Beth Jackson: Were you practising as an artist in Austria, before you came to Australia?
Franz Ehmann: Yes. I was taught by my father to paint. At thirteen I had my first exhibition and then I received a Young Achiever's Award from the Austrian government. Later, I became a chef and pursued my individual art practice during my young adult life doing drawings and odd pieces with boxes of matches, fire and so on.
BJ: So you've always had an intermedia practice and more, an ephemeral, installation-based practice?
FE: Yes, definitely.
BJ: Was that seen as radical in Austria at the time? Were you part of any sort of avant-garde?
FE: No, not really. I was probably too young to be part of any scene or group of artists. Then I moved away from Austria to other parts of Europe, coming to Australia in 1986. That made it even more complicated to be part of anything: not so much the fact of being a foreigner, but that you feel you don't really need to be part of anything. In 1988 I decided to do my stint at college to get a formal degree, so I studied at the Northern Territory University in Darwin. But a great deal of my education in Darwin came from Darwin itself which has a strong quality of transitiveness, an ephemeral quality in both the people and the landscape. The landscape is extreme—in the wet season there is an abundance of life because of the rain and the steaming heat, but then when the dry comes there is basically death, the land burning, and so on. Then the landscape itself regenerates... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline