September 11, 2012
Today Gary Silipa turns the focus back to Askew and asks him some questions about the One Fifty show and it’s format. Tell us about ONEFIFTY and what is it all about?
ONEFIFTY is pretty much just a format.  We wanted to do something that’s going to make an art show a spectacle again!  We’ve agreed on a format that makes the work affordable for people our age and younger and for people that might want a little piece of what we do but can’t quite afford it generally, and we’ve put a time limit to create a sense of pace and urgency.  People have to be really invested in it to come and get the piece if they really want it and that’s exciting y’know?, that’s the type of show I’d like to go to.

 The last time you put so much work into a show was your solo exhibition at the beginning of the year.  Were you waiting for something to put more work into again?
I didn’t think that I was going to exhibit again this year and probably not locally, unless I could think of a way to make it work for people locally.  I think that’s why this kind of format was born.  I’ve seen other galleries doing it and I thought it was a really awesome idea but I don’t think any of them have taken it as literally and as far as we have.  My show was a small body of work, big paintings, but there weren’t heaps of them, it was just comfortable for the space, but I also wanted to do something where you have the impact of walking in and seeing heaps of work as well.  It’s pretty much the total opposite to my solo show.

 You have 50 canvasses to paint, personally, what are you enjoying about painting these 50?Just being able to have fun with it and communicating heaps of more concise ideas rather than developing an idea for months.  The works from my other show, the process was quite time consuming and slow.  I don’t want to invest quite that amount of time in each one so the ideas have to be quick off the mark.  The result is a more humorous show which is good.

 You had some ideas beforehand, as you go along, are new ideas coming about?
Oh yeah I’m already holding back on ones that I want to get stuck into until I’ve done all the ones that I drew out.  I drew out 25 in advance so I knew exactly what I was going to do.  There are some ideas running through all of them that pull them all together but they’re also little blips and insights into how my mind works.  Some of them are quite autobiographical too.

 You can definitely tell a lot about your character by looking at what you’ve currently painted.
It’s quite a good depiction of where I’m at in my head at the moment, especially the dick and balls.I know that sounds so stupid but It’s tongue and cheek. I was just thinking about universal symbols that people kind of tend towards in public space.  I thought about bathroom graffiti, It’s so accessible and it’s one of those instinctive things that everyone will have a opinion of or feel something about it if you drew it.  It’s quite a powerful symbol in a lot of ways.  I have a real simplistic sense of humour. [With] pop culture, I have the ‘1989’ smiley face, a star, a halo and a crown, real graffiti symbols, I have flags in here because there’s been a real resurgence of flag art that my friend Saber really led the way with.  I’ve incorporated U.S and the English flag into my work a lot in the last year and a bit because I’ve been talking about cultural influence on New Zealand and they were the two most dominant, pop cultural forces that had a lot of influence on my experiences growing up.  [With} music and art, my generation saw a transition with NZ having a real heavy English dominance to a very visible US influence which changed us.  Considering where we are, our countries history and the people that live here, we have this outside beacon of pop cultural influence which has shaped the way we live and do things. Some of it is my cynical slogans about living here, quite NZ-centric.  There’s a little bit about nepotism and big business and the way the world works and how we perceive that as people that don’t have much, trying to still get our slice in life and live, with so many cultural gatekeepers. Those are kind of the main themes of my work.

 What are your thoughts behind the chosen colours, black, red and white?
I really enjoy stripping things back.  You learn to accept what’s important and it becomes more of an exercise in emphasising and strengthening the form.  I’ve always enjoyed that and I think that’s something that has come from graffiti and graphic design, the backgrounds that I have.  They’re powerful colours, through history they’ve always been the colours used in propaganda and graphic design, it’s always easy to make something stand out and catch your eye.  Limiting your pallet in general is smart.

 What do you think the audience thinks about the show ONEFIFTY?
I don’t know what people currently think coming into the show, but I know how interested I am to see how they react when they get to the show.  That’s the experiment in a lot of ways, what sort of atmosphere it has, how people react and interact with the work, which [paintings] they’re drawn to.  The fact that we aren’t exhibiting as three separate artists, we’re jumbling the work up and keeping an amount of randomness, yet there’s uniformity in the format so I think, as a viewing experience, it’s really going to compel people to act on their immediate gut-reaction on what they’re drawn to.  You’re going to see people come in and they might not start at the beginning, they might walk straight to something that resonates with them.  That’s the kind of reaction I want to see.  I want to see people smile and laugh and people to get excited about an art event.  The fact that they can come in and it’s cash and carry, they can literally pick something and walk away with it, it’s kind of cool.

