The latest Spotlight work to illuminate the Gloucester Street side of Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre is a warm, inviting scene created by local artist Iva Anjani. Further exploring the possibilities of the projected animation format, Anjani’s peaceful domestic scene was created by hand, stitching together up-cycled materials to compile the image. A painstaking process, the work is imbued with care and exudes a sense of serenity, a reminder of those places where we can find sanctuary. With the scene brought to subtle life through the wizardry of Immersive Reality’s Nick Keyse, Anjani’s work provides a soft contrast to the urban surrounding, a window of calm to contemplate. As Anjani’s first public artwork, we took the opportunity to talk to the artist about her experiences and reflections as her vision came to life…
Hi Iva – can you introduce yourself?
Hello! I’m Iva and I honestly never know how to answer these kinds of questions. I’m just a girl who picked up a new hobby during the lock-downs and ran with that. I’m Indonesian, I love spicy food, and I can’t swim.
What was your initial response to the Spotlight project and how it might work for your creative process?
I want to say, first of all, that I was really surprised when I was even approached to do this project because I’m not an artist by trade. So, I guess that means I didn’t already have a “creative process”. I looked at all the previous artists featured in the project and it got me shaking in my boots! Everyone featured were all such established Ōtautahi artists with distinct styles, and their Spotlight artwork were all thoughtful and clever. But I was determined to step up to the occasion. I’ve been sharing stuff I make online for as long as I can remember so I just approached this the same way. Except people on the street can see it and not a small number of people online curated by me and the algorithm… yikes!
Anyway, the Spotlight project is awesome because it’s so unique but it doesn’t get hindered by the style or medium of the artist. I didn’t have to do anything differently. I planned the design, check to make sure it would look nice when viewed from afar, and got straight to cutting and sewing.
As your first large public work, what challenges did the process throw up?
Everything was a bit challenging. It was technically very laborious. I sew clothes mainly and I’ve done small embroidery or applique projects, but this was bigger and ironically with tinier details. I’ve never done anything like it before. However, I think my biggest challenge was deciding what to show that was truly “me” and still be something the public can resonate with. Also getting it done in a timely manner while having a full-time hospo job… that was so hard, haha.
How did you find the collaborative aspect of the project and Nick’s work to animate your art?
I don’t think it could’ve gone any better. I had full faith in what Nick can do. I had suggestions on what to animate and my main concern was providing enough assets for him to aid in the animation. It’s not a dynamic scene so I thought it would’ve been a mission for him to animate, but damn he did well! The zoom in’s are brilliant – that’s all him!
Can you describe the scene you created – it feels at once very personal and yet very universal…
Sure! It’s a view through a window into someone’s kitchen – my kitchen if you wanna be specific. There’s curry on the stove. I’m frying an egg (I love crispy eggs with anything). There’s a bunch of dishes already in the sink because somehow that always happens, even when you’re cooking for one. It’s a starry night, the table’s set. The wind is blowing. If you look closely, you can try to glean what kind of person I am from what’s stuck on the fridge door: a kid’s drawing, an unpaid parking ticket, and a little polaroid of a four-legged friend. I guess what’s missing is just my rice cooker!
There is a lovely feeling that the work brings the domestic into the public realm, how do you hope people respond to the work?
Yeah, I really hope people can see some aspect of their home in the scene through the details I’ve included. Maybe it’s the curry. Or maybe you have pretty green curtains. I just want people who are in the city at night to look at it and remember that they can access the memory of their home anytime they like, and maybe find some comfort that it’s something they can return to. I’m fully aware this in itself is a luxury. If that’s the case, I hope they can feel some peace when they see the scene and take a moment for themselves.
The work was created from upcycled materials, how important is that approach in your practice?
Extremely! It was really essential that I only used second-hand materials when making this project. I managed to source everything I need from op shops (shoutout to Creative Junk) and stuff I already own. Even down to the thread. There’s already so much stuff on this Earth. I didn’t feel any need to buy anything new to create it. It also wouldn’t feel right making something that serves the public at the cost of the planet.
What were your thoughts the first time you saw the work live and illuminated?
Excited! Confused? How was it possible that I made that? I don’t know! I’ve never achieved anything of this scale. I guess, overall, at the risk of sounding simplistic, I was very happy.
Has this project inspired any new ideas that you want to explore?
Yes, it definitely has built up my interest in mixing different needlework techniques and fabric textures to make paintings, maybe even making it wearable. I feel like the possibilities are truly endless now!
There must be a few thank you’s to dish out – who do you want to give a high five?
Yes! Huge thanks to you and Nick for believing in what I can deliver. For Selina and Kophie for holding my damn hand in the beginning when I didn’t know how to start the project at all. And, of course, to my partner, Chase, for hyping me up on those nights where I felt like giving up. He’s my best friend and he inspires me every day.
You can see Iva’s work in person after dark at the intersection of Colombo Street and Gloucester Street.
Spotlight is made possible with support from the Christchurch City Council’s Place Partnership Fund, Rau Paenga, Phoenix PDP and Immersive Reality.
After a three year hiatus, the Flare Ōtautahi Street Art Festival is back for 2025! Featuring seven headline artists creating large-scale murals across the city, more than 50 additional artists contributing to a range of creative activations, street art tours, an artist panel, workshops, a market and an exhibition – this is going to be huge! Oh, and did we mention the creation of Aotearoa’s tallest mural by Jacob Yikes?!?
To mark this return, we caught up with some of the central organising crew – project manager Selina Faimalo, artists Dcypher and Kophie a.k.a Meep, along with our own Reuben Woods to chat about the challenges, the excitement and legacy of Flare!
So, there’s less than a week to go until Flare Ōtautahi Street Art Festival 2025 kicks off! How are you feeling Selina?
Selina Faimalo: I’m good!
Are you sure?
SF: I feel a bit scattered as there’s so much to do, but it is such an exciting time!
You have already done a lot, Yikes has started his huge mural on the Distinction Hotel, the multi-crew wall in Sydenham is complete, a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff is coming into place… How different has this year been from the 2022 festival?
SF: It’s much easier. There are no Covid restrictions, which has made it a lot easier! With the funding we had already secured, it’s been way easier to get sponsors to get behind it. I guess it’s been okay with walls… Actually, it’s been easy to get the walls, it’s been harder to get concepts approved…
What are the most common challenges with getting concepts approved?
SF: Flare is all about creative freedom, so getting feedback from wall owners and then giving it back to the artists has been hard. We didn’t really have that as much with the first festival.
Do you think that’s because of the new locations or is it a changing sentiment? Street art has to deal those relationships constantly, balancing permission and a process of concession with creative expression. Dcypher, Kophie, as artists how do you navigate those challenges and do those experiences give you more insight when you’re on the ground team helping organise these types of events?
Kophie a.k.a Meep: For me, it’s always important to be able to interpret the brief in my own way, but in doing so I really value working with people and reflecting community, social and environmental issues, which are informed by the research I carry out. Freedom isn’t about painting whatever I want, it’s about responding in meaningful ways to the brief to reflect my ethos as well as the broader community. I think I now get more opportunities to work in that way.
Dcypher, you’re pretty versatile, have you always been willing to go with the flow?
Dcypher: Yeah, that’s always been my approach. I feel like mural art is one of those things that hopefully reflects community, you know if multiple people have input it always has more impact, rather than just doing exactly what I want to do all the time. It can be less impactful to only have one specific viewpoint , not a more wide-ranging perspective.
Ultimately, that is a sign of public art right? It’s this mixture of expression and public conversation, so it’s always walking a tightrope in a way…
D: Exactly it’s like a discussion interpreted into a visual format that can be translated in many ways.
Jacob Yikes begins work on his mural for Flare on the Distinction Hotel
What is it like being on the organisational side of something like this? Obviously, your expertise as artists is super helpful, but how much do you enjoy this side of it and would you rather just be an artist being invited to a festival?
D: Yeah, I would love to be the artist invited to all the festivals and having that creative freedom, but ultimately at the same time I actually like all the groundwork and boots-on-the-ground stuff that has to be done, just having a stake in helping other artists achieve their goals as mural artists is something I enjoy.
K: I’ve got a long history with event management, project management, and working with Selina, so I really like it, doing all the design and stuff like that, it’s fun. Tiring but fun. I organised the exhibition for the last festival as well.
2025 is the second incarnation of Flare, how has it evolved from that first iteration? We have already mentioned that the first festival was hampered by Covid, which changed some of the plans, is this version more like what you always envisaged for Flare?
SF: Yeah definitely. I think we have a solid team now behind Flare. I was a complete noob during the first Flare, I’d done events and stuff, but not street art festivals, obviously, having Kophie and Dcypher and Ikarus help me learn about the culture, I think I understand it all more now…
As much as you can anyway, right! Nothing is ever straight forward, right? There is always some issue or logistical problem, and this festival has had its fair share. I mean, creating one of New Zealand’s biggest murals is always going to create a lot of problems! Then you’ve got the relationship between the creative side and the commercial side. What other challenges have come up and how have you dealt with them?
SF: Often the walls to paint are easy to get, but the land next to the wall you are painting are hard and can be a barrier to getting across the line. Then there’s navigating relationships with who’s in the festival, trying to be inclusive, trying to stretch the budget. Everyone wants to be part of the festival, everyone wants to be involved, but you only have so much money and space…
D: Having done previous festivals, obviously it builds up the reputations of all the artists and other people who want to get involved. It shows the greater community, the people that might be paying for murals, the quality you can get. It shows off artists to the wider world…
SF: With Flare and my involvement organising large scale murals in between, I can understand what it means to organise a mural, but it’s so niche, there’s not that many people I can ask, it’s a very random job. But it’s really cool being a part of the process, like how much paint you need to order, what equipment you need. With Yikes’ mural, it was a logistical nightmare, I feel like now I could organise any scale mural, because that one is like three large lifts and abseilers and a massive projector that weighs 70 kilos! So, I think having a good team, a good community, is really key.
Talking about involving people, how did the seven headline artists come to be selected? We’ve got Nick Lowry, Jessie Rawcliffe, Jacob Yikes and Ysek7, all from Ōtautahi, and then you’ve got the three out of town artists, Fluro, Haser and Berst, what were the key reasons for selecting those artists?
D: I think there is always a desire to get new people opportunities who haven’t been part of Flare before, but definitely, there should also be a focus on well-established Christchurch artists…
K: It’s always important to have a diversity of styles.
