Creativity & War Corporatism
A C-Words Creative Conversation with director and artist Simon Robson AKA North Boy South.
March 2021
Simon and I go way back. We first met at Fitch in London around 1999 and went onto share many great times working together at the formative digital agency, Large. After parting ways at Large Simon followed his passion and retrained as a motion designer. He was soon making waves with his distinctive animation and motion graphics work and rose to prominence on the back of the groundbreaking war corporatism short film ‘What Barry Says’.
Over the following years Simon has relocated from Stockwell to Sydney, and has worked in commercials, TV, interaction-design and projections, short and long-form film projects. More recently he’s been refocusing his 3D work in the area of physical and digital sculpture.
I caught up with Simon in March 2021 to discuss his devotion to Eddie van Halen, the time his militant neighbour propelled him into the limelight, how experimentation sits at the heart of his work and why he’s holding off on jumping onto the NFT bandwagon for now.
Please give a short introduction about yourself.
My name is Simon Robson. I’m an artist, commercials director, Dad of two incredible boys and husband to Emma my gorgeous wife. I am blessed for all of this and I am grateful. I live in Sydney Australia, but I hail from Wakefield West Yorkshire. I lived for around 15 years in London which were without doubt the most formative years of my life. At 48 one might call me ‘seasoned’ and I’m OK with that, with growing older as a creative and artist. The world will do with that information what it will. I also love a gin, love to surf and love the sea, I guess that’s what keeps me in Sydney.
Tell us about the first time you realised you were creative.
Interesting question, as I’ve recently been working with creative guru James Victore who swears by the idea that ‘What made you weird as a kid is your superpower as an adult’. I have strong recollections of modelling countless Airfix models as a kid. I made all sorts; cars, tanks, spaceships, but it was the aeroplanes that I loved the most. Something about their shapes; their beauty and elegance, their aerodynamics and defiance of gravity. It all reached very deep within me and I’m only realising how deep now. I also loved drawing, my subject matter was most often aeroplanes again, and fish. Next to my little modelling area on my desk at home, I had a fish tank. I was mesmerised by their hydro-dynamic shapes, how they moved through the water and defied its viscosity. The way they would just hang there suspended in the water before flitting off was so enchanting to me as a kid.
You graduated with a bachelors degree in French and Politics from Aston University, Birmingham before moving to London in 1995 with the intention of becoming a musician and signed recording artist. What led you to become a director and what creative outlet do you have for your music these days?
Oh wow. Yeah, such a mess! They say some creatives arrive in the world ‘fully formed’. People often talk of Basquiat in that way. I was the total opposite. Although I had visually creative leanings as a kid I never developed them beyond my bedroom musings mentioned above. I did pretty well in art class, but my older sister was always a prodigious school-girl fine artist, so I was always very much in her shadow. My younger sister was an excellent classical pianist and occupied that territory. I always just kind of sat there in the middle, neither academically gifted nor by my family’s estimations, artistically gifted.
At 15, the guitar arrived in my life. Some of my mates were already larking around in bands and I was kind of peripherally interested, but not really. Running up to Christmas 1987 a switch just flipped in my head and I knew I was going to be a guitarist. As much as I admired them, I didn’t want to play like Hendrix, Clapton or Van Halen, I just wanted to have a love affair with this instrument, explore it and make it my own. And I did. I already had no interest in my studies and the guitar really tuned me out of academia even more. Between 15 and 18 it’s all I cared about and all I really did.
Going to university was only a way of getting me amongst people who I could form a band with. I wanted to go to Hull, literally because the prospectus had a picture of some students in a band in it, haha! I missed my grades though and ended up at Aston through this ridiculous system they have in the UK called ‘clearing’. It’s a ‘last man in’, fill up spare university places and funding holes kind of thing. I didn’t know what the fuck Aston was or what it was all about. It turned out to be probably the least creative university in the country with no arts degrees and mainly business studies students. Jeez, was I in the wrong place, again!
Moving to London in ’95 my chest burned with un-realised musical ambitions. For 4 years I worked shitty jobs, joined bands, built 2 recording studios, gigged, had a few wins but mainly losses. Music was my love, but I felt it was leading me nowhere. I was mentally cashing out of being a professional musician by late ’98. It was really hard for me. Music was the only thing I’d ever loved as a young adult and it seemed to be leading me down a dead end. A last ditch attempt lead me to trudging around London’s film colleges putting up ads saying something like ‘musician / sound designer wants to work with student film makers’. Moseying around the colleges I began to pick up prospectuses describing courses for ‘interactive digital media’ and things like that. Then it happened again, and for first time since I was 15 I ‘knew’ what I was going to do next. The ‘knowing’ was really powerful. I was going to be a visual creative.
