Digital art

In conversation with artist, filmmaker and designer Tee Ken Ng

tanya.sticca@artgallery.wa.gov.au — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 05:01:35 +0000

In conversation with artist, filmmaker and designer Tee Ken Ng

L-R: Tim Minchin, Tee Ken Ng; Perth location shoot for Tee Ken Ng’s zoetrope-animated video for Tim Minchin’s Leaving LA 2020. Photographer: Cam Campbell.

tanya.sticca@a… Fri 12/03/2021 - 1:01pm

12 March 2021

Zoetropes have been around since the 1800s and have been used to create some fantastic animations by the likes of Studio Ghibli and Pixar for example. When did you start experimenting with zoetropes, and why?

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I hadn't actually made a zoetrope prior to Leaving LA. As an animator, I was always fascinated by them because you could see exactly how they worked and yet it was like magic when they spun to life. When Tim Minchin approached me to make the music video, I had been creating animated designs to go on vinyl records that would animate when spun and viewed through a camera. I'd gotten into this form of animation in 2018 due to a video I'd made for Eristoff Vodka, who are involved in hosting Boiler Room events that stream live dance music sessions. I thought it'd be cool to create an animation on a DJ slip mat and film it for the video. To my surprise, the video blew up, and I was inundated by people wanting to know how they could get the slip mat. I also started getting commissions from musicians and record labels wanting their own custom-designed vinyl. As I was getting known for this animation method, I pitched the idea to Tim of using zoetropes which is a cylindrical variation of the technique. The spinning zoetropes created an animated world for Tim to be trapped in (like a rat on a wheel) and eventually escape from.

Tell us a bit about your journey as an animator. What were the challenges you faced in the industry, being based in Perth - one of the most isolated cities in the world? Is there anything that you would do differently?

I stumbled into animation in 2013 when I was creating videos on the now-defunct social video app called Vine. The app was owned by Twitter and allowed you to upload short videos up to six seconds long, which had to be shot within the app. To record, you simply held your finger on the screen. The extremely basic interface meant you had to get super creative to make something engaging. Many creators like myself soon worked out you could make stop-motion animations with the app by quickly tapping the screen to capture frame by frame. Posting my work on Vine was my first foray into social media, and I quickly connected with many like-minded creators all over the world, many of which I still keep in contact with. I don't think it really mattered that I was in Perth; if anything, I think it helped differentiate me. Back then, I was probably only one of two creators in Australia known for creating social content with stop-motion.

Detail from Tee Ken Ng’s zoetrope-animated video for Tim Minchin’s Leaving LA 2020. Photographer: Tee Ken Ng.

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You've worked on quite a few projects with some of the world's most well-known brands and artists. Was there a particular project that stood out for you the most, and if so, why?

Many stand out for very different reasons. From having an animation I created for Twitter tweeted from Mars by the Curiosity Rover to being flown to a surprise ware-house party by Netflix.

And of course, Leaving LA has been the most epic journey where I got to film in LA and Sydney, exhibit at AGWA as part of the Perth Festival and rekindle my childhood friendship with Tim.

Tee Ken Ng

Perth-based artist, filmmaker and designer

Who would be your dream artist/company to work with, and why?

Company-wise, up until last year, I would have said Apple. Incredibly I got to work with them three times in the past 12 months. The iPhone is such an incredible filmmaking tool; working with something that people carry around in their pocket perfectly fits with my DIY ethos to making videos.

What advice would you give to those who are looking at mapping out a career in animation?

I'm largely self-taught and don't really feel part of an industry, I have no idea how you'd go about getting a job with a studio, so I'm probably not the best person to give animation career advice. General creative advice, follow your curiosity, make stuff for yourself that you want to see and put it out there because chances are someone else would want to see it too. Agencies are always on the lookout for new and interesting creators on social apps like Instagram and Tik Tok, and fortunately, they aren't necessarily looking for content with the most likes or views. If you can develop your own style by making things you love, you'll have a better chance of standing out.

Leaving LA | Tee Ken Ng and Tim Minchin AGWA installation view, January 2021. Photo by Court McAllister.

