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.
FLY ARTISTS
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)
And
'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.