The journey to director happened pretty quickly for me once I was strapped into the visually creative cockpit. At first I felt my way through jobs in branding, web design, installation design and so on. Motion design called out to me though. Motion design and music are practically the same thing; time based arts requiring constant change and modulation to engage the audience. The jump to director happened well and truly after my first short-film was very well received in film-festivals and by the advertising world. Production companies reached out to me, I got signed as an ad director before I knew what being an ad director even was!
Music and I are still sometime bedfellows. Music is always there for me, humming along in the back of my brain. Rarely a night goes by when i don’t wake up with a new melody in my head. It’s like in the absence of making that much music right now, my brain just does it on auto-pilot in my sleep. That sounds pretentious and improbable, but it’s true. Then, because I don’t immediately sit down and record it, I kind of feel like I’m letting that part of myself down. Sounds silly hey? I had a personal music project called Citizen 26 going for a while. But with any of my creative output, I want an audience, and building an audience in music is a long long road. So I don’t really feel the drive to record that much at the moment. Music kind of sits out there in the cold for me a bit these days. I did record a sound track to a short film I recently finished called ‘Fighting Fish’. I absolutely loved that. I scored Paris Texas inspired slide guitar melodies to a futuristic looking sculptural motion piece, and it kind of works!!
Your creative work came to prominence in 2004 via one of your early animation projects, ‘What Barry Says’, an un-apologetic criticism of US foreign policy. Tell us how you came up with the idea for this groundbreaking project and what the reaction to it was.
Around 2003 I was freelancing as a motion designer around London. I was doing work I enjoyed and getting paid pretty well, but i always felt like I should be doing something more with these new motion skills I was learning. I’ve always had a strong social conscience and without knowing it, I guess I was looking for an ‘issue’ to make a film about.
At that time I was living in Stockwell South London. My neighbour Barry, was a well studied political leftist with a brilliant turn of phrase and a killer voice. Afghanistan was again in flames and the bogus argument for the invasion of Iraq was rapidly being cobbled together by Bush & Blair. I would spend hours down the pub with Barry, listening to him wax-lyrical about ‘War Corporatism’ and ‘The Project for The New American Century’. You should look it up, what was absolutely shocking back in 2003 seems almost quaint today.
Out of the blue I suggested I record Barry speaking about the above with the idea of animating to it. Within a couple of days we’d recorded his polemic which lasted around 6 1/2 minutes. I culled it down to 3 mins and began animating to it in my evenings and weekends. Back then with no kids, that was doable, Emma was very understanding. After around 8 months it was done. Jody K Jenkins re-recorded Barry’s voice ‘properly’ in his gorgeous Soho studio and then he added his wonderful score. The film was released in February 2004 and…it blew up.
I submitted the film (Now entitled ‘What Barry Says’) to a number of festivals and they all accepted it. Then, I was getting requests to screen it. Then I was getting invited to Toronto, New York and around Europe to talk about it. Then somehow, pre-YouTube or Vimeo, it went ‘viral’. The film was hosted only on my own website, and Claranet my host said I exceeded my download limit by around 10,000%.
I was getting random phone calls (Yes, I had my phone number on my site) from people around the world saying how much they loved it. Some US marines cadets mailed me with a death threat. Crosby Stills & Nash wanted to make their own version. Really, the mania around it lasted about 3–4 years.
Ironically WBS got me signed to a prestigious London production company where I didn’t fit in at all. It all seemed very glamorous, cool and potentially lucrative to be ‘signed’ as a commercials director. But essentially what I’d done was to create an awkward, constructivist typographic piece of animation that railed against the road to war that our capitalist system was leading us down.
Then I signed to a production company to create TV ‘adverts’ which are very the shop window of capitalism. It was a really off-kilter decision. I should have understood that my very acumen was in the outsider artist / creative political commentator status I’d made for myself. Instead I fell for the promise of potential status and earnings. If I could have my time again, I’d do it very differently.
