Destiny

What is Kustom Art? Think tattoos, pinstripes, cigarettes, skeletons and roses. Imagine an ultra-curvy bikini babe, drawn in the Betty Boop style with a needle-thin waistline, sitting atop a hot rod wielding a gun. The colours are bright – lots of reds, blacks and greens. Do you see it?

I hope so, because even for the curator of Kustom Lane Gallery, Tony Peake, it’s not so easy to describe the style of art his gallery exhibits. "It can be anything," he says of lowbrow art, what Kustom Art is called sometimes. It can be surreal, comical work – somebody’s definition or creation of something that they’re taking the mickey out of."

In a positive sense, Tony speaks of it as "something for the masses." He describes its rival, highbrow art, as art that is "intellectually stimulating, which may be a dot on a large piece of paper that someone’s gotta figure out what the hell it is."

Basically, lowbrow art is for people who can actually draw – but there’s a distinct style to it which makes it easily recognisable. Peake’s gallery, located in Hawthorn, is symbolised by a white ribbon wrapped around a bright red heart – that speaks for itself really.

The Kustom movement originated somewhere in the 1950s and largely has the development of the hot-rod to thank for its existence. The punk and rockabilly culture cultures of the 60’s and 70’s also contributed to Kustom’s influence. "Street-type art," Peake finally lands on a concrete explication. "That’s what I would call it; art, graffiti, that sort of thing. Not just your landscape and portraits and things like that. "

Its origins lie in America, particularly in California (the home of Guns ‘n’ Roses – remember their logo?) But the scene has gained ground and can be seen internationally – Australia is the obvious example of one of its hosts. But so are others – like Japan. And it is from here that Peake has invited some talented young artists for an exhibition titled Destiny. It’s the first time that the artists have exhibited their works in Australia and Peake expects a good turnout. "They take it to the extreme," says Peake after being asked what makes Japanese low-brow art different to that of our country. "I guess that they devote themselves to ‘that’s where I wanna go, that’s what I wanna do,’ and that’s why the show’s called Destiny. Cause it’s like, when a Japanese person takes on a particular art form, that’s it for life. Whether they’re a tattoo artist, a woodworker or an office worker, they sort of pigeon-hole themselves."

The show will exhibit around 60 artworks from three feature artists – Mr G, Makoto and Ghost. "Mikoto – he’s famous for doing the Lucky Cat interpretations. That’s like the Japanese icon – you know the fortune cat?" These are the little porcelain things that wave at you when you leave a restaurant. "He’s well known for his take. He does a lot of pinstriping work."

Works of other Japanese Kustom Artists will also be exhibited. "There’s this one guy called Crazy Dotty. He does everything by dots.

"I went to Japan last year and spoke with some of the artists and with a guy called Nash who promotes the art scene in Japan. He has a magazine called Burnout. It’s all to do with the Kustom Art scene in Japan." Together with Nash, they organised the tour. "It hasn’t been a cheap exercise. To me it’s worth it because people in Australian have never seen it before. It was just something I had to do."

After much deliberating about how to describe Kustom Art, Peake and I came to the conclusion that it’s akin to doodling in your schoolbooks, but a more refined version. "Yeah it’s probably an expansion on that." Peake thinks about it and then states, "I just think it’s cool!"

And so, the cool exhibition of Low-Brow, Kustom Art will be held at Kustom Lane Gallery, located in Luton Lane in Hawthorn. You can go in to see the works from the March 19 to 27. Check out kustomlane.com for more details.