SF: Berst is a key figure in the graffiti world and is generally just awesome to work with. We always have an approach that ensures graffiti is a big part of the festival and having Berst as one of the headliners achieves that, Fluro both has a connection here, having grown up in Ōtautahi, and she also comes from a graffiti background. Haser, has that grounding as well, but he also brings a totally unique style, infusing his work with his experience as a Māori artist. I feel like we need more representation of Māori art works locally…
It becomes about a public discourse, right? It’s the same with graffiti, which is seen as this thing to chastise, so incorporating it is really important to help the public to understand it and what impact it can have. It’s about acknowledging and creating a discourse about public performance. From a personal point of view for each of you, what are you most looking forward to in Flare?
SF: For it to start!
K: The opening and closing parties!
SF: I think just seeing it all happen. As soon as everyone’s got all their paint and they’ve got their lifts and it’s can to wall, paint brush to wall, and I can actually see what’s happening visually, rather than just on my computer and on my phone!
D: I think getting lots of artists in one spot together is just really cool. Starting conversations and having an exchange of ideas and approaches to muralism for artists is a massive draw card for the New Zealand mural art scene in general, it’s not something that happens a lot, especially having everyone coming from all ends of the country.
K: Just hanging out with everyone, like in the last festival, when we got to scooter around on the Lime Scooters and see everyone’s progress, hang out and collaborate like Dcypher said. There’s such a wide mixture of things happening this time as well, so it’s like every day there is going to be stuff going on…
D: I think that the market day [on Saturday, March 8 at Te Pae Green] is probably going be a highlight for me, and of course, creating the largest mural in New Zealand!
How much thought goes into how this event reflects Ōtautahi’s street art standing? Obviously, there are some really good events around the country, like South Sea Spray, Graffiato, Boon, how important is it that Flare, just like Christchurch, has a unique vibe and feel, rather than it sort of replicating what’s already happening elsewhere?
SF: I guess it’s co-created, I think that’s the whole the thing about Flare, it’s created by everyone if that makes sense, it’s Dcypher, it’s Kophie, it’s Ikarus, it’s you, it’s everyone. It’s us trying to make it happen together…
D: I think just geographically the city’s layout and architecture is perfect for a thriving mural scene especially after the earthquakes it just really put Christchurch at the top of the list for muralism in New Zealand. All the prior festivals, Rise, Spectrum, all the stuff that OiYOU! did, you know everything that came before any of this started is super important as to where it’s going to go and why it is the way it is right now. All the work that everyone’s put in beforehand is finally culminating with Flare.
K: The incorporation of graffiti as well, is unique.
There’s a sense of authenticity because Flare is representing something that is organically and authentically happening in the city already. It’s incorporating those parts of the culture that matter in a way that maybe some other places are unable to do for various reasons. We’ve been through so much that half of the sell has already been made, its established. We need this type of event because we’ve got such an embedded urban art culture here. That goes along with making this event work, that sort of authentic, organic aspect, it’s a response to our city’s history, and it feels quite powerful.
SF: I think as well like I don’t know other cities, but everyone’s pretty easy and knows each other, it’s not too hard to get people to work together.
D: The Christchurch scene has always been like that, even back in the day all the different graffiti crews, even though there were obviously conflicts, more often than not everyone just got along and painted together…
Detail of the FSA X DTR X BRS Crew Production on Colombo Street in Sydenham
That is important because everyone is pulling in the same direction, everyone wants it to be successful rather than having people wanting to tear it down. Kophie, you were at an important age when like the likes of Rise and Spectrum took place and you got to be part of those festivals, how much of an influence did those experiences have on your pathway to becoming the artist you are now?
K: I was already writing graffiti and stuff, but just hanging out with all those international artists was just really inspiring, so I kind of like forced my way in there to volunteer and hang out with everyone, I just hung around and didn’t stop hanging around people until they let me paint!
SF: That’s how you make friends!
Do you hope that Flare will do that for another generation?
K: I hope so, but a lot of people don’t want to put in the volunteer work, or they just expect things to be handed to them, so get in there and do stuff…
For you Dcypher, this must be so pleasing, because when you were coming up we didn’t have these types of events here in Christchurch, it must be awesome to see that that evolution from your point of view.
D: Yeah, I mean half the reason I moved to the States was because I didn’t necessarily see a career path here strictly painting murals . I knew Project Legit wouldn’t have longevity with the City Council’s viewpoint it wasn’t necessarily going to fund it forever, so it was time to leave. So coming back to Christchurch and seeing how much it had developed after the earthquakes was awesome…
Surely a programme like Project Legit would have benefited so much from having something like Flare, because it is a pathway, right? Project Legit was helping young graffiti writers explore positive outcomes, but where could they go from there at that time?
D: Yeah, at the time, I don’t think a lot of people saw a direct career path. I definitely did early on, but all the other guys I would work with, not many of them saw that same career path, everyone just wanted to keep it just strictly graffiti and unadulterated which is obviously the core ethos of graffiti culture. I think some people had that line of sight and a lot of people have differing viewpoints, it was either something that faded in their twenties, but now new generations can see a clear career path, even if they may not be hyper focused on it, they can still kind of see it as a potential direction.
So, how can people get involved this year in Flare?
SF: Come to everything!
D: Support your local artists, buy stuff! Exchange ideas!
SF: Go to the show, come to the talks and learn about the headlining artists, go on the tours and learn about what’s there already, volunteer…
D: Just bring life back into the city. After the earthquakes, all the malls took people away from the city, so this is a massive draw card to bring people into the city and make it feel alive.
Flare Ōtautahi Street Art Festival kicks off on February 28th, with the programme running through March 9th. Stay tuned for full Flare coverage – including the full programme, interviews with artists and updates! Get excited!
Our new Doodle Session series is a deep dive into the creative process of some of our favourite artists. We sit down and let the creative energy flow as they draw, doodle and mark a page, all while we ask a few questions and explore what makes them tick, the role drawing plays, and how it all comes together.
Episode one of our Doodle Sessions features none other than teethlikescrewdrivers – whose energy is evident in the way he annotates our conversation with drawings, from school chairs to pencils, self-portraits to phrases – check it out and get inspired!
Keep an eye out for future episodes on our YouTube channel!
Kophie a.k.a Meep One is such a prominent part of the Ōtautahi and wider Aotearoa scene that it is hard to believe she has not staged a solo exhibition of work – until now! Trials is the artist’s first foray into a solo gallery exhibition, fittingly staged during the 2024 Christchurch Hip Hop and hosted by Fibre Gallery, key connections for Meep, whose work is rooted in the influence of graffiti and hip hop culture and her proud bi-cultural Dutch and Samoan heritage. While gaining widespread attention for her public mural work, Meep is well-versed in studio work, from painting to design and even fashion and jewellery. Trials will focus on her imaginative creative output without the restrictions of public commission conditions. A fiercely principled individual, Meep’s art is always imbued with meanings and discourses drawn from her experiences and observations, even when it appears more surreal than topical. We sat down with Kophie to chat about Trials, the process of bringing it all together, hip hop culture, subversive influences, and a number of other topics…
Your upcoming exhibition, Trials, will be staged at Fibre Gallery in October – I was surprised that this will be your first solo exhibition, for someone with your body of work and profile, it’s been a long time coming…
Yeah, I’ve always wanted to do it, I just haven’t really had the guts! It’s been terrifying because I really don’t like being the centre of attention or anything like that. But art is an important part of my life, and it has been ever since I was born really, so I’m happy to finally do it. I’ve wanted to do a show with a big research project behind it for ages, but it’s just too much and it’s hard to get funding for that scale, so for this show I’m focussed on painting stuff that I want to paint in the moment, experimenting and just showing it really…
There is so much work that goes into organising a show, the logistics of funding it and organising a venue, the promotion and all those things, but an exhibition also needs to have something to say, and it takes time to develop a body of work out of formative ideas. The fact that this has taken a while to manifest, does that mean you feel more confident in terms of what you’re saying?
Yeah, and I feel like once I get my first show out of the way, then I won’t feel so stressed about doing it again. In the past I have put too much pressure on myself to make it perfect, but I have just let that go and just made art.
Trials is taking place as part of the 2024 Christchurch Hip Hop Summit. The influence of hip hop has always been a strong element of your work, how much did street culture, graffiti and hip hop inspire this exhibition?
One of my first introductions to graffiti was seeing the wall at Waltham Park from the first Hip Hop Summit in Christchurch, and the guys from the Summit team have always been supportive of me. I was supposed to do one for last year’s Summit, but I wasn’t able to secure funding, so they’re kind of making me do it this year! Hip hop and graffiti are a massive part of my inspiration, and so is street culture in general, like skateboarding. I wasn’t good at skateboarding, but I was around the culture. Growing up in Wanaka, it’s very outdoorsy, so things like snowboarding were also an influence. Then we moved to Christchurch and seeing all the graffiti when I was a teenager was a big part of my growing up. Once I was transfixed with graffiti and art, apart from non-stop drawing, I would always either bunk or walk after school to the South Library and pour over all the graffiti, art and skateboarding books they had there at the time. When I was at school, I would just sit in class and basically draw on myself all day. A lot of the stuff in Trials is inspired by that feeling I had when I was younger and seeing graffiti for the first time and how the world was back then without social media. I think there is a nostalgia for that time, most days I just want to throw it all out the window and just play in the street like I did when I was a kid. It just seems like the world now is completely different…
I assume the show’s title refers to the trials and tribulations that you’ve been through, but it also suggests the concept of criminality that is associated with graffiti, the challenge of transitioning graffiti into a career in the arts, and perhaps the trials of modern-day life, especially the impact of technology and social media. Was the title intentionally so wide-reaching in its suggestions?
Yeah definitely, when I was trying to think of a name, I wanted something that had multiple meanings. The name evokes the trials I have been through to get to where I am now. I guess I had a hard upbringing, but despite dropping out of school, I was able to get an education and then to do what I do now, I’m very grateful of how far I’ve come and how I’ve gotten through all that. Trials also reflects the fact that I wanted to do a lot of experimentation in this body of work. I’ve had so many ideas for so long and I just haven’t had time or the ability to take time from work and focus on painting. It takes a lot of time and money, which is proving to be difficult even right now. I start at 9am and then finish at 9pm and I’m still working on the same painting…
Obviously, there are a lot of very personal aspects embedded in the show, but something I admire in your work is that when you are painting real people, including your self-portraits, you imbue your subjects with a symbolic quality, a feeling of being an archetype rather than an explicitly specific person…
I like to create the whole character. I don’t like doing realism, it’s not something that I really enjoy. It’s just a skill rather than being able to use creativity and imagination. So, for this show there is a lot more of my cartoony stuff, abstracted and surrealist stuff, subversive stuff. There are a lot of hidden messages. I find straight ahead realism quite boring because you are just painting what’s there. I want to create characters from scratch and give them back stories that reflect how I was feeling in that moment or something that inspired me. I doodle all the time, so I’ve taken a lot of stuff that I have drawn and remember how I was feeling and then I try to turn them into better works…
What does the process look like? How do you go about taking an initial drawing that captures an idea and turning it into a more polished painting?
