ISSUE 11 - MARCH 2018
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Emma Kate Co emmakateco.com $99.00 Passports can be bat-shit-boring. Same navy blue with silver/gold Aussie logo... SNORE. Emma Kate Co, bless her, is the ultimate travelling style queen and has just released a new leather travel collection to take your airport style to new heights. (No pun intended). “let’s go places” with our new passport wallets, shall we?
Laurie Melia Ceramics lauriemeliaceramics.bigcartel.com $150.00 My partner has been instructing me that I need a jewellery box, for like, months now (As if I can’t just have rings lying around everywhere...) The thing is, there is only one jewellery holder for me, and it’s this spiritual adviser jewellery plate from Laurie Melia Ceramics. It’s creepy and beautiful all in one, and makes putting on your jewellery seem like a powerful morning ritual rather than a task. Take the hint babe. NUDGE, NUDGE.
favourites
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Julie White juliewhite.bigcartel.com $30.00 Oh. Julie White. Here you go again, making us fall in love with your artistic wares and kooky prints. I’m not a sock person, but you compel me to want to be a sock person. Hell, I just want to be wrapped up in your artwork and wander the streets as a personal advertisement. These socks. JUST YES.
Claire Ritchie www.helloclaireritchie.com $49.00 Colour is life and this artwork by Claire Ritchie has me wanting to paint a mural on my living room wall in an attempt to replicate the same giddy feeling I get from having this hang above my desk. It just...make me happy, you know?
Remedy Kombucha remedykombucha.com.au $72.00 (for 24 cans) Good for the belly, good for the soul! It’s all the craze lately, but seriously, have you tried it?! The yummiest of all yum beverages on the market right now, and it’s seriously good for those guts of ours AND it started in Melbourne.
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Photographer Neil Kryszak IG:@neilkryzak
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blue vera
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Words by Alex Dyson I was passing the monkey bars at the community playground on my brief walk to the shops to get some groceries when the song came on. The chunky synth accompanied by urgent, whispered delivery. I’d heard it before at my job at triple j, sure. I might have even referred to it as a “tuna sanga” before. But there was something about affirming lyrics combining with my lengthy stride that made it happen. There were no witnesses luckily, but if they had been on that sunny day in the Melbourne suburbs, they would have witnessed a 29-year-old man, green canvas bag in hand, strutting his stuff like a prizewinning moray eel. The song that was ensuring my hips didn’t lie that day, was Lady Powers by Vera Blue; the lavahaired, angelic-voiced artist who was now talking to me down a phone line from LA where she was spending time writing music, playing shows, attending fashion events, and just generally hanging out in a place that couldn’t be more removed from her regional NSW upbringing. Vera, real name Celia Pavey, laughs at me as I retell the story of my spontaneous suburban strut. “I get tagged in videos of people dancing to that song all the time -
the moves are so sassy!” Sassy is the perfect word. The song is unashamedly empowering: “I’m not going to beg for your respect. I won’t be defined by your eyes.”It’s pretty bad-ass stuff, and as she reminisces to me down the phone line I discover that the 2:53-second long song came to fruition as the microscopic culmination of a string of relationships starting from when Celia was quite young. “I guess with all the music I’ve written since I was 15 because I experienced being in love and being in relationships on and off all the time, it’s been in only recently in the past 8 months have discovered through being by myself and figuring out who I am as a single woman I’ve been able to like grow a sense of empowerment and purpose and know how to be treated, and not just talking as a woman, but for anyone to know who they are, and be treated correctly.” Celia is not alone in this sentiment; both figuratively with #metoo users and equality campaigners everywhere, but also literally in the studio with some of her closest friends.
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“A lot of my girlfriends are actually in this song; there’s a spoken work of them saying lady powers at the beginning and every time I say lady powers I have these women that I’m surrounded by in my life saying it with me so really special to have had them involved.” Friends and family seem like a large and crucial part of Celia’s world. Her parents still live and work in her hometown of Forbes, where her mum teaches and her dad runs the local plant nursery. Her mum also plays piano at the local church, where Celia still goes back and sings sometimes. “Yeah, the oldies get a bit excited when they see my sister (Emily) and me standing close to the microphone when we’re back.” And whilst musical talent in the Pavey family tends to skew towards the women, Celia’s dad actually played a vital role in getting her debut album off the ground. No, it wasn’t the fact that he bought a drum kit and started playing it out in the Granny Flat behind the family home like some rebellious teenager in a Simple Plan video clip, but actually when it came to giving the full body of work a name;
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stevens
cassie
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“I gain inspiration from party shirts, Australian film, old signage, the Australian music scene, and the general day to day attitude of the average Aussie...�
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ban she
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Tell us about your recent show ‘home comforts’. Home Comforts was a series of drawings I created for the exhibition “Disperse”, curated by Chiranjika Grasby (an amazingly talented Adelaide artist). Home Comforts was about embracing the unique cultural identity of being Asian Australian. The series depicted myself surrounded by the food of home – of my childhood. Food is always a major theme in my art because I bloody love to eat! In this instance, I used food to explore my feelings of distance and belonging in relation to my Chinese background. When I was young, I used to be embarrassed by the Chinese meals my mum prepared. Why did I have to have congee and pickles for breakfast instead of eggs and bacon? Couldn’t we have spag bol for dinner just this once? Now that I’ve moved out, I miss the cuisine and the connection to my heritage. You draw what you know, which is incredibly relatable to almost every human i know. Describe what it’s like embracing your honest self through your art. My personality is equal parts narcissistic and self-deprecating, so I love drawing myself but in a very unglamorous way. My characters are on the toilet or eating a whole bag of chips in
bed, they have stomach rolls and double chins. It’s pretty therapeutic to draw myself as I am. What’s your favorite piece so far, and what meaning does it have to you? My favourite piece is a drawing called “Greed” which is the first thing I’d ever made for an exhibition. I love it because it’s so colourful and full of seafood and also because when I was done I was like “damn, I can’t believe I drew this”. There was a feeling I wanted to capture with Greed – the spirit of your favourite illustrated children’s book but grown up. I think I captured it, and I was very proud. You’re a zine creator! I envy artists like you that can do that. What got you started in the zine scene? I got started with zines because of Zombie Queen – aka the coolest person in Adelaide. Zombie Queen ran an event called Zine Swap and before that I had no idea what a zine was. But now I know anyone can be a zine creator! Zines are just a physical representation of creative energy and they can basically be anything, they are the last true democratic art form.
ban she What mediums do you use in your work? I use markers like Copics, Tombows and Windsor & Martins, and every now and then I’ll make sad attempts at painting and digital. Do you just have sketchbooks everywhere around your home? Yes, but not in a cool artist way, more in a hoarding junk way. Do you struggle with juggling a ‘normal job’ with a creative life? Almost like you’re living a double life? I have a full-time, 9-5 office job – like an actual CAREER job and it’s so, so hard to balance it with making art. I am so tired all the time. Like, I called my last zine “So Tired” because that’s all I could think about. I still have this image of myself as an amazing 70 year old Yayoi Kusama type, wowing the art world and wearing qipaos exclusively with like a perfect bowl haircut. I’ve accepted that I don’t need to make it as an artist while I’m young and I’m okay with that.
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