-page _SARAH MCKENZIE/ Frank & Mimi Sarah recently moved to Brisbane after finishing a Communications Degree at AUT in Aukland, NZ. She was a regular contributor to the Kiwi design mag Folio. _ GHOST BOY AKA DAVID STAVANGER David is a widely published poet. He is a main stay on the Australia Slam circuit and has won copious awards and titles. He runs poetry workshops and Slam events around the country. His alter ego Ghostboy is a dark individual. You can meet him at www.ghostboy.net
team _GRANT MARTIN
_MICK NOLAN
Creative Editor grant@textandimage.com.au
Senior Writer / advertising michael@textandimage.com.au
_BEN MARKS
_DANE BEESLEY
Managing Director ben@textandimage.com.au
Photo Editor dane@textandimage.com.au
_ANAIS LESAGE
_MARTY CAMBRIDGE
Art Director anais@textandimage.com.au
Sub-editor / writer marty@textandimage.com.au
Cover art // Netal Lucas *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.
Printed by the Omne Group // www.omne.com.au
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _3
airlock studios - not in the city
airlockstudios.com call for bookings 0413 622 847 or email info@airlockstudios.com The Medics, The Jungle Giants, Waax, The Beligerants, Karl S Williams, Mosman Alder, The Cairos, The Workinghorse Irons, Hannah Karydas, The JohnCitizens, Ricky Lee, Cole and VanDyke,Lucky Bradford, Mace and the Motor, The Rocketsmiths, Big Scary, Kate Miller Heidke, Danny Widdicombe, The Gin Club, Pete Murray, The Grates, The Furious Turtles, Speed of Purple, Le Murd, Morning Harvey, Elation, Butterfingers, Shifter, Powderfinger, Kinoath, 1.1.1, Jac Stone, The Ten Tenors, Jensens, Giants of Science, Emma Dean, Mark Sholtez, Schoolfight, The Red Breast, Bourbon Street, Jud Campbell, Young Meadows, The Mods, The Secret Whisper, Vasy Molo, Headshow, Machinery Hill, The Sea Shall Not Have them, Max Judo, Fourplay, The Predators, Shag Rock, The Tremors, Viper syndicate, Dub Doubt, Flamingo Crash, Women In Docs, The View from Madeleines Couch, Another Day Down, Love Hope & Charity, System 13, Tourism, Fur, the chutes, FarOutCorporation, Hydrophonics, Polyvinyl, Filler, Screamfeeder, The Gypsy Circus (Film), Eleven Line (Drums), Elation, Judd Campbell, Lancaster, Blaik. James Grehen, Nokturnl , Yves klein Blue, the cairos, AND MANY MORE T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _5
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _7
R
R ed Flag R iot WORDS/ MARTY CAMBRIDGE
HISTORY _Red Flag Riot
BRISBANE’S BLOODIEST PROTEST On March 24, 1919, over 7000 ex-servicemen and their supporters marched across Victoria Bridge to attack South Brisbane’s Russian community. What happened next is known as one of the bloodiest riots on Australian soil. Five months previously, in September 1918, the Australian Government had extended the War Precautions Act to prohibit the flying of red flags, a symbol of the socialist revolution in Russia. Following the end of World War I, Brisbane’s unemployment rate was above 10%, returning soldiers couldn’t find work and there was increasing tensions in the socio-political landscape. “Australian society has never been more divided than it was at the end of WWI. The idea that Australia was a united nation is a myth. It was divided along class lines, ideological lines, pro and anti-war lines, racial and ethnic lines”, Brisbane historian, Raymond Evans told T&I. During this time Australian conservatives were concerned with growing socialist movements across the country, with the banning of the red flag later described as Australia’s first anti-communist fear campaign. “As we’ve seen all throughout Australia’s history there’s been a fear of the foreigner and a fear of non-British people. This was no different. They were frightened of the Russian revolution and were worried it would happen here.” So fearful was the conservative environment in Australia at the time, that prominent Russian community member, Peter Simonoff was banned from speaking publicly in Queensland and arrested in Melbourne in late 1918 for broadcasting socialist ideologies. Disillusioned conservative supporters began to isolate and target Russian diasporic communities across Australia, especially in Brisbane. “Russians were beaten in the streets for speaking Russian by Australian soldiers. Their premises, shops and the Russian Hall in South Brisbane were all destroyed. They were sacked from their jobs and evicted from their homes. It was a full scale public assault on a small ethnic community,” said Raymond who has published an extensive account on the Red Flag Riots. Following Simonoff’s conviction a number of demonstrations were carried out across Brisbane, including one on March 23 when 1000 Russian and left-wing supporters gathered near Parliament House. There, they began speaking of revolution and civil rights as they unfurled red flags and banners.
The demonstration angered members of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (now known as the Returned Services League (RSL)) and minor scuffles broke out until police arrived and dispersed the crowd. The following night over 7000 returned soldiers and their supporters gathered on William Street and surged towards the Russian Hall in South Brisbane chanting “hang them” and “burn their meeting place down.” Anticipating the violence, police commissioner Frederic Urquhart, commanded 60 mounted police armed with rifles and bayonets to confront the rioters on Merivale Street. Over the next two hours more than 100 men received bayonet wounds, between 14 and 19 policemen were injured, one police horse was shot and killed and 19 returned soldiers were hospitalised. Despite a decline in physical attacks on the Russian community in the coming months, they became subjected to to pro-nationalist Government policies. “After the riots a number of Russian leaders were rounded up by Australian authorities and imprisoned or deported. The Australian Government made a list of over 70 Russians they planned to deport but the British forces wouldn’t allow it because they were worried about strengthening Russia’s military”, Raymond explained. Attacks on minority groups have been a regular occurrence in Australia since British colonisation. Indigenous Australians, Chinese migrants, the White Australia Policy, the Cronulla riots and carefully orchestrated immigration policies all paint a picture of Australia’s xenophobic history. “The thing with mainstream Australian history is that it is seen as fairly placid and quiet, but when you start digging into it you find there is a lot more violence than people are willing to talk about. This is not surprising when you think about the type of society Australia has been throughout history. It’s a history that established itself through violent conflict with Aboriginals and is intrinsically and institutionally based on violence and intolerance.”
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _9
“I am highly influenced and inspired by 1920s circus photography. I am jealous I never got to photograph a circus in the days when they travelled by train.” Like the Boxing Tent series, Netal has become more focused on the offhand, day-to-day moments. “At first I was always interested in the things most people are drawn to with the circus, such as the performers’ abilities, the animals, the exotic performers, their makeup and costumes. But now I really find the whole culture of it fascinating. What it’s like to raise a family in that culture, the travel, their community and what they do in their spare time.” Her current project covers Brisbane’s drag community and it too peeks behind the curtain to present a humanising perspective. Netal Lucas shoots portraits. They are a throwback to the early days of celluloid photography, with minimal light speckling the faces of otherwise gloomy subjects.
