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 Artist ALEX GILLIES chats with ZENOBIA FROST about the art of woodcuts and his latest exhibition, Luddite.
ZENOBIA FROST: You’re a self-taught artist; what made you choose woodcuts and relief printing?
ALEX GILLIES: I didn’t plan to do this kind of art – it was more of a knee-jerk reaction that I was making to so many other forms of art in popular culture. When I started out, I did have a couple of years of photography under my belt, but in my mind, every fool with a mobile phone these days thinks they’re an artistic genius. So I set aside my camera and looked for the furthest removed form of expression I could find. Placing a picture into a surface rather than onto a surface was simply a fluke that worked.
ZF: Why do you only work with maple wood?
AG: There is something that I find inspiring from having and holding something that’s been around long before you or I came along – like it’s been waiting around for you to arrive. Carving into maple is like that sometimes and if you cut with the grain in just the right way, it has hair-like strands that look like silver in it. Strange little things like that still hold a lot of mystery to me.
ZF: What inspires your images?
The images I choose always seem random at the time until months later when I take stock. Over the past 12 months I’ve portrayed a lot of different wildlife. Owls keep cropping up, turtles and whales, butterflies – even a giraffe, which was for a stranger on the internet who was trying to collect a million handmade pictures of giraffes.
ZF: What’s your upcoming exhibition, Luddite, all about?
AG: All my life I thought a ‘luddite’ was someone who was a bit backwards. A close friend called me a luddite and it sent me straight to the dictionary. Turns out luddites were real people rising up against industrialisation in England 200 years ago. It boils down to meaning ‘people who are afraid of the pace of technology’ and I’m one of those people. The medium of woodcuts hasn’t really changed in more than 500 years; it works, so why mess with it? A lot of my pieces focus around old forms of technology that I dearly love – my typewriter, old hot rods from my grandparents’ generation, bicycles – stuff that doesn’t need replacing every 12 months. I bet your plasma TV will be useless in 2210!
ZF: What do you love most about your work?
AG: The thing I love most about woodcuts is the thing I hate the most. When you paint, you paint over until it’s right. When using scalpels and chisels to make woodcuts, one slip of the hand can ruin months of work. I love how unyielding the medium is. You don’t know whether you’ve gotten it right until you pull that first print from the block. Imagine painting with your eyes closed and only opening them when you’re finished. The elation from showing so much patience and then getting it right makes you want to do another and another. I just like it when ideas work.
LUDDITE by ALEX GILLIES runs at Doggett Street Studio, Newstead, from Jun 4 to 17. Ph: 3252 9292 / www.doggett.com.au
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