Weekend Immendorff 2022, The Searchers, 2.7 x 2.7 m, Acrylic paint, ink on Wagner canvas drop sheet (apartment block on fire hooded shapes) photography Louis Lim

Interview for SUB URBAN MYSTIC took place in David M. Thomas’s Wynnum Studio 16 July 2022 at lunch time. 

Erika Scott: What’s the video?

Laughter

David M Thomas: A video of myself making these paintings.

E S: Oh, yea. Time-lapse?

D M T: No. Time-lapse on my iPhone. No, I have been shooting it with a camera, my Panasonic camera. There’s this one really great shot actually where I was videoing while projecting the drawing, where the camera interprets the projected light as this rainbow of light.

E S: Like filming your TV screen?

D M T: Yes. I guess. totally unexpected. It’s out of focus and I was listening to the Church and it’s this lovely image, which I will probably use at some stage to promote the show. I’m not sure if I’ll ever show this video, but I like the idea of watching myself making these things or documenting the process of making them.

E S: I just imagine that reflection from the screen, it’s like, you usually overlay imagery and light and stuff anyway. It’ll kind of open up another layer or something.

D M T: Yes. Well, yes.

E S: I’ve got like a long roundabout question.

D M T: No. 

E S: I’ve got eight questions in one.

D M T: go-on.

E S: I’m going straight into Suzanne. I remember you saying, after meeting Suzanne, that she’d influenced the nature of how you made work, not entirely in an expanded way, as I know that you were already doing band stuff, cerebral sound collaborative stuff, but I think your sculptural practice, I can’t remember the word you used, but you said it changed. And then coming full circle, like Suzanne did so many different creative things. She was doing shit in the community, directing video, she was directly involved in your practice, but she would never, she didn’t exhibit paintings, you know? They’re not her works, but it’s like she’s having a painting show.

D M T: Yes. That’s right.

E S : You’re concreting Suzanne in capital letters, as like an artist, straight simple.

D M T: I mean, I think there is a very definite statement to this exhibition that you pick up on right away. That is, we’re kind of continuing this idea of our shared practice, but this exhibition foregrounds these enlargements of her drawings that she made near the end of her life. She started doing them around the time of her residency that she did in Penang, an Asia Link residency. For Suzanne, that residency was really, really significant because it was the first time she was acknowledge as a solo artist in her own right. 

Suzanne was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. Then she had periods, good periods where things were okay. She got this residency, she went to Penang in 2015. That’s when she started making these drawings. I think that they were somewhat influenced by her interest in Buckminster Fuller, but they have this uncanny resemblance to Hilma af Klint’s stuff. I’m not sure how seriously she took these drawings and she also saw herself as I think a part of what you’re describing here is she saw herself as a kind of support person.

Also, she came from a community of people that saw the idea of  woman becoming artists as problematic. I think she was culturally (professionally) disadvantaged because of the community that she came from. I think she aspired to be an artist. That is my motivation here is to value, and to add to the work that she’s made.  There’s not a huge body of these drawings which I could find, there’s about 20 or 30 of them. And I’m selecting the ones that I like.

E S: That to speak to you.

D M T: That speak to me.

E S: How long was the residency?

D M T:  about three months.

E S: Oh, okay. Great.

D M T: What’s really weird, one of the other people that’s helping me with this exhibition, Bridie Gilman. She also did a residency in Penang in that same year.

E S: It’s interesting that you say, in your statement, that you’re interested in what’s in-between what you do, and who you are, and working outside of those labels. I can see that you are more interested in weaving in-between shared and collaborative spaces. Suzanne also liked to move in these spaces too. I guess what is it inside these spaces that’s interesting to you? Like, is it just outside language?

D M T: For me, there is a relationship between personhood, selfhood and authorship and how all those ideas are problematised by life, relationships, and the way that we consume information. We have these significant relationships in our lives where you are really bouncing ideas off each other all the time, and I’m realising this as I’m making these big works. I’m looking at these other works on the magazine rack, all those ones have similar formal elements to ones that Suzanne would pick up in these drawings, you know? The movement goes back and forth round and round and continues. This is why I wanted to call the exhibition at the beginning, Perpetual Motion (Dis)order. Because it’s the kind of constant movement. That notion of constant movement is an essential notion in the development of modernism, but also Hegelian philosophy.