Following the critical acclaim and success of ‘What Barry Says’ you followed up with a string of projects, namely ‘Taking Liberties’ (2007) and ‘Coalition of the Willing’ (2009) which provided commentary on social issues such as the UK government’s decimation of civil liberties and open source culture and the role it could play against global warming. Tell us about these two thought provoking films and why it’s so important for you to address global issues in your creative work.
Currently I’m on the fence about how useful ‘issue’ film-making is. Groups like Extinction Rebellion show us just how powerful ‘boots on the ground’ and civil disobedience are. Issue films are very polite by comparison. If they contradict your opinions you can turn them off!
I can honestly say that the drive for me to use my creative skills to bring the issues I’ve worked with to life has come from being morally assaulted by the issue first and foremost. With Coalition of The Willing (Global Warming) I could not do nothing. I just could not. Seeing a Jeep advert on a roadside hoarding in Sydney in 2008 just gave me a colossal kick up the arse. The ad’s tagline was, ‘Have fun out there!’ I was gob-smacked that in a time of ecological crises caused by carbon emissions, Jeep was telling us to skid around fields in their vehicles having fun! Call me a kill joy, but this really spurred me on to do something.
Coalition became a collaboration of 20+ studios from around the world, all making animated sections to the polemic written by Tim Rayner. The collaborating studios approached us after the talk Tim & I did at the F5 creativity conference in 2009. Like me they all wanted to say something important with their skills. I directed and produced the film, working with each studio, helping them stay true to Tim’s message. I also animated a number of sections myself. It totally absorbed me for 18 months. The method of making the film absolutely reflected the message; that collaboration and systems of knowledge sharing are the only way to combat climate change.
Taking Liberties was different. I directed 4 animated sections within a feature documentary directed by Chris Atkins. I knew very little about the Blair government’s assault on civil liberties until Chris talked me through the issue. His passion was infectious and brought me into the fold. I must say that I felt bad about how little each freelancer was paid on this job. Our animation budget was tiny, I took no fee. On reflection I think a pro-bono production is better than a cash starved one. If you sign onto a pro-bono, it has to be mostly because of your belief in the issue. Asking people to work for low pay is somehow worse, it’s like you hardly value them.
Describe how you work professionally. Do you prefer to work alone or in collaboration?
Sadly and happily I mostly conceive my ideas alone. I say sadly because I’m exploring the concept that true human creativity grows exponentially as you bring more people into the process. I say happily because when I generate a killer idea alone, I feel elated. Recently I have been listening to podcasts where creatives describe ideas as living things that come to join you. It’s as if the idea has its own life force and it finds its surrogate, i.e you. I don’t know which way I’ll end up going, probably in both directions at the same time, as usual…
Outside of your personal projects your ‘day job’ involves animation and live action direction for high profile clients such as Adidas, Nike, Telstra, Mastercard, Coca-Cola and McDonalds. Does your creative work in this generally more commercial sector have a particular signature? If so, please explain what that signature is and how you adapt your creative style for a diverse range of clients.
Darn and blast, I have to talk about commercial work now, haha! Here’s a thing, a secret. If it ever gets out, I’ll be un-employed. Ah well, here goes. I CANNOT take commercial work seriously. Most of the scripts I read, I find laughable. Not laughable in the sense of them being bad creative or something. Mostly the ideas I receive from agencies are pretty well thought through, even if they have been pilloried by a committee of clients fed on a diet of fear, fear and more fear. But I find the very idea that humans invest so much serious creative time into brands and product selling, totally incredible. Because brands and consumer products are totally fictitious. They exist in our minds only. And there are so many more important things to talk about and invest serious production dollars into. But you know, we must all live in the world, we must pay our way, so I must engage with these scripts when they present themselves to me and I must try and win the work to feed my kids.
My style would be firstly, stream of consciousness; I am never better than when I dream of how I can connect ideas together through metaphor and motion transitions. As a human I am always ‘in flow’, I am rarely the same from day to day. My moods wax and wane, my tastes flex and change (Hence no tattoos). I am random and constantly ‘in flow’. So to get the best of me, this must come out in my work. I value this fluidity of story-telling much more than style.
Secondly I’d say I am irreverent. If I can find a place, any place to be silly and slightly have a smirk at the very idea of creating a commercial film, within the content of that very commercial film, then I will do it. Often these irreverent decisions are the ones that delight the agency and client the most. My favourite example of this would be the commercial I made for Australian online fashion retailer, ‘The Iconic’ back in 2013. With ‘The Bondi Hipsters’, two Australian comedians in the central roles, I had the perfect partners to take the piss. I devised some ridiculous in-camera set-transitions that the client and agency bought into. That was fun…
Who are your creative heroes? Have they influenced your work in any way?