“A lot of these girls have stories that are deeper than the makeup and glitter and what you see on stage. Getting to see their two different personalities before and after also helps to tell their stories and it allows me to photograph them more personally and intimately.”
While the digital camera takes but a moment to capture her composition, the figures contained within look as if they’ve been sitting for decades, waiting for Netal to arrive.
While the girls are used to a life in the spot light this attention comes at a price. It is this balance the Netal is drawn to.
Netal graduated from the International College of Creative Arts in 2008 and went on to work as an assistant under Stefan Jannides at Red Brick Studios. In 2012 she contacted Fred Brophy, the proprietor of Australia’s last traveling boxing tent, and asked if she could document the once proud pugilist tradition. The pair became friends after striking a deal that will see Lucas document Brophy’s travels until he retires. Netal has also explored the rambling life through a series of carnival shots.
“All of the girls have been great to work with and it helps that they love being in front of the camera. At times it has been emotionally difficult to process some things that these amazing girls have had to go through.” “Some girls have been open about their struggles with depression. One girl arrived upset to a shift after being spat on while on the train to work. These girls are some of the strongest people I have ever met. It takes a lot of courage to do what they do and it frustrates me that they are made to feel uncomfortable and at times unsafe just to be themselves.”
PHOTOGRAPHY_Netal Lucas
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _11
PHOTOGRAPHY_Netal Lucas
www.netallucas.com
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _13
B REAK ING
SIMON DEGROOT
TH E S PAC E
B AR RIE R
WORDS/ JON WEBER PHOTOGRAPHY/ DANE BEESLEY
ART _Simon Degroot
Looking through a back catalogue of the artworks produced by painter Simon Degroot, there is quite a clear line of progression to the vividly tendered, spatial investigations that he has brought to head with his recent show Select Reshape. The collection was on display at the Spiros Grace Art Rooms in Spring Hill, which has become one of Brisbane’s greatest hidden gems in gathering together and showing some of the city’s most astute and exciting artistic talents. Degroot is certainly one of these, and he has managed to produce one of his most acutely resolved and interesting shows to date. This flux is part of his charm, and the balance between the visual purity of the painterly forms and the complex nature of their inception is an investigation that allows the questioning of perception—both visual and conceptual—to offer some hidden corners that promotes him above the generic abstract artist.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _15
ART _Simon Degroot
His latest works are largely stimulating geometric-esque abstractions, full of colour and careful arrangement. One might be inclined to label Degroot a Minimalist or Modernist or some other such overbearing title, but this was an area that when asked about, he was as hard to pin down as the paintings themselves. “The formal characteristics, the surface, the paint and the physical ‘stuff’ of the painting are all carefully decided”, Degroot says. “While I’m currently making works that have a minimalist look, or an abstract look, this will probably be temporary and is likely to change. I am interested in deconstructing images into abstract component parts, then transforming and transferring them to explore ideas and limits of communication. At the moment abstract painting is best suited to this exploration.” In this way his explorations into technology and modern social symbolism are good examples of how he balances preconceived structural notions against his analogue physicality. “I am interested in communication – especially abstracted digital icons and the way computer desktops operate. I am also interested in the handmade, the touch and feel of paint, pencil and paper. Where all these things meet is where I try to explore, where tactility is confused and interactions with different media become complicated.” It is a combination that is highly effective conceptually, bringing underlying gravity to harmonic compositions that are complemented with interlacing spatial journeying and lush colour experimentation.
I AM INTERESTED IN COMMUNICATION – ESPECIALLY ABSTRACTED DIGITAL ICONS AND THE WAY COMPUTER DESKTOPS OPERATE. One might easily imagine that Simon Degroot regularly finds himself adding a deliberated “but” at the end of sentences regarding his work. When asked how he sees himself being included with the world of Modernism and Post-Modernism, he answer is typically layered and yet decisive, very much like his imagery. “Like many other contemporary artists, my practice is linked to an idea described as ‘metamodernism’, an approach to art making that is inclusive and can incorporate many contradictory ideas at the same time.”
For more of his work head to/ www.simondegroot.com Spiros Grace Art Rooms can be found at/ www.sgar.com.au
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _17
“
PAINTING HELPS TO BRING SOME HUMANITY BACK TO MY LIFE.
FEATURE _Barred Art
WORDS/ MICHAEL NOLAN PHOTOGRAPHY/ DANE BEESLEY Andrew’s morning starts out the same most days. He wakes at 7:30am, showers, eats breakfast and is in front of his easel by 8:30. He’ll paint for a solid four hours before breaking for lunch and then goes back to work for another four hours. Once the day is over he’ll retire to his bedroom where he’ll paint and read til lights out. At first glance, Andrew lives the ideal life of an artist. His every waking hour is free to spend honing his craft. However, he is unlike many artists in one regard. His easel, bedroom and studio are all located within the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre, a high security gaol in Spring Creek, about 60km west of Brisbane, where he is serving 15 years to life for murder. As a child he was a creative kid and he carried those interests through to adulthood. But it wasn’t til he was sentenced to Spring Creek that he began to devote serious time to painting. New prisoners have a choice as to how they spend their day, they can either work in the industrial section of the prison building forklift pallets, furniture or fencing materials, or they can study. Both options give the prisoners access to a training and certification program and gives them the necessary paperwork to be eligible for employment, once they’ve served their sentence. The jail is very clean. It’s only four years old and the cinderblock cells remain crisp and luminous while the razor-wire fences still hold their polish. To get there you pull off the Warrego Highway, cut through the vegetable pastures of the Lockyer Valley and then through what seems like 10km of scrubland. You emerge to an expansive and freshly landscaped field, roughly the size of 20 football fields. In the centre sits consecutive rings of razor-topped fencing that impound the prison. We pass through a series of security checkpoints, numerous corridors and about half a dozen steel re-enforced doors to emerge in the yard. It too is broad and sharply landscaped, feeling more like a commercial estate on the edge of a city than a high security jailhouse. Thursday is lockdown day at the Spring Creek and the yard is empty. To the left is the warehouse and machine shop. To the right we find the education block and therein lays the art room looking no different to one found in a high school. Andrew is softly spoken, calm and polite. “I paint to fill in time and to take myself away from this place,” Andrew said. His tranquillity is a white wash, it doesn’t come from a place of inner peace, rather from boredom. His world is colourless, cold and the same every day. When confined to this interior, one that sanitises the senses, the act of painting can be its own form of defiance. “I paint landscapes as a direct result of being denied landscape. It’s my way of compensating for the fact that I can’t go for a walk through the bush or along the beach.” He’s four years into his sentence. During that time he’s finished a TAFE certificate in visual arts and now assists the gaol’s art teacher.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _19
“
I PAINT TO MAKE MY OWN WORLD A LITTLE BIT BETTER OF A PLACE.