That’s something that, because of Suzanne largely, I was able to develop some understanding of through doing a Ph.D.. Like you said your Mum helped you with your assignments, well Suzanne helped me with my PHD,  practically, financially, emotionally, and in every possible way. She says she would’ve been involved with some of those ideas. Sometimes she was my assistant. Sometimes I was her assistant.

E S : She was always roping me into events.

D M T: Sometimes you were her assistant, ha, absolutely, yes, absolutely.

E S: So is it just showing things as they are, or is it like a desired space, to see?

D M T: No, it is, I am always trying to create in my practice some sort of idealised notion of the way I would like things to be. It can only be this way in art for me. It’s not an ideological space, but it’s a space where I am trying to make things the way I might like them to be.

E S: So it’s personal, but when we were talking about room dividers last time, and you’re doing room dividers again now, but we were talking about room dividers and the ease of counter positions, and you were linking that to like free thought and free thinking, and that people need to look and see and be present. Do you think people aren’t thinking for themselves, is there any statement there?

D M T: I’m not making any kind of commentary necessarily directed at what other people are doing or not doing? I was like amused by that name (room divider) and how you can read it literally. How a room divider relates to very politically didactic ideologies that people seem addicted to right now.

E S: You room divide words too, like you use dis and you use the brackets, and then order, that’s a room divider.

D M T: Well, that’s right. I’m being playful and also kind of nostalgic. That was very much like a late eighties thing that people would do. When they’d have an exhibition, it would’ve be called disorder or disclosure and the dis would be bracketed. I’m sort of playing around with that. 

E S: I think people still do that now (laughs)

D M T: In that situation, where I’m using that title perpetual motion disorder, it’s about this dynamic between formal and informal which kind of, I know that covers everything aesthetically speaking, but I had this funny thing where I’m buying these shelves. I bought these shelves from this woman, Jenny at Apple Shelving in Sunnybank.

E S: I’ve been on their site, cause I was looking at Shelving.

D M T: I went out there a couple of times. The second time I went out there, there was the world’s largest container. Like the biggest container is parked across multiple car spots and I’m thinking, are they moving? Are they closing down? What’s going on? I went in there the first time and her son was like, “what are you doing?” I was telling him, “this is what I’m doing. This is what I want. Blah, blah, blah, blah.” Then the second time and he goes “these are for an exhibition?” I said, “yeah,” he goes, “what’s the exhibition about?” and then I had to think, how do I say what this show is about? so I can go and get noodles and not be standing here for 45 minutes.

E S: You know you can just make something up.

D M T: Good yes I know. I have my own habitual necessity of telling the truth or wanting to tell the truth. I said it was about life and death. Somehow, I guess this sort of interest in like, how that kind of dichotomy might relate to, and I don’t see that as a dichotomy. In the last couple of shows, especially like say the Wreckers Show (Real Distraction) it was about life and liveliness and life forms. Life really you could define it by simply in one-word, movement.

E S: Thinking dichotomy’s, I’ve noticed there’s been these big splits in your work, like your Boxcopy show in 2012, you split the room completely, horizontally, at my eye line. You left the gallery above, and created a basement below, where performances and stuff would happen. There was a real hardline between formal and informal, and at the time that felt quite aggressive.

D M T: That show?

E S: Just spatially, and the lighting, and by creating that separation. Now I think things have changed. I feel you’re still doing those room dividing spaces, but it’s so different.

D M T: Yes. Well, I’d say it’s quite a common thing for me and my work. I think the first time I did this it was in Canberra Contemporary Art Space, where I actually had the luxury of having a large space and a small space. I thought ‘how cool it is to be able to work with these two spaces’. Some of this I think, relates to this kind of Cartesian dualistic notion of consciousness for those people interested in philosophy, the Cartesian maxim that starts his system of thought is ‘I think, therefore I am’, and it presents this dualism between the “I” that thinks and the “I” that is, so presents a consciousness in dialogue with itself.