Edward Van Halen: Because his guitar solos were so incredibly fluid, un-expected and ground-breaking that whenever I heard him play he held me in the palm of his hand. He was a much greater ground-breaker than Hendrix, by miles. Unfashionable to say that, but it’s all true.
Gerald Scarfe: Seeing flashes of animation from The Wall as a young kid on Top of the Pops made me realise that there was someone else out there like me. Someone who’s mind was constantly fluid and that’s how he presented his animated ideas. Unbelievable, mind-blowing, and of course politically right on point. In many ways he was my prototype, if only I could draw like him.
Run Wrake: I don’t know if I’d call him a creative hero, but everything I see of his makes me weak at the knees; his illustration, animation, art, everything. In the early Noughties when everyone was leaning into the technical, Run kept his wonderful analogue edgy MTV style at the centre of his work. He died too soon.
Where do you find inspiration?
Wow, so tricky to answer with clarity. Definitely refer to my above point about ideas being their own entities that are not owned by us… Ideas arrive, they come to me on their journey somewhere, like a tramp sheltering under a bus-stop or a jogger under a tree in the rain. They are often…just there.
Sometimes I wake with them in my head. Sometimes, ‘smack!’ they just arrive as I’m doing something totally un-related. I used to see an idea un-realised as a crying tragedy, but now I realise if I don’t make them, they just go somewhere else. My Vedic meditation practice has brought me a lot of clarity around this. A concept central to Vedic meditation is one’s ‘path of charm’; through daily meditation we free ourselves of stress that blankets the clear view of what we should be doing. Once our path of charm becomes more apparent to us, we can follow it like a string of lanterns glowing at night. The ideas relevant to us will arrive with us once they see we are following our correct path. It’s then up to us whether we release them or not.
Depending on how you look at it being ‘creative’ can be viewed as either a gift or a burden. Whilst creativity can enable us to miraculously produce the previously unimagined it isn’t always something you can draw on at will. What are your thoughts on this statement?
This totally relates to what I wrote above. But before diving back into the Vedic, I want to empathise with the first sentence. Yes, it can be a bloody burden: Here you go, an amazing idea drops into your lap, wowee! Great! For 5 minutes… And then; How do I make it? Will I make money from it? Fuck, this is going to take ages? My peers will think this is silly? Who am I to try and realise this idea anyways? I’m useless, this idea is too big for me! I’m off to scroll through Instagram…
Sound familiar? So how do we get out of this loop? Well, for me it’s about releasing the stress around the burden of the idea and the way I do that is through meditation. Here’s a strategy I developed for myself, it’s a zinger, you and your readers are welcome to use it, for a small fee, haha! not really…
Whenever you’re alone and you catch yourself in this loop of creative self-doubt and self-loading, say to yourself, ‘Guess what? I’m the only one here. This idea has landed on me, it has tasked me with realising it. I may not be perfect. There maybe a bunch of tools I could know better to realise it. God knows, maybe I could be more talented all round! But right now, it’s just me and this idea, so I’ll do my best and that’s good enough, because I’m the only one here…’
Of course if you’re working as a team you can just blurt the un-honed idea out into the room and you can all riff and that’s totally cool too. But many times you have to develop the idea to a certain point (Or all the way) alone. In which case, use the above.
As a prolific artist and director, how do you maintain your own creativity to ensure the strongest ideas and highest standard of output?
If you don’t mind I’m going to slightly skew this question. Above I’ve said a lot about ideas and you’ll glean from that above that believe there is no strengthening an idea. There is one idea and then another, but you can’t strengthen an idea no more than you can make a kid who’s terrible at maths, a maths whizz. Ain’t gonna happen. So rather I’ll answer the question about keeping creatively fit and keeping high output standards:
To be creatively fit: De-stress (Personally, I meditate and surf for this) and remain playful with the idea. Be the idea’s friend and don’t burden it with your life’s ambitions. Don’t make it the idea that will win you that award you’ve always wanted. Just be playful and remember your time as you on this earth is fleeting, so have fun. Also, stay curious. As we get older it’s very easy for us to shut ourselves off from new technologies and ways of doing things. We can feel that we’ve earned our stripes, learnt our chops and what’s happening now is for the kids. Well, that’s not the case. You’ve gotta stay in the playground and to a certain extent in the classroom. Luckily as a 3D artist this comes with the territory. That space is moving so fast, you gotta keep up. But that can be fun and delightful too. Try and see everything you don’t know through the eyes of that 20 year old grad you once were. It takes humility and I’m still working at it. But let the ego go and great things will follow.