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You are an artist who isn't afraid of pushing boundaries when it comes to art. Is there anything that you are currently experimenting with or is on your bucket list?

In my latest music video, I managed to strike two things off my bucket list. I've been inspired to do a one-take video since watching the movie '1917'. We did it by mounting a GoPro to a Lego train, another idea that I've wanted to try. The music video should be released in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for it!

This is the first time you've had a solo exhibition at the Gallery. How has the experience been for you so far and what do you hope audiences will experience when they come to see the exhibition?

I have exhibited before as part of group shows. Leaving LA is the first large-scale exhibition of my work. I always thought it would be amazing to have a work in AGWA, but doing an entire exhibition was not something I had even imagined possible; it is quite surreal to me.

I hope audiences are primarily entertained and immersed in the animation, the zoetropes, and Tim's song. For me, it never gets old watching the animations spin to life; it's like being a child again; if visitors come away with that feeling, I'd be happy.

Tee Ken Ng

Perth-based artist, filmmaker and designer

Leaving LA

Tee Ken Ng

Tim Minchin

Perth Festival

Digital art

Tee Ken Ng

Card Text

Tee Ken Ng chats with us about his journey to becoming one of Australia’s most sought after animators, zoetropes and his collaboration with childhood friend, Tim Minchin.

Rewinding the Panorama

tanya.sticca@artgallery.wa.gov.au — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 06:44:34 +0000

Rewinding the Panorama

Sohan Ariel Hayes Panoramic View of Albany (Kinjarling), The Place of Rain 2019 (detail). Advisors: Lynette Knapp (Menang Noongar) and Prof. Stephen Hopper AC⁣. Three channel digital video colour⁣, 5760px x 1080px, 25fps, 2.1 sound, 10’08” minutes edition: 1 of 3⁣. Commissioned for the Janet Holmes à Court Collection.

tanya.sticca@a… Mon 06/07/2020 - 2:44pm

5 September 2019

Currently showing at the Art Gallery of WA, The Botanical: Beauty and Peril exhibition brings together works from the State Art Collection and that of Janet Holmes à Court in a wide-ranging, and often bracing look at representations of the Australian landscape.

Among the works on display is the striking video piece Panoramic View of Albany (Kinjarling), The Place of Rain (2019), by Perth-based media artist Sohan Ariel Hayes, in which he reinterprets an 1834 panoramic etching of Albany by British surveyor Robert Dale.

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Perth Media Artist Sohan Ariel Hayes with his work Panoramic View of Albany (Kinjarling), The Place of Rain (2019).

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This reinterpretation of a perhaps notorious work in the exhibition – the etching is notable not just for its panoramic format but also the gruesome fact that it was first exhibited in London alongside the decapitated head of Noongar leader Yagan – prompted extensive research into the social and environmental history of the original print. Read on for an interview with Sohan Hayes in which he shares his insights on a number of concerns and themes raised in his work.

Working with archival materials has been a key part of your practice for some time now. What was it about this Robert Dale etching in particular that captured your interest?

The panoramic format first grabbed my attention – I can’t think of any other panoramic images done in Western Australia before 1900, so it’s kind of unusual. Then there are these striking tableaux of Menang people and soldiers across the foreground of the view. From all the research that we’ve gathered, the view appears to be nineteenth century real estate propaganda. I mean it looks quite beautiful – it’s a picturesque image of Albany a few years after settlement – but actually its purpose was to sell something. It’s advertising a land opportunity and was a powerful vision that attracted investors to the Swan River enterprise. In the act of doing so the work becomes a story about dispossession: the stripping of the rights of the Menang people without their knowing or consent.

Can you tell me a bit more about the research process that went into developing this work, and how you drew out the ‘invisible histories’ in the original?