 Is this a one-off show or are there future plans ahead for ONEFIFTY?
We’ve talked about it a bit and it would be really cool if it was an ongoing thing.  For the time being it’s a show that would enable us to travel to a different city quite easily.  Make work in a fairly short amount of time, exhibit it and move on.  I like that because it’s a very different experience to doing a show generally, you will know within ONEFIFTY minutes if it was a success or not. I’d definitely like us to take a show to Wellington in the span of this year, then maybe Melbourne, Los Angeles and New York in the horizon.  Maybe modified slightly to a THREEHUNDRED, we’ll just play it by ear.  I’d like this weekend to be a success so that we can keep doing this, it’s pretty much the most fun art experience I’ve had.

 Do you think you’ve thought of everything you can to limit things to ONEFIFTY?
You could definitely keep going but I think that this is a good start.  It’s going to be tough because we’re going to have to not let people we know come in if they’re not within the first ONEFIFTY.  That’s quite harsh but just as long as people know, they got to be serious about attending and getting into this show if they want to be a part of it [so] why not?  It makes it a good experience for everybody if you get into the spirit of it.  I want to see people buy more than 1.  For the price of less than 2 paintings of my last show, you could buy every single work in this show.

 That’d look pretty impressive hung up.
I’d love to see someone come in and buy all ONEFIFTY.  If there’s someone out there that does that then, that’d be amazing!, but to be honest I’d like to see ONEFIFTY individual people all have a piece of art if they really wanted it, that would be cool too.

 Last question…If you could have ONEFIFTY of anything, what would it be?
[Laughs] That’s a good question, I’m not so quick off the mark with these types of questions that make me really think…ONEFIFTY free round the world tickets to be redeemed at any point of my life.  It would enable me and my friends to travel consistently around the world to experience, paint, exhibit and enjoy, opposed to being stuck here.  That would be rad!


Today Gary Silipa turns the focus back to Askew and asks him some questions about the One Fifty show and it’s format.

Tell us about ONEFIFTY and what is it all about?

ONEFIFTY is pretty much just a format.  We wanted to do something that’s going to make an art show a spectacle again!  We’ve agreed on a format that makes the work affordable for people our age and younger and for people that might want a little piece of what we do but can’t quite afford it generally, and we’ve put a time limit to create a sense of pace and urgency.  People have to be really invested in it to come and get the piece if they really want it and that’s exciting y’know?, that’s the type of show I’d like to go to.



The last time you put so much work into a show was your solo exhibition at the beginning of the year.  Were you waiting for something to put more work into again?

I didn’t think that I was going to exhibit again this year and probably not locally, unless I could think of a way to make it work for people locally.  I think that’s why this kind of format was born.  I’ve seen other galleries doing it and I thought it was a really awesome idea but I don’t think any of them have taken it as literally and as far as we have.  My show was a small body of work, big paintings, but there weren’t heaps of them, it was just comfortable for the space, but I also wanted to do something where you have the impact of walking in and seeing heaps of work as well.  It’s pretty much the total opposite to my solo show.



You have 50 canvasses to paint, personally, what are you enjoying about painting these 50?
Just being able to have fun with it and communicating heaps of more concise ideas rather than developing an idea for months.  The works from my other show, the process was quite time consuming and slow.  I don’t want to invest quite that amount of time in each one so the ideas have to be quick off the mark.  The result is a more humorous show which is good.



You had some ideas beforehand, as you go along, are new ideas coming about?

Oh yeah I’m already holding back on ones that I want to get stuck into until I’ve done all the ones that I drew out.  I drew out 25 in advance so I knew exactly what I was going to do.  There are some ideas running through all of them that pull them all together but they’re also little blips and insights into how my mind works.  Some of them are quite autobiographical too.



You can definitely tell a lot about your character by looking at what you’ve currently painted.