FEATURE _Barred Art
His work is methodical. Each canvas is a glimpse of a half remembered place. And as time and incarceration push Andrew further from those memories, each painting becomes more and more vague. “I paint to make my own world a little bit better of a place. I like working with the other guys, seeing them achieve what they are trying to do with their art and passing on my own knowledge.” While there is little chance that Andrew will be able to leave the Spring Creek jail any time soon, his work does not suffer the same restrictions. Most of his work is sent to his mother while the rest is exhibited outside. Both state and privately run gaols have some form of art room used for education and art therapy. Recognising that exhibiting finished work is a natural extension of the creative process, Serco host regular hangings around the state. One of the bigger annual shows is the Art Inside project run by the Prisoner Fellowship. Primarily a chaplaincy provider, the Fellowship was setup in 1967 by Charles Colson, the one-time White House counsel to President Nixon. Colson served seven months in a federal prison after he pled guilty to obstructing justice in the wake of the Watergate scandal. He went into prison known as Nixon’s hatchet-man, having instigated the Hard Hat Riots in New York that saw around 1000 anti-war protesters attacked and beaten by club-wielding construction workers. He came out as a born again Christian and devoted his senior years to advocating for greater prisoner rights. The Fellowship’s Queensland Director David May said that art helps inject some humanity into a justice system that from the onset is cold and impersonal. He believes that true justice can only occur when harmony between the victim and the perpetrator is restored. Unfortunately, the justice system keeps those parties separate from the first moment a crime is reported. For quite understandable reasons lawbreakers are isolated from their victims. They are prohibited from contact during the investigation and trial period and once convicted they are locked away with little contact to the wider community. While this keeps victims safe it prevents the perpetrator from ever having to acknowledge the first-hand effects of their actions. It makes any sort of meaningful, heartfelt apology or true act of forgiveness acutely difficult. Restoring this balance is at the core of the Prisoner Fellowship. They do it first hand by bringing the two parties together for a series of mediated chaplaincy sessions. A back-up option is to do it remotely through art. The meditative quality of paint invariably allows inmates to access parts of their emotional memory associated with their crimes. They can begin thinking about remorse in their own time and on their own terms. Exhibiting their work also helps to change the community’s perception of inmates by showing them as industrious and creative people, and proving they can do more than just break rocks and print license plates. It is this resulting sense of confidence that in turn reduces their likelihood of re-offending. Andrew’s not at that place just yet. He says that while the thoughts of his crime drift into his work at times he’s not psychologically strong enough to deal with them head on. “This can be a dead depressing, dead-boring place. We’re not all animals. Most of the people in here are ordinary people who have made some stupid mistakes. Painting helps to bring some humanity back to my life.” “It’s a lot easier than you’d expect and not as violent as TV makes it out to be. Your biggest concerns are loneliness and depression.”
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _21
8 MILLION CANS, 25 FAMILY MEMBERS AND FOUR FACTORIES. AFTER 12 YEARS IN BUSINESS IRONLAK HAVE GONE FROM A SMALL TIME OPERATION RUN OUT OF THEIR FOUNDER’S APARTMENT TO A GLOBAL BRAND THAT RIVALS THEIR LONG ESTABLISHED COMPETITORS.
Chemistry
kings
FEATURE _Ironlak
Levi and Luke, Fortitude Valley. Photography/ Dane Beesley. Wall/ Drapl & Treas
Levi and Heath Ramsey are the two brothers behind Ironlak. Originally from Sydney, Levi moved to Brisbane in early 2002 to start Advanced Valve Tech, now AVT Paints. Their aim was to get existing paint companies to change their valve system to cater for the needs of writers. Frustrated with the slow progress they launched their own range of aerosols, under the Ironlak brand. “At that time I was painting a lot and I wanted to have access to more colours, cheaper, better paint. We thought, ‘fuck it, we’ll start a paint company,’” Ironlak founder Levi Ramsey said. “We thought if we could come in with a quality a little bit better than Dulux, and at a similar price point, than we are going to pick up at both the low end and the top end of the market.” The guys were the first in Australia to really focus on resin and solvent blends geared to produce an even, quick drying application of colour on industrial surfaces. They merged this technical know-how with a first-hand understanding of a writer’s needs. They knew what kind of caps writers wanted, how to balance viscosity with quick application to prevent dripping and that Aussie writers worked under different environmental conditions to their European counterparts. The resulting product was embraced by Aussie writers, who were sandwiched between low quality commercial products sold at their local Mitre 10 and expensive European imports.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _23
WE THOUGHT, ‘FUCK IT, WE’LL START A PAINT COMPANY’ As demand grew they bought shares in a Chinese paint factory and moved their manufacturing offshore. “We initially went to China to try source some filling equipment ourselves to start up a small handline, while there I thought I’ll go see a couple of contract fillers.” That’s when Levi met Mr Tao, the chemist. He became a business partner and it went from there but Levi maintains that the move to China wasn’t motivated purely by lower labour costs. “Labour only makes up about 10% of our production costs, most of the cost is sucked up in raw materials.” China’s central location made sourcing raw materials and exporting the finished product cheaper. It is also a cheap place to buy land and build a factory. Importantly, it gave the team an isolated place to develop new products away from the prying eyes of the competitive market place. They felt safe in their isolation but that same isolation allowed their early partners to rip them off. “In China people are really friendly, really hospitable and you can get just about anything done but you’ve got to be careful about who you partner with. If you don’t know how business gets done, the processes to go through and their culture, you can end up walking away empty handed.” They fell victim to industrial espionage and straight up theft. “We had the various employees skimming. Part of the skimming on the sales side of things was getting not necessarily Ironlak products, but generating new private label stuff that was going to compete with us and once that became prevalent I was like, I’m out of here.” They were getting screwed so Levi pulled Mr Tao aside and they decided to start their own factory.
FEATURE _Ironlak “The profit from the factory kept eroding because you got these guys skimming at the front end and the back end. Mr Tao was someone that I’d worked with for seven years. He’s really honest, hardworking, loyal, and someone you just feel comfortable with.” They went at it alone and haven’t looked back. Demand continues to grow and they’ve just completed the first stage of a new factory that will give the operation the ability to churn out around 1.2 million cans a month. China’s rampant industrialisation has also provided a goldmine of new walls for the Family to test their products. “For the most part if you pick the right spots you can just rock up and paint,” Levi said. When they have drawn the attention of the law they’ve been greeted more with confusion than condemnation. Ironlak have employed a clandestine marketing strategy to suit their customers. Instead of broadcasting overt advertising they’ve reached out to fellow writers and offered sponsorship akin to the way surf and skate brands support new talent. “It stems from being a graffiti writer and you’re kind of used to doing it at night in shadows. I’ve tried to let the culture of the company shine through and let our products speak for themselves rather than trying to be the Richard Branson of the paint industry,” Levi said. There are now 25 international writers in the Ironlak Family and Marketing Director Luke Shirlaw said he receives daily requests for sponsorship. “We realised early on we had to start pairing up with some writers, utilising them and helping them at the same time to grow their brand as a writer and to help us grow as a company.”
