IT'S NOT ART.
IT’S FLY ART.
The stultifyingly conservative, establishment-controlled artworld has trained us all to regard the large, serious, oil painting as the most prestigious and desirable of all artforms.
Followed, at some distance, by the expansive watercolour, mere drawings, lowly etchings and, finally, popular prints and pottery.
And our sanitised folklore and national image-protectors would have us believe that the quintessentially Australian creature is a furry marsupial or a flightless bird.
Of course neither of these representations is accurate.
The simple truth is that Australians are far more egalitarian than elitist.
More interested in unpretentious humour than hubris.
More excited by simple poignancy than pseudo-intellectual obfuscation.
And far more likely to encounter a fly or two, at work and play, than any of the exotic strangers venerated on the national coinage and coat of arms.
That’s why you’ll probably like Fly Art.
It’s funny, intelligible and undeniably and unashamedly Australian.
And it’ll go with virtually any carpet or lounge suite colour.
Which of the Fly Art pieces would be best to replace some of the hideous pieces you inherited, or acquired when you didn’t have the funds to purchase anything decent?
And which would be the ideal gift for your quirky, clever friend.
Or the stuffy, snobbish relative you can’t stand.
ERIC – FLY ARTIST
The first telltale sign of Eric’s prodigious artistic talent was noticed by his mother.
One day, not too many tantrums after his second birthday, Eric took a crayon and, on his parents’ freshly painted lounge room wall, energetically created a strikingly realistic and evocative depiction of the spaghetti he’d only recently tipped into the cassette holder of his father’s new hi-fi unit.
Although his not-so-proud dad was incapable of recognising and applauding his son’s brilliance, his mother’s admiration was boundless,particularly during those periods of chemical-fuelled optimism immediately following her failure to remember to take her medication.
What made her all the more convinced or Eric’s genius was his extraordinary capacity to develop a thematic approach to his art and pursue it with unnervingly focused zeal.
Indeed, the usually early decision to make spaghetti the subject of his work was one he stuck to like bolognaise sauce to a moustache.
His innovative 2004 masterpiece ‘Spaghetti on the pre-school teacher’s car door’ was but one example of the precocious infant terrible’s ability to create art that was at once controversial and thought-provoking.
'Spaghetti On The Pre-School Teacher’s Car Door' (2004)
'Spaghetti On Handbag’(2005,nail polish on leather)
'Spaghetti without meatballs’ (2006 – biro on curtain fabric)
Spaghetti Surprise (2007 – Texta on wedding dress)
and, arguably the most famous of his earlier works,
‘Spaghetti Graffiti’ (2008 – spray paint on retirement village entry statement)
In 2009, Eric held his first exhibition, ‘A Shitload of Spaghetti’, very close to the National Gallery in Canberra.
Both works, ‘Leftover Spaghetti’ (2007 – Pencil on serviette) and the still-life, mixed-media piece ‘Spaghetti in a bowl’ (2008 – Spaghetti, in a bowl) were snapped up by his mother for a Nick’S Framing and Print Sales’ record of $124.50 each, including the frame, and delivery.
‘Leftover Spaghetti’ (2007 – Pencil on serviette)
The extraordinary career crescendo left Eric with a profound sense that there was little more to achieve in the fine art world and, like so many other over-confident
individuals with his unusual level of talent, he soon found himself working in advertising.
In 2010, he persuaded colleague, Richard Clarke to collaborate on developing Fly Art and again pulled out his pencil and dashed off a near-instant masterpiece.
“What’s that, and impression of a boxed fly’s frenzied flight path” Richard ventured on seeing the work.
“No!” Eric hissed, “It’s called ‘Italian Staple’ and it’s my impression of the essential spirit of spaghetti – are you fucking stupid or something?”
And so their strange, often volatile and always mediocre collaborative effort began.
Eric was once eleven.
RICHARD CLARKE - FLY ARTIST
From a very early age Richard Clarke wanted to be a scientist, fortune teller or Prime Minister of Tonga.
But it soon became evident to his parents and teachers that his ambition and natural abilities were mutually unsympathetic.