Working on an iPad makes it a lot easier because I just take a photo of a random sketch and refine it. It’s easier to play with colours and stuff before I paint it. But other times, I just start drawing on a piece of wood or canvas and then I just paint it. So, some of them have a refined sketch, some of them don’t. I’m mostly playing with oil and acrylics on ply, which is my favourite surface. I’m largely using recycled ply that I’ve cut into shapes, it’s reminiscent of some of my paste-ups in the past, big cut out figures, but they’re on ply and nicely painted. There are probably only going to be two real portraits, one inspired by me, because it’s hard to get a reference photo of someone else and I don’t want to use AI, and one of Callum [Kophie’s partner, who is currently finishing a music production degree in Australia] because I miss him! But in both cases, they’re not just portraits, they’re abstracted and stylised, with stories behind them.
You mentioned the presence of subversive elements in your work. How important is working in the studio for the expression of subversion when you are increasingly creating commissioned public works where creative freedom is lessened? Does that become part of that nostalgic element that you’re looking for as well?
Yeah, one hundred per cent. I feel like a lot of my big murals are be watered down a lot because of the client relationship, so this show does take me back to my roots. I’ve always been outspoken and political. I care about issues, so that’s always been a central part of my work. In my first year of study, we had to draw a portrait of a friend. He told me he worked in the meat works, so I drew him like Hannibal Lecter as a joke, and I made this big melting-globe-world-monster thing, and a fish made of scrap materials symbolizing a radioactive fish after the Fukushima disaster, which had just occurred. I guess it comes from the influence of satire, political art, like Obey, and the likes of Adbusters. Skate graphics as well, they have a history of being subversive and they definitely influenced me. That stuff’s always been cool to me. I played a lot of video games growing up and they always had funny subversive stuff, like in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, there was a Sasquatch character…
I like that with games now, where you see custom builds and skins, so you’ll have these relatively normal worlds, and then, all of a sudden, they’re populated by giant bananas. The more ridiculous something is, the more it reveals the underlying absurdity of what we perceive as normal…
I like the balance of silly but serious at the same time, it makes you think. All my works are very topical in one way or another, some are just more obvious than others. I feel like a big thing in my work is the impending doom of climate change and how we are all heading towards a fiery death, but no one seems to care. It’s just like head in the sand stuff…
It’s that whole This Is Fine meme, the dog sitting in a flaming room…
That’s exactly the aesthetic, that whole ‘I’m fine’ thing…
We have discussed some of the themes and subject, but is this body of work a progression in terms of visual style?
I feel like it’s me being true to my original style. If you look at my old workbooks, I drew the same sort of stuff but just way worse, so it is an evolution of that. I haven’t really been able to paint big versions of my sketches. I do a little bit in my graffiti when I have enough paint, but not as much as I would like.
It feels like a balancing act of how to express yourself in different spaces…
I guess it comes back to the duality of doing illegal stuff while also trying to go to meetings and be professional. I always feel so fake in a way. But I look at businesspeople who are doing horrendous shit and they don’t bat an eyelid. I’m a genuine person that sticks to their guns, so I just feel really weird about living a double life. I don’t know how to act half the time…
How do you think the idea of a more genuine expression relates to the broader context of hip hop? At its heart, hip hop is very much a DIY culture, but it also has been through so many incarnations; you had the earlier stages of hip hop, street parties and making something from little or nothing, then you had the ‘get cash’ and bling kind of attitude of the nineties onwards, that hustle ethos, and now hip hop has evolved into something different again as it is more commercial today. What hip hop ethos do you identify with most strongly?
I guess hip hop has become very commercialised nowadays and I never want to be a commercial sort of artist. I just want to be someone who makes art about things that are happening in the present moment. I like a lot of underground music.With the Full Steam Ahead crew, we wanted to try and incorporate all the hip hop elements. Even though we mainly do graffiti and rap at the moment, we do have B-Boys in the crew. I love the origins of hip hop. Street wear, clothing and fashion is also a big part of my inspiration. When I was a kid, a lot of the time I would just draw the different outfits that I dreamed of having because I had to wear second hand clothes. It wasn’t cool to wear second hand clothes then! I would draw all sorts of cool outfits. I’d draw girls and then cut them out and make them different outfits like paper dolls. I thought I was going to be a fashion designer! Drawing my characters with cool clothes and accessories is a central part of my art, I guess. The t-shirt as an important platform for messages is another idea I really like. When I was painting recently, I was thinking about all the clothes I had when I was a teenager and stuff, I had this cool t-shirt that said like ‘Big Brother is Watching’ from the 2000s, why did I get rid of it! I want to paint it now, just thinking about that!
That captures the DIY element of hip hop for me, it was created by young people who didn’t have access to things so they made use of what they could, whether it was street corners or subway trains…
That’s definitely a central part of my work and my whole life really. I’ve always made stuff that I didn’t have. I’d make clothes for my dolls from scratch or like second hand fabrics. I just did it out of necessity really. Even now, like I built a fence at home when we needed one. I make do with what I have, I upcycle things, I learn to make and fix what I can. I have always been a DIY type. I’d cut out posters from free magazines when I was a kid, take the posters and cut them up and collage them and poster my room with them. I don’t know, it’s always been like that. I made the hat I’m wearing because I was playing the video game Harry Potter Legacy, and I liked the hat one of the characters was wearing. I was like, I need it, so I made it. My art has always been from second hand stuff or acquired items. Right now, I’m using recycled ply because I had it. It comes down to my ethos of not buying new things for the good of sustainability. Everything nowadays is so crappily made anyway.
The clothing your subjects wear is important, whether a t-shirt with a message or your works that explore Pasifika identity and traditional clothing, these are a reflection of your background and the way fashion has always been so important to hip hop, punk, any kind of street culture…
Yeah, I made the weirdest outfits when I was a teenager. I had a big emo phase and a Boy George phase, like an eighties phase, a gangster phase, haha. I think fashion plays a big part in personal expression, so it is important in my artwork. Especially drawing things that I couldn’t get or creating my own fashion designs…
I want to see some photos of Boy George era Kophie! You mentioned your crew Full Steam Ahead, but of course you are now also a member of TMD [The Most Dedicated]. How big an impact has that had on your work, knowing you are part of a globally celebrated creative collective? Does that bring pressure, or does it just reinforce your self-belief?
I mean, I think about it every single day because it blows my mind that I’m in TMD! I’m so inspired by everyone in the crew. When I was younger, I would use my friend’s computer, because I didn’t have one at home, just to look at pictures of TMD productions and stuff, so it blows my mind really. It did give me the push in confidence to have my own exhibition, because I wanted to in the past, but I was worried that no one would really come or turn up, but I have gotten to the point now that I don’t really care anymore. I am also not making art to for the intention of anyone buying or anything like that, I’m making it because it’s stuff that I’ve always wanted to make and it’s a reflection of myself. Although it is all for sale!
That’s really important I think, because it is quite rare. For a lot of people an exhibition is a way to sell work, to make money, so to have an exhibition where you can be more honest in terms of what you want to say and you can make work that’s important to you, it must make the whole process more satisfying on a personal level…
Yeah, as I mentioned, I wanted to do a whole research aspect and have detailed stories behind each work, but I didn’t have the time and funds to do all that. But it feels more freeing to just do what I feel like doing in the moment and do whatever is topical or influenced by whatever podcast I’m listening to, or if I’m angry or sad or happy, then make something based around that. I feel like it takes the pressure off, and I feel like it gives it more authenticity…
Do you have a defined idea of how the whole show will look?
Sort of, but not really. I’m not sure if they will all really match or anything, it’s just like my brain spilling onto a painting. But I have four paintings so far, and it’s quite a big space so I’ll see what happens. It was quite a short turn around, they asked me a couple of months ago, so I guess I’ve had four months to get it all ready, which sounds like a long time, but it’s not really, especially when you’re trying to do a hundred other things. Paintings take so much longer than anything else. But yeah, I’ll see what I can do!
Who do you want to thank?
Red and Tommy from the Hip Hop Summit and YCD [Youth & Cultural Development], Nina from Fibre Gallery for making me do it, Selina and the FSA and TMD crews, and of course, Callum!
What do people need to know about Trials?
The show will open on the 4th of October at Fibre Gallery on Cashel Street, where my mural Navigation is on the side of the building. I think it opens at 6pm. We have DJ INFARED playing. I might bring some Speights…
As the city’s newest spot to stock up on paint, Rinley’s Writer Supplies has quickly been established as the go-to for the local graffiti community. That comes as no surprise when it is the brainchild of a veteran painter who knows the local scene and what people want, ensuring Rinley’s is truly a store for writers. We visited Rinley’s small-but-well-stocked Sydenham location and caught up with owner Noose to chat about his graffiti experiences, how Rinley’s came into existence and the realities of selling (and stocking) spray paint…
One thing I’ve learned from meeting a lot of graffiti writers is to never to expect what someone is going to be like…
Hard out! I’ve had that here. I don’t know if you know the dude who paints mushrooms, but I met him recently and he was like, I don’t associate with anyone who paints, don’t say who I am or what I look like or whatever! I was so surprised. I was asking him about whether he paints the mushrooms where you would actually find them, and he was like, yeah, kind of, it was a little bit of a road map, which I thought was quite cool. He was a really interesting dude.
There are painters who have been deep in the culture for years and then there’s those who get into it almost independently, who subvert the traditions a little…
I think the scene has changed dramatically as well. I was definitely an asshole, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, it just stagnates your actual growth as an artist when you’re like, that guy went over me, I’m just going to go hard out and make sure I go over them. It means you don’t paint anything good, you’re like, what’s the point, you’re going to get gone over anyway…
Was your introduction to graffiti through hip-hop culture or through another influence?
Skateboarding bro, just being down at the skate park. That was when the older generation were painting walls down there all the time. I was down there every day bunking school and I’d see them painting all the time and I’d try and talk to them. The reception was very gangster and like, what do you write, Toy? It was quite aggressive. So, I was like, OK, that’s how you have to be, you have to have beef to be someone. There was also the whole YouTube explosion around the same time. I started in 2007 and that was when movies like State Your Name and a bunch of big New York graf videos had just came out and had the attitude of, if you buy your paint you’re a toy, and graffiti is a full contact sport. So, I was like, you have to be able to fight and do all these other stupid little things, which is so dumb looking back on it now.
