Stressed, still earchin the realestate
inspections trying to find a place but cant seem to beat the famalams
(families) and Asians with millions of domahs (dollars) living one out. Big Up
the Crunchy Nut Corn Frakes.
2. What pursued you to make a shift from
Science to Art?
It was that long ago, but I think
it was 2 things. First physics started to become a headfuck and I’d much rather
have had a free period than sit through that, but most probably it was my first
issue of Monster Children. I can’t remember the artist’s name but they had a
feature on his hybrid creatures that combined like rifles and pistols with the
animal bodies. It seems pretty simple when I saw it like that but the
illustration was so detailed you find something new in it every time you’d
look. I think from that point I started taking more interest in my art classes
than I did in biology and PE.
3. Recently you won a 4 page spread in
Monster Children’s issue 32, a magazine that I remember you introducing me to a
couple of years back. What did you submit and what does it all mean?
Well I submitted an erotic series I did
for a university assessment, which can be seen on
www.wesleyshaw.carbonmade.com, but obviously they could only choose one image,
which consisted of what visually seems like an erotic sort of portrait of a
friend between another’s legs. This isn’t what I intended it to mean but for
the purpose of the competition I thought why not submit an erotic shot for a
magazine notorious for every second web posts of theirs being a half naked
chick. Conceptually, the series in a whole looks at the Freudian ideas of the
oedipal and castration complexes. Basically, these deal with the bond shared
between the son and mother and the irrational fear a male has when he see’s a
moot for the first time. Of course, I didn’t want to just shoot a series
directly representing these complexes so I took an approach to show how they’re
manifested subconsciously during sexual acts. The first frame for example
depicts the male figure sucking the female’s nipple as they’re naked bodies
embrace. On first glance, the majority of this internet obsessed audience would
think of pornography, however the supple nature of the males actions are quite
similar to the first few years a son would spend suckling his mothers nipples.
Although the audience doesn’t see it, this image was selected from a number as
the facial expression played the most important role in the meaning of the
image. This importance placed on the facial expression was carried throughout
the other 2 frames. While all the comp judges saw was this bloke with his face
between a chicks legs, the nervous facial expression once again attempted to
draw back to his first experience with a freshly shaven vagina. Finally, the
third frame depicted two figures about to take a bath together with the focus
on the baby like expression of the male as he watches the female enter the bath
with him. It is at this moment that the he subconsciously thinks of bath time
back in the day.
4. What are you doing with the cash?
Well leading up to the Exhibitions
opening night, when I didn’t know if id won or not, I had this list of ideas
including going to New York and redoing the West Coast, hooking up a fat Mamiya
RB67 set, a 90mm Summicron lens for my Leica R3 or finish off tattooing my
ribs. But as of now, not working and all I’m waiting on my next 5,000 from the
DET to give me some breathing space. Looks like now I’m just gonna save it
until it’s granted.
5. What influences your art?
I suppose the major influence behind my
photography especially started back in year 10 when we were given an essay
assessment to do on a ‘Modernism’ of our choice. I remember it being something
ridiculous like 250 words per frame for 4 artworks, which I thought when I got
it would be impossible. When the day came to hand it in everyone was handing in
like 4 or 5 page essays and there I was with this 14 page mandem on Surrealism.
From that point I immersed myself in this subjective approach. Today the major
influence is probably Bataillan Surrealism, which takes a darker approach then
this popularised image of Dali’s Dreamscapes. Bataille, although not an artist,
was the theorist inspiring the likes of Boiffard and his ‘big toe’ and
sado-masochistic works. Combining his theories, as described in obscure short
stories in ‘Visions of Excess’, with new age erotic photography is how I tend
to develop my works.
6. Where have you travelled to?
Back in the days of fitness freak mandem I travelled to the
states for running. We did a few days in LA and Mexico before we had to run our
way through Arizona until we made it to Vegas. Spent a few days there pissantin
about since the majority of us were only like 16. Once we’d finished up there
we went back to LA and did all the touristy shit like Hollywood Boulevard and
Universal Studios. Can’t say it was much of a culture shock since we were
running half the time. Looking back on it, and now watching shit like Border
Patrol on 7 I think what the fuck were these cunts doing taking a group of
mainly white 16 year old tourists to fuckin’ Tijuana. I remember walking down
the main road and seeing that every second store was a pharmacy and thinking to
myself surely these guys no much older than me can be GP’s. Turns out they took
us there just before they started to restrict how much pseudo-ephadrine so
called pharmacies could stock. When we weren’t being suckered into them every
other metre we were being hassled to take a photo with a black and white
painted donkey they were trying to pass off as a zebra.
Most recently, I went on a Eurotrip which included Paris,
Swiss Alps, Barcelona, Nice, Monaco, Florence, Rome, Venice, Croatian Islands,
Slovenia, Austria, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, London and Sweden. Suppose I
should’ve read the next question before I had a rant about America, anyway on
we go.
