5 MINS WITH..
Hugo Mathias
Last time we chatted you were over in Namibia, and you told me that being there "has influenced my art in a way that I’m not yet aware of" - now that you're back, can you articulate how it has done so?
Yes, I can try. I’ve always found myself blending my art with my interest in pop culture – drawing my favourite musicians or actors. But I feel that I want my art to have more substance than simply being representative. I want it to tell a story.
I’ve always been interested in history, and spending all that time in Africa I was thinking about these cultures. They have been there for thousands and thousands of years, migrated to different areas of the continent over time, and different languages have melded together to form new ones. Cultures trade with other cultures, but there’s always a root to everything. I think about this even with music. “Who did it first?” Rock came from blues which came from American slave spirituals, which came from West African folk music. You can trace things back. I noticed so many parallels between contemporary American hip hop dance and traditional African dance. I think we all know where that link came from.
I started drawing things I saw - daily life and wild life. I became interested in a lot of European master painters who had travelled during the late 19th Century and recorded what they saw. Sometimes they painted contemporary subjects and sometimes they painted from history. I want to create images like this. However, given European culture at this time, their history paintings depicted Roman, Greek or Biblical subject matter. I want my images to tell stories that are rarely told – the ethnic diversity of South Africa, King Moshoeshoe of Lesotho’s diplomacy, David Livingstone’s heart being buried under a tree in Zambia, or the failed attempts of European colonists to domesticate zebras.
So in a nutshell I want to develop my paintings into stories from history. Given my recent experiences, the subject would be southern Africa. Since I’ve been back I’ve kept rather busy with commercial work, so I haven’t had time to paint. However, I’ve produced a 26-page zine with drawings & writings from my eight months spent in Africa. Two weeks before my flight back to Melbourne my bag was stolen on a train in Zambia. It contained cash and my passport, but most importantly my sketchbook. I’ve attempted to recreate it from memory, and the zine is the product.
Although your back from your trip, are you still "recording things as you see", or does being back in AUS mean different directions & motivations?
I’m still reflecting on Africa and conjuring up compositions for paintings I would like to complete. We are spoilt in Melbourne, there’s free art museums that exhibit these European master painters everywhere – NGV, State Library, etc. So, I’m taking advantage of those opportunities and gaining inspiration all the time.
So explain how you came to create the ‘Ivory’ single cover?
I had a few ideas but settled on the repetition of the face. I guess it’s a very basic representation of that idea that everything has a root and you can trace it back. In this case, the repetitive faces become smaller but they’re all linked together somehow – opacity tool in Photoshop. The lyrics, to me, describe ageing and reflecting back on things.
What's coming up for Hugo Mathias Illustration?
I’ll be working in my studio until the summer. During this time, I want to execute these ideas I’ve talked about concerning African history. Then I’m going home to New Zealand for a month to drive. My only plan is to drive. I want to work on a project with my home country as the subject. I just booked the flights, so I’ll think more on this later.