Various artists, 2021
I don’t know if you’d agree, but my feeling is that there are definitely benefits to a less rigid view, a willingness to change and go with the changes…
People like that get better so much quicker because they’re nice people to paint with, because they have opportunities to paint with people who are better than them and they want to paint with them. But if you’re an asshole, everyone will be like, I don’t really want to paint with that guy, he’s going to cause drama, and it’s going to affect the thing that I’ve got going on…
Starting in 2007, you have obviously had experience from both the pre-quake and the post-quake scenes, how do you see the difference?
Pre-quake, if you didn’t have a good tag and you didn’t have a good throw-up, you weren’t allowed to piece. It wasn’t going to happen. Your stuff wouldn’t last, you had to build your name to that point. You also couldn’t paint freights at the time, because of the fear of FILTH and other crews like FAT, they very much held down that scene. There were real repercussions for messing with the thing that they had going on. But post-quake a lot of those dudes left, so this younger generation had a bit of a free for all, there weren’t these scary dudes holding a tight grip on the scene. Obviously, the amount of abandons (empty buildings) as well meant it was just a free for all, it was crazy.
The city was fucked, so people were happy that there was something going on. For years there were three pubs in the city you could go to late at night, there was the Town Ball, that tent one, maybe Dux Live in Addington, so it was pretty grim… Any kind of colour that you added to that was seen as good, you could just paint like there were no laws.
Do you think that environment led to an ongoing change in terms of the perception of graffiti or do you think that bias is still there? Ōtautahi has this reputation for our murals – graffiti has fed into that so much and yet it doesn’t necessarily get the same shine, do you think that’s improved from what it was?
I feel like the level of graffiti that was painted pre-quake went down post-quake. Pre-quake you had the likes of Dcypher, Lurq, USK, Sender, the Wall of Fame by the Colombo Street over-bridge. Then there was the big buff that happened with the train tracks and a lot of that was lost, so it just turned into a tagging and throw-up spot and people stopped piecing and doing productions for quite some time. It wasn’t really until some of those festivals happened post-quake that it was, like, oh shit, we’re getting good recognition for the bombing that everyone’s doing, but we can’t compete at all with the piecing…
Dcypher, mid-2000s
That echoes what happened in Auckland with the Rugby World Cup buff in 2011 and years of history were wiped away and that vacuum was filled with a focus on bombing and tagging rather than piecing…
It opened up a spot. It was like alright, those sick pieces and burners and stuff are all gone, now it’s our time to take that spot, let’s just do something quick and fast, like a big stomper or something to claim that spot to use it later to do something. As opposed to being like, shit, let’s do something as good as that or attempt something as good as that…
What names stand out for you in that post-quake era?
Definitely BC crew, JFK crew, Ikarus obviously, Yikes. I feel like When Dcypher came back it was on for DTR. Freak and all those guys were still doing amazing stuff, but you know, its Dcypher, he gets things going…
B.C., circa 2012
You talk about JFK, who were super active post-quake – you are a member of that crew, right?
Yep, I am. When JFK was formed, you had to be painting quite heavily to be in it, but there was also a lot of thought about where you were situated in the city; I got put in because I was in Addington, Deok was put in because he was in Hornby… It just made going all city very easy, so that’s why it covered the city quite quickly, there was a bunch of dudes in New Brighton, a bunch of dudes in the east, there was a bunch of dudes out west…
JFK, circa 2013
Who else stands out?
Post-quake, 100% Skum from JFK, he was just insane. He was the PK before PK. I remember Skum, Germ, Jot, all those dudes, were going hardcore. Slepa, I think he was kind of going hard pre-quake and kind of died off just after the quake, but yeah, all those dudes were going crazy…
SKUM, 2016JOTER, circa 2014
Fast forward a decade or so and we are here today sitting inside your store Rinley’s Writing Supplies, how did Rinley’s come about?
I got caught two years ago and basically, I couldn’t paint Noose anymore, they knew who I was. I had just had a kid. I was going through the whole court thing, where I was put on a year’s good behaviour. At the same time, I was also getting some legal work, and I was saving all the money from that because I wanted to try to do a project, like try to get legal walls for people and to find people new places to paint, do that whole thing. I was getting more jobs doing Chorus cabinets and saving all that money. So, I had bunch of money sitting there and I was like, I can probably open a shop with what I’ve got. I had already thought of the name Rinley’s, I was going to make markers and paint. The name at first was Rinley’s Black and Chrome, it was just going to be black mops, chrome mops. But that sort of changed over time. I messaged a bunch of paint suppliers, shopped around and was in chats with Montana and they were just so on the ball with replying to emails. They were so good to deal with, I was like, this is like a no-brainer, I’ll just take the risk and do it. I sent them a whole bunch of money and three months later all this paint showed up…
Going back to that idea of racking paint to be a real writer, how have your personal experiences shaped Rinley’s and how you have gone about setting the store up?
I wasn’t a racker. When I started the cages came about that made it harder. I was just on the cusp where you could rack from The Warehouse when I was starting. I was just buying paint, and I was buying shit loads of it. I was spending basically my whole wage on paint at one point…
BORE and NOOSE, 2016
Where were you buying paint?
I was using Embassy hard out, but when Ironlak went, it was a matter of necessity to shop around, so I ended up using Gordon Harris for years. Before I started Rinley’s, I was using Tom’s Emporium.
Tom’s has stocked Montana, you talked about how Montana as a company were really good to deal with, but it also has a strong reputation for quality…
Yeah, Embassy had Montana years and years ago, when I first started, and I loved it. The smell is nostalgic, and its good paint. But honestly, the main reason I chose Montana is how good they are to deal with. Their paint is as good as any other paint you can get, but the level of service and communication when you’re sending large amounts of money overseas is second to none compared to some of the other places. They see a small place like this, and they see the potential. They don’t see it like just some small fry who only want a small amount of paint compared to someone else.
You’ve started Rinley’s at a manageable scale in terms of the shop itself, but you’ve got a big range of cans in a small space!
I think what was happening with a lot of the paint shops was that they were looking at four different, say, burgundies, and they looked at the middle tone and they go fuck, it is close enough to the other ones, let’s just get that and we will step down to the next shade, whereas artists still want those off shades. For someone like Yikes or Dcypher, who do crazy technical pieces, those slight changes in shade mean a lot. For me just painting pieces and stuff, it doesn’t mean as much to me, I can go from a burgundy to a bright red pretty easily, but it’s just like a necessity really, like there’s just nothing better than having a full range that you can just look at. The other thing was when you go into a lot of paint shops or even skate shops to buy paint, they’re all behind a cage. It’s almost like you’re burdening the staff to get the cage open, you feel like you are being watched and you can’t be trusted. That’s why I’ve got this set up, where the door is shut at all times, but I’ll let you in, you pick your own shit, you can compare colours, you don’t have any other awkward encounters. I just make this shopping experience better, because painters aren’t all deviants, a lot are quite successful in their jobs, they don’t deserve to be watched like a hawk to buy paint…
Rinley’s Writer Supplies
Which is all an off shoot of essentially criminalising spray paint…
Which was the stupidest law anyway! People can buy all these pens, there’s no law on the pens. You can go fill up a weed sprayer full of paint, you could go get a fire extinguisher right now from Bunnings, fill it with paint and have the most destructive tool you could possibly have, but for some reason spray paint was targeted. I’ve read the legislation around the time that it was written (early 2000s), I think the perception was that graffiti writers are all lower-class kids, so let’s make it hard for like 15/16-year-olds, not actually knowing that many of them were fully grown men. Which is stupid because they would have seen that in the court papers…
With the rise of urban contemporary art, people are using spray paint as a part of a much broader creative practice as well, but the product is stigmatised by putting it behind cages and making it an awkward experience for people to have to go and get something unlocked and then be watched…
Well, the other crazy thing with the law was that if you are walking around the street at 12 o’clock in the daytime with a bag full of spray paint and you got pulled up by the cops, you’ve got a legitimate alibi as to why you have that spray paint, you do that at 12 o’clock at night and you’re a tagger. Who is to say that you’re not a night worker? I’ll open late for people, like if you want to buy paint late at night, holla out, we’ll sort a time out and you can come and grab it. A lot of the dudes that do come in, they work late, they don’t get the chance to come into paint shops during the week. Not all of them are out painting graf, some are just using it for canvases or whatever they want to use it for…
It’s interesting, I know of a few people who have gone into studying criminal law or things like that, because of experiences associated with painting graffiti. Were you already aware of some of those things from being a writer, or is that stuff that you kind of dived into because you knew that opening the store would potentially bring up some of those issues?
I kind of knew a bunch about the laws just from being caught before, but then I obviously had to look into it from a business point of view; am I liable for selling someone spray paint and then they go out and do a throw up and chuck a Rinley’s tag alongside it? Am I going to get in the shit for that? Which is why you need things like public liability insurance and stuff like that. I mean, if that was to happen, they could take you to court and it could get thrown out, but you’ve just wasted thousands of dollars on lawyer’s fees just to try and argue point which should be pretty straight forward…
Do you have excess stock in storage?
Everything is out at the moment. We will have stuff in storage from this next order, especially in the Montana Gold range, because this (the current stock) is only half the Gold range. We’re doubling the next order in the Gold range. It was just a wee bit of a concern because Gold hadn’t been here for so long, I was worried that people would be like, it’s a dollar fifty more than Montana Black cans, The people that have used it have all said the same thing: the cans go longer, the coverage is better, they’re easier to use because they are low pressure… Even Dcypher said all the stuff he did for Project Legit using Gold has held up insanely well, and that’s like 15 years ago now. So, for people that are wanting to use aerosol for large-scale murals, that’s the shit to use.
Rinley’s Writer Supplies
What’s your time frame for re-stocking? Have you figured out the best way to keep well stocked?
Because it’s coming from overseas, it’s like three and a half months. I am lucky, my partner is a fucking genius when it comes to running a business how its supposed to be run, she’s a superstar at that kind of thing, so yeah, she’s got that side covered. We’ve just placed another order, a massive order as well, to try and time with summer.