As for ‘Highest standard of output’, I’d rather reframe this as being true to yourself and true to your mood. Sometimes I work the SHIT out of things. I let the quest for perfection go to the edge of being way too indulgent. But you know, sometimes that’s right for the creative I’m buffing. Other times, a couple of pencil strokes is enough. Adding more would be diminishing ‘the highest standard out output’. So work on knowing yourself and playfully work on your styles and then you’ll know when something needs a 4am reckoning or a couple of strokes and then happiness (Masturbation innuendo intended).
How important is experimentation in your creative work? What has been the biggest breakthrough in your creative work that came through experimentation?
Experimentation is very important. It’s exactly why we should keep personal work going in amongst our commercial necessities. I’ll give a few examples:
When I was getting ready to animate my sections for ‘Coalition of the willing’ I wanted to go painfully analogue. A friend of mine at the time mentioned the ‘Paint on glass’ animation technique. It is perhaps the most masochistic animation process there is; paint, the frame, photograph it, wipe it away, paint the next frame. 12 frames makes a second…You get the drift. I took this technique on like a man squaring up to a mighty oak with an old rusted saw. But I made some lovely sequences this way that I’m still proud of for Coalition of The Willing.
I’ve experimented with printing 3D frames onto clear acetate, photographing them, wiping them away and re-printing. Kinda worked, certainly looked analogue.
I’ve stop-frame animated a crowd of weird human dancers for a Coke ad. That worked-ish, maybe a 6.5/10.
I think the biggest break-through would be what I’m currently doing now with my sculpture drafts. Drum roll please… I am shading drawings…with a pencil! I know, it’s probably been done before. But observant readers will remember that I mention about 50 questions ago that I had a prodigious fine artist older sister. So I’ve had to release several kilos of stress even to start to take my pencil drawing seriously. As I do and as I let go of my fear, I’m making big break-throughs in my drawing. So yeah, losing the fear of not being as good as my sister has been perhaps the biggest break-through.
Do you ever suffer from bouts of ‘creative block’ where you find it difficult to get your head into a freeflowing creative space? If so, what methods, processes, exercises or activities do you use to unblock yourself?
My mind is constantly churning with creative ideas. Perhaps all the acid and mushrooms I took as a student really turned on the faucet to let the ideas flood in from the unified field. But, they are not always…the right ideas. Haha!
Case in point; Right now I’m directing a film for Earth Day. 2020 was a very quiet commercial time for me. I did lots of self initiated work, but as far as responding to scripts is concerned, I got pretty rusty. So when I received the script in February for the Earth Day film, it was a great chance for me to do with what I do best; craft elegant visual metaphors within scenes that would transition beautifully together. I sat down… and had nothing. NOTHING!!! I was so rusty. SO rusty in fact that I almost threw the job. I kept trying to throw it, but the agency kept coming back. I demanded total creative control hoping the agency would tell me to ‘bollocks’. But they kept saying ‘OK’. So then I was stuck. How did I unblock myself? Like this; Meditate, sit down, nothing, get upset, surf, sit down, nothing, get more upset…and repeat. Until I remembered the words of my mentor James Victore; Forward Momentum is everything, just do. So I did. I sketched inane shit that would never make the cut, jumped into Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4D making bad things, until the good things came. Because when you’re ‘doing’ your mind mind gets caught up in the technical stuff and your idea interpreting brain gets a break. So with the pressure released, the ideas receiving part of my brain could do it’s thing. So to un-block, I just get going on the bad stuff and let the god stuff come. In the words of the great Johnny Cash, ‘Get Rhythm, when you get the blues!’
In your opinion can anyone be trained to become creative or is it something you are born with?
Oh Jesus! Erm, wow. I really don’t know if I’m qualified to answer this. Here’s as close as I can get:
Humans are inherently creative, that’s totally evident to me. Even a grey accountants clark probably has poetry inside them that would make the most hardened soul weep. But to be creative on tap? That takes training and practice for almost everybody. Commercial creatives all have ‘fall back’ styles they grab at when in a bind. Is that being creative? Well it’s more like visiting the back to make a withdrawal. True creativity requires being de-stressed, in the moment, playful, curious and humble. So if you can get there, anything is possible.