That proves its own existence through that internal dialogue. The interesting thing happens when you consider and accept the fact that other people exist and you are in actual dialogue with other consciousnesses and that’s the exhibition in a nutshell.  With the shelving I’m creating a space within the white box, within the outer space-space. 

E S: Who’s collaborating?

D M T: Bridie Gillman is helping me, she is producing some ceramics. Originally I asked 3 people to participate. One of those people’s was Merinda Davies and she was very busy at the time. I wanted her to bring living plants into the exhibition.

E S: It’s not happening?

D M T: No, not as far as I know. I’ve left that door open, but I’m not pushing it because I’m not about making things happen. I want to let them happen. It’s a kind of balance, I think for this type of collaborative practice its between making and letting, that’s probably the biggest life skill I’ve learnt. I’ve learnt that through my collaborative activity with ∑GG√E|N mostly and working with Archie, you cannot make collaborations happen. They have a life that makes it happen or they do not.

E S: Is it then the choosing?  The choosing of your collaborators then, is that something that just happens? Is there still some kind of predicted outcome?…

DMT: My agency in respect to that?

E S: yea

D M T: No, I think of it like casting. Also, I’ll finish answering the other question before I get onto that bit. Merinda, the door’s open and it would be cool. Bridie I had seen her ceramics in another exhibition and I thought, well, I’ve made this space from these shelves, and what can I put on the shelves, I also knew that there is a desire from the institution itself to incorporate the broader community in some way.

As I have done this in my practice before I thought, well, maybe I can curate other people’s objects into these shelves. It’s not then just about my consciousness and just not about, yes, I’m making selections, but then by making these things it also makes the space, like maybe it’s a shop. Maybe it’s a gallery, or who knows what fuck it is. Which I kind of like that confusing part of it too.

E S: Like the Antiques Road Show. (laughs)

D M T: So ceramics with Bridie, also I really like Queena Grot’s (Pam Rosel’s) lamps that I had seen in an exhibition in the last couple of years. I though wouldn’t it be cool to incorporate those lamps into the show. Because they’re very informal too. These objects have this kind of informal quality, which I thought would contrast particularly well with the very formal modernist style of furniture. It’s a kind of contrasting dynamic. Another collaborator in the show will be Rebecca Ross, who is going to help me with some of the manufacturing, doing the loops and the sewing of things.

E S: Oh great.

D M T : Rebecca has been someone who I have bounced these ideas around with and knew Suzanne very well, and you know so maintaining a kind of life relationship around making the work. Who else Kirralee Robinson is helping with one of the ideas that came out of a discussion with Bridie, which was to use this couch, a Vico Magistretti Carimate couch. That’s been in my family for years and we’ve used this furniture before in exhibitions, but we will have the base upholstered and cushions added to it, and that will take the place of the gallery minding desk. Apparently they need a desk, but I want the people minding the space to have a comfortable couch that they can sit on, to lie down on. Somebody can come along and sit next to them and just hang out comfortably in the space without it being like an office or a place of work.

E S: Is there anything more to say about the domestic or is it just that opposing force to the gallery?

D M T: No, no. originally the shelving wasn’t going to be as industrial as this, originally the shelving was going to be the Terence Conran thing, and the Terence Conran thing is this, so like these are basically my books of reference, this Terence Conran House Book, this Hilma af Klint book.

D M T: Have you seen the Calder circus?

E S: I don’t know, like I know like circus..

D M T: When we were in New York Suzanne bought this DVD, Alexander Calder would perform the circus made from wire and whatever was at hand. 

E S: A bit of puppetry?

D M T: Yes. Like puppetry, in really elaborate detail, and he’d have acrobats swinging on this thing and letting go and catching them with the other thing and sound. His wife would play the record player with the circus music, so painting the big canvases is I think like …

E S: Circus architecture?

D M T: Like the tent and the backdrops, It feels like that.

E S: Yea. That’s nice.

D M T: Those are some of the thoughts I’ve had while making them, that are reminding me of these things that…

E S: That she liked.

D M T: Just thinking about our life together and how that doing this reminds me of those things that she was interested in. It just comes around to it, you know? It’s like the paintings become  diagrams, especially some of the other ones which are more grid based. I have this instructional diagram or map.