You ultimately have a very specific audience, so I assume it’s less about growth as it is about building customer loyalty and a solid reputation…
I’ve had probably a message every other day asking do you ship? do you ship? But at the moment, I’m not interested in shipping because I’m concerned that if I do start shipping, locals come in and they are like, oh shit, man you’ve sold out really quick and it’s like, yeah, I’ve sent a 500 can order to Nelson or whatever. I want to cover local first… and put Christchurch on the map internationally as best as I can…
NOOSE, 2024
You’ve got more than just paint as well – tell me about some of the other products you stock…
I pretty much only import stuff that I like! We’ve got a range of markers. The reason I got the silver Uni Paint PX-30s is just because they are the best silver marker you can get. The Sakura Magic’s are just a good black marker and then the Sakura Solid Paint Sticks are cool because they are a little bit different. We have various mops from Krink to Fadebomb and eggshell stickers too.
I see you also have some books, some collectibles and some art for sale as well…
When I had opened, I didn’t have a lot of things up other than the spray paint, the caps and the markers, so a few friends were like, I’ve got some shit that I want to sell, can I put it in your shop? And I was like yeah definitely! It was pretty empty up there, so a mate’s put up his Transformers VHS tapes he wants to sell, he had a custom shoe he wanted to sell, Skum from JFK has like a whole bunch of random buses and canvases that were done in like 2015 or 2016, so we’re selling those, and then the books. I got Fresh Press from the guys up north, and then just like a few other books that I had collected over the years that I’ve read probably 10 times and won’t read again…
You’ve got Flip the Script by Christian P. Acker, I love that book…
Yeah, it’s a bloody good book. The Mike Giant book is really interesting as well. I look at that quite a lot now, just because it reminds me a lot of old Christchurch graffiti. I’m not sure whether or not it was the Art Crimes page from years ago that he was uploading to, and people were taking influence from, but it’s kind of crazy how similar his style and even some of the colour combos and walls that he did remind me of old Christchurch pieces, like how the letters hit the ground… I also listen to his podcasts and stuff and from the sounds of it, he was sharing photo stacks around the world with people quite regularly, so whether or not those stacks ended up here, it was an interesting time back then, the internet was around but it wasn’t used the way it is now…
Having been part of the graffiti scene for so long, does opening Rinley’s feel like a new phase in your graffiti story?
I started in 2007 and I really didn’t want to be coming into my 20th year painting not having done anything, so I wanted to do something at least. I fucked myself getting caught, so I couldn’t do anything impressive graf wise, I wasn’t going to risk getting caught again, having young kids and a missus that was fucking stressing out, so Rinley’s was the answer…
Having been caught, what are your thoughts on how the city approaches graffiti?
Every time they like have some new programme that will stop tagging, they never work! The only thing that does work is giving people space to paint legally. I think the Council now, especially with people like Mel Hillier at the Graffiti Projects team, she understands that, and she can see now that there is a group of people that do just want to paint good shit. They might not necessarily want to go onto painting three-storey high buildings with crazy murals, but they just want to paint nice pieces, they want to chill, to be able to have beers or whatever just down at the wall and just make a day of it…
BORE and NOOSE, 2015
You know, the city has all these places where people can be physically active. There’s never a problem about basketball courts or pump tracks or skate parks, why is it such a big leap to have a place where someone can paint a wall?
As someone who’s fucking shit at sport, shit at skateboarding, I did it for years and got nowhere with it, the one thing that you are kind of alright at, painting pieces, you’re shunned for!
When you frame it as a chill thing, where you can spend a day with a group of mates painting, having some beers, having a good time, where’s the threat in that?
Everyone that comes past and sees you painting, I’ve never had a bad interaction when we’ve been painting pieces. As soon as the sun goes down though, that’s where the perception changes, even if you are doing the exact same thing after dark, people go, tagger! Which is crazy, just paint in the day and you’re right!
NOOSE, JFK, 2024
Problem solved! Thanks man – lastly, when can people shop at Rinley’s?
Nine to five, Monday to Thursday, nine to six, Friday, and then nine until twelve, Saturday and Sunday. But from October I’m probably going to be doing appointment only across the board as we are having a baby. But I’ll be low on paint by that time anyway, so I don’t think it will be a massive problem…
And people can find out more on the socials?
Yep! Follow us on @rinleys on Instagram and Threads!
Jacob Root, a.k.a Distranged Design is proud to present Reclaimed – a pop-up exhibition of new works on old surfaces at a temporary space at 4 Cranford Street, opening 6pm Friday, July 12.
Reclaimed will present works painted on up-cycled materials, including pallets, window frames, and used timber, providing a fitting textural surface for his exploration of aerosol – the artist moving beyond traditional stencil approaches and into freehand spraying, thick brush stroke portraits and experimental stencil techniques. We asked Jacob a couple of questions about the show…
Stencilling can be interesting as a technique, you kind of need to find new approaches as you refine the process – what new influences have you developed for Reclaimed and how did they come about?
I think the main influence of trying new techniques was travel, but also the amount of murals I’ve done over the last couple of years where I didn’t have the opportunity or time to cut stencils, so I had to get better at freehand spraying. After it started clicking I just really enjoyed it more, as it’s more hands on painting rather than cutting stencils for hours on end. Also the fact my hand and arm cramps and aches for hours after cutting stencils, it didn’t seem like a long term plan as my only way of creating artworks.
Material surfaces are really important for stencilling and by extension aerosol, too, how much work has to go into making the ‘canvasses’ for Reclaimed?
So far a lot has gone into messing around and rebuilding items, which I’m really loving. Driving around scavenging items that I can beautify by rebuilding, sanding, then painting on them has been incredibly satisfying, and the edginess and grit of the canvases I’ve found compliments my style. I’ve got a lot more to do in the next couple of weeks leading up to the show though!
What is the location for Reclaimed and how did that opportunity come about?
The location is 4 Cranford Street, it’s a new build by Duogroup. Duogroup are the building owners of the wall that Rightbrain and I painted our Sir Ed Hillary mural on, so I decided to get in contact with them and they were kind enough to jump at the idea and let me use their space.
Reclaimed is made possible by the support of Duogroup and the Inkster Company.
Make sure to catch Reclaimed – opening 6pm, Friday, July 12 and open until Sunday, July 14.
Kiwis love a good garage sale. Maybe it is the curiosity. Maybe it is the potential nostalgia. Maybe it is the chance to rifle through someone’s discarded belongings in the hope of finding a unique treasure. Maybe we just love the thought of a bargain that cuts out the middle man.
Ōtautahi creative Daken, known for his bootleg toys and funky, humorous illustrative style, is drawing on the power of garage sales to inspire his forthcoming show Garage Sale with Lucky Dips, opening May 13th at Absolution. Daken describes the show as an exhibition of nostalgia, Kiwiana, trash and treasures, all presented through the lens of a good old fashioned garage sale. We caught up with Daken ahead of the show to find out what we can expect and how the idea came to fruition…
I know you are always busy making, creating and generally tinkering, but when was your last solo show? I had my first solo show way back in 2021, on my birthday actually, which was pretty exciting. That show was almost exclusively a bootleg toy show (with the exception of a couple paintings). I had only been in the toy-making scene for a year at that stage so I wanted to really push what I was doing in that space. I feel like Garage Sale is more integrated with everything else I do, coming together for a more varied experience.
How did the idea for Garage Sale come to you? I know you have an Instagram profile that focusses on handmade garage sale signs… Absolution asked if I woukld like to have a show there (shout out to Rochelle!). I always have show concepts and ideas popping up in my head. The Garage Sale idea had been fermenting for a wee while, and given the opportunity at Absolution, it felt right. I do indeed run an Instagram profile that posts pictures of garage sale signs, I started it back in 2019. Garage sales have always had a special place in my heart. Having a background in graffiti, the idea of guerrilla marketing through a kind of typographic graffiti folk art really interested me. No one sign is the same, they are always made with random materials, and the focus is to just get the message across: ‘Come here, on this date, to look through my old crap and give me cash for it.’ I felt at the time that I needed to document them because, like graffiti, they are such a temporary thing. The Instagram page (@garagesails) was a big seed that helped lead to this show.
What can we expect to find at Garage Sale with Lucky Dips? A Lot of trash, treasure and nostalgia, haha! The show started with the idea of garage sales but slowly evolved into sub genres of nostalgia and identity through the lens of Kiwiana. So, you can expect to see all of these ideas drawn on paper, painted on items, displayed on thrifted clothes, made into toys from other recycled and broken toys and much more…
It sounds like Garage Sale will reflect your diverse practice… I like to think of myself as a jack-of all-trades, master-of-none when it comes to my work. Jumping between materials, mediums and ideas has always been my thing. I use the name Daken’s Emporium because I can’t seem to stick to one thing. The idea of emporiums and garage sales seems to fit the way my work in general is very eclectic in nature. I get an odd feeling, dare I say a sense of magic, when there is a culmination of things that come together to make a bigger narrative. I love how everything has its own history, has a story of when it was made and how it came to be in some place with other things that can be so different, somehow all winding up in the same place… Did I just describe the human experience?! One of the biggest challenges that kicks at the anxieties in the back of my head is it all not working. I look at my contemporaries and other artists and wish that I could pick something and stick with it. But the truth is, trying new things is always fun and exciting for me. So defining my own personal style and voice within so many avenues of work, while challenging, is in the end, who I am.
Do you have final message for people who might want to come and see Garage Sale? For those that intend on coming to the show, have a fun time! I hope I have managed to capture at least a small fraction of that magic I talked about, even for a short period before it’s all separated and taken down, just like a garage sale sign. Also, come say what’s up! I would love to chat about the work, hear your thoughts, and discuss who you think would win in a fight between Swamp Thing and Superman! Oh, and don’t forget to pick up a lucky dip!
Daken’s Garage Sale with Lucky Dips opens on Monday 13th May, 6pm – 8pm, at Absolution Tattoo and Piercing, The Arts Centre – Te Matatiki Toi Ora
The fourth and final artist in the Paste-Up Project is Mark Catley – one of the city’s longest tenured paste-up artists. Mark’s nostalgic vintage toy paste ups have been a familiar site across Christchurch for many years and as such he was a natural contributor to this project. For his installation, Mark continued his toy parade, this time with huge images of Barbie, G.I. Joe, He-Man and more circling the bollard like a line-up awaiting identification. Catley’s work evokes nostalgia, warm recollections of childhood favourites, but it also illuminates the darker side, from the ridiculous body shapes and reinforced gender stereotypes to the problematic materials used in production. We chatted with Mark and dived into his experiences pasting art around the city and the Paste-Up Project specifically, and, of course, a specific Star Wars character…
It seems like you have been pasting art up around Ōtautahi for a long time, do you remember when you started?