7. Favourite Country/ City and why?
As cliché as it is coming from a future
art teacher, and as much as Stina would love me to say Stockholm, I’m gonna
have to go with Paris. Apart from the Nigerian mandem trying to jump me the
first night as I made it back to my hostel through Paris’ equivalent of the
Cross. I think it’s the stereotypical view of the French that made me enjoy it
as much as I did. The stereotypes go it half right, they wont go out of their
way to be arrogant but you may they’re harmless as long as you’re not in their
peripherals. Knowing this and knowing what you want to see and when it’s a
great place to wonder and take it all in. And what to say of the Pompidou? It’s
beyond me why everyone raves about the Mona Lisa, you can hardly get to the
front and they have to keep the room at a toasty fucking 30 degrees, not to
mention it’s a fucking labirynth of a place so by the time you make it to the
wretched prostitute you’re sweating dicks and want to leave ASAP. The Pompidou
however got it spot on. They’ve got external escalators wrapped all around the
outside of the building. Along with this, the 5 hours I spend on the Modernisms
level were probably the most intriguing 5 hours of the entire trip. I always
knew there was truth to people saying seeing an artwork in a book is nowhere as
near as prolific as it is in real life. The hour is spent in front of Dali’s
‘Guillaume Tell’ personified this.
8. As a mutual ex student, What do you
think of South Sydney High School Maroubra?
It depends on how you look at it. As a
student, looking back at the time spend there I don’t know what possessed me to
become a teacher. One of our favourite memories was when the tables were turned
one day and a teacher went to the deputy and told him a group of boys was
bullying him. However, half way through my degree all I can say is that I’d be
blessed if I get offered a position there at the end of my degree.
9. What are you studying at uni and how did you get in?
Recently, I’ve seen a few people who I
used to go to school with and they’re shocked when I tell them I’m studying to
become an art teacher. Surely I wasn’t that bad of a student. Anyway, yeah I’m
doing a B. of Art Education at COFA. As much as people seem to think, oh you’re
aboriginal you don’t even need to study, you’ll get into uni anyway, I resent
this I got in on my own accord. For like 4 weeks leading up to the HSC I spent
everyday studying and came out the other end with an offer to COFA and a
scholarship.
10. Favourite art medium?
Favourite art medium hands down analogue
photography. Present company not included, every cunt nowadays thinks that
going out and buying a thousand dollar camera makes them a photographer. NO,
I’m afraid not, no one wants to see your fuckin sepia tone photos of sunsets
and cunts at the beach. A perfect example is these fuckin postgrad cunts in my
studio lighting class, with their flash million domah 5D’s asking what fucking
aperture is! Who are you kidding, you’re not a fucking photographer.
Back to why film is my favourite medium. NOTHING can beat
the grain of a 800+ speed film. I have this book called ‘The New Erotic
Photography’, which consists of thousands of erotic images taken with both film
and digital and hands down this one Marc Baptiste black and white film shot of
a chick laid upside down in a bathtub, which relies on no elaborate set up or
shooting again and again until you find the ‘right’, is the best image in the
entire book. Big up’s if you can capture this spontaneity with a fast film and
no lighting and still produce an image infinitely better than some digitalised
fake grain generic piece of shit.
11. Seeing as you changed from creating a career out of
physiotherapy to studying art education what do you think when Many people,
straighty one eighties especially, say that art has no future or money in it?
Do you believe that?
What people need to realise that artists are no longer these
bohemian lifestyle kind of people who resort to shared housing and believe that
in love not war. Take 30 seconds to scroll through any of the pages in your
internet history and ask yourself how many advertisements there are on them.
Who do you think made these, certainly not the cunt sitting behind the L’s test
counter at the RTA you bare eidyats. They don’t realise there’s infinite
possibilities in art, take COFA for example, where you can tailor your schema
so that you come out with a chance to become a curator, museum director,
teacher, designer, web designer, sound technician, photographer.
12: Was it awkward at all taking explicit sexual photographs of a close
friend?
Most people I either asked or told about
the shoot were too embarrassed to be in such a thing or found it perverted that
I was asking. It’s not everyday you see a friend nude with his head between a
chicks legs so it was always going to be at least a little bit awkward for all
parties but I see it like any other job. If you want people to feel comfortable
working with you in such a situation you have to be as professional as
possible. I mean if I was standing there not shooting and trying to hide a
boner, there’s no way in the world we’d have a chance of working together
again, let alone anyone as word spreads.
15: Favourite drug and why?
Acid. Purely for what I can best describe as Half-Time Sean
or Double-Time Sean. Having Big Shorny Wilhelm trying to talk to you and having
all his words slur and slow down after which it’d speed up to twice as fast as
he’d normally be talking was fucked. Don’t trust the chick, from Lismore
walking around Chinee Laundree with a bottle of liquid acid she’s bad news.
16: A message to your haters?
Let me tie up my do-rag imam start
parring, I just smashed a mirror, walked under a ladder but nothing aint
gowannin.
17: Dirtiest hoe in the Dirty South East?
This old chain-smoking bird from my
building that pisses in the elevator because, and I quote she hates “that damn
nip janitor”.
18: Anything else?
19: Lowest Suburb in the South East?
Big Up The Eastlakes Mandem.