The original Ironlak Team planning a wall in Byron Bay circa 2007. Reals, Sofles, Sirum, Linz and Tues design the piece while Levi and Heath watch from behind.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _25
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS HAVE A SINGLE PURPOSE BUT ARTISTS USE THE PAINT TO DO A VAST ARRAY OF THINGS.”
The crew has copped flak over the years. As Australia’s most notorious graffiti company they are often the first point of contact for nefarious journalists who are looking to perpetuate the stigma of graffiti as vandalism. This has put the brand in an awkward position. While Luke is keen to connect media with quality artists who treat graff as a mature and professional art he says the reporters invariably chase conflict. In the past this conflict has drawn the attention of the authorities who have profiled the company to ensure that everything was above board. In turn, Levi and the crew need to keep a degree of distance between the official face of the company and a significant segment of their customer base who engage in illegal painting. One typical media storm broke in 2007 when the Daily Telegraph caught wind of an Ironlak sponsored graff-battle. The hacks took issue with a first place prize of 500 cans. Their spin foretold an impending wave of vandalism once those cans reached the hands of hoodlum writers. The police gave a statement mushrooming the story across the nightly broadcasts. “We left the office that day because we were worried that Today Tonight were going to turn up on our doorstep, they were chasing us pretty hard,” Luke said. Despite the competition explicitly banning illegal entries, the media charged Ironlak with instigating vandalism and Luke was unable to sway their opinion. “I told them that, one, the person that is going to win this will display a level of skill that I think most people will actually find appealing. Two, it’s not going to be some kid that will be running around tagging churches.” Fighting this misconception to develop graff as a legitimate art form is at the core of their business. Artists and designers from outside the graff scene are becoming more aware of the brand and Levi maintains that Ironlak will evolve to cater for their needs as they have for writers. Enter their range of technical markers and art supplies. Initially used to outline finished pieces they’ve since been adapted for more general use by fine artists, illustrators and graphic designers. The thick and consistent application of solid colour that adheres to everything from corrugated iron to high GSM paper melds well with anyone that wields a pen professionally. This wider net of artists and professionals also tend to work indoors. Levi’s team responded with Sugar, a range of low-toxicity cans, devoid of harmful solvents that is both good for the environment and serves to quarantine the company from the fluctuating price of oil, the main ingredient in acrylic paint.
Levi painting in Miami during Art Basel. Photo Callie Marshall.
FEATURE SECTION _Ironlak _Title
Sofles working with Ironlak’s Strikers during a trip to Christchurch. Photo Selina Miles.
The first step was to replace the traditional propellant (LPG) derived from hydrocarbons, with Dimethyl ether, an organic gas. Next they removed petroleum based solvents, including Xylene and toluene that are responsible for getting paint sniffers high. They were replaced with an alcohol derived from fermented sugar cane and mixed with water to produce a concoction pioneered by Mr Tao. Worryingly, rewriting the baseline chemistry of paint manufacturing came at a price. Sugar is about 25-30% more expensive to produce and the first cans had performance issues. “In the initial batch, as the temperature got hotter, Sugar wouldn’t perform as well. If it got over 25degrees, it would evaporate too quickly. As the paint hit the surface you’ve got all these little particles and they join together and level out to a nice smooth surface, but it would dry while it was in that particle state ,before it could all mesh nicely.” They loved the new range in Europe and the States, but for writers working through an Australian summer it didn’t go down so well. “It was a nightmare product to finalise. You’re trying to maintain the integrity of what the product is in terms of your health and the environment but you need it to perform with all these different capabilities. Industrial products have a single purpose but artists use the paint to do a vast array of things.” With the kinks worked out Levi maintains that Sugar is now as reliable as their traditional Ironlak cans with only a fraction of the toxicity. Lastly, that distinctive Ironlak smell has changed. Levi mixed the fragrance with their early cans to invoke a personal nostalgia of the Tuxan brand that he wrote with in the 90’s. “It was a shoe paint that smelt really good,” he said. While Levi has only happy memories of the smell some customers started complaining about headaches. This opened the brand up to an underhanded propaganda campaign aimed at undermining their credibility. “When we first launched in Europe people said the paint works well but smells bad and that must mean that it’s really, really toxic,” Levi said. They’ve since reduced the amount of fragrance, which has helped to blunt the salvo of misinformation, while maintaining that quintessential Ironlak smell. The smell only a writer knows.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _27
Hunter S. Thompson passing a joint to Bill Cardioso while they watch the Watergate trials.