Well, according to my Instagram page, it was 2015. I only worked that out based on when the photos were taken of the big Batman and Robin faces opposite Victoria Square, it’s some fancy restaurant now…
The Permit Room…
Yeah, that’s it!
So, what was the inspiration?
Well, a lot of people were doing it at the time. After the earthquakes, things had changed, and I just thought I’d give it a go. I honestly don’t even remember now. I would’ve had a friend print them out for me. I was doing my insurance work at the time, and I would get emails about toy figures and I would open them up and put them on my computer monitor and I just started taking photos of the faces of Batman and Robin and then I went home and made them bigger and I just pasted them up. At first, I didn’t actually know anyone doing it personally, so I just had to Google how to do it myself. I remember going to one of those Instructables websites about how to make wheat-paste glue. I just used the first recipe I found and I pretty much stick with it even now…
Did it always make sense as the medium to use to put your art out in the streets?
Well yeah, I mean, I’d never tried using spray cans or anything like that and I figured this was the quickest way to get it up there. Then by chance, the first time I put them up, I think it would have been the Batman head, I remember walking back to my car and turning around to have a look, thinking that’s pretty cool, and there’s some guy yelling out to me: “Hey you!” I was like, oh shit! I mean, it wasn’t that late, it would have been daylight savings, so it had only just got dark, and this guy shouted out to me. I turned around and I just replied “Yeah?” And he asked me: “Did you just do that over there?” I said “Yeah”, and he said it was pretty cool, but he wanted my details, and I just gave them to him. I told him my name, I gave him my cell phone number, and then nothing happened. It wasn’t until six months or a year later that The Press ran a story about this mysterious street artist and it turned out the first guy was a reporter and after the first story was posted on Stuff, that reporter spoke to another reporter and they knew who I was straight away. So, someone from The Press phoned me and said: “Oh, so was this you?” And stupidly I just said, “Yeah it was”, being the good boy I am. I remember hanging up and thinking, shit! So, I rang them back and said: “Hey, why don’t you just not put that it’s me and have a bit of fun with this?” But he was like, “Nah, it’s too late.” So my dream of being a mysterious artist was washed away…
You were never able to become the Banksy figure of mystery…
Exactly, I never really had enough time to give myself a cool name or anything.
I don’t think I’m creative enough to come up with a good name…
I’ve got a good name now, a podcast gave it to me: BosskCat, because Bossk is my favourite Star Wars character and my last name is Catley, so BosskCat. They even made a picture of TopCat, but with Bossk’s head stuck on it. That was some guys in England who thought of it…
You have become known for your annual May the 4th Star Wars bonanza, has that become something that you look forward to each year?
I really like to do it. It’s just a bit of fun and I imagine even if no one else cared, I would just put them up for myself for fun. It must have been a few years ago now, but I remember it was hosing down on the night of May the third, it was stupid weather, you know, there was no way anyway should have gone out putting up paste ups, although some of those pieces have lasted for years. Anyway, one of them was over in Lyttelton, on the old fire station, it was a Princess Leia paste up, but there were about 10 or 12 Russian sailors all hiding under that spot, with bottles of vodka and a plastic bag of cooked fish. They were just drinking and pulling out bits of fish meat to eat. The smell was revolting. I was annoyed because that was the spot, you know, I’d worked out a few days earlier that was the spot, and because it was raining I thought no one would be there. Anyway, I half tried to explain what I was doing but they had no idea what I was saying, they just laughed, so I just quickly did it and got out of there, looking back it was pretty funny…
Interestingly enough, other people started to add to that piece, right? Was that cool to see?
Yeah, they put like little pockets and a big mouth on there, that was cool…
It gave the piece its own life after you walked away, and that’s a good lead-in actually to the Paste-Up Project, because although you haven’t got any Star Wars figures, obviously the vintage toys are a central element, so explain the concept that you’ve installed…
I really wanted to do something interactive and get the public involved. I was treating it along the lines that it’s going to be pretty hard just to keep it updated, let alone with people playing with it, so I just thought I will have some larger figures up there from generic toys from my memories; I really wanted to have a massive Barbie from the 80s, a Sport Barbie in an 80s leotard, showing how crazy the body shape was. I also wanted a He-Man up there too, because I’ve been talking a lot with my friends about how it is so weird that He-Man is such a macho figure, but he’s always in his underwear. It’s the same with fantasy novels like Conan, it’s always fighting monsters in loin clothes, it’s very weird to me. Anyway, I added Raphael, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and a G.I. Joe from the 60s. Back in the 60s, all the boys were taught to go to war and fight and kill, this very macho thing, and all the women were taught just to stay home and look after their man and the family, that was the lifestyle, so I wanted to question that. Then I just asked the public to send me photos of the toys that they had as kids. I’ve still got quite a few to put up as well…
The thing with toys is that they have such a powerful sense of nostalgia for us and yet they are often highly problematic and that was one of the things you said that you were wanting to illuminate. But it’s not just the questions of gender identity and body image, there’s also actually the literal toxicity of older toys…
Yeah, it’s crazy when you look into all the plastics that they used, especially back in 50s and 60s, right up to the 80s and 90s and probably still now a little bit with the mass-produced toys especially, all the knock-off toys. They’re getting better now, but its the hidden stuff like all the glues, the paints. I think Fisher Price is one of the first companies to actually come forward and say publicly that you can still collect these vintage toys, but by all means do not let your children use them. It’s quite interesting because a lot of people just really don’t want to hear that. A friend told me that this local Salvation Army store posted that they had all these great toys from the 80s and someone replied saying, hey, this company’s actually come out and said that these are to collect, not for kids to play with, which is a hard thing to hear. Right now I’m holding a 1980s plastic figure, I love all this stuff, but I will wash my hands after playing with something like this, and I don’t really like letting my daughter play with some of these toys. It’s not because they are collectible, they are toys that are meant to be played with, it’s more that we try to get her toys that aren’t toxic. It’s hard, because I still buy vinyl, but ideally, they should be using recycled plastics to make records. It’s just bewildering, it’s crazy…
You have actually worked quite consistently at a reasonably large scale, some of the previous Paste Up Project artists haven’t worked at such a size. Was this project less daunting because of your previous experience?
Yeah, it was good. Really the only issue was the curve of the bollard and learning about the materials, like soaking the adhesive paper for half an hour. But it went up so easily, I couldn’t believe how fast it was. It was really good how it adhered, so it went well, and I enjoyed working at that scale…
That sense of scale seems quite important for your work because that nostalgic element takes on more emphasis when it is larger. As you get older, things seem smaller, so to make them bigger again plays on our memories of them, it brings back that sense of magic. When you see something after a long time and you’ve gotten older and bigger, it never seems as impressive, so recreating them at this massive scale, it brings back that wonder. It gives them a sense of agency as well; it makes them seem like they can talk back. The large size seems to be a good fit with the concepts that are being teased out in your work…
Yeah, I mean it does make a lot of sense. I mean, I like Ghostcat’s tiny builds, his small stuff, with surprises that you have to look out for, the detail’s just amazing. But then I love things that are just stupidly large, oversized and just really like: Bang! There’s Barbie, standing on Manchester Street. I love the fact that everyone just knows what they are straight away, yet it’s still a surprise.
It automatically attaches people to something familiar, right?
They go in for a closer look and they go, oh it’s He Man! I remember that as a kid! It starts all the conversations about what their childhood was like. Hopefully it makes people smile…
You talked about a few people commenting as they were passing, have people been responding to the work?
Most of it has been positive. I’m always personally surprised that more people don’t stop and have a chat. I’m the sort of person that if I saw someone doing that, then I’m always like, wow, that’s cool, and I’ll go ahead and try and find out what someone’s doing. But you know, most people just live in their own worlds, looking at their phones. Big groups of drunk people are the worst to be honest, that’s why I try not to do it on a Friday or Saturday night. There’s nothing worse than a whole bunch of drunk people, going “what are you doing?” With this work, when people asked, I could tell them that it’s an official project, and they like to hear that as opposed to just putting something up, but then it’s a bollard, you are not just going to put things up on it are you?
That’s the other thing with your installation, the connection with the bollard. Because they are toys, it automatically raises the idea of advertising, so it starts to become an interesting interplay because it’s not advertising and it’s actually doing the opposite because it’s raising some of the issues of consumption. The way you have composed the work, that large-scale parade going around the bollard, was that in some ways to stop it looking too much like advertising posters?
Yeah, it was. At one point what I wanted to do was like a line-up, like The Usual Suspects mug shot. But then I realised that the heights were all different, and it wouldn’t have worked. I mean, I’ve sort of done that, but not really. I just wanted to make something that you walked around, a big continuous piece to look at, and then to add to it over the weeks. I’ve been there a few times and added stuff to it…
I have one last question and this one is probably pretty hard to answer, you’ve mentioned that you’re a toy collector, what’s the one toy you would buy if price was no object?
I’m a Bossk collector, so there is the famous toxic-limbed Bossk from Spain. There are about 50 of them in the world, some say 29. I’m really into the Spanish Star Wars stuff. Basically, they’ve made like 600 million little tiny figures, mainly in China or Taiwan, places like that, but then Spain got a contract, and started producing some Star Wars figures, but the company that produced them, the quality of plastic they used wasn’t as good and so for some reason the Bossk figure’s plastic has degraded and has turned his limbs, his arms and legs, a green colour. They call it the toxic green Bossk and this figure is sought after all over the world, it goes for stupid money. It’s not like the Boba Fett Rocket Launcher, but…
That’s the famous one, right?
Yeah, but it really annoys me, and I’m getting my geeky hat on here, there are fewer figures of the toxic Bossk, but because it’s Boba Fett, it’s given more cred. But Boba Fett is just a dude in a space helmet, he is literally just a guy in a space suit! He’s a cool figure too, but the Bossk is the one! I know that if I ever got it, it wouldn’t be that amazing, I would have it in my hands and it would be, ahh, its OK, but that’s the one I would buy.
Did you want to give any shout outs?
Thanks to yourself and Phantom, JZA, Cape of Storms, and teethlikescrewdrivers, he’s always handy with his advice and he is so enthusiastic. I love the fact that he is all over everything…
That sense of community is driven by a lot of people, but he is right at the heart of it…
If I was younger, I would hang out with them all the time. But I do kind of like working by myself. I have so much work, but it just takes time. It always looks so cool and it’s great when there are new fresh walls. I often think what would my mum think? But she would probably drive right past and that’s alright.
Thank you to Phantom Billstickers and the Christchurch City Council for their support of The Paste-Up Project!