E S: I was getting that, especially like, they’re not grids and they’re not, you know…

D M T: What the hell is this one? I have no idea what this one is. It’s just comes out.

E S: I feel like It’s an apartment block on fire. Under a rainbow with some cool belt buckles.

D M T: The way I was seeing it too, it has these hooded figures, which are like Philip Guston, like hooded figures. From the last four years of me teaching intro to painting, I’ve been talking about many artists, but key ones have been Hilma af Klint and Philip Guston. Then key ones that are present within the kind of international consciousness of people who made you make paintings.

E S: You are painting it Baselitz style, upside down.

D M T: Which is a necessity. But I’m a fan.

E S: I don’t know. I find it a weird way to commemorate, to make paintings of someone else’s paintings. It’s kind of nice. 

D M T: This goes back to the thing about authorship. For me, I was in the process of making, and before I put in this application I was hitting my stride in terms of my own work. For some reason, this idea came to me, seeing this opportunity and needing an idea for that opportunity. You always need and “idea” for a show. You can’t just say, I want to do my work. Give me the show.

I came up with this idea, I suppose, of making the whole show my work, but then my persona kind of isn’t in there, apart from the making of the show. One of the things that came up you know when I went in there yesterday and had a very impromptu meeting with Georgia and Hamish. As I was leaving, I said, “I think there is a weird dynamic between the universal to the very, very personal.”

Hamish was like, “Oh we could see that in what you wrote.” I said, ” that’s interesting. Because I’m only aware of that now.” So this is a weird thing that is happening. Like with Bridie and Suzanne, both being on a residency in the same place, Suzanne’s pictures relationships to Hilma af Klint all this kind of cosmic, mystical thing that’s happening.

E S: It’s a good line. “How can I know what I think until I see what I say”. I can’t remember who said it, but I like that. What’s the Suburban Mystic?

D M T: What is Suburban Mystic? I never know what to say. When people ask me, what is it that I do. What kind of work do you make? I remember saying to somebody at Metro arts, I’m a 

Sensual Suburban Mystic. I also remember a friend of mine referring to me as a mystic, and from reading this biography on Susan Sontag. She got interested in this thing called Gnosticism, a conflation of mind and body, conflating the Cartesian dualism. Because essentially what we are in this plane is one thing. That we see these distinctions between mind and body and this creates a whole lot of problems. Language also really helps us do this.

E S: You had this sensibility with Suzanne, with designing and making this house, but for this show it’s like these little gallery scenarios, and it’s kind of like “making house”? Is that weird?

D M T: There is a fantasy element to it.

E S: Like of comfort and safety and I don’t know…

D M T: The shelving acts as a type of archival and presentation space, and a way of framing things. I can put drawings on it, collages and a video and these other objects.

E S: Sound or any performances?

D M T: There’ll be sound, I will probably use those woven speakers. Those have a very domestic seventies vibe to them, but they have a very particular warm sound to them.  I feel like my role is turning exhibition design in a way into the art form. My focus is really on the exhibition design, but thinking through that in a very kind of holistic way.

I feel like I’m taking over Outer Space, but not in a kind of aggressive way. Just this is work that I know how to do, and rather than them have to ask me for a text or a poster or anything, I just know that these are things you need for an exhibition, and I can just do those things.

E S: Are the carpet tiles coming in?

D M T: Carpet tiles, yes. As mainly soft coverings to try to dampen the reflective surfaces in the space, because the sound of the space is so bad.

E S: The sound’s going to go behind the canvas?

D M T: The reflected sound because they will be hung away from the wall. The idea is that some of the sound waves will get trapped in the space behind the large paintings. The paintings interestingly, they have a very specific function that has nothing to do with their visuals.

E S: Nothing to do with Suzanne at all? The sound?

D M T:  No. Well, I was going to…the problem I have is what to call the exhibition.

D M T: …and trying to work out how to accredit it. Because I’ve seen recent exhibitions that have like this kind of collaborative thing, as a primary fulcrum of everything, and the show is just called the one person’s name. Then that one person’s name is super huge and it just seems like you’re saying one thing and you’re doing something else. You saying one thing and you’re doing the opposite.

E S : You’re still on top.

