WHO IS DOUG BARTLETT?

Australian collaborative collage artists Nick Morris and Dave Bowers prove that two is better than one. TREATS! goes Down Under to find out why a Basquiat-like obsession with celebrities, the word nude or sex, muscle cars, advertising, cartoons, pin-ups, surfing, comic books, hype, musical icons, eroticism and graffiti—Doug Bartlett!—has turned the Australian art world upside down.

by Rob Hill

DOUG HAS ENTERED THE BUILDING

The music is moaning and groaning. The beers are cold. Paint is splattering. Something is happening. A sorta metamorphosis. Not quite a conjuring or heavenly seance, though. It’s less intellectual than instinctual. More of the juices of creative momentum are flowing than a spiritual uncorking. But it is something. It’s the kaleidoscopic setting where the elusive Doug Bartlett comes roaring to life. But Doug Bartlett isn’t exactly a person. Doug Bartlett is the name of the “energy” that Nick Morris and Dave Bowers create when they get together and paint at their Torquay studio in Australia. The process goes something like this: slabs of color are slapped down randomly and images are layered on haphazardly. There’s only one rule: You can paint over anything, and the other one can’t protest. Whole vistas appear and disappear. Hours of work can be swept away with one exacting sweep of a brush. “Doug has entered the building” is the only explanation required.

“This process, which is confronting as well as cleansing, continues until we both agree the painting is finished,” Morris says. “Working this way creates a feverish momentum, and we can be working on up to forty paintings at a time.”

The canvases are a free-flowing exchange of random images and themes, and are applied using stencils, spray paint, silkscreen and freehand, using acrylic paint and oil stick. They glean material from mass popular culture, including quotes from celebrities and words lifted directly from spam text.

TOONS, GOONS, POP STARS & CARS

Morris mines his childhood for dreamy inspiration: “I am inspired by the iconic images of my childhood in Ballarat. Australian symbols like Hoges, GT Falcons and Monaros permeated every fiber of my being. I still remember staring in awe at my father’s friend’s sparkly green speedboat named Anyhow.

These images, along with cartoons, pop stars and religious icons, dominant the work. These symbols and aesthetics helped to form the basis of the Doug Bartlett experience.

Bowers is interested in exploring the hazy line between beauty and ugliness: “Aesthetically, I find inspiration comes from anywhere any time. I find myself mesmerized by what I call incidental urban micro landscapes, like the patterns of road repairs, or chewing gum on the footpath; symbols, numbers and letters on power poles; the accidental tracks and patterns we leave as a species. I find the process of decay quite beautiful—rust, peeling paint etc.”

Although he jokes that he “creates cartoon characters that would fail a Disney audition” they have a certain melancholic depth that can’t be ignored. They appear sad, aloof, and angry. Almost worn out.

Together, the artists’ aesthetics begin to slowly swirl into a painting. The sharing of a canvas can be a liberating experience. There’s an almost helicopterish momentum created; decisions are made quickly, and then abandoned, only to be explored again. “Working alone you can sometimes labour over a detail for hours,” Bowers says. “But with a shared canvas, someone else (Doug) will just boldly paint right over it and I’ll think what a bloody relief.”

HOOK, LINE & SINKER

Nick Morris and Dave Bowers graduated from Monash University (Caulfield) in 1986, both with Diplomas in Graphic Design. They have worked together in the Street / Surf / Art subculture since creating clothing label “UMGAWA” in 1990. After selling the UMGAWA label, Morris worked as art director for Quicksilver. He then launched anyhow his own freelance design company in Torquay. Bowers became a regular Mambo artist, as well as working as an illustrator and musician. Between them they have produced, and continue to produce, art for brands such as Paul Frank, Stussy, Mossimo, Lee, Globe, and St. Lenny.

And their work quickly became gallery darlings in Australia. They exhibited all over: Fresh Gallery in Melbourne, Ho Gallery in Melbourne and Tiger Fish in Torquay. But it was one showing that changed everything: After the exhibit at Art Sydney, their prices have almost tripled. (Their prices range from $1600 to $4200, with an average price of $3500.)

But, ultimately, what is the goal of Doug Bartlett? What, beneath all the paint and oil and icons and pop culture overload, is really going on? It’s simple—and not so simple. The official artist statement is as follows:

“My art is the Australia that I grew up in and live in.

It’s all the images that are indelibly stamped in my mind. I feel fortunate to have been born in this country and my art is testament to that and all the other great international influences that we are exposed to. The unique culture of Australian muscle cars and the bogan culture that so often revolves around it. The beautiful form of the female even when it is thrown into that bogan culture is still the same beautiful form that adorns the highest of levels of society. Our obsession with celebrities, their personal lives and the bizarre headlines designed to capture our attention in the media. Throw in the word nude, sex or confessions and it is sure to create excitement with a story that rarely lives up to the hype of the headline. Advertising seems to follow suit and the more conscious we become of ads of the past, they seem to be so naïve and ridiculous. It’s entertaining to think that our ego’s bought those campaigns hook, line and sinker.

I choose not be cynical but focus on what’s great about our unique culture and it is truly unique. It’s a culture that doesn’t need to take itself too seriously and can willingly take the piss out of itself. At times it can be silly, even ludicrous, but it is what we have grown up with and been exposed to over the journey so it seems all so normal.” —Doug Bartlett

Maybe it’s the idea of “combines,” a term created by Rauschenberg in the 1950s, referring to his work that blended traditional mediums of painting and sculpture, which Doug Bartlett has taken to a new level. The simple—yet wildly hard to integrate—idea that if someone paints over your precious work, you’re not allowed to complain about it.

To buy Doug Bartlett paintings go to www.nickmorris.com.au/doug_bartlett_collaborative.php