Our latest Artist Profile is with artist BEAST, whose exhibition Dazzleboi is currently presented at Brunswick Street Gallery.
BEAST is a multidisciplinary artist from Northern Australia with specialties in murals, queer theory and aesthetic relations. Before moving into a predominantly spatial practise, his work could be seen on walls across Canberra and Sydney, combining Hard-Edge training with a background in Graffiti to compile an impressive portfolio for art school. BEAST’s work now spans numerous fields and media, taking language as a point of entry into themes he sees as part of a Queer zeitgeist, such as identity and representation. Currently completing his BFA studies at RMIT, he is using his final year to explore key areas and ideas in his developing practise; Reparative Antagonism, moving “toward an image”, and “intent to lose the form”.
What medium(s) do you work with, and why have you chosen them?
I work in multiple mediums, making from a loose conception of the ready-made; the world is full of objects already existing and available for manipulation. In this way, I use a lot of prefab and sourced objects allowing me to expand my vocabulary across materials far beyond my skillset, collaboration opens my practise to infinite possibilities in similar ways.
Can you elaborate a little more on your making process — how does your artwork get from initial concept to exhibition stage?
My process involves gathering cues from language, reading texts, looking at relevant conversations on social media and trawling my own archives for ideas and imagery that appears to link, as these ideas conflate and develop amongst one another I’ll find them attach to a material, medium or process I can then use as the vehicle of expression. Generally the link I find is superficial, easy to observe and hopefully, readable by an audience. As a point of entry this gives me a broad path to then explore and experiment under the constraints of a recognisable idea, like a landmark in an unfamiliar area.
Who or what are the biggest influences to your work?
My major influences are Santiago Serra, Steven Rhall, Gabriel Orozco, Steven Powers, Eve Sedgewick’s theory of ‘Reparative Reading’, all of Ben Lerner’s poetry and criticism, Contrapoints, Tracey Emin and Charles Blackman.
Can you tell us a little more about your creative working environment/studio?
Our space is an open communication space, three years of students can move freely throughout one another’s areas and we’re often throwing conversations across from room to room, though when we’re getting to it we maintain a weird interpretation of “all work, no play”... It’s just... A lot of our work as artists involves play, so we play, but its work, everything is serious, even the lack of seriousness is serious. If that makes sense...
Who would your dream collaboration be with, and why?
Steven Rhall has excited me more than any artist I’ve seen in years, his work is absolutely brilliant, perfectly antagonistic but open to surprise. I’d love to share space and see where our ideas would meet.
If you could go on an Artist’s Residency anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?
My dream residency would be to somehow organise a tour of Sao Paolo’s graffiti scene, spend some time living and writing with some of the pichadores and then finish it off with an exhibition of documentation and artworks in response presenting my works in Brazil and a curated collection of Brazilian works here in Australia. I’ve been inspired by Brazilian graffiti for a decade now, they have one of the most unique cultures for painting on the streets that I’ve ever heard of, and I love the process with which they’ve developed their visual language as a culture of multiple cultures, plus pixação is the most interesting graffiti on the planet, I can’t get enough of it!
What’s next for you after your time at Brunswick Street Gallery? What upcoming projects are you working on now?
I want to put some stuff in a shop window soon, like a park bench in a target.
I have a few works showing at incube8r soon and will be popping up around Melbourne this year. My grad show is in November, it’ll be related to my performance work from last year... beyond this I have to start developing thesis ideas, so its back into the books for me.
Dazzleboi by BEAST is current until 5 April 2020.