D M T : You’re doing this and it’s like oh, well that’s a convention. Well, that convention is part of the show and you need to question it and think about it.

E S: So did Suzanne have titles for these works?

D M T: I don’t  know. I don’t know what she was planning to do with them. Some of them aren’t quite finished, resolved, the other ones are like doodles.

E S : Has she ever shown drawings or anything like that?

D M T:  No. I don’t think so. Going back to the beginning of this. The significant story here is like when we had Suzanne’s Memorial in the Hamilton Community Hall like in the information before we showed the videos that she made, people were coming up to me at the front of the stage and one guy comes up to me and, and says, “Was Suzanne really an artist?”

He cocked his head and looked at me quizzically and said, was “Suzanne, really an artist?” Because like, a month before, Libby Howard and David Howard and I were in the funeral home doing the newspaper announcement and they were asking me, what should we put as the occupation? Maybe in another state of mind I might have said documentary filmmaker or director or human being or person or something else, but in that moment I said, “artist,” so this person thought it was the opportune time to question that decision.

E S: a lot of people seem to have a problem with that job description for some reason.

D M T: I mean, but it does kind of indicate something about the environment and the community that she came out of. That was very distrustful of that as an occupation and why she left it in the first place and why she went out with me, because I think she went out with me, because she saw that I offered an opportunity, as much as she was attracted to me. No, I wasn’t ugly or anything, but I think why we stayed together anyway, initially we hooked up cause we were young and we wanted to fool around. The reason why we stayed together is because I was doing stuff and constantly doing, not waiting for people to say, am I allowed to be an artist?

E S: When was the first moment that you knew you were an artist…(laughs)

D M T: I still don’t know that I’m an artist, but I’m not going to wait around for somebody else to give me the permission.

E S: That’s empowering.

D M T: It goes back to your discussion about doing things, this is the problem I have with institutions. I’m waiting for them to say when and where I can do things, how I can do things, I don’t want to wait for somebody else to give me the permission all the time, or the space or the money. I just want be able to, if I want to do something, and I think Suzanne was attracted to that…

E S: She was really driven too…

DMT: She was very, very driven. She was also, she came from a culture that was conservative and I meet these young students all the time. I think, it’s somebody else that gives you the permission to do something. Some cultural body, some board of people, some selection panel says you’re allowed to do this. If you wait for that, you’ll never do anything. You have to kind of self-generate the license somehow. You have to overcome this sense of I’m not worthy, which culturally everybody in this country sort of has at a certain point, you know? That’s a less of a fact, everybody seemed to have, certain people who, maybe it’s because I wasn’t born here, that I don’t feel that I need permission. I don’t know. One of the things I’m doing with the show is to say, well, I think these works are absolutely worthy of being in an art gallery, and being considered art, and making them big, as I’m trying to make them great.

E S : Do you think you’ve been more apologetic in the past, and that you’re more confident now, that typical story?

D M T: I think probably the opposite in some ways. I think as you get older, you become more apologetic in some ways, but what I’m aware of, what you become aware of as you get older I think is also that, there’s a lot more confusion out there than you suspect, put it that way. I have a lot of experience and I’ve acquired quite a lot of information around the activities that I’m involved with so…I don’t know, hopefully I’m just trying to become a bit more gracious in how I deal with the broader community, and not be such an asshole, you know. Part of that, what I was describing, is that it comes with a certain sort of impatience. And that’s a lot to put on other people as well. If anything, I hope I become more patient…

E S: I’m pretty impatient

D M T: Well, nothing fucking happens. I understand. I understand it, so tedious, like you want to make something happen, but like that’s something that you learn. That’s what I was saying about letting things happen over making them happen. Sometimes you have to make them happen or else nothing will happen. Knowing when those times are, when is the time to make something happen and when is the time to just ease off and stop pushing.

E S : I’ve got that song in my head now (sings) “You gotta to know when to hold them”…

D M T: Kenny Rogers…

E S: yep.. (laughs)

D M T: Well, I’ve been listening to a lot of Waylon Jennings because like Suzanne and I went through a real, like, in the early stages of living here, we went through this Waylon Jennings phase and it’s that type of, that song was a rip-off of Waylon Jennings essentially.

