EX DE MEDICI

Born in the Riverina region of New South Wales in 1959, eX de Medici currently lives and works in Canberra1 and is an Australian pioneer for the exploration of the tattoo medium in a contemporary art context.

de Medici grew up in the Canberra and New South Wales punk scenes, before completing a Fine Arts Degree at the Australian National University where she focused on performance, installation and photographic works and collaborations. Despite being surrounded by punks with all manner of tattoos, it wasn’t until seeing one specific tattoo that she became interested in the medium.

“I remember meeting somebody who had a really odd tattoo – tattooing had never entered my mind until then – and I thought the surface was really interesting. I was going to Melbourne to work on a film with my friend Tony Ayres and I got my first tattoo while I was down there while I was working on that film,”2 de Medici explains.

In 1989, de Medici became the first tattooist in Australia to complete a Formal Apprenticeship in tattooing through a grant from the Australia Council. The apprenticeship took place in Los Angeles, “under a woman, Kari Barber, because I’d seen the male dominated scene in Australia and the attitude to women [was] just appalling. I found a much different outlook when I went to L.A.”3 de Medici’s early works exploring tattoo culture included a series of 120 portrait photographs, “sort of life sized, of both people who I tattooed and people who I photographed in various tattoo shops that I’d worked in,”4 which was displayed at the Canberra Contemporary Arts Space before being shown in various locations around Australia.

Now, she is most revered for her exquisitely detailed, subversive watercolours, which display the patience and detail exhibited by the finest tattooists, and also explore themes such as the relationship between life and death by using visual icons such as skulls so commonly linked to tattoo culture.

These exquisite drawing and painting skills certainly exceed those possessed by the Melbourne tattoo artist who worked on de Medici’s first tattoo, with the artist recalling it was “an absolute disaster – the guy was drunk. The only time I could get the tattoo was after the shoot at 11pm. Tony accompanied me saying ‘don’t do it, don’t do it’. We got there and I was so excited that I didn’t notice how many beer bottles were rolling around on the floor. My drawing skills were a billion per cent on that guy, I’m telling you.”5

While she still has the tattoo, de Medici admits it needed to be, “changed and remade…half of it fell out. There’s a lot of technical skill you need for it to stay in there and look good over a long period. In that time I researched getting [Australia Council] funding to go and live in America to learn tattooing.”

“When I was younger I was a bit more contrary, less judicious. After I left art school I was disappointed because I thought the art world was going to be a really great place to hang out – the more I saw how conservative the art world was, the more interested I was in tattooing. A few people had said ‘oh you don’t want to do that – that is art world suicide’ and I thought ‘if you’re saying that, it must be really interesting.’ And so my contrary nature powered me on … plus I thought it was really sexy and art didn’t seem very sexy to me. There was an excitement quotient and a verboten quotient. I’d been working in decayable materials and the human is the most decayable of all things – it couldn’t be collected as an art object.”6

While the art world grapples with the ‘collectability’ of tattoo, de Medici has had no such issue, amassing her own personal collection of tattoo memento ‘monoprints’. This collection has been amassed over the course of over 25 years, from her clients in Australia and abroad. These works, displayed in the exhibition as an installation entitled The Blood of Others, are blood transfers onto paper towel which the artist has taken immediately after tattooing her clients. Individually packaged in clip-seal bags, these are visceral works that evidence a direct relationship between tattoo and contemporary art; track the artist’s prolific tattoo practice over a large span of time; and provide a novel method of collecting in this field.

Notes

1 <http://sullivanstrumpf.com/artists/de-medici-ex/>

Accessed 20 October 2014

2 <http://sullivanstrumpf.com/images/docs/271010115802.pdf>

Accessed 20 October 2014

3 <http://sullivanstrumpf.com/images/docs/271010115802.pdf>

Accessed 20 October 2014

4 <http://sullivanstrumpf.com/images/docs/271010115802.pdf>

Accessed 20 October 2014

5 <http://sullivanstrumpf.com/images/docs/271010115802.pdf>

Accessed 20 October 2014

6 <http://sullivanstrumpf.com/images/docs/271010115802.pdf>

Accessed 20 October 2014

Images - Opposite and Overleaf: eX de Medici

The Blood of Others [detail]

Ongoing collection, 1989-2015

Paper, plastic, human blood

19.5 x 18 cm each

Collection of the artist

Photograph: Shane Fitzgerald

Red (Colony) 2000

Watercolour on paper 114.1 x 152.1 cm (irreg.)

2002.35

Winner of National Works on Paper Acquisitive Award with funds from BeleuraMornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Collection

© eX de Medici

Holly Grech

Townsville-based photomedia artist Holly Grech’s new series of works, They belong to the Crown, is the result of an enduring interest in the tattoos people get on their hands, neck, and face, and the rights we have to do as we please with our own bodies. Grech explains, “it is said that an archaic monarchist law still exists whereby any citizen of the Commonwealth is unable to permanently mark his or her own hands, face or neck as these are considered ‘property of the Crown’. I found this concept intriguing and the obvious implications of such a law remaining enforceable in modern society, particularly considering that tattoo, body modification and body adornment is now commonplace.”

