 Image courtesy Gould Galleries.  Artist Scott Redford
Coming up at the end of July, the Melbourne Art Fair, held at the Royal Exhibition Building, offers viewers a dynamic look at both national and international artists.
One artist absolutely worth checking out is Brisbane-born Scott Redford. Since the early 1980s, Redford has been referencing modernist art, Abstract-Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop. His works use these codes in unique ways. Most strikingly, Redford blends art history with surf culture to dissolve the divide between high and low culture, as seen in his series, Blood Disco, in which Redford painted seven large surf boards with stencilled designs.
As both a regional artist and as a gay male, Redford creates art from the margins. “Marginality was almost forced on me; I didn’t choose it. It chose me,” he tells MCV. “The main thing that marginalises me is me and my big mouth I’m afraid.”
The theoretical debates about art that were alive in the 80s have had an undeniable affect on Redford.
“I am a child of postmodernism and I make no apologies for that. Postmodernism seems tame compared to what lies ahead of us this century, as we absorb an incredibly expanded field for cultural production and consumption now that we have China, India, Asia, the former Eastern bloc countries and South America now fully culturally ‘online’,” Redford explains.
“Looking back, nothing was more liberating to me than when I discovered the ideas about contemporary culture I was feeling so strongly within me verbalised so well by thinkers and writers such as Imants Tillers, Paul Taylor, Juan Davila et al in Australia, and then Baudrillard et al overseas. I am forever in their debt.”
Being gay has also had an affect on how Redford sees the world.
“Well, it permeates everything, really. Being gay also makes you less willing to accept the status quo, as that status quo has repressed you. It makes me more willing to ask ‘Why?’ or ‘Prove it!’.”
While he wasn’t part of the surf culture growing up on the Gold Coast, Redford was fascinated by the look of it; its aesthetic.
“I suppose I have a voyeur’s or outsider’s appreciation for it. It was just was one of the most powerful forms of shorthand I could muster. And yes, it’s all about style. Style linked to the materiality of the surfboards themselves. Everyone knows that surfboards are amongst the most beautiful things humans have ever made.”
Currently Redford is exploring film, and with it, the story of a 22-year old surfer/painter/singer.
“Reinhardt is always at odds with the status quo through his punk tendencies, his youth, and his ‘attitude problem’. Reinhardt is sort of Gold Coast Hamlet, not. He isn’t an alter ego; he’s a fully fledged character who takes up a lot of my time, as I not only have to write his script but also have to make his artworks for the film. This is what I’ve been showing in exhibitions lately. It’s a hopefully fun, but also a serious experiment about current art.”
Scott Redford’s work will be showing at the Melbourne Art Fair at the Gould Galleries’ stand.
“Reinhardt may even show up, but not til later in the day,” Redford adds. He’s a party boy that one!”
Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Buildings, Carlton, from July 30 – August 3.
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