- Wooden Toy Features -

INTERVIEW WITH BEASTMAN // Interview by Jay Chapman.

The multitalented artist that is Beastman has been making waves lately with his artwork, design and photography throughout the art world. His detailed works on wood with acrylic and ink show a parallel world of scaly skinned, bold outlined, beast-like characters gripped by fear, anger, stress, jealousy, lust, confusion and paranoia. We had a chat with this Sydney based artist, operator of we AREtheIMAGEmakers and all round nice guy! read on...

To get the ball rolling, tell us a little about yourself. (Beastman) I'm a mostly self-taught artist, illustrator, graphic designer and photographer from Sydney, Australia. I grew up in the hills district and I currently live and work out of a big terrace house in the middle of Surry Hills. I like to spend most of my time painting, drawing, listening to music, watching movies, skateboarding, drinking and just hanging out with friends.

You work in a number of mediums. Do you divide your time between them or have a preferred medium? I like to paint the most, so I guess i try and do this as much as possible. I also do a lot of freelance graphic design work, so this work gets squeezed into the mix whenever it comes up. It can get a bit hectic sometimes when I have a deadline for a client around the same time as an exhibition, trying to balance design work and painting often drives me bit crazy.

In your paintings you "depict a parallel world" of creatures and colour. What's your inspiration for these? This world of characters were slowly developed over years of drawing, I didn't start painting in this style until about 3 or 4 years ago. I am inspired by human behaviour, especially the way people react to the media, and also how human's interact with nature. The characters loosely represent a society living in fear, where everyone is gripped by anger, stress, jealousy, lust, confusion and paranoia.

Your photography heavily features skateboarding. How was this influenced you and your work? I grew up skateboarding from a young age, so it has always been a big part of my life, and skating is what got me into photography in the first place. i just wanted to take photos and document me and my friends skating, so i got a camera, lenses and flashes and taught myself how to use it all. Skateboarding culture has been a huge influence on my artwork, I always looked up to skateboarding artists and photographers such as Ed Templeton, Jim Houser, Mark Gonzales, Evan Hecox, Don Pendleton, Mike O'meally and many others. I was always buying heaps of skate magazines, checking out all the latest photos, advertisements and graphics.

Your a busy man at the moment with multiple shows coming up on the horizon. How do you find time and whats involved with being the founder, editor & designer of [weAREtheIMAGEmakers]? I've actually been a bit slack with the WATIM stuff lately... I have been concentrating more on my own artwork this year. But i do still find time to regularly update the WATIM blog with current exhibitions, projects and events, and I still try and put up an issue with fresh interviews every 2-3 months, these usually take a few full days to put together. I also curate and organise exhibitions, I think i would have some kind of event in the works at all times, at the moment its the 12X12 Exhibition which will be in Sydney in June and Melbourne in July. WATIM basically involves a shitload of emails and spending time on the computer. i have also recently just started doing studio visits with Australian artists, so you can look forward to seeing more of these on the site i the future. And I have big plans for other WATIM events and projects, hopefully I can get these off the ground later in the year.

As well as [WATIM] you curate the 12x12 exhibitions. Tell us a little about that. The 12X12 Exhibition is an annual group exhibition I first put on in 2007. The show features 12 Australian artists, each artist produces 12 artworks each that are 12x12 inches in size. The idea of the exhibition is to bring together some of Australia's best emerging artists from all over the country with different styles to create smaller artworks that are more affordable, so it gives art fans a chance to buy a piece of work by their favourite local artist at a reasonable price. This year will be the third 12x12 Exhibition and features some really good artists like Meggs, Phibs, Simon Degroot, Justin Lee Williams, Twoone, Ainslie Fletcher, Luke Taaffe and more. It opens in Sydney at aMBUSH Gallery on Friday 12 June and then in Melbourne at No Vacancy Gallery on 3 July. All the details can be found on the website www.watim.com

You have recently moved out of the worlds end studio in Sydney. This must have been a great place to work? Yeh i was working in Worlds End Studio from April 2008 until January this year. The studio is in a building called Hibernian House in Surry Hills which is a really old 5 storey building covered in graffiti. Ben Frost is a legend, he signed the lease on the space from the start and could see the potential of a large share studio. In the beginning it was Ben, Trent Whitehead, Kill Pixie, Numskull, Kiss Kiss and myself, we had a lot of fun working in there, the studio is also home to Stupid Krap, which is a side project run by Ben Frost. Because everyone had a good work ethic, everyone worked really hard in there and we were all very productive and we could do whatever we wanted in there really - paint the walls, skate, play hacky sack - I eventually moved out of there to work from home and save a bit of money, Ben still has the studio going with a new mix of artists.

What is your most important piece of equipment (workwise) to work with and why is this? Well it has to be my Mac, cause i use it everyday to do design work, email people, run the WATIM website, edit photos and type interviews like this one.

What are your thoughts on the present Australian art scene? The Australian art scene is really booming right now, especially in Sydney. There are a lot of good artists working really hard and producing some amazing stuff, and everyone is keen to show their work and be part of different exhibitions and projects. Of course the global financial crisis may have slowed down art sales a bit, but if you are producing good artwork and are planning to continue making more and more, your work is going to sell. It's also funny to see more commercial galleries starting to want to show the new shit, i guess they are starting to realise that our younger generation is sick of seeing the same old crap. There are new galleries opening in every city that are run by good people and are keen to promote and sell work by young emerging artists - Gorker, China Heights, Palmer Projects, aMBUSH, Nine Lives, 19 Karen - everyone needs to get behind these galleries and the artists showing there, because these are the people that are going to make the scene even stronger and more exciting.

What messages and feelings do you want to reflect in your works? I don't try and convey too many direct messages through my artwork, I am more interested in the viewer finding their own feelings or meanings out of my work. I like to think people can find something in my paintings they can relate to in their own life, whether it's a certain situation, relationship or character. A lot of my artwork is a loose statement on our society living in fear.

You seem to shoot a lot on 35mm. Is there a reason for this? I have always shot 35mm film from the beginning. I guess I got used to this process at a young age, I love picking up films from the lab and checking them out for the first time. And you can get some really good colours and effects shooting film, I like shooting fast slide film and cross processing it, and some of the best photos I have taken have been on the cheapest colour negative film.

What does Beastman do to relax? I actually don't relax very often, im usually working. I guess I like to watch movies and football, draw and paint, browse the net, listen to music, eat good food or just hang out with my girl on the couch.

If you could bring back a popular fad from the past what would it be? I felt pretty cool at the time when I had an undercut with a fringe in the late 80s - and what ever happened to hypercolour t-shirts?

www.watim.com
www.beastman.com.au