You’ve crafted a unique and powerful signature in your work without ever becoming formulaic. How do you keep your creative work fresh and exciting for yourself?
That’s very kind indeed. Thank you for those kind words.
I guess age and making non-commercial work both help. Age in that I’ve been making ‘My work’ as a commercial and non-commercial creative for well over 20 years. Naturally over that time I’ve explored various styles and techniques. So in itself, evolution over a period of time tends to buck a formulaic approach. Keeping non-commercial work going means I can keep experimenting. Without a client looking over your shoulder I can really play. Last year I made quite a futuristic piece which brought one of my abstract sculptures to life. Whilst making this I was also still drawing in pencil, pen, making little clay sculptures and doing 3D printing work. Lately I’ve fallen in love with rendering these abstract sculpture concepts I have in all manner of ways. Next I would like to find a market for this work.
You’ve recently taken up sculpture, bringing beautiful abstract sketches from the depths of your imagination to life as tangible materialised forms. What is the inspiration behind these fantastic creations and where do you hope to take this new outlet for your own creativity?
Ah, that’s a nice segue from my answer above :) Often these sketches come just as I start to draw. It’s a bit like wandering around in the dark with a torch and discovering the forms around me as I go. So the inspiration simply comes from letting the pencil wander. At first I committed to never erasing a line, if it was drawn, it stayed. Lately I’ve loosened this approach a lot. I make a lot of draft marks before committing to a proper pencil render.
As I mentioned before, I’ve long been influenced by aeroplanes and fish. Robot faces and forms often emerge too and I put this down to my obsession with the Micronaut toys I collected avidly in the 80s. recently I looked them up online and revisiting their forms and shapes was quite a deep moving experience for me.
I would really like to find a market for this work. Recently crytpto art sales through NFTs has exploded. On the surface of things I’m a perfect candidate to jump into this world. But more and more now people are talking about the environmental impact of ‘minting’ these NFTs. As a long time environmental campaigner I feel that I can’t jump in until a more ecological process has been established. Plus, I like the idea of someone buying one of my sculptures and having it in their home. Hopefully this can bring them as much joy that I got from designing and making them. I’m really early in the 3D printed sculpture space, but I find it very exciting, especially as print quality and colour and material options expand.
What advice would you give to a creative looking to develop a side hustle or personal project alongside their career?
Well, you just need time and motivation. Families and children take up a lot of your time, but that doesn’t stop you from pursuing extra-curricular activities, it just means being very organised. I’d also suggest getting yourself ‘ready’ for this new venture by taking a good look at your motivation and working habits. Starting can be hard and seeing things through can be hard too, because perfectionism can stifle us early. I would highly recommend looking into James Victore, his book and his courses and what he teaches around motivation and dealing with perfectionism for creatives. He has a lot of great lessons to help you lose the hang-ups and jump in.
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the majority of us to re-address the way we work with negative and positive consequences. One of the surprisingly positive results, suggested in WeTransfer’s Ideas Report 2020, is that many of us have actually been more creative during the pandemic. As a creative how have you been coping with during the pandemic and what important lessons have you learnt that you will take forward in the future?
Well, 2020 was disastrous financially for me. I had the double whammy of the pandemic and then separating with the production company that represented me here in Australia and APAC. I’d had a great 2019 with them and then in 2020 hardly saw i script. I had to revert to being fully freelance to start winning work again.
At the beginning of my commercial work downturn I threw myself head first into personal creative projects and learning. I also explored 3D printing so I could start to make my sculpture concepts physical. I had a very satisfying 6–7 months just doing my own thing. But then of course I had to start making money again and so I starting hustling around November of last year.
What I learnt is that although I am aiming towards being a selling artist, I need to keep some of my attention on the commercial director career that I hope some day hope to leave behind. It has fed me and provided for my family for some years, so I must keep this going whilst I evolve into future artist me. It’s a bit like changing a car engine whilst driving down the freeway!
Your creative work has allowed you to travel the world and live in London and now Sydney. Does travel and experiencing different cultures influence your work? If so, in what way?
