28 January 2025
Hello Tim, can you tell us about your journey as an artist? How did you first get started in the visual arts?
I have always enjoyed making things, tactile processes and engaging with cultural outputs or storytelling in various formats like visual art, music, film, writing, skateboarding, photography and cooking. In my early 20s art was a bit of a saviour for me as I struggled with mental health issues, drugs and disillusionment with society. I had previously really enjoyed art at school and found my way into a visual art course at Tafe in Brisbane. I found Tafe extremely nurturing and making and studying art and ceramics proved to be a perfect fit for me, being an artist became my new home and it still is. Admittedly becoming an artist has been a long journey of not just time and skills development but personal growth and learning to believe in myself.
What drew you to working with ceramics and drawing as your primary mediums?
I have always drawn and been drawn to popular 2D imagery. Growing up I was heavily inspired by 2D art in everything from mambo t shirts, film posters, paintings, graphic design, graffiti, skateboard graphics, comic books. I kinda fell in love with ceramics when I was studying at Tafe, initially for its tactile qualities but compared to drawing and painting, ceramics came quite easily and naturally for me. I have mostly tried to tie my love of 2D Pop art imagery into my ceramics which has taken various forms but often until this day looks like drawing on and in clay.
Ceramics, while it feels natural is also extremely technical and unforgiving, I think I decided early on to view this as a challenge and to push myself to try and master it which has helped me develop a patience that doesn’t come naturally.
Your work often combines pop art-inspired imagery with personal stories. How did that unique style develop?
Those images are what speaks to me as a viewer, across mediums, so it is natural that I like making the same style of work (Pop art). One of the beauties of that way of working is being able to reference my influences, other artists’ and things around me in day to day life. The personal bit comes back to my own lived experience and is possibly a rebellion against trends and art school expectations to deal with lofty conceptual topics in your art. For whatever reason I have always wanted to make accessible work that a broad audience can connect to without a tertiary education in fine art.
How does living in the Northern Rivers influence your artistic practice and the themes you explore?
It’s tough to dissect as I’m heavily influenced by the region, I grew up here and I really see my values have been shaped by the region when I leave or come into contact with people from other areas. I think in a lot of ways this area has made me. In ways living here is a blessing and in others it’s a curse. As an artist I think it’s a hustle, then living in a slightly conservative country like Australia that doesn’t really value art or artists much is a bigger hustle, then being an artist in regional Australia is harder again. In some ways this region is better because so many artists live here and it’s more progressive than other regional areas but it’s also tricky because there are limited opportunities here with many artists chasing them. So I try to exhibit and send my work beyond the area, I’m lucky that my recent Music Saves series was popular, it sold well. In 2018 I had a booth at an art fair in Sydney and a person said to me ‘oh you’re from Mullumbimby, well now it makes sense’ which probably speaks to the fact that I had bright colourful drawings on recycled cardboard and that people up here do things differently.
Themes like consumerism, environmental issues, and mental health feature prominently in your art. Why are these issues important to you and how do you hope audiences will connect with or interpret these themes?
I think in some ways environmentalism is a value that I was taught as a kid, it was important to my family and I just grew up with an awareness that we are responsible for the planet and that over consumption was unethical. I have had teachers, friends and community throughout my life who have reinforced those ideas. Environmental awareness almost feels like common knowledge now yet at the same time totally important and at odds with society. As a parent and as an object maker I can feel like a hypocrite at times, but I do still try to make art that raises these topics anyway.
The mental health thing is fairly personal, I’m still not totally comfortable being open about it but there are mental health issues in my family and I have struggled with them myself off and on also. In fact if I had to put a singular cause or motivation behind my art practice I would say that it was and still is a way for me to manage my own mental health. So it often features in my art in less overt ways because I don’t feel like yelling it from the rooftops but it is ever present. I also see mental health as a significant issue in the local community and broader society.
Can you walk us through your creative process? How do you approach a new piece or series?
Typically my ideas might develop over a long period of months or years in my head, I do a fair bit of driving to my teaching job so I often get ideas while driving or walking and my phone is full of lists of ideas. Often I’ll do some experiments, especially if it is a significantly different in technique to previous work. Inevitably with ceramics there’s often testing to get materials to work and do what you want. One of the perks to teaching is that I get to play with different techniques and when I like something I can bring it in to my work, this helps to keep things fresh and my brain stimulated. That all said I do often work spontaneous also but it tends to be within parameters of a series I am doing or using motifs and aesthetic elements that I am already familiar with.
Your exhibition Local Knowledge is currently on display at Lismore Regional Gallery. What inspired this body of work, and what can visitors expect to see?
When I initially applied for the exhibition at LRG it was to show my Music Saves ceramic cassette series but due to the floods the show was pushed back a couple of years and by then I was feeling like doing a different exhibition. I had been wanting to do a series about the Northern Rivers region and all the weird and wonderful features it has. Growing up here, moving away and returning multiple times, raising kids and building an art career here has given me some interesting insight and perspectives on this area and I guess it felt like an interesting way to pay homage to the northern rivers, to have a self depreciating laugh about some of the archetypes and funny things here and also a nod to Terroir. This is the French word which describes a wines characteristics as shaped by where it was grown and produced. I like to re-contextualise terroir onto art because I really feel that the art someone makes is shaped by the person, their history, culture and life experiences. So in this way I am talking about myself and my personal history by looking at the northern rivers in various ways. These various perspectives include plants, animals, types of people,sayings, social dynamics and landmarks (like Wollumbin which produced the volcanic basalt which has literally shaped the area, its soil, flora and fauna and even climate). Visitors can expect a few large scale paintings, 20 ceramic plates on the wall and a handful of ceramic cassettes which all reference to some part of the region.
What’s one piece in your current collection that holds special significance for you, and why?
Most of the work in this show is personal in some way so that is hard to say. The work feels like it’s part of me in a way that art doesn’t always, this series feels like a bit of a personal history. In a way the “Tropicana Exotica” large pink pineapple painting is a bit of a symbolic portrait of my mum. She is an avid gardener and foody, she is gay and so the work talks to the gay community in this area as I largely experienced it through her and her community as I was growing up. Tropicana Exotica which includes that text, talks to the climate here, which dictates what you can grow and what is commonly eaten here as a result, it also describes the exoticisation which I feel you are labelled with when you hail from the Northern Rivers. The smaller illustrations in this work include a mirror ball which symbolises the Tropical Fruits parties and a simplified image of the Winsome Hotel which was a gay pub for some years. Until this question it wasn’t so clear but this work is a kind of gay gardening partying foody homage to my mum, the doctor.
What’s next for you? Can you give us a glimpse into any projects you’re currently working on?
There are a few things up in the air but I am looking at doing some art fairs again this year, maybe Sydney Ceramics Market and Brisbane Affordable Art fair. I’ve entered a few competitions. I am teaching Ceramics and Visual Art in Murwillumbah and Byron Bay through Tafe. I am planning a solo exhibition at the Australian Design Centre in Sydney for 2026 and I have one half completed collaborative mural in Lismore Back Alley Gallery that I am doing with Jeremy Austin, my studio buddy, and some other murals in the area which I am hoping to lock in soon. I am also rebuilding my website and working on a small video biography with Jeremy. I am not back into studio production yet after my show Local Knowledge at the Lismore Regional, so it remains to be seen exactly what I move on to next but there are always projects happening and I am keen to do more public art.