‘WIERD SCENES INSIDE THE GOLD MINE’
Tim Page is going back over 50 years of archive images and he’s mining gold. AFTER HIS TIME COVERING THE WAR IN VIETNAM TIM MOVED TO THE U.S. WEST COAST. AN EIGHT YEAR ACID YO-YO TRIP ENSUED AS HE BOUNCED BETWEEN SEATTLE, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND THE BAY AREA. IN THE MADNESS OF THE 70’S HE SCORED A GIG AT ROLLING STONE WORKING FOR $150 A DAY WITH THE LIKES OF HUNTER S, TIM CAHILL AND DAVID FENTON. THESE PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED SHOTS ARE FROM TIM’S ARCHIVES IN CHAPEL HILL AND WERE TAKEN WHILE HE, HUNTER AND BILL CARDOSO WERE WATCHING THE WATERGATE TRIALS. WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY/ TIM PAGE
PAGE’S PAGES _Hunter S. Thompson We find ourselves again in times when governments feel it necessary to abjectly lie to us. Here in Australia it is ‘On-Watergate’ as opposed to the deviousness of America’s ‘Watergate’ in all it’s D.C. duplicities. Back then it led to a regimes downfall, will it now sow the same twists of fate, seed similar consequences? The Watergate trial had sequelled the case of the Pentagon Papers when Daniel Ellsberg & Tony Russo were on trial for disseminating the back story on the Vietnam war. Parallell to the Democratic headquarters break-in at Watergate, a Nixon controlled mob, ‘the plumbers’ had broken into Dan Ellsberg’s psychiatrists office in Los Angeles to gather possible incriminating evidence against him. It all culminated in the first major broadcast of a quintessential legal case and the resignation of a president. The foul bowels of governance were exposed live on TV from the senate committee chambers, it made for gripping viewing. Ratings soared while the mighty lied and fell like nine-pins; live, bloodless, history. Nixon finally exposed as a criminal. Swathes of America were AWOL from work, hooked. Daily I would walk down the hill past the ‘Whisky-A-Go-Go’ on the corner of Sunset Boulevard, down to my mate Bill Cardoso’s tiny bungalow behind the Safeway on Santa Monica. We had met through Tim Cahill at Rolling Stone magazine. Bill had for a spell, edited the Boston Globe magazine, ran a jazz club in the Azores and will, amongst the cognoscenti, forever be known as the scribe who cornered the term ‘gonzo’. On the contentious ‘68 campaign trail in New Hampshire, he had used it to label his journo mate Hunter S. Thompson’s writing. Hunter was in town for the Rose Bowl, daytimes he squatted at Cardoso’s crib watching the demise of the man he loathed; the central figure of dispite in ‘Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail’. I guess he was reporting the event live, well off of Cardoso’s Trinitron. It was an incredible piece of theatre, shaping the worlds future and history. Unravelling corruption and criminality played out on the screen as we passed joint after joint and ingested odd coloured pills. It was a stream of consciousness, woefully unrecorded, interjected by Hunter’s rants against swine, calmed by Coors and another voddy. The day destroyed itself and Hunter had another piece for Rolling Stone and his book, paying homage to our host, the original prince of gonzo, which by Cardoso’s definition comes from the Canuk ‘gonzeaux’ and means ‘shining path’. Yet Hunter always ‘looked’ so straight, chinos, sports shirt, loafers, shaved head - sure my head was a bit fuzzy but those were post ‘Nam times with christmas bombings, Kent State students shot by their own government, break-ins financed by the White House and the culprits now facing the Senate Select Committee. Later there was a two day shoot when Hunter got us to drive him to Long Beach to pick up a Vincent Black Shadow. An enterprising bike nut had imported the last of the legendary British super bike parts and was assembling them as faithful replicas. The machine with it’s V twin 1000cc engine made Harleys look like Vespas. The street version could max at 112mph without any soft saddle or suspension, possibly the meanest bike ever built. I digress but this is a gonzo tale. Hunter was a bike and gun nut, his first book was on the Hell’s Angels, the gun bit eventually spelling his cosmic ride. For Hunter the drugs were the icing on the cake. We breakfasted on vodka screwdrivers and multi hued ‘vitamins’ at the Sunset Plaza which made focusing from the ‘red sharks’ backseat a tad difficult as we careened along Mulholland Drive, the rim that runs atop the Hollywood Hills. Looking back from a Chevy Impala convertible at 40mph on a touristy road trying to track a gleeful, banking, grinning, Ray Bans glinting, whooping rider with lit ciggie in a long holder clamped between his lips. Cardoso was following commands to the winds, while a clean image eluded me as we pulled along the notorious twisty tarmac. I shipped the film off to the San Francisco office of Rolling Stone, who promptly lost it, never to be seen again. Hunter flew back to Colorado leaving Cardoso and I with a stash of ‘vitamins’. Just over a year later he proposed to Jann Wenner that he go to Saigon to cover the fall in April ‘75. Jann suggested that I go to take the pictures. Hunter chimed that I was too crazy. In the US I wept my eyes out as the bells of peace peeled for an hour and the PAVN tanks broke down the palace gates. I had wanted to be there for the end. His Gonzoness had bottled out two days before and flown to Hong Kong. Anyway, the case against Dan Ellsberg was opening in the federal court downtown with both TIME & LIFE wanting coverage and I had stoned Dan back in Saigon with his first opium and unquote ‘changed the course of history’ or so he inscribed on my copy of the Pentagon Papers. The rest is history and we will still try to congratulate all that is the finest form of stream of consciousness style and brevity that spans insanity to lucidity that tears across your screen in a jagged reality and alerts you to the alternative and to the truth. The moral of this tale is to make us aware of the lies that are being fed by those we once believed should run our bewildering times.
Hunter S.Thompson at Cardoso’s bungalow.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _29
TATTOO _Jon FTW
JON FTW JON FTW IS A NICE GUY. HE’LL GREET YOU WITH A SMILE AND HANDSHAKE AND HE’S ALWAYS KEEN TO PUT A PRETTY GIRL ON YOUR ARM.
WORDS/ MICHAEL NOLAN
He can be found working out of “Wild at Heart Tattoo” in the Queen Street Mall. While he’s been working as a tattooist for the past 6 years, Jon started out as far removed from the industry as one could be, working instead as a plumber.
“I hated every minute of it and thought there’s got to be something more than this. I always thought about getting into tattooing but I figured that it was one of those industries where you kind of have to know someone. A tattoo apprenticeship is a tough break to get so I just put it off. One day I thought fuck it I’m just going to do it,” Jon said. He spent a year building a portfolio of paper work and pressed it upon Don Johnson, his tattooist at the time. “I kept hitting him up saying, ‘I really want to do this.’ He said, ‘Ok go see my mate Tony Oliver, I know he’s looking for someone, I’ll put a good word in for you.’ I went up and showed Tony my portfolio and he gave me a job.” Within days Jon started his apprenticeship at Sacred Skin in Stones Corner. In the time since, Jon has specialised producing luscious portraits of women.
“I’ve always loved painting and drawing girls faces. I think it’s a classic image. If you’ve got a pretty girl on you, you can’t really go wrong. It’s just such a lovely thing to tattoo or paint.”
His take on these prohibition-era pinup models and flapper girls is individual, yet it is a concept as old as tattooing itself. He is heavily influenced by the likes of London’s Valery Vargas and Xam the Spaniard, who both work with the female image. “It’s something that tattooists have done forever, but it’s kind of my favourite thing to do.”
Each of Jon’s women are one-offs. Drawing from catalogues of early 20th century fashion magazines and pulp illustrations for reference, he starts with a vintage photo before building the character work on top.
“What kind of guy wouldn’t want a pretty girl on his arm?” Jon said. He has played with hand-drawn and painted images for the better part of his 28 years, but switching to ink on skin came with an entirely different level of pressure.
“I didn’t think I was good enough for starters and I didn’t know how to go about it. I remember going in to get my first tattoo and it was scary as. I went into this little shop in Wynnum. It stunk of weed. Two scary dudes behind the counter were like, “Whadda yoo want!?” I kind of hesitated and picked this skull thing. That was my first experience with tattoo and I thought, holy shit, it’s cool as fuck!”
In recent years Jon began to focus more on painting and illustrations. This move started with the re-emergence of flash, the off-the-rack tattoo designs that usually hang in a parlour, giving punters inspiration when deciding on a new piece. “For a time it was all custom stuff. No one wanted anything from off the wall but I reckon it’s coming back. Especially that real old school look. We get young kids, 18 and 19 year olds, that come in looking for flash. They come around, check out the boards and say cool, I’ll get a panther.” For Jon, painting on paper is similar to skin, though the medium gives him a little more room to experiment.