Yes it does, but I have to be a bit frank here and make the distinction between London and Sydney. London was a playground culturally. So many great things happened to me because I was in London between 1995 and 2010. People buzzed with ‘the new’. Everyone wanted to experiment, learn, create new things and blow the socks off the old. Opportunities were abundant. Styles shifted and evolved right on front of your eyes. However, I never found it easy living in London. Overall it was socially too edgy for me. Being a boy from the north I never settled.
Arriving in Sydney I immediately felt more at ease. People walking down the road and smiled. I’ve always loved the sea and fell in love with surfing. The wide open spaces and landscapes really call to me here. But creatively, Sydney is extremely conservative. Clients by and large won’t buy an idea unless its been done before. This has meant that most of my commercial career here has been frustrating. I made the choice to stay and I love the place, but commercially Sydney was not a great choice for me. But the flip side of this is that I’ve had to look at developing my non-commercial artist’s approach to feel satisfied. In fact, getting older and getting to know myself has taught me that I was never really suited to solely pursuing the commercial content route in the first place. After making What Barry Says or Coalition of The Willing I should have stuck with my issue film work all the way. I should have weathered it no matter what the financial impact, because it would have put me in a more genuine place for the long run. I have never loved advertising or the commercial world and now it is my means to money whilst I make my shift. This sounds like regret, partly it is but more so it is a realisation I am thankful for. At the ripe age of 48, it feels like I’m starting anew as I evolve out of just doing commercial work and into a place where I can start selling art and get back to issue film.
Over the last 2–3 years we’ve seen a steady growth in the popularity of NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) as a way to monetise digital content. In the area of digital art this has gathered pace recently. Indeed only last month US artist Mike Winkelmann AKA Beeple sold one of his artworks as an NFT at a Christies auction for $69 million. As a designer turned artist operating in the digital art space do you see this as a viable option for selling your own future artworks? If so, what do you foresee as the main challenges in working with NFTs?
The idea of digital artists being paid for their work is wonderful. Up until recently, digital artists would use their personal work as a shop front to attract agencies and brands. Only very few would ‘catch the eye’ of paying clients who’d be willing to pay for that artist’s own personal style. This attraction would also largely be ephemeral. Some creators would perhaps get to be flavour of the month with paying clients, but then the fashion would move on. The advent of NFT’s gives digital artists the opportunity to build communities around themselves and actually sell their work. It’s a paradigm shift and a wonderful thing.
However, and this is a huge however, minting NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain is currently enormously carbon intensive. The ‘Proof of Work’ platform means that minting a series of NFTs of a piece of work can be the equivalent in electricity draw to an average European citizen’s electricity demands for well over a month. There are now NFT market places growing up on ‘Proof of Stake’ platforms like Tezos which use a tiny fraction of the electricity Ethereum based marketplaces use to mint tokens. Hicetnunc is one such marketplace that is getting popular and runs on Tezos. But the most popular market places like Nifty Gateway and Superrare all run on Ethereum. So for now, if you want to make money as a digital artist, you’ll only really be able to do this on one of the Ethereum network marketplaces and this means emitting a huge amount of carbon to mint your work.
For me, the decision is simple. Whenever I acquire money, I do so for my kids. I don’t give a crap about my quality of life in old age. As long as I can eat and have a roof, that’ll be enough. All my saving and investment decisions are made for my kids. Last year I invested in a bunch of environmental ETFs. I did this because I didn’t want to have to tell this kids 15 years from now that their inheritance came from carbon sin funds. The exact same applies to my thinking on NFTs. Let’s just say the stars aligned for me and I sold a bunch of very expensive NFTs on the Ethereum network for $1mil USD. Imagine me handing over this money to my kids and saying, ‘Here you go boys, a shit ton of money your Dad made for you at the expense of you having a habitable planet to live out your years on’. Ridiculous! I’d never do it. In so many ways having kids has become my moral litmus test when it comes to how I invest and deal with money.
And finally: What’s next for you creatively?
To return to the flowing, in the moment, stream of consciousness style of motion work that is what runs genuinely through me. To perfect my process for making my sculptures physical, be it 3D print, bronze or whatever. To make enough money to get by, but more importantly, to really embrace the inner creative that revealed himself over the last 8 years of meditation, and live with him in a state of peace and productivity.
About the author:
Graham Sturt is Creative Director / Partner at strategic design and branding agency, D8.
Originally from England, he lived and worked in London for more than a decade before relocating to Amsterdam to follow his passion for Dutch design.