“My initial impetus in the development of a new body of works exploring a “They belong to the Crown” ideology was to seek out confirmation that such a law exists or existed in the first-place. This, as it turns out, is not such an easy undertaking. My research has led me to further anecdotal evidence of the supposed law, however it remains unclear whether or not it is fact or rather an ‘urban myth’ that has prevailed since the Georgian Period. It became clear to me over time that the validity of the law becomes less relevant, or should I say less critical, to the basis of the series of works. The simple truth that the perception of such a law existing in the first place and, considering that it is so widely acknowledged in modern society, is intriguing in and of itself.”

Image: Holly Grech

They belong to the Crown – Subject 1 [detail] 2015

Fujiflex print on board

Image: 88 x 100 cm; Sheet: 98 x 110 cm

Edition: Artist’s proof

Courtesy of the Artist, Holly Grech

© Holly Grech

“The concept of a law that allows the Commonwealth to have such power over a human beings body in the past may have been customary but nowadays it seems – at the very least - barbaric and irrational,”1 Grech surmises.

Grech’s extensive research into the purported ‘property of the Crown’ law has also unearthed a wealth of information about early Australian convict tattoo practices. “There are specific cultural imperatives and practices that explicitly link tattoos with criminality, particularly with convicts sent to the Australian penal colonies from 1788. Many references on the British laws that pertained to convicts sentenced to the Australian penal colonies suggest a separation between the British law system and the governing ideologies of the Governors of each Colony. Convicts were sentenced under British law, however when they arrived in Australia they became subject to the arbitrary laws meted out at the whim of the Governors and Magistrates in charge at that time. Preliminary research shows that the laws were created to reinforce the penal system and provided clear identifiers of an individual – marking them as a convict. Therefore it is plausible that the law on tattooing was established in Australia and alleged to be a Commonwealth law to reinforce its validity, allowing officers in charge to develop more and more indiscriminate rules (one rule was that convicts could not put their hands in their pockets2),”3 Grech explains.

They belong to the Crown – Subjects 2 & 3 2015

Fujiflex print on board. Image: 81 x 100 cm; Sheet: 91 x 110 cm

Edition: Artist’s proof

Courtesy of the Artist, Holly Grech

© Holly Grech

They belong to the Crown – Subject 2 2015

Fujiflex print on board. Image: 71 x 100 cm; Sheet: 81 x 110 cm

Edition: Artist’s proof

Courtesy of the Artist, Holly Grech

© Holly Grech

“Many 19th century tattoos were linked to indictment through the use of tattooing of prisoners (to catalogue and identify them), in order to claim prisoners for the British state, often-documenting conviction, transportation dates and sentence periods. ‘In pre-1988 historiography, convicts had no bodies; they were merely unpleasant objects in an unpleasant system.’4”

“Around one in every four male convicts had tattoos on his body. Some tattoos were made to remember loved ones left behind or whom passed on the voyage...other tattoos were made to symbolise courage or strength, or to protect the wearer from danger or evil spirits. Convicts tattooed themselves to show that they belonged to a particular group or clan. In 1717 branding [such as of deserters with a ‘D’ burnt on the left flank of the trunk5] was abolished and replaced with tattooing. This was marked on the soldiers as a sign of disgrace as part of the punishment, therefore meted out by monarchical rule. Adultery, also, was punished in this way in some parts of Britain; ‘BC’ was tattooed on the subject as a sign of ‘Bad Character’. These tattoos were then altered or embellished by the convicts on the long passage to Van Diemen’s Land – the ‘Land of Sorrows’, in an act of rebellion or to re-instate their reputation.”

“It might also be metaphorical, that the body of the subject belongs to the Commonwealth and therefore is the last remnant of the ‘body politic’ overseas. As such the body did not belong to the person but had been forfeit to the Crown.”

“This could be connected to laws stretching back to the Magna Carta, connected to feudal ideas about hierarchy and possession of tenants, heirs and property ownership and upholding the law as the physical ways in which the body belonged to the country and the monarch.”

“Whatever may be the case, modern society has shifted so dramatically in its views on bodily adornment, and no longer are such embellishments seen with disdain, but rather are a contemporaneous symbolic expression of individualism, culture and lineage. The ‘human vessel’ is the ultimate canvas and belongs to self, and in a world that is increasingly becoming homogenous our own bodies are becoming the only form of self-expression that we feel complete dominion over. This is in stark contrast to the archaic use of tattoo during colonisation and marks a paradigm shift in our society that no longer do ‘They belong to the Crown’,”6 Grech concludes.

A common thread in Grech’s practice is a macro view of her surroundings, and this remains true for this most recent series of portraits. Having identified suitable and willing participants for her photographic works – spending time not only photographing them, but also interviewing and recording their thoughts and experiences of being tattooed – Grech presents her ‘subjects’ “as ‘marked’ biological structures; impersonal, unattached to the ‘being’, reinforcing the notion that [the hands, neck and face] are not one’s own, but belong to the Crown and the Commonwealth.”7

Notes

1 They belong to the Crown, Artist Statement, Holly Grech, 9 May 2015

2 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/ 10314619208595895> Accessed 10 May 2015

3 They belong to the Crown, Artist Statement, Holly Grech, 9 May 2015

4 Behold the Man: Power, Observation and the Tattooed Convict, Australian Studies 01/1997; 12(1), Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and James Bradley

5 Behold the Man: Power, Observation and the Tattooed Convict, Australian Studies 01/1997; 12(1), Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and James Bradley

6 They belong to the Crown, Artist Statement, Holly Grech, 9 May 2015

7 They belong to the Crown, Artist Statement, Holly Grech, 9 May 2015