“It’s similar to tattoos in the way you can fade stuff out using liquid water colours and liquid acrylic.” The point of difference is in the solitary nature of the craft. “I like it because no one has any say in what you do. You make what you want. Whereas with tattoos, there’s always some sort of input from the customer.”
While Jon isn’t pursuing paper work in the professional sense, he is working on a collaborative illustration project with an author. The pair are looking to produce a children’s book that tells the tale of two loner sharks, who form a friendship after they get ostracised from their shiver.
His style is delicate and feminine but its roots lay in long established traditions making it equally popular with women and men.
Instagram/ jon_ftw www.wildathearttattoo.com
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _31
HALFWAY HALFWAY ARE A RAMBLING COHORT OF COUNTRY ROCKERS. FOUNDING MEMBERS JOHN BUSBY, ELWIN HAWTIN AND CHRIS DALE ORIGINALLY HAIL FROM ROCKHAMPTON, WHILE BROTHERS NOEL AND LIAM FITZPATRICK ARE DUBLINERS BY DESCENT. THE GO-BETWEEN’S JOHN WILLSTEED AND LUKE PEACOCK ROUND OUT THE LINEUP. JUNE SAW THE RELEASE OF THEIR LATEST ALBUM ‘ANY OLD LOVE’ RECORDED AT PLUS ONE RECORDS IN GREENSLOPES. JOHN BUSBY SAT DOWN WITH T&I TO DISCUSS THE BAND’S RECORD THAT IS RAW AND SPARSE, LIKE THE BACK SEAT LEATHER OF A SUNBURNT DATSUN.
INTERVIEW/ CHRIS TIERNEY PHOTOGRAPHY/ DANE BEESLEY
As a group you’re quite a large band, do you think you could function without all 8 members, or do you think all 8 are a crucial part of the band? We did some shows where we played as a four piece, without drums and that was okay. Chris, Dale and I have done shows together and it’s just not as much fun but it’s less expensive. It’s a good way to nut out songs. I guess all the songs come from one guitar and some vocals and it’s just more interesting. You’ve just got all these different elements you can add to it. We rehearse constantly all the time together, so it’s always pushing forward when we work on new stuff. Everyone’s always putting their parts forward and I just like the processes and having endless possibilities. Is there room for another member? I’m not sure what we could add. We’re not looking. (Laughs). If there was something, maybe. Right from the get go when we started the band, we listened to a lot of Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. They seemed to have a pretty expansive sound even though there weren’t heaps of them. I started listening to Lamb Chop and they had a dozen members and it just seemed interesting. We’ve stuck with it now and we’ve been together a long time. It’s just the way it is and it’s fun, it’s never fun booking flights but it’s fun. Story telling is a big part of your music. A lot of those stories come from your personal life, like Any Old Love that tells of your father’s time as a jockey and a trainer. How much of the other band members lives contribute to the stories? Well it’s always been a pretty open forum. This time I just had a lot of songs. It wasn’t a conscious decision, I just had all these songs based around Brisbane. It was an unusual process for us. When you write a concept album like this, where it’s heavily themed, it’s sometimes easier with one person. We rehearse a couple of times a week and we’re constantly going through all those things together. We don’t talk about what the lyrics are so much but someone will tell me if they like a line and you can tell by their enthusiasm whether they think it’s good or not. A couple of the songs were flat out co-writes by Chris and myself, and Luke Peacock as well, he wrote Dropout. It ebbs and flows.
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MUSIC _Halfway
ONCE YOU READ STEINBECK, THERE’S NO FUCKING WAY YOU’RE GOING BACK.
Dropout has a bunch of different sounds that really stand out. There is an REM feel to the vocals, Crowded House sounding melodies with lyrics that could be found inside a Paul Kelly album jacket. Were these artists influential or did the sound evolve naturally? I grew up loving REM through the 80’s. I love a heap of their records especially their older and mid stuff. But I never think about it, I haven’t listened to it in a long time. With Dropout, I heard Luke demo it before he joined and I encouraged him to bring it to the room and play it. I thought it sounded like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, it had an AM rock sound to it. It changed a lot when the band played it compared to Luke’s demo. Music is like anything, the music you listen to, the books you read and all the stuff you consume it has an impact. It’s not like when you’re first writing a song and you’re listening to a stack of Bob Dylan and you’re just whining like some kind of parrot copying, it’s different to that. It’s like reading John Steinbeck. Once you read Steinbeck, there’s no fucking way you’re going back. If you’re into writing working class songs, or writing about average people, reading Steinbeck is a great shortcut because it will save you fucking around forever when the guy had already had a whole bunch of great ideas about that 50 or 60 years ago you know? So was there anything you were listening to during this recording process that had an impact on you? Probably Richmond Fontaine. They’ve got a writer, Willy Vlautin, who writes novels and songs for his band. They’re really expansive and that sort of gave me the ideas. I was listening to Willie Nelson’s Redheaded Stranger a fair bit, and Phosphorescent. I wanted to make a concept album or something with the help of narrative without it being some big Pink Floyd grand wank. I wanted this thing to carry a story without jam outs or grandness. I wanted to keep it quite lean and sparse and bleak if possible. When you perform do the songs trigger a different memory for you every time or are they always the same? Three or four are bar songs and we lock into that. Others are direct parts of the story which are just memories. Those memories were so easy to tap into because they’re so strong. They can be the simplest thing. They certainly remind me of being there. I have my favorite story and others have theirs. If the song is good, people will be able to relate to it in some way. Some music is really great for that ,like early REM. I don’t know what any of those songs are about, but fuck they’re good, and I seem to get a lot from them. But then again, when I think of them I think of being 18 and being in Rockhampton and waiting for records to come in the mail. The songs definitely hold my memories in them though. My old man was going through a tough time, he was young, he was fucking up but he’s a good guy and we still get on well. But in a way these songs are more my mother’s songs because she was the one who would chuck us in the car and sort shit out. Often I look at the press of this record and think there’s always a lot of talk about my old man being a champion jockey doing all this stuff being wild, which he was. But to me a lot of the record was her story. They were both married young and they were in their mid-twenties when I was young. I guess it’s that point where you realise that your parents can be quite frail. They’re not superheroes. Which is kind of what songs on this record are about, seeing all these people, seeing my old man fall, seeing my mum drive off into the middle of the night trying to be tough, but being fucking terrified. (Laughs). It’s pretty fucking scary driving off into the middle of the night in a 1970s Kingswood with no phone and 800 kilometers from anywhere. (Laughs).
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _33
www.halfway.com.au
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WE GET TO KNOW THE DESIGN QUITE INTIMATELY BECAUSE IT’S COMING FROM THE END OF A PENCIL.