By the time hew was finally allowed to enter the secondary education system (thanks largely to the timely donation by his father of a new polo stables wing to St Judas’ School for Girls with Dwarfism) he had lowered his sights and focused on a career in quantity surveying or hairdressing.
The pressures of trying to learn to read and pretending to be a very short girl proved too much for the teenager’s already over-taxed mind and in 1975, after failing all six end-of-year exams (including sewing theory, remedial home economics and adding up) his parents moved to the United States of America where Richard was enrolled at the University of South Carolina, double-majoring in Flea Circus Management and Usury.
In 1976 he completed his PhD and returned to Australia in search of a flea circus or a bank to manage.
It soon became evident, even to Richard, that he would have to again reduce his career expectations.
He tried to get into sewage farming and failed.
His attempts to begin a career in naturopathy and supermarket trolley collection also proved futile.
Finally, he considered suicide or advertising.
Unable to find a suitable length of rope, he became a copywriter at DMB&B.
To that point, Richard’s goldfish-like attention span and puerile sense of humour had proved an impediment to progress.
But in advertising these qualities, along with his inability to use big words, made him an instant professional and social success.
By 1984 he had become one of the youngest creative directors of a multi-national agency and in 1986, he left to co-found the State’s newest creative agency.
Over his decades in advertising and marketing, Richard promoted everything from potatoes to politicians, and the 57 things in between.
Even more surprisingly, much of his work in radio, television, press, print and outdoor became award-winning and he published three books on advertising, none of which has won a Pulitzer Prize, or been read in its entirety.
After decades, the allure of advertising banality – selling the unnecessary to the undiscerning, and making the unremarkable, unhealthy and possibly dangerous, irresistible – began to wane.
In 1997, while with Eric, looking for a suitable souvenir art piece in New York, they both realised that there, even in the world capital of creativity and consumerism, there was very little original artwork that appealed to either of them or was affordable.
There was nothing funny, instantly intelligible and would fit in with their respective living rooms’ colour scheme.
And so Fly Art was conceived.
“So what?” you may well ask.
FLY ART FOR SALE
Our exclusive collection of fine fly art and fly art accessories
ABOUT THE FLIES
Trained flies promote innovative Australian art Fly Art, undoubtedly the nation’s most imaginative souvenir art brand since Ken Done began using his brightly coloured, infant-simple designs to build a multi-national business, has created yet another Australian marketing first. With the help of a team of entomologists, behavioural psychologists and a specialist animal rights lawyer, Fly Art is using real, live flies to promote the often quirky, always humorous artworks which feature real, dead flies. According to Fly Art creator, Richard Clarke, the trained flies are simply being used to heighten awareness of the fly as the quintessential Australian creature. “Everyone needs to be reminded that none of the indigenous animals venerated on our legal tender and over-used in mediocre advertising is the friendly, egalitarian Australian creature which most visitors and locals encounter most frequently”, he said. “So that’s why we’re sending out squadrons of specially trained flies to make contact with as many Australian and tourists as is possible“, he added. Clarke claims the flies have had “basic behaviour-modification therapy” which has resulted in them being more inclined to seek moisture and sustenance from human sweat, spittle and eye fluid than other more traditional sources, such as animal faeces and left-over KFC products. “Our plan is to get more flies to engage with patrons at high-profile international sporting fixtures, as well as to increase the unpaid ambassadors’ presence and persistence at picnics, barbecues and beachside activities in and around the entire continent”, Clarke said. “The more, natural ‘fly experiences’ we can facilitate the more the market will move from buying idea-less Chinese-made stuffed kangaroos, koalas, emus and Tasmanian devils to acquiring a clever, well-designed piece of Fly Art or one of the other works(t-shirts, books and the like) in the growing Fly Art Collection”,he concluded.
THE FLY SONG
It’s time Australia took a stand and really made a fuss.
To choose a national animal that’s truly most like us.
The emu and the kangaroo are on our coat of arms.
But they’re not due this honoured role we overstate their charms.
They’re not the one we see each day and battle to the end.