I remember seeing Tom Kerr’s tattoo flash drawings illustrating lines from Bruce Springsteen’s iconic 1982 album Nebraska on Instagram around two years ago. As a long time fan of the musician, I was an immediate intrigued. The album, famously recorded in Springsteen’s bedroom on a four track recorder, stands as one of the New Jersey native’s most celebrated works, devoid of the stadium rock scale and instead focussed on Springsteen’s intimate Americana story telling. I reached out to Tom at the time and he told me of his plan to draw imagery for every song, I was excited to see what would come from the project. It may have taken some time, but finally the suite is ready for exhibition as a complete body of work. As you can imagine, I was excited to sit down with Tom and we sermonised about Springsteen, Nebraska and the process of making these works…
I have always found, depending on prevailing tastes, that it can sometimes be hard to admit that you are a Springsteen fan, you never know response you are going to get! For some people, it’s still the flannel shirt and Born in the USA, but there is, of course, this whole other side to Springsteen. How did you kind of come across his music?
My dad is a huge fan, so growing up, Springsteen classics were always playing, especially Born in the USA and Born to Run and stuff, but I think getting older and being a young adult, I just resented Springsteen and thought for so long it was just dad music. Then my really good friend Dan, who probably has the best taste in punk music I know, was like, have you listened to Nebraska? I was like, nah, I don’t really rate any of Springsteen’s music, it’s all dad rock or whatever. I think he said something like, forget everything you know about Springsteen before you listen to this album, it’s not a big band, there are no saxophone solos or type of shit. I was really into lo-fi music, recorded songs, and I got more and more into that and through that I went back to Springsteen’s wider catalogue and listened to Born to Run and that’s when I fell in love with all the classics. You get to an age when you realise the music your parents loved is good. As a kid, you push so hard to be like, I don’t want to like the music my parents liked, I’ve got better taste than they do. But then you grow up and realize that Elton John and Springsteen and Cat Stevens, and all those dudes are flawless musicians…
The idea of Springsteen being ‘dad rock’ was so strongly entrenched from his mega star status in the 80s, but I was always more into his early, kind of romantic street poet aesthetic, the storytelling, the Magic Rat and stuff like that, and then Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River and eventually Nebraska continue that storytelling vein in a darker tone. Born to Run is about escaping, but those later albums are about being trapped, or what happens when you don’t get out, and I think as you get older, there’s something about that idea…
With Nebraska, the songs are so well done, you listen to Johnny 99 or Highway Patrolman and they go for three minutes and you know everyone in the song, you know about their dreams, their aspirations. The song ends and you are like, how have you painted such a picture with like three chords and just like talking about these guys? He tells us how characters went to war, how the farm didn’t work, about having a brother who is a loose cannon and shit, I couldn’t tell someone that much information in just three minutes…
They are short, yet they are almost cinematic in scope and vision. The other interesting thing is Springsteen’s influence on the New Jersey punk scene, right? The Dropkick Murphys, The Gaslight Anthem, he’s had this interesting standing where the broader public have this perception, but the people in the know have a different understanding…
I think it comes from digging a little deeper. Born in the USA was his commercial success, it was in the 80s and there was so much marketing when they made that album, they made him shave and go to the gym to look like a working-class farm boy or whatever. But in reality, if you look at photos from Greetings from Asbury Park, he’s wearing a beanie, he has long hair and is wearing bell bottoms and shit, and he’s the complete opposite of what most people think of Springsteen…
The ripped arms, the sleeveless flannel shirt, the headband, but then you go back to that earlier ‘Skeeter’ persona, the leather jacket and the oversized beanie, the scraggly beard, hanging around in Asbury Park, playing bars like The Stone Pony…
The E Street Shuffle kind of stuff…
Born in the USA is interesting though, it is really misunderstood, it is actually an album that’s way darker than everyone perceives, there is actually a kinship with Nebraska…
Nebraska was all demos. I think they did The River and they toured it and then Bruce wanted to break off from the E Street Band and become a solo musician or he wanted to break off from the concept of what The E Street Band were doing, so he recorded these demos and when he took them to the label, they were like, this isn’t happening, so he went back in the studio and did Born in the USA. In the Born in the USA tours they do live versions of Johnny 99 and a few more of the demos that were in Nebraska actually ended up on Born in the USA, like Working on the Highway. I think they tried them all as full band songs and half of them just flopped…
Born in the USA was written to be much more sparse, right? Originally the songs were stripped down versions, the title song was more bluesy and, of course, No Surrender is the most punk song in his catalogue…
We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school… So good!
But it’s lost in that full band bombast…
Even the song Born in the USA, when you ask a person on the street if they know the lyrics, most people are going to say, I was born in the USA and I was sent down to kill the yellow man… It sounds really redneck, like I’m proud to be an American and shoot Commies and all that sort of shit, but then you listen to it and it’s like, I lost my job at the plant, I came back and no one thinks I’m a hero, all my mates are dead, they didn’t come back, it’s the same narrative as Forrest Gump…
Born in the USA was co-opted by Ronald Reagan and the Conservatives as a rallying slogan and it has just never escaped that association. Although, since Springsteen came back with The Rising, and his role post as a sort of post-9/11 poet laureate figure, his politics have been made much clearer. His work has always fluctuated between big arena sounds and more intimate albums, like The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust, but Nebraska definitely stands out…
Apparently, when they finally got into the record pressing stages of Born in the USA, he still had the tapes for Nebraska and every single time he got into a room with an engineer, he was like, we’ve got to put it out. I think they finally agreed to do a small run as a mini album, but it was recorded so poorly that every time they tried to cut it to a record, the lathe would bounce out of the record. They went through like five engineers or something to finally actually mix it properly because it was just like boombox recordings and the mics were too loud or there was not enough going on…
As a musician yourself, does the story behind the making of Nebraska, which Springsteen recorded on a four track in his bedroom, add to the allure of the album?
Yeah definitely. There’s so much information around and half of its fake, half of it is bullshit. The best story I’ve heard about it was that it was recorded on a Tascam four track, so to bounce it down to tape, you then record it on a boombox or a normal two track or stereo tape recorder. So, Springsteen bounced it down from a four track to a boombox and then he’d take that boom box out on a row boat and go fishing in an estuary. Apparently the boombox fell into the water and he waited for the tide to go out to get it back. The boombox was fucked but the tape was fine, so they washed out the tape and that’s why it’s got so much filth and grit to the music. It’s a great story, but I have no faith in it being real…
A real fishing tale…
Four tracks have a tape speed, so if you have a 40-minute tape, if you record on half speed, you get like 80 minutes. A lot of people think that Springsteen had the tape speed like just slower, but then whoever mixed it down for him, knocked it back to 12 o’clock, so if you try and play guitar to the songs, they are like a quarter step out of tune, and not in E or E flat, but like halfway between, which gives it this weird quality. I think people subconsciously resonate with it because it’s not an E chord or an E Flat chord like most bands would write music in, it’s something slightly different…
So, you play his songs?
Originally, I thought it would be cool to put on the show and have a different musician play each song from the album. I’ve got Johnny 99 and Reason to Believe down, but the rest of them are so hard to play. I don’t know if it’s because he recorded the guitars and then did vocals over the top, or it’s just his style, but there are some sentences I just can’t get through being able to strum it right, especially Reason to Believe and the bit about the preacher standing with the Bible and the congregation’s gone home, it bounces up and down differently to the way you strum a guitar. It’s probably just his style, but every time I get to that mark of the song, I fuck it up, it’s so hard…
So, the exhibition is based on your response to each song?
Kind of, I’ve basically just drawn the image each song painted in my head. When I drew them, I wasn’t tattooing yet, I was still building, but I would draw after work three nights a week and I eventually just ran out of ideas. I had listened to the album a couple times and it hadn’t really resonated yet, but I valued Dan’s taste in music so much that I was like, it has to be good if he recommended it. I ended up working on a job by myself and instead of using a work radio I just wore headphones and I listened to the album. I used to always skip Nebraska [the first song and title track] because Atlantic City is such a banger, but I finally listened to Nebraska with headphones and the lyrics were clearer and the song is just about a guy and his girl killing ten people and getting the chair. I just thought it would be pretty cool to draw a guy sitting on an electric chair with his girl sitting on his lap. I was drawing so much after work and I just needed more briefs, so I was like oh, I’ll try to Atlantic City next week and then after I’d done three songs, I was like, well I have to do the whole record now and then they just sat for ages…
It became a ritual…
Every week, yeah. Instead of listening to the album, I would just listen to the one song I had to do that week, all week, to really try and close my eyes and think what the snapshot would be.
What was that process? Did you find yourself gravitating towards types of imagery or certain phrases?
Yeah, certain phrases…
Was there a consistency across the phrasing that you were picking out of each song? It seems to me a pretty cohesive album…
I think probably being a New Zealander and listening to songs written by a Jersey boy recorded on tape or whatever, lots of things in my head kind of had that Sopranos or old American movie type stuff. For Mansion on the Hill, I just had this big American, gothic-like Addams Family mansion…
There is some really memorable imagery throughout the album, like in Atlantic City: “Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night…”
So good. There’s a really good newspaper photo of the Chicken Man’s house, his front door is like Ground Zero, like there’s just weather boards everywhere. Originally, I thought the Chicken Man was a go-to fried chicken spot and they blew it up because it had been abandoned or fallen apart, like the Santa Monica pier where the Z Boys surfed, which had fallen into such disrepair the Fire Department never showed up. I was like oh, the Chicken Man must be a restaurant, and then I read about the crime families and stuff, and it’s actually a guy…
Were you doing research to inform the imagery as well, or were you wanting a more pure response to the lyrics?
I think with the tattoo style and so much being reference based, I was trying to find actual references to draw on and still trying to capture the imagery from the song. The drawing I did for Johnny 99, I found a shot from a hostage scene in a movie, but then I had to draw one of them as Johnny 99, and one of them is a gas station attendant, so I had to research clothing a gas station attendant would have worn in America in the 50s or whatever, and try and make it look a little bit old school. So that was fun, having the image in your head and trying to draw it and portray it as more than a feeling because at the end of the day, it isn’t actually an image, it’s just an overall vibe that you’ve got in your mind…
Did you revisit any over time?
They were drawn and that was it. I think too, because the idea was to do one a week, and because I’m always trying to find shortcuts, one of the songs I didn’t initially rate that much, like My Father’s House, I would have been quite happy to skip it and just do it at the end, but I just knew if I did all of them and left that one until the end, I would have just skipped it and never done it. As a result, having to listen to My Father’s House for a whole week, by the end, I was like, this is such a great song…
So, when you were originally drawing them, were you drawing them as tattoo flash?
