I stumbled upon Priest’s graffiti, probably, about a year ago. He has a really fun style – mixing bold, bright colours with simple, curvy letters, with a few quirky twists. I’m into it.
It’s always interesting to me to see how writers take the energy of their graffiti and apply that in a gallery setting. There’s an essence of working in the street that often can’t be recreated. It becomes something else. In hearing that Priest had a solo show coming up, I was curious. The resulting work pulls from the vibrancy and boldness of his graffiti, but he hasn’t tried to bring his street-work inside the studio, it’s a completely different aesthetic.
For ‘Toys’, Priest has created a body of artwork on canvas that is “a vibrant study of the comedy and contradictions that arise in the transition from childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood”. There’s a police officer riding a toy car, Lego blocks next to bullets, and riot police wading through colourful plastic balls of a fun house ball-pit. It’s visually colourful, yet conceptually dark.
Ahead of his opening tonight at Stockroom Gallery in Melbourne’s Clifton Hill, we reached out to Priest to pick his brain about the show and his current artistic direction.
Firstly, congrats on the show and thanks for taking the time to do this.
I’m a fan of what you’ve been doing with your graffiti, so it’s cool to see how you apply a similar bold, colourful style to studio work – even though this work is completely different to what you’ve been painting on the street. Can you tell us what we’ll see at the show tonight, and how this body of work came to be?
This work in my first solo show has been a vision of mine for a while. Like my graffiti, I have a very clear idea of what I want my work to look like before I start. However, executing that is the difficult part. Over the past few months I have put together a gallery exhibition without any restraints on creativity.
I find it very hard to produce work with the goal of pleasing others – regardless of whether I think the work will sell or not. The show has worked out exactly as it was intended. Who knows what the response will be.
Where did you get your start creatively? Give me a quick breakdown of your history and what kickstarted everything for you.
I spent most of my teenage years making music. It was so important to me at the time. Around nineteen I stopped [making music] and started tagging instead. Graffiti was challenging and entertained me in so many ways. I surrounded myself with other painters to immerse myself in the scene as much as possible. I have always found joy in creativity, and different mediums have just met my needs, at the time, in different ways.
Are you from Melbourne originally?
I’m from Wellington in New Zealand. I moved to Melbourne in 2014. Most of my crew live here now too.
You worked with Rone on his Empire show, where he transformed an entire house. A lot of work went into that show, ageing everything, building fake floors, furniture, flooding a room etc. Basically, set design. How did you get involved in working on Empire? And how did that lead you to creating this show of your own? The patterned wallpaper, constructed guillotine, and overall set up of your show definitely feels informed by Empire, now that I know.
One of my closest friends put me in contact with him. Initially I was only meant to be painting a few walls for a bit of cash, but it quickly escalated into an entire year spent at the mansion, working on every single part of the exhibition. I actually lived up there for two months to run the show whilst it was open. The skills I gained from it were immense.
It was an opportunity that I just couldn’t ignore. Rone and I have very different artistic styles, however, the skills him and the team taught me, enabled me to envision and produce a show that I would have initially not pursued. I think one of the biggest things I took from Rone was his commitment to hard work.
Tell me about the subject matter in this show. By juxtaposing playful imagery with more serious themes it feels approachable, yet sinister.
The work is a mixture of my old style and some new concepts. I knew especially the bright coloured sinister pieces might attract a lot of attention from people passing by – the gallery is seen by a lot of passing traffic. I liked the thought of perhaps taking people out of their comfort zone, with the works not being what they initially thought they were from the street.
Can you explain a little more the content of the works?
The content is based on placing the darker parts of life as an adult, into childhood settings, and drawing similarity between the two.
Each work has meaning to me, but I feel can be interpreted in various ways depending on the viewers’ own opinions. A friend pointed out to me, my painting of a policeman hunched onto a toy car could be seen as either making fun of police, or addressing Melbourne’s underfunded police force. Once the work is at a point where it can be viewed like this, is when I decide I want to commit.
Is this your first time working with acrylics as Priest? How is this different for you, than your normal practice of working with spray paint?
I made about five acrylic paintings last year and exhibited three in group shows – each time under the name Priest. It’s very different in the sense that graffiti gives me instant gratification. I can finish a piece in about an hour and be happy with it. Sometimes a painting will take around 30 hours including planning. By the end of this process, I often can barely look at the work. I become numb to it.
How long have you been working on the show? How are you feeling ahead of the opening tomorrow night?
About three months all up. I’m feeling terrified, with small patches of confidence. Enough to keep me working on it at least.
The show is themed around the evolution of play. What does play mean to you now as an adult vs when you were younger?
I don’t feel much has changed. Just the way I label things has. I am trying to call what I do a career, but I’m really just taking fucking ’round seriously.
Tell me something fun to do in Melbourne?
Go drink some beers and watch the larping in Brunswick Park. It’s fascinating.
What’s next for you?
I am moving to Europe indefinitely at the end of this month. I would like to find something that fits in-between fine art and the illegal side of graffiti. I’m just not sure what that is yet.
Toys – An Art Exhibition by Priest, opens tonight: Friday, 9 August, at The Stockroom Gallery, 355A Wellington Street, Clifton Hill, VIC, Australia.
The exhibition continues until Sunday, 18 August.
For more information, or to request a show catalogue, contact the gallery: https://www.thestockroom.com.au/
Follow Priest on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/just__have__fun/
Luke Shirlaw is the founder of Artillery Projects – a graffiti art publisher, and visual studio specialising in mural production, graphic design, and content creation. Follow him on Instagram, or subscribe to Artillery’s ‘The Drop’ for exclusive email interviews.