TOP DEAD DEFECTOR—Locust Jones talks about art in global oppression.
Meg Watson
August 30
Locust Jones is an Australian artist whose work is strongly inspired by international media, text, and politics. He has exhibited widely on both a national and global scale, and he has completed a number of residencies in studios around the world. Mixing cold and mediated language with expressive and unleashed lashings of ink, Locust seeks to unearth the ideology and sinister purpose beneath the words and images that colour our days. Here, Meg Watson speaks to him about his time spent in residency overseas, and the anger behind his vivid drawing practice.
Meg Watson: Your work revolves so much around language and the media. What first drew you to these topics, and what drives the aggression behind them?
Locust Jones: These topics came about after some travel in the Middle East—I saw the world differently, and I realised that the propaganda being fed to me all my life by the USA and its allies was just that: propaganda. I lived in Beirut for 6 months and met a lot of interesting people—people who had served in the militias during the civil war in Lebanon; people who had killed many people. I met members of Hezbollah and I visited the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The first time I went there I stayed with a Lebanese writer and who had many Palestinian friends. I learnt a lot. I was taken to the Israeli border. I met film-makers and artists in bars and listened to how they survived the civil war. I saw graveyards with many innocent Palestinian children buried in them; a result of a stray IDF tank shell landing in a school. This made me angry and upon my return this anger was unleashed in my drawings.
MW: In 2010 you went to Korea on residency with Asialink. Paint us a picture of your time there—so to speak. How was the media different from that in Australia, and how did it affect your work?
LJ: The media was saturated with content about North Korea and Kim Jong Ill. It was very biased towards the north. I think this was a result of a right-wing government being in power when I was there. Everything was about money, power, and influence. It seemed to me that the government controlled the media—you could see it in everything. There was a North Korean who had defected to the south and he died while I was in residence. The headlines read ‘Top Defector Found Dead in his Bathtub’ and this became one of my text drawings.
MW: You were primarily based at The National Art Studio in Chang-dong, Seoul; but did you venture elsewhere? What were the defining features of the local art culture?
LJ: Yes I travelled around the country—to the north, to the demilitarized zone, and to Jeju Island in the south. The local art cultures were very broad; from new media to ancient Confucian styles of architecture.
MW: In addition to Seoul, you have also completed a New York-based residency in 2003, and one in Beirut during 2004. What do you feel you have gained from these varied experiences?
LJ: International residencies shape the kind of work I make because I am constantly being influenced by different people and their cultures. It shapes my experience. When I was in New York the electricity was down for 2 or 3 days in the middle of summer and I remember being on the rooftop of my building watching helicopters hovering and the police telling me through a megaphone to get back inside the building as if I were a terrorist. Shops were being looted and the Hells Angels barricaded the street that their headquarters was on. I walked about at nighttime witnessing lots of weird and crazy things while native New Yorkers retreated to their homes—as if the memory of 9/11 was shackling them indoors. All these experiences found their way into my drawings, sketchbooks, and video/sound tapes. I am travelling to Africa in October for a residency in Johannesburg which promises to be very interesting. I have made contact with the ABC’s Africa correspondent Giny Stein, and am looking forward to finding out more about the political situation of post-apartheid South Africa.
Applications for 2013 Asialink Arts residencies are open from now until the 3rd of September 2012. You can learn more about it here, and apply here.
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