Yeah, the expectation was just that people would get them tattooed. People responded to them really well, but no one actually got them tattooed. I drew them ages ago, so I thought I will see what happens, if I tattoo them or not. But then a couple of years ago I was like, I need to do a zine and an exhibition. The space at the shop [Absolution] was already booked out for like a year, but I saw that the 40th anniversary of the album was coming up in two years’ time so, I thought, two years is ages away but it would work. It flew by because of Covid, so I was like oh shit, two years already! Time to do the show…
It feels like a traditional tattoo style is a really good fit with the album. I know the most immediate association is the black and white album cover image, but if you were to turn Nebraska into an art style, I kind of think it would be black and white photography and traditional tattoo flash…
At the time, my main medium was a Sharpie pen and black colouring pencil. It still is now, but instead of using a Sharpie I use a point 6 Artliner, so it’s just a little bit smaller. But the thing I love about a Sharpie, especially for text, is that if you make the text too small, things like a lowercase E, get the bleed in the eye of the E and it becomes solid, it’s the same as if you were using a typewriter and the ink was too runny, all those things close up. In traditional tattooing, because the lines are so bold, if you do them too small the lines go close together, so all the designs have to be very contrasting to the skin that you don’t tattoo, so all the lines have to be far apart. So, for instance, if you are tattooing a hand, you don’t bother doing all four fingers because you know it will just blow out and become black, so you imply the form. On Nebraska because a lot of the songs are demos, a lot of the details are implied; the harmonica solos, and you know when he does those high pitch screams, I feel like a lot of those are his way of saying this is where the sax solo would go… Because it’s just a tape recording, there’s no thought put into it. I will play four bars, and I will whistle, or I’ll play harmonica, and in the studio we can decide whether it’s going to be sax or synth. That’s kind of the beauty, because its good enough. People will be led to believe it’s a conscious decision and it’s the same with tattooing with a really big needle, you are kind of governed by how much freedom you have, so the decision you make is that less is more, I guess. You can sort of imply something in same the way you would imply a sax solo by just humming, and people will go I love how you are humming that bit and you go, I didn’t know what else to do…
When you look at the works now and when you think about displaying them, does it make you more aware of the album’s narrative?
I think what hammered that home was the introduction I wrote for the zine. I wrote it as a dedication to everyone who is described in the album; everyone who ever felt like going on a killing spree with their girlfriend, or wanted to live in the big mansion on the hill, or fell out with their parents and that sort of shit. The last song is Reason to Believe, so it comes around to a dedication to all these people who went through all this shit and somehow, even though you are at the end of your rope, there’s something to believe in that is bigger than we all are, and then the album just ends. So, there is that conscious story-telling that is so good, you can’t believe that the sequencing hasn’t had a heap of thought put into it, we’ll close it out with this song about faith, and he doesn’t even mention that it’s in God, he just mentions that there is something that makes you get out of bed each day…
That reason can be so many things; the person you wake up next to, the vision of that house you grew up in, everything that precedes that song can be one of those reasons to believe…
Like in Open All Night, I drew a nice car, but he talks about having this car up on blocks, working on it. It’s probably a shitter, but he loves it and that’s probably his reason to believe, this rad car…
Cars are such an important image in Springsteen’s songs…
Nebraska is about the first ever spree killer, the first person to kill in a car crossing state lines. In his autobiography, Springsteen talks about how his Nana or someone told him in an electrical storm you can’t get electrocuted in a car because of the rubber tyres, so in the book, he’s like, when I was a little kid whenever there was a lightning storm I would run out of the house right into the car, and then I proceeded to write songs about automobiles for the next 40 years of my life. His whole career comes back to this story of cars being like a saviour…
So, what do people need to know about the show?
It opens at Absolution on Friday the 30th of September, which is also the 40th anniversary of Nebraska, technically it would be Saturday, Friday in America, but yeah, it starts at 6pm. I’m thinking I might give away a prize for the best Springsteen outfit, but I’m going to try and encourage people to think outside the box and not dress like Born in the USA Springsteen, which I think is the whole point, educating people that there is a Springsteen behind the Boss. Like Dan said, forget everything you know about Springsteen, this is the record. If you don’t like Springsteen yet, hopefully this one is the one…
I’m not sure how I’m going to lay it out yet. It’s rare to not see a tattoo artist use an iPad now, even I use an iPad, but back in the day, you used to do everything on tracing paper first, then you would do a nice one on paper. I’ve still got the tracing paper drawings from these works, so I’m thinking, because Nebraska was a demo album, I might hang all the final artworks and then around the corner I might hang all the tracing paper works and the lino cuts and all that sort of stuff. I was thinking I might use a string line to line everything up but I might leave it up, highlighting that Nebraska was a working idea that wasn’t supposed to be finalised and left like that…
What’s the one line from Nebraska that you think best sums it up?
I probably change my mind every day when I listen to it, but right now it’s probably in Reason to Believe:
Take a baby to the river, Kyle William they called him
Wash the baby in the water, take away little Kyle’s sin
In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away
Take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray
It all happens in the same breath of air, someone’s in, someone’s out. We are all just doing it. Reason to Believe is probably my favourite song on the album, as much as I love Atlantic City, but Reason to Believe is so good, there’s the line about the girl waiting for Johnny to come back, there’s the wedding, the preacher standing with the bible but the bride didn’t show and the congregation’s gone home. It’s a tough one, actually maybe it’s the opening line:
Seen a man standin’ over a dead dog lyin’ by a highway in a ditch
He’s lookin’ down kinda puzzled, pokin’ that dog with a stick
Got his car doors flung open he’s standin’ out on Highway thirty-one
Like if he stood there long enough that dog’d get up and run
It’s a vivid image, right?
It’s such a wicked lyric, like did he see that or just make it up? I like the idea of someone just standing there being like, c’mon, get up man, this can’t be it… It might come back to the death of the American dream, poking it with a stick is not going to get it going again, you just have to get back in your car and keep driving.
But it’s the reason to believe, it might not get up and run, but you can hold onto something, hope is always there…
Or you could be the dog, hoping someone might poke you and not just keep speeding past…
I became aware of Hostile Body, an exhibition of digital art produced under the identity of Auspicious Victory, through somewhat cryptic social media buzz. I had recently been grappling with the rising profile of digital art through the lens of crypto currency, skeptical of the way digital art was being represented as PFPs and 8-Bit illustrations. But Hostile Body was presenting a much more considered, conceptual and interesting approach, layered in intense visuals and tied to reality in haunting way, it suggested the best of digital practice. With the exhibition opening approaching, I was fortunate enough to talk to Auspicious Victory and find out more about the concept…
How would you describe Auspicious Victory – is it an identity, an alias, is it something more conceptual? How has Auspicious Victory evolved over time?
Gender neutral and identity fluid (they/them), Auspicious Victory can be anyone or no-one. Auspicious Victory comes from Amarapura “The house of the immortals” and preaches simulation theory as fact. Part designer, marketer, performance artist, techno prophet, visual artist, and activist all in one. Auspicious Victory’s true identity is irrelevant as they will tell you. Auspicious Victory will eventually be “guided” by a collective of individuals who wish to support their cause, this format is a DAO, a De-centralised Autonomous Organisation, breaking new ground, with the crypto world coming together with the art world to create the first de-centralised artist.
Hostile Body is described as a “multi-sensory” exhibition of various digital mediums, how long has Auspicious Victory been exploring digital art and what approaches are most interesting to them?
Auspicious Victory in this simulation was given their first PC in 1983. They learned to code in BASIC, their first program was an animation and they have created digital art ever since. In the exhibition, there is a piece of artwork created in 1999 that has never been seen before.
Auspicious Victory responds to stimuli of all kinds and likes to collaborate with other artists. Working this way brings new perspectives and builds community along the way. The approach they are currently taking is to de-centralise as much as possible.
Deep State IX 2 E, 2021, stretched canvas, 1200mm x 1700mm
The rising profile of digital art has been tied to the cryptocurrency movement, but that unfairly obscures the longer histories of digital creativity, what does Auspicious Victory see as the biggest benefits of digital art making?
Yes, crypto is responsible for a lot of things but digital art is not one of them. Digital art was made before Auspicious Victory even entered this simulation. Digital art is anything shown on a digital screen. It’s that simple. Whatever screen you are looking at, a media professional or artist created it. There is so much media to choose from at present that we don’t even notice art when we see it.
Wow, the benefits… there are so many, where do you start? The benefits for oneself are instant gratification but this can also become a distraction. Digital art is easily shared and can be much more affordable than traditional fine art. Also you can weave deep messages and interactive experiences into digital art. You can express yourself in ways previously unimaginable. It’s corny but true, with digital art the only limit is your imagination. Digital tools are much more accessible, soon to be a commodity/service and allow anyone using a digital device with a screen to make art.
Hostile Body presents the experiences and extremes of chronic and mental illness, has it been conceived as a very personal story or a more universal exploration? What threads have come out most clearly and how have they been explored through the digital mediums deployed?
Auspicious Victory’s experience in this simulation is not exclusively unique. The themes are universal. Auspicious Victory encountered trauma on their journey, from this they sensed emotional and mental injuries, the data could be called pain.
In many of the pieces, the floating objects represent an aspect of an extreme emotional state, both low and high. These floating objects are held in stasis effectively freezing the emotion in time to observe and interpret.
The mood is largely determined by the colour palette; sometimes warm, bright and vivid colours suggest the high of a hypo-manic episode and conversely the darker more turbulent palettes allude to darker states.
The abundance of colour and texture in these works are a facsimile for mental over-stimulation.
The landscape quietly or violently makes its presence felt in the background, reminding the viewer and the artist that storms are always brewing. But as all things, these too shall pass.
Deep State VIII U, 2021, stretched canvas, 1200mm x 1500mm
The exhibition is to be staged at the XCHC, how much of a challenge was ensuring the venue could successfully host the range of art? How vital was it that the venue was right?
No challenge at all. Auspicious Victory is not alone, there is a team of believers investing their time into similar projects and crossing paths with those talented people has been serendipitous and has led to creative and practical solutions. Auspicious Victory is grateful and acknowledges those who have gracefully stepped into the fray.
The venue is essential as most galleries wouldn’t do what Auspicious Victory want’s to do. XCHC is the perfect venue for this show. It’s a flexible white box. It’s intimate. It’s authentic and connected to a vibrant creative community. And its not afraid to try something new.