DESIGN _Frank & Mimi
WORDS/ SARAH MCKENZIE PHOTOGRAPHY/ SUPPLIED BY FRANK & MIMI
On a wall in Alfred Street’s new bar Dutch Courage, hangs the latest mural by Rick Hayward and Emily Devers, otherwise known as Frank + Mimi. The duo provides a fresh perspective on the ancient craft of signwriting, producing signs with flow, feeling and balance. Their signs mark some of Brisbane’s most charming locations, evoking an era before the handmade gave way to the industrial. Combining Ricks’s signwriting background, and Emily’s illustration and fine art talents, their creations take them from pencil, to brush, to paint – the old fashioned way. “We get to know the design quite intimately because it’s coming from the end of a pencil essentially. Because there’s nothing between us and the design but our own hand, we’re channeling our vision through our own body to the surface. There’s no other interruptions or tools that we use, so our own personal style becomes more visual and more apparent,” Emily said. They source authentic reference material from the golden age of signwriting. An age where the lettering and artwork for billboards and other signage was done by hand and there was a consciousness of the relationship between the illustration and text. Artisans acquired the skill through a long running apprenticeship, as Rick did for five years. Although the craft was all but lost with the advent of computer software, there is now an increasing niche market that appreciates the authenticity of the era past. “We try to use books [to research] because the internet is so oversaturated with reproductions of things that exist in the twenties and they’re not necessarily from then. Like remade photographs all touched up and made up type samples, it’s kind of hard to find things with integrity.”
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DESIGN _Frank & Mimi
The pair look for flowing script, a fat casual lettering style, a textured surface and locally produced handmade goods. They make hefty use of gilding, overlaying surfaces with gold or copper leaf. This finishing technique was first employed by the ancient Egyptians and later commonly used on solicitors’ windows. Once synonymous with the establishment, Rick and Emily are now producing gilded signs to adorn shops and bars around the city. Their projects range from the intimate to the gargantuan, the most obtuse of which wraps the nine metre long Newstead Brewing logo around the corner of their brewery over on Doggett Street. “We were on a cherry picker right next to each other in over thirty degree heat for over a week straight. Logistically it start with that was already a challenge before we got onto the cherry picker but it was very mentally and physically challenging as well!” A good sign needs good typography. Letters need to be both appealing to the eye, and easy to read. Consideration needs to be taken in the selection of typeface, point size, line length (leading), adjusting the space between groups of letters (tracking), and pairs of letters (kerning). To achieve an agreeable balance Rick and Emily draw letter styles in traditional signwriting. “A sign painter in the day would have their script, their block, their casual and then maybe a couple of letter styles, for example like a Roman letter style, so they’d have four to about half a dozen letter styles. Then you can build on those with things like turning them into a block letter or putting a drop shadow on, and then any decorative elements within the letter.” Just like sign writers of old, Frank and Mimi are keen to revive the old ways of the master. Having recently partnered with Shillington College, the apprentices are currently running a series of lettering workshops at the Finders Keepers markets. After booking out their first workshops at the Sydney markets, it’s already become apparent that there is a great deal of people who are interested in learning the skill. “The classes are basically about getting an understanding of the preliminary strokes for your horizontals and your curves, and then we work through to how to incorporate them into an alphabet. Once we’ve done that we work together to come up with a layout for your very own sign, so you’ve got something nice you can take home with you!” www.frankandmimi.com
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _37
MUSIC _Some Jerks You’ve been kicking around these past two years playing shows but only just decided to do a formal release of two new songs. What put you in position that you felt the need to get something out there again? Simon: Because we hadn’t done anything for a long time and the last thing was quite a long process and I think we just wanted to put something out quite soon. We thought we would just pick two songs, record two, master two and put it on a single because it was a bit of a novelty and we hadn’t done it before. We’ve been writing and playing gigs constantly and getting in the studio and locking in a period of time - we never just got into that mindset or we didn’t want to really. We thought we need to get something out quick so let’s do it quick. We wrote Dark and Dead of Night during the previous album but it was one of the songs we didn’t use even though it was probably our favourite song at the time. It just didn’t turn out right. We thought we couldn’t do it justice and when we got motivated to do the single we wanted to record that song. We’re reasonably happy with how it turned out.
WORDS/ CHRIS TIERNEY PHOTOGRAPHY/ DANE BEESLEY
You’re a small group and have a fairly classic line-up of guitar, bass, drums and vocals. Would you ever consider different instruments or additional members on different instruments? Will: When we play live it’s a bit easier to fill out with three people and everyone has the freedom to do their own thing. But when it gets into recording it can sound a little sparse in places but you do have that freedom to build on it and I don’t think we’d expand with more members. How much work goes into your lyrical content? Will: It starts as rambling. Vicki: I don’t think while I’m writing, I just write. Whatever comes out comes out. It could take me a year to figure out what I was talking about or what it means. Someone else might come up and go “Ohh so that means that” and i’ll go “yeaaah maybe that’s where I was at”. I just sit down and do it. Will gets inspired by weird shit, don’t you? Will: Well, Nancy was weird. We had a weird conversation about Nancy Sinatra being dead but she wasn’t. So Nancy is about Nancy Sinatra telling you to dig up the dead girl of your dreams.
Simon: We have quite a bit on the first EP but the second one I think we just wanted to get all our songs down and we didn’t want to have other instruments. The next time we record we’ll probably end up experimenting a bit more with different instruments. Vicki: We have theremin on Dark and Dead Of Night. We weren’t really that precise with it, it was just for spooky noise. Simon: It is what it is and because it’s only three people everyone has to have a bit of personality. Everyone has to bounce off each other and I think if we had more members it wouldn’t be what it is. Vicki: It’s just easier to manage, it’s the power of three.
Do you prefer that sort of improvisation or do you have melodies prethought out?
Simon: And we can fit into The End! There’s only three of us and we’re all really little.
Vicki: It all comes out at the same time. I generally write songs on the bass if I’m doing it by myself and the melody and vocals come along at the same time. Or as a band sometimes the melody will come and a few words will pop up and we can go from there.
