What he done

I always drew and invented stories. I still feel that what I do is play even though within an economic context I have a job as a storyboard artist. I have been fortunate to work with some notable directors including Gregor Jordan, Robert Conolly, Pip Carmel, Brian Henson, David Caesar and most recently Christina Andreef and Richard Roxburgh.

The creation of a feature film storyboard is a soulful and rewarding experience. This is the art of telling a story in a visual sequence imparting everything from composition to character, lens to lighting. The less soulful but still incredibly rewarding side of my work has been within the TV advertising realm where massive budgets have afforded all the best toys available to the film makers I work with which means I have had to learn about techno cranes, fraser lens, CGI, green screen composites and all elements both practical and virtual. So I feel have achieved a nice balance between the technical and the creative.

Armed with these skills I have finally taken the last step in the completion of a dream. I am currently co-directing a feature film with my artist friend Gav Barbey. The work is broad in its artistic scope and we hope ground breaking in more ways than one.

My page on the Internet Movie Database

My Space or Yours

The lush green rolling land and ancient monolithic trees in Aotearoa haunt my psyche where ever I go. So too my pride in the influence of Maoridom and of Kiwi achievement, heightened by distance and rugby broadcasts, marred only by foolish redneck outbursts and radical xenophobes. I long for warm fires, warm linen cupboards, warm embraces and dry ready wit. Or a good beach sing-along with all welcome to share the hotpot of pipis or a stirring Polynesian infused rendition of ‘Ten Guitars’.

This feeling for land, culture and family is at the centre of my artistic expression. But it doesn’t exist for me as a reality I can access whenever I want. It has become a dream space behind a barrage of CNN falsehoods and isolating personal devices, fearful parents seeing phantom kidnappers and paedophiles in every playground and their bubble wrapped kids unable to experience the slightest scrape without a hyper vigilant fear monger to scream in terror rendering a mundane fall into a bone-chilling reminder of how unsafe it is to be . . .

Safety, familiarity and certainty are precious commodities the world of fear doesn’t often afford us. Information technology is quickly filling the empty rooms of our solitude.

The challenge for me as an artist is to see past the swinging watch to the hypnotist beyond. The truly self-reflexive primate can define its own space with imagination, beauty, humour and harmony. The imbalanced or selfish primate will stumble, rumble and pillage its way through any and all spaces until they are spent.

We need change nothing but the spaces we define and the stories we tell each other.

Response

My piece for spaceAID is a study for a graphic novel collaboration with artist Bob Withers. TRANS is about an underclass who live in the dark sooty caverns of a train tunnel system in a dystopic megacity. This underclass known as Subs do not exist as official citizens and cannot venture into the world of the post humans up on the clean and brightly lit platforms. The Subs deify the platform elite and all of their artefacts. A simple chocolate bar wrapper becomes an important treasure once in the hands of the Subs and their growing shrines to the platform travellers. The Subs perception that the lives of the platformers are heavenly and carefree is in stark contrast to the reality. These microchipped travellers exist in a world without privacy. Cyber implants guarantee thought access to the official corporate database of information. All behaviour is monitored. Plasma field blockades solidify and trap any individual deemed capable of dissent.

This piece draws parallels between the world of refugees and the world of the information rich. These divides are polarising more and more every day as populations multiply and space becomes scarce.