GAYLETTER

Justin Shoulder is a performance artist based in Sydney, Australia. Gerard Garvey (the photographer of this feature) and I spent some time with Justin and his composer Nick Wales at their super swanky, though temporary, Tribeca home. We were lucky enough to see Justin dressed up in a pink body suit and gloves; we were also lucky enough to see Justin dressed down — I point this out only due to his exquisite chest tattoo. We talked about Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, the idea of replacing the canned laughter that we hear on sitcoms with stereotypical gay verbal compulsions (werk!), sperm donations, and the absurd broadness of the word “fashion” in New York City, among other things. Though most importantly I was lucky enough to pick his brain with many curious questions regarding his art practice.

Justin Shoulder is an extremely talented artist and luckily for you he’ll be preforming his magical performance V at Pussy Faggot on September 12^th, his New York debut. Be there.

Hello Justin Shoulder, Do you consider yourself a performance artist?
 Hi Thomas. I am a performance artist wrapped in a shiny film of entertainment sweetness. I’m interested in sharing my stories in the club, the theatre, still and moving image.

Where did you grow up, where do you live?
 I’m from the northern beaches of Sydney, Australia. From suburban greenery I moved to Summer Hill in the Inner West of Sydney where I am based today.

Did you go to university, what did you study? From High school I went straight into a Digital Media degree at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, a broad survey of sound, video, digital photography and art theory. Afterwards I worked full-time in photographic retouching not really considering I could be an artist, but that I had to climb that stairway of industry. I’d go really hard on the weekend in search for something visceral away from the screen. I found 34B and Club Kooky and met a whole family of artists who used group performance as their mode of communication. I was really enamored by this glamorous freaky world and it became my vehicle for expression. So I’d also say the club was my education.

Why do you think you started performing for an audience? After staring at a screen 10hours a day in a dark room – performing seemed like the most alive-making engaged creative exchange I could have with people (apart from fucking).

What was the response from your first public debut? Totally wild! I performed at a night called “You Lil Stripper“ (just to contextualize if you don’t know in Oz we have a totally bogan saying “You Lil Ripper” equivalent of “Fuck Yeah”) put on by my collective The Glitter Militia. I did a reverse lycanthropic strip with my red tinseled disco dog Caenus Cerabrallus supported by a percussion ensemble. Arm stilts transformed me into a quadruped. With screams of delight from the audience — those 2 months of sculpting and gluing tinsel were worth it!

Justin made that illustration: “V comes from directly derived from that image”

So you’ve executed both options that performers have in terms of documenting their work. One being simply to film the performance live and the other is to essentially create a short film that features your performance. Which do you prefer? What’s the dynamic like between the two? I’m such a spectacle freak so I cringe hard seeing straight up filmed versions of my work because you lose so many layers of ambience and sensory impact. I’m much more drawn to re-interpreting my performances for the camera as works on their own. I can then amp the special effects, the colours, the editing, the lighting and have much more control. I’d encourage the audience to watch my live works without camera mediation pretty please — just feel it.

I felt that your latest project, The River Eats, was extremely macabre but in a very unique way. When and how did this project come to fruition? The River Eats is a response to my urban environment at this time. The central character Pinky comes as a response to the increasingly digitally mediated way we live. He loves internet shopping and the validation of self provided by social media. He is a nihilist only interested in the next shiny thing. He also comes from my own obsession with material objects and trying to reconcile this! Like all the creatures they are an aspect of my personality which can be confronting to see come out of me! Underneath all of this is his innate desire to be part of something much bigger. In the show Pinky undergoes a metamorphosis, shedding his material skin to reveal the elemental creature OO. The show was inspired by a trip I made made to Brazil in 2011 — specifically, a revelatory experience I had at the Iguazu Falls. Contemplating the recent death of two friends and my grandmother, I made an offering to the falls. All these butterflies came out of the waterfall and they were licking my tears. Their wing patterns inspired the design for the creature OO. I wanted to remember that feeling. Because as soon as I come back, I forget it – you just go back into your everyday reality. The whole of The River Eats is about finding this balance between living in an urban contemporary world and still remembering you’re part of something bigger.

The work was developed as part of Melbourne’s 2012 Next Wave festival, with dramaturgy from my long-time mentor and creative producer Jeff Stein. This year I presented a further development for Sydney audiences in my first two week season, with a fucking great response!

You will be performing in New York City on September 12^th — any words for those who either aren’t planning on attending or to the people who haven’t head about it? What should they know or expect? Expect an amped camp alien spectacle.

Justin as V in NYC!

I am assuming that you’re a fan of Leigh Bowery and Matthew Barney, are there any other artists in particular that you’re inspired by? There is a very rich lineage of queer artists from Sydney that inform my work. Costume performance artist Brenton Heath-Kerr (particularly his work wood-woman), activist artist Peter Tully, performance artists Betty Grumble, Matthew Stegh, Sex & Glitta and Regrette Etc. Last year I worked alongside Italian group Dewey Dell and their synthesis of light, sound and movement and its simultaneous collision hit me hard!

Your Fantastic Creatures project was a 6 part performance series dealing with various characters. Are they a family? How long of they been in existence?
 My practice so far has centered on the creation of contemporary urban mythologies and their objectification across the fields of video, performance and sculpture. More specifically I have taken great interest in the form of Mythical Creatures. There is a broad cultural and historical base spanning millennia: from composite entities like the sphinx to the preternatural vampire well alive in contemporary everyday pop culture. The Mythical Creatures of our worlds over populated bestiary reveal a human desire to connect with the mysteries and cycles of the natural environment. They become vehicles to explore human anxieties and desires.

Drawing from this investigation I have created my own Fantastic Creatures beginning with Caenus Cerabrallus in 2007. These beings unite human, animal and fantasy forms to draw links between natural, spiritual and metaphysical realms. For each Fantastic Creature, I create a personal story, intention and landscape where they reside. Live performances become theatrical ceremonies that awaken these beings from imagined slumber. Mime, dance, drag, clowning and training in Bodyweather articulate these beings in a fusion of performance approaches. Through a process of drawing, sculpting and weaving I create intricate masks and costumes for each of the creatures out of found/discarded materials. These shavings form the skin cells of the Fantastic Creatures whose current identifying attributes are tinsel, plastic bags, balloons, synthetic hair, Styrofoam, straws and sequins.

I don’t see it as a closed project but a life practice that gives my world logic. I’ve just began mapping their universe.

I particularly feel in love with your character Glut Glut — I like to think of him as essentially Oscar The Grouch’s overtly sexual cousin with a fetish for Shell oil. How accurate is that perspective? Could you want to elaborate on his character?
  Glut Glut is insatiable, filthy, the embodiment of excess… all it can say is ‘glut glut’. It speaks only through its own name to perpetuate itself. Like the devil it can also procreate without sex.That description is pretty accurate! I have been becoming GlutGlut for a very long time and he has his own body odour now that my boyfriend describes as ‘sweaty balls, off milk and hairspray’

I also really enjoyed watching your film/performance V. One motif that I though was especially interesting was the idea of an anti climax or a broken expectation. Everything from the THX sound that everyone knows to the meowing that obviously implies a cat, which ends up being a book full of copied sketches. What’s the function of this theme in V? With V I wanted to create a tragic clown that was friendly yet monstrous. V came directly from the ink drawing presented in the show. From this image it got me thinking about drawings as mirrors. I started to research the tradition of Vanitas still-life paintings — dealing with the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. V the Fantastic Creature, responding to this, became a contemporary performative Vanitas. It feels like some sort of dramatic sermon by V with a promise of paradise  — that is never delivered — in that sense a total anti climax.