It’s quite a good depiction of where I’m at in my head at the moment, especially the dick and balls.I know that sounds so stupid but It’s tongue and cheek. I was just thinking about universal symbols that people kind of tend towards in public space.  I thought about bathroom graffiti, It’s so accessible and it’s one of those instinctive things that everyone will have a opinion of or feel something about it if you drew it.  It’s quite a powerful symbol in a lot of ways.  I have a real simplistic sense of humour. [With] pop culture, I have the ‘1989’ smiley face, a star, a halo and a crown, real graffiti symbols, I have flags in here because there’s been a real resurgence of flag art that my friend Saber really led the way with.  I’ve incorporated U.S and the English flag into my work a lot in the last year and a bit because I’ve been talking about cultural influence on New Zealand and they were the two most dominant, pop cultural forces that had a lot of influence on my experiences growing up.  [With} music and art, my generation saw a transition with NZ having a real heavy English dominance to a very visible US influence which changed us.  Considering where we are, our countries history and the people that live here, we have this outside beacon of pop cultural influence which has shaped the way we live and do things. Some of it is my cynical slogans about living here, quite NZ-centric.  There’s a little bit about nepotism and big business and the way the world works and how we perceive that as people that don’t have much, trying to still get our slice in life and live, with so many cultural gatekeepers. Those are kind of the main themes of my work.



What are your thoughts behind the chosen colours, black, red and white?

I really enjoy stripping things back.  You learn to accept what’s important and it becomes more of an exercise in emphasising and strengthening the form.  I’ve always enjoyed that and I think that’s something that has come from graffiti and graphic design, the backgrounds that I have.  They’re powerful colours, through history they’ve always been the colours used in propaganda and graphic design, it’s always easy to make something stand out and catch your eye.  Limiting your pallet in general is smart.



askew portrait 2

What do you think the audience thinks about the show ONEFIFTY?

I don’t know what people currently think coming into the show, but I know how interested I am to see how they react when they get to the show.  That’s the experiment in a lot of ways, what sort of atmosphere it has, how people react and interact with the work, which [paintings] they’re drawn to.  The fact that we aren’t exhibiting as three separate artists, we’re jumbling the work up and keeping an amount of randomness, yet there’s uniformity in the format so I think, as a viewing experience, it’s really going to compel people to act on their immediate gut-reaction on what they’re drawn to.  You’re going to see people come in and they might not start at the beginning, they might walk straight to something that resonates with them.  That’s the kind of reaction I want to see.  I want to see people smile and laugh and people to get excited about an art event.  The fact that they can come in and it’s cash and carry, they can literally pick something and walk away with it, it’s kind of cool.



Is this a one-off show or are there future plans ahead for ONEFIFTY?

We’ve talked about it a bit and it would be really cool if it was an ongoing thing.  For the time being it’s a show that would enable us to travel to a different city quite easily.  Make work in a fairly short amount of time, exhibit it and move on.  I like that because it’s a very different experience to doing a show generally, you will know within ONEFIFTY minutes if it was a success or not. I’d definitely like us to take a show to Wellington in the span of this year, then maybe Melbourne, Los Angeles and New York in the horizon.  Maybe modified slightly to a THREEHUNDRED, we’ll just play it by ear.  I’d like this weekend to be a success so that we can keep doing this, it’s pretty much the most fun art experience I’ve had.



Do you think you’ve thought of everything you can to limit things to ONEFIFTY?

You could definitely keep going but I think that this is a good start.  It’s going to be tough because we’re going to have to not let people we know come in if they’re not within the first ONEFIFTY.  That’s quite harsh but just as long as people know, they got to be serious about attending and getting into this show if they want to be a part of it [so] why not?  It makes it a good experience for everybody if you get into the spirit of it.  I want to see people buy more than 1.  For the price of less than 2 paintings of my last show, you could buy every single work in this show.



That’d look pretty impressive hung up.

I’d love to see someone come in and buy all ONEFIFTY.  If there’s someone out there that does that then, that’d be amazing!, but to be honest I’d like to see ONEFIFTY individual people all have a piece of art if they really wanted it, that would be cool too.



Last question…If you could have ONEFIFTY of anything, what would it be?

[Laughs] That’s a good question, I’m not so quick off the mark with these types of questions that make me really think…ONEFIFTY free round the world tickets to be redeemed at any point of my life.  It would enable me and my friends to travel consistently around the world to experience, paint, exhibit and enjoy, opposed to being stuck here.  That would be rad!


1:49pm
(Notes: 18)
  
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    Today Gary Silipa turns the focus back to Askew and asks him some questions about the One Fifty show and it’s format....
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