On a balmy Thursday in Brisbane, the afternoon rains loomed but thankfully held off, for a crowd was gathering in front of a large blank wall on James Street, Fortitude Valley. The 250+ spectators waited with anticipation as the most recent artist to take out the Archibald Prize, Ben Quilty stood before them poised to tackle a live painting and some questions posed by co-curator of Art on James, Alison Kubler.
As the fluid black lines took shape upon the wall and revealed a kangaroo, an emu, a quasi-religious image of a snake and a trademark skull in the Quilty coat of arms, the artist spoke candidly about the phenomenon of tagging and the voiceless young men in our society who use his favourite medium, aerosol, to pronounce their presence upon public buildings. Clearly concerned with masculinity, macho gesture and the inequalities between artists and sportsmen in our country, Quilty’s work appears to be becoming more political as he attempts to define the human aspects of quintessential ‘Australian-ness’.
Quilty was gallerist Jan Murphy’s star player at Art on James. The week-long inaugural event presented the work of some of Australia’s finest contemporary artists, from the stables of Brisbane’s leading commercial art galleries, in the retail spaces of Fortitude Valley’s affluent James Street strip. The enterprise, organised by the James Street Initiative, was borne out of a desire to integrate art, fashion and design into a combined retail and cultural experience.
Co-curators of Art on James Alison Kubler and Louise Martin-Chew of MC/K Art Consulting were responsible for marrying represented artists with each of the participating retail stores and programming the festival. In a fusion of art and fashion they