This work has also been reimagined by other Western Australian artists, Christopher Pease and Gregory Pryor, so those works feed into the dialogue around this one. A key link has been conversations with (Menang Noongar Elder) Lynette Knapp and (WA botanist) Stephen Hopper. Stephen Hopper had actually just done a couple of lectures on the fact and fiction of the Dale panorama. So I went and spent some time with the two of them, using Stephen’s scientific background and Lynette’s Menang/Noongar knowledge. And we just did these passes across the painting and all of this detail came out of that. Obviously we can’t include all of that detail, so there’s this emotional, intuitive response which comes out in the work; a simple shift from day to night, from summer to winter storm, this rain like tears when these monsters begin to appear.

With this work being specifically commissioned for the exhibition, was there any sense of responding to AGWA as a historical and cultural site itself?

Good question. Dale’s print has been shown regularly in the past by AGWA, but never alongside the descriptive pamphlet by Dale which was originally distributed with the print and an illustration of the head of Noongar warrior Yagan. By placing this new work next to the original print, the intention is to trigger a dialogue between the two images. Once you’ve seen the new work, I don’t think you can ever look at the original print in the same way again.

Sohan Ariel Hayes Panoramic View of Albany (Kinjarling), The Place of Rain 2019. Advisors: Lynette Knapp (Menang Noongar) and Prof. Stephen Hopper AC⁣. Three channel digital video colour⁣, 5760px x 1080px, 25fps, 2.1 sound, 10’08” minutes edition: 1 of 3⁣. Commissioned for the Janet Holmes à Court Collection.

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The depiction of a numbat in the mouth of a feral cat is a striking image. How does this representation of invasive species define the work as a whole?

Once The Botanical co-curator Laetitia Wilson and I got talking about how there’s an invading species which is the Europeans, at the same time they are also bringing along other invasive species – rats and cats and rabbits and so on. So we started to play with images of those invasive species becoming feral and all the killing that has resulted and continues as we speak, every night and day. The fat cat is a monstrous image and, as a phrase, often represents someone who’s got too much wealth and has become gluttonous.

The work shows a huge storm sweeping the landscape, which then dies away with clear skies returning as the video loops. Does this hint at a sense of hope for how we might approach these issues differently in the future?

This was an idea that came from discussions with Kingsley Reeve who created the sound track for the work. There is a connection with the moving panorama of the mid-nineteenth century which we mimic digitally here – where they literally used to rewind the painting on a scrolling mechanism to restart it – and so we tried to rewind sound and image and found the effect mesmerising. The result is that the work doesn’t really have a start or end – it just keeps oscillating. It suggests a potential for change. In connection with the environment now, if we don’t change course, there is a great storm coming. Or are we already in it?

How do you think the colonial and conquest-oriented mentality represented in Dale’s etching links to wider environmental issues we are faced with today?

This whole capitalist expansion in the 19th century was, in part, a great mechanism of turning nature into profit at zero cost. There was the technology and finances to take advantage of the so-called ‘land opportunity’ here in this country and convert it into profit. I think it’s really important to look back and understand that mechanism, to understand those it benefited and those it dispossessed. After all this is not something that was done once – the engine’s been running rampant repeating the cycle of dispossession all over the entire globe and now it threatens to cost us the earth.

What role do you think art and artists have in bringing public attention to the kinds of environmental issues that are highlighted in the exhibition?

I think as artists we’ve got a responsibility to help tell stories – to make them personal. My good friend, Anna Kosky, who puts together Writer’s Week for the Perth Festival, said she was at a conference on climate change earlier this year and one of the key scientists said that they’ve done all they can, now it’s up to the artists to tell the stories. That’s a big ask, but I think we can help shape a vision, to help shed light on reality, to encourage deep thinking and sustained action.

The Botanical: Beauty and Peril runs until 4 November.

Sohan Ariel Hayes

The Botanical: Beauty and Peril

AGWA Collection

Janet Holmes à Court Collection

Digital art

AGWA

Card Text

Currently showing at the AGWA, The Botanical: Beauty and Peril exhibition brings together works from the State Art Collection and that of Janet Holmes à Court in a wide-ranging, and often bracing look at representations of the Australian landscape.

Interview with Artist Sohan Ariel Hayes

Digital art

In conversation with artist, filmmaker and designer Tee Ken Ng

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Rewinding the Panorama

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