Marijana Jocic and I recently co-directed the video for Malmö / Berlin musician Emma Elisabeth’s beautiful song Where Do Tears Go. It’s from Emma’s recently released 6-song EP “We Gotta Talk”, which you can listen to here on Spotify and purchase through itunes
Here is an animation I recently made for London based jazz exotica trio Les Hommes.
“Queen Fez” was nominated in the “Best Experimental” category of the 2017 Berlin Music Video Awards.
Rory More of Les Hommes describes the song as “a heady dose of gritty oganatronic mondorama with touches of Shearing-meets-Monk on a pub piano.” The song was recorded live at Bark Studio and will be available from April 7th on their new LP “The Sinner”
I really loved creating this weird-world eggimation, especially the pool party and keyboard scallop scenes…and the mini golf egghead scene, and the flippity-floppity fish dish…it has it all. Thanks for the inspiration Queen Fez and Les Hommes!
Music video I animated and directed for the song “Don’t Look Back” by Urbanity (Albare and Phil Turcio).
To celebrate the 1 year anniversary of Sarah Blasko’s beautiful album ‘Eternal Return’ and the release of the deluxe digital only version of the album I was asked to make a video for the final track on the record “Without”. It was wonderful working with Sarah again. The animation is one long camera pan of a large single image I made, I think it would make a cool print.
On 23 April 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Paul Kelly released ‘Seven Sonnets and A Song’, a mini-album of Shakespeare’s greatest sonnets and a song from ‘Twelfth Night’ set to music. Here is the video for Sonnet 18 (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’) that I created. It was so nice working with Paul again, one of my very first major label music video commissions was for his side-project “Stardust Five” in 2006.
In 2008 I made an animated music video for the song “Persist” by the Melbourne band All India Radio, the animation was based on the story of Topsy the Coney Island elephant electrocuted by Thomas Edison. My sister Marita provided illustrations and Isobel Knowles assisted me with the animating. The first time I watched the animation with an audience (at a music video program during the Melbourne International Film Festival), claps and cheers followed at the end of every video screened, however “Persist” was met silence so awkward I wanted to fall through the floor. Fast forward 7 years…
Last November I was in NYC for the opening of the exhibition “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland 1861 – 2008” at Brookly Museum, “Persist” had been curated in the exhibition, along with works by Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, and Joseph Stella.
The animation was displayed on a screen, on a loop with the original and very graphic film by Thomas Edison “Electrocution of Topsy”, as a key part of the section that told the story of Topsy and her life at Coney Island. It was an honour to be part of the exhibition, and it was also wonderful to meet the curators from The Wadsworth Atheneum who had originally conceived of the exhibition and to hear how they came across my animated tribute to Topsy online.
The exhibition toured nationally showing at The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT, San Diego Museum of Art (July 11, 2015 – October 13, 2015) and McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, (May 11, 2016 – September 11 2016).
From April 2017 Persist will be included in an adapted version of the exhibition that over the next five years will travel to venues in underserved communities in the US.
A fully-illustrated, beautiful 304-page catalogue of the exhibition was published by Yale University Press, here is the write-up on my animation from its pages…
Recently, Melbourne band The Orbweavers presented Deep Leads, a night of music and archival film footage of Melbourne at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, three of my animations were also included in the screening.
The Poison Garden music video screened along with two other films I made especially for the performance, one for The Orbweaver’s song Periods Of Light and Rock, and another for their song Radium Girls.
Radium Girls tells the 1917 story of female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint at the United States Radium factory in New Jersey, the animation will be reworked and released as a proper music video some time next year.
I was in New York City at the time of the event so didn’t get to attend the performance and unfortunately there isn’t a lot of footage from the night, but here are some stills from the Radium Girls music video…
Last December an animation I made for French rock n roll boys Archi Deep and The Monkeyshakers was released, watch it here:
Earlier this week my new music video for The Orbweavers premiered on Tone Deaf and was selected as Rage’s “Wild One” music video (formerly Indie Of The Week). This project was a bit of a family affair, my older sister Marita being one half of The Orbweavers (her partner Stuart is the other half of the band), and once again my younger sister Molly lending her limbs in front of the camera. “Poison Garden” is out now on digital release on Mistletone Records via Inertia.