There’s only one we think of as our most unwanted friend.
Chorus
It’s the fly. It’s the fly.
It’s the pest that will not rest until it’s shared our beer and pie.
It reminds us what is possible if we all work hard and try.
It’s the littlest Aussie battler. It’s the fly.
It’ with us at each sporting test and streaks around the ground undressed.
Sticking to the best game plan it knows.
And when it goes to country shows.
It’s up the nose if even those we always hope will be most unimpressed.
It shares our love of pets and speed of breeding time and fat and greed.
It keeps its state through constant exercise.
It eats Chinese and figs and peas and dead crustaceans, pigs and cheese.
While we gain weight it keeps its normal size.
Chorus
It eats the treats that we all do before the meal or once passed through.
Nothing that we leave will go to waste.
Sports start priest or refugee it greets each one will equal glee.
Even politicians suit its taste.
Wherever we are it is too from city pew to outback loo.
It mixes with the smartest and the fools.
From downtown dress to sweet success from high court bench to prison stench
Following our smell but not our rules.
Regardless of age, sex or fame it treats each one of us the same.
It has a spirit we can’t tame. It’s the symbol of our freedom.
Chorus
We swat and swipe and swear and spray to keep the ‘fair go’ fly away.
Whole industries survive so it does not.
Like marriage beer and Christmas day our clever foes are here to stay.
Even though we’ve tried to kill the lot.
It rides koalas, cows and roos and wanders free in all our zoos.
Nobody can tell it what to do.
It’s happy with the life we choose it never leaves us when we lose.
It really is a lot like me and you.
Chorus
Traditional Australian Fly Song
I sometimes sit and wish that I
Were much more like a summer fly.
I wouldn’t fret or frown or sigh
Nor feel the urge to sulk or cry.
I’d never ever wonder why
Or know that I am going to die,
If I were just a summer fly.
And I’d be free
And I’d be wild
To live each day a thoughtless child,
Without the need to earn a cent,
Content to breed in excrement.
Today’s a day I wish that I
Could live more like a summer fly.
No need to fear the endless sky
Or heed another painful lie
Or feel my mother’s watchful eye
Or deal with truths I can’t deny.
And I won’t know I’m going to die
If I am just a summer fly.
And I’ll be free
And I’ll be wild,
Existing as a thoughtless child
Without the need to earn a cent,
No thought of time or where it went.
Just living life until it’s spent,
My kids all born in excrement.
The future safe in excrement.
*This is not a traditional Australian fly song, yet.
THE FLY SWAT APP
If you find swatting flies as therapeutic and enjoyable as do most Australians, you don’t need to spend time and money breeding flies to kill, or leaving a rotting pig carcass on your coffee table.
Just go to http://studiolundsager.com/portfolio/the-fly-swatter and download the ingenious app available there.
It’s sure to provide you with minutes, if not days, of mindless time-wasting fun while you’re supposed to be completing that big job everyone was hoping you’d have done by early last week.
A TRIBUTE TO FLY ART'S FORMER BENEFACTOR AND BENEFICIARY
Fly Art is indebted to former Winthrop Professor Ian Dadour at the University of Western Australia, a World Top 100 university.
During Fly Art’s formative years, the Centre for Forensic Science in the Faculty of Life and Physical Sciences was the source of the clinically reared (germ-free) flies which were used to produce the Fly Artworks.
In appreciation of Professor Dadour’s assistance, Fly Art was an enthusiastic supporter of his important scientific research and sponsored the Faculty’s annual awards for academic/research excellence.
And several of his PhD students were paid privately to rear the ‘stock’ needed.
Professor Dadour has a great sense of humour and enjoyed Fly Art’s irreverence and anti-establishment posture.
He recognised that the ironically conservative, unthinking stuffiness of the art world was as pervasive in academia, and he enjoyed contributing to Fly Art’s thumbing its nose at the yawn-inducing traditionalists and largely closed-minded snobs we both disdained.
Fly Art still has its flies clinically reared by research students at UWA.
Image: Professor Ian Dadour.
