Brett Ashby was