Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming
Gone at Dusk 2011
Well I'm always influenced by music, my last series was called 'Songs for Sorrow.' My friend Ray Cook said there is a musical quality in my work in that they can be rearranged and reinterpreted to take on different meanings, I really liked that. There is no real order to my images, when I have a body of work up in an exhibition it can be quite disjointed, some people don't like that. But i think if you don't focus so much on the lieral meaning of things, you can defiantly sesnse a unison of mood throughout the work.
I understand you're very interested in 1920's film noir. How did photography become a road of exploration for you?
Yeah i love old black and white movies, any old movies really. I was reading once the surrealist film makers in the 20's in Paris, apparently they used to go into the cinemas at random parts of the films and as soon as they would figure out what the story was about they would leave and go onto the next one. That stuck with me so strongly, I love the idea that the mystery was more important than they story and how they chased that excitement of the experience of revelation. I started photography in high school and just really fell in love with it I suppose. I always wanted to be an artist of some sort, I wanted to be either a poet or a trumpet player so not sure why I ended up with Photography!
You are known for using a range of techniques to scratch and distort your photographs. Could you tell us about your approach to making such images? Do you have a finished result in mind, or do you allow the technical imperfections to take over the work?
Well I'm not doing all that stuff so much these days. Actually I am, it's just pulled back a lot more than it used to be. Because I have been doing this treatment to the negatives so many times I can look at something now and pretty much know how I will mess it up and distort it, but when I started I was just having fun and playing around. I'm much more controlled with it now. I've also learnt that sometimes the images don't need anything done to them at all, and sometimes I will really get in there. Basically I'm just trying to recreate the beauty of imperfection, but in a more controlled manner I guess. Van Morrison saids it's the cracks that let the light shine through.
I recently visited you solo exhibition at the Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane. Moving through the exhibition was like living in the midst of a deep, uneasy breath. You could feel the dampness of death thicken around you. You seem to be fascinated by death, spirituality and subconscious. What is it about these ideas that interests you?
I'm glad you got it. Well like I said I've always been attracted to the darker side of things. I guess I went through a rough time in my life too and I started making these really heavy images, it's eased up a lot over the years, the darkness is still there, it's just more refined I think. If anything it's more powerful now because it's subtle. Iv'e always been fascinated with the sky, with space, with mythology, the more I started reading the more I learned that all these things are interconnected. Our experience as human beings on this planet, I just believe there is so much more to what we think is reality, we are like a civilisation with amnesia. I like how photography plays with this idea a bit, it's reality but at the same time it's not. What re these images we see and how do they relate to time and place after they are taken and presented in different contexts? And what is this world I am creating?
Your photographic style is very unique. You seem to create a sense of fantasy and mysterious relationships between different subjects. What have been the main influences over you and your work?
Thank you. My main influences? Life. Emotion; love, anger, depression, joy. Surrealism is a big influence, the film makers or that period like I said. The writers also. I was reading how they used to tear a page in 4 pieces then rearrange it randomly to create new depth and meanings to the work. It's a similar approach I think to how I create the different relationships between different subjects like you said. I love all the Japanese photographers. Nobuyoshi Araki said black and white photography is like death. I love the French photographer Antoine D'agata. Jimmi Hendrix and Nina SImone are big influences. I love Bill Henson. My favourite artists of all time is Francis Bacon and also Cy Twombly…R.I.P