July 06, 2012
artist simon macewan
Simon MacEwan claims he's disorganised. But perhaps that's just another word for busy. He is a Melbourne-based artist who works across a range of media. He draws, animates, sculpts and makes jewellery. Simon has held several solo shows in his home town, and participated in various group exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. He is also included in the Artbank Collection. Simon's next solo show will be at the Anna Pappas Gallery in Prahran, from 12 July.
Which five words best describe you? Obscure, baroque, particular, curious, distracted.
How did you get your career start and what path have you taken since? I have been an artist since I was quite small and never believed I would do anything else, so I suppose it started with crayons and went from there. It has been more of a tree than a path, where new areas of skill are explored, but the main trunk is always the art-making. The most recent step towards becoming a real artist is to start showing with Anna Pappas Gallery.
What's the best lesson you've learnt along the way? Not to give up, and to be patient. The best lesson I am yet to learn is how to be organised.
What's your proudest career achievement? I think I am still waiting for it, but last year I curated a project at C3 gallery called Studio Apartment, involving 15 other artists and designers. It went very well and I was able to work with people that I admire and like.
What's been your best decision? Going to live in Berlin for a year. I had spent some time overseas before but this was the first time I really made somewhere my home and made a concerted effort to learn a language.
Who inspires you? It sounds a bit sucky, but refugees really inspire me; if they can leave their homes and everything they have ever known and start again in a new country with nothing, and with nothing to go back to then surely I can find it within me to cope with my much more trivial troubles.
What are you passionate about? Art, sometimes, but it also fills me with gloom. I am passionate about the possibilities of education, and of the importance of learning and research as an end in itself, not simply as a path to a higher wage or solution to a particular problem. Great things emerge unintentionally, and having a specific end in sight can blind us to other possibilities.
Which person, living or dead, would you most like to meet? When I was a teenager, the sort of competitions where you could meet your favourite band filled me with an anticipatory dread and embarrassment. I couldn't imagine what you could say to them and just imagined standing awkwardly being looked at by the band while the competition organisers looked disappointed about your ability to have fun. I would like to meet the film-maker Hirokazu Kore-eda, though.
What dream do you still want to fulfill? Oh, there are a million of them. To be able to speak more than one language fluently and to visit Iceland's glaciers.
What are you reading? Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem and The ideology of the aesthetic by Terry Eagleton.
images courtesy of simon macewan and anna pappas gallery
first image: simon macewan, watcher, 2012, watercolour on paper, 56 x 76cm, courtesy of the artist and anna pappas gallery