Vicki: We are the smallest band in Brisbane apart from some kid’s band. Simon: Steady As She Goes has only one person. Vicki: But he’s tall! Do you prefer the atmosphere of playing smaller gigs or do you like having more space when you’re playing? Vicki: Smaller venues are good but I think if we did play in a big stadium we would still be close together. Will: It’s like the Dead Moon thing. I remember Fred Cole always saying “If my foot’s touching Andrew’s foot on the Hi-Hat and his cymbals are bumping into Toody then we’re in the right spot”. (laughs). Simon: We’re all quite small but our natural game is to play quite loud and energetically up there. www.somejerks.bandcamp.com
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _39
BAD TEETH
Can you remember the first burger you ate? Does the image of a burger have any significance? Where did the idea come from? It would have to have been in a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Back when the toys were so much better than they are now! Little Muppet Babies on tricycles, transforming robot burgers and fries, even the rubbery PVC figures of Ronald and the Hamburglar were so good. Kids these days are stuck with crappy toys in that scary Happy Meal box with the psychotic eyes. How could you not love a good burger? Some days I have to drive all over town to meet clients or spend time in galleries, so there’s only time to eat fast food in the car between meetings. That was when I started pushing the Bad Teeth brand really hard, eating burgers every day for almost every meal. So naturally I had to introduce a burger boy character in the comic strip named ‘Cheese’. Why Bad Teeth? Did the idea for Bad Teeth come from a place of paranoia? Kind of. Right now I can’t afford the dentist and I hate going anyway so I’m destined to have bad teeth. I also wanted to pick a phrase that would come up in regular conversations to sneakily remind people about ‘Bad Teeth’ from time to time. What advice would you give to young illustrators who want to work in the commercial sphere? You have to shamelessly get out there and promote yourself. No company or studio will hunt you down to work for them unless you’re in a very small group of lucky people who were in the right place at the right time. Make time to hang out with your friends.
DESIGN _Bad Teeth What was it like to work with Skatebiz? How many decks did you design for them? It’s great! The first Greek Myths board series was super popular and I have a stack of graphics in mind for future releases. I can’t remember the amount of graphics that I have done for them, definitely a good handful. We also did a bunch of shirt graphics as well. We are working on some new graphics right now actually. Things have been super busy over the past year with the Cheestroyer resin and vinyl toys, but I’m finally finding time to get back into board graphics. How did the tennis player portraits come about? Are you particularly keen on tennis or is it just the contorted facade of a player mid-swing you find appealing? You’re right on both counts. I love tennis. I guess part of the appeal is that tennis is a solitary sport just like how illustration is a solitary art. There are similarites with the technical side of tennis: the angles, the different spins and kinetic chains that create different shots, and having to solve problems over a two hour match. It’s the greatest sport in the world. Also when players make contact with the ball they pull funny faces, so I decided to draw portraits of the Top 32 ranked players for the month of February that year. Zines make up a huge part of your output. Are they a popular item, do you sell many of them or are they more of a niche interest? They are very popular at zine festivals and comic conventions, but outside of that you find yourself spending more time explaining what a ‘zine’ is rather than handing them over to people. You sell copies here and there, but mostly they are used as currency to trade with other zine makers. When did you branch into toys? Why? About 3 years ago I started working with Swampfiend on a 3D rendered version of Cheese. He was learning how to use ZBrush and wanted to try 3D printing. We worked on a little non-articulated figure, produced it in resin, and sold a very limited run about a year later. Soon after that I started the monthly Bad Teeth Zine Factory and left toys for a little while. I had seen Double Haunt’s toys featured online and learnt that they were based in Brisbane. We got in touch and realised we had similar tastes in toys. We’re both big fans of action figures from the 80s, designer vinyl toys and Japanese sofubi. I wanted to do a monster Godzilla kaiju style version of Cheese, and Raph from DH was really excited about the idea.
www.badteethcomics.wordpress.com
He produced about 20 copies in resin that we hand painted and sold at the 2013 Supanova convention to raise money for soft vinyl production of the toy. Even though the figures sold out, we needed more cash. We turned to crowd funding and after a month of emailing blogs and posting non-stop on message boards and Instagram, we had reached our funding goal. If you haven’t felt a soft vinyl toy before there’s something about the material. It feels like the way toys should feel. When you get one of those cheap McDonald’s toys it immediately feels cheap, whereas soft vinyl has a certain integrity to it. Plus you can do all kinds of cool things with vinyl. like swirl multiple colours or add glitter to the material.
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IF YOU HAVEN’T FELT A SOFT VINYL TOY BEFORE THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT THE MATERIAL. IT FEELS LIKE THE WAY TOYS SHOULD FEEL.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _41
G H OS WRITTEN BY/ GHOSTBOY AKA “DAVID STAVANGER”
A LONG WEEKEND WILL END BEFORE IT BEGINS
H S T SHORT STORY _Ghostboy
A long weekend will end before it starts. Every night you hit the town searching for the sound. First up some punk bands under a train station. The taxi on the way in smells of old vomit, you’re wearing red lipstick and women’s underwear, everything is in place. You walk in like you mean it then look around to see if anyone saw you. They didn’t. No one dances in this town but they dress like they want to. The three of you head for the elbow of the bar, near the saloon door toilets and the free party pies. You check the mirror and see an old man kissing himself. When you come back out, half the pies have gone and the rest of the bar is cold. BBQ Mick has assumed his position at the end of it all, leaning forward with his hat cocked to the East. He gives you a quick look up and down but doesn’t ask your name or persuasions. You ask him how he got his and he replies I do BBQ’s. He looks like he’s never left the station, he looks like he would cook a mean steak. You start drinking again. The first band shout at you a lot and you want to shout back. By the second you are dancing with the friend who moves like his life doesn’t depend on it. Some men are better movers than others. Jumping around to a half decent cover of ‘I Just Wanna Be Your Dog’ you want things to break, you want things to run. Picking up a beer glass you hear the sea then remember you have an inner ear infection. Your friend says You can’t really fuck up this song. Everything from the past sounds better than the future. There is a girl that looks like Anais Nin grinning at you when you’re not looking. You walk closer and realise that it is Anais Nin, so you buy her a drink and then drink it for her. You haven’t read a book to the end in years. You aren’t going to impress anyone tonight. The third band hit the stage harder, they have been here before and know where the edge used to be. When you were in Berlin, the ageing dope dealer you met told you these days the edge is hiding deep in the mountains of Pakistan. The lead singer has lots to say but it is the drummer who talks the most. Two rock vixens either side, it’s someone’s birthday and you should sing along. Trying to waltz you fall on top of an old friend and bang both your knees. She has this bar, few would try and deny her. The next day she will get up and bake a cake in a bikini. Such women are cut from their own cloth. You go back to the toilet and there are two security guards banging on a cubicle door. Some guy has locked himself in and is softly crying, the security guys are trying to shove a screwdriver through the top crack. Never cry in the men’s room. Better off wetting your shoes and saving the rest for later. Back out in the bar the Cleveland train is flashing on the board, three minutes to go. Last drinks taste better when you drink them first. In the beer glass the lipstick has held but you haven’t kissed anyone. You leave by the wrong door, the taxi picks you up in front of the war memorial. Don’t fight it. These are the nights when the best parody is still in front of you and you can dance with it in the dark and take yourself home and sleep.
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _43
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _45
T&I BNE _ISSUE FIVE _47