E S: Oh, okay.

D M T: He invented that dum dum..that kind of bass, heavy bass swing, Texas swing thing. That was Waylon’s, because he was a bass player. He was actually a bass player with Buddy Holly. He didn’t get on the plane. He almost got on the plane.

E S: Oh, lucky.

D M T: That’s a story. That’s a life story. Like we were really into it. We read his biography, collected all his records.

E S: Oh, yea.

D M T: She loved his kind of rugged manly good looks.

E S: I always enjoyed Suzanne’s and your references, for new things.

D M T: Yes. She was a searcher man, she was always researching. That’s why I say, like, I don’t think she knew about Hilma af Klint, but there’s a great chance that she did. Cause she kind of knew about everything like two years before I did. Then she would tell me, and usually, I’d go, “oh, I’m not interested in that.” Then two years later I’m going, “oh, that’s really interesting.” She’d say I told you about that two years ago…(laughs)..and she’s still telling me.

I know that seems kind of maudlin, and that I’m dwelling, but there’s nothing about making these paintings that’s like that. I mean, there’s certain aspects of my life that feels like that, but making these paintings is a different sort of thing..

E S: I mean, it feels pretty celebratory.

D M T: That’s good.

E S : The way the paint kind of sits on the material is interesting. It keeps that kind of sketch-y quality, and still looks quite instantaneous, even though it’s-

D M T: For me, one of the most important things in my own painting, the work that I like has a kind of spontaneous liveliness of application. I’m not fan of work that looks like it’s machine-made. Then back to that thing about where is the humanity for me? The humanity is embedded in the way materials are worked. Evidence of the hand, the evidence of the person. I am trying to amplify and not kind of copy exactly. I am trying, I mean, I’m using these paintings as a map into her bodily activity. In some of these images, it’s hard not to see a contemplation of a kind of abstraction of cancer and the disease that she had, a kind of visualisation, an attempt to take control of what’s happening to her body. There’s a kind of diagrammatic or what I’m calling idiomorphic  representation of her illness, of her own body. What’s implied by some of them is this kind of cosmic aesthetic, universal aesthetic. For me, that cosmic aesthetic involves not just the internal, but also not just the external universe, not just the ideal universe somewhere out in space, but it’s in every cell of your body.

E S: What do you think she would think of these?

D M T: I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve asked myself that question. Would she of wanted me to do this show, or the other show, where I just did what I was doing at that time. Then I don’t have an answer….did I tell you that funny dream I had?

E S : No.

D M T: I was here making music, and the sliding door was open and I turned around and Suzanne was standing there. Coming in, and she walked into the bedroom and sat on the couch in the bedroom, and then pointed to the bed where I usually sleep. There’s another Suzanne in the bed..kind of laughing. At that point, I woke up, my heart pounding. The most realistic waking dream I’ve ever had in my life. I felt like it was a kind of practical joke, and she was smiling and happy and healthy. I haven’t had a lot of dreams with her in them, but I’ve had like two dreams like that, that have been really kind of present, and where I really felt I wasn’t dreaming. I don’t know if that answers the question? There’s this there’s kind of dualism, there’s duality, like there’s two of them and they’re both in the room. I just felt like, she was just saying, wake the fuck up! Get out of bed, you lazy fuck. I know she was saying something, some kind of statement. It was obviously my own consciousness saying something, or it was that spirit. What I’ve come to realise is that, we die, but it’s not the end of that energy. The energy exists around us. We’re just part of this thing. We have consciousness in a body for a period of time. The energy that constitutes that consciousness in that body doesn’t disappear. And it exists, like it doesn’t kind of exist in some mystical invisible realm. It exists in these things, in these actions and these activities. It’s me kind of amplifying that, trying to kind of reignite or expand, amplify.

E S: …then it’s not even a remaking, it’s got a whole other life-feeling, its totally different.

D M T: It has these other functions in relation to my individual existence within the exhibition. It’s almost like a pretext for the activity, but it’s also a thing in itself. They even function as these kind of objects when you fold them up, when they become these things on the shelves. So…pretty big…

E S:…out-er space? (laughs)

D M T: No you won’t run out of space with an SD card..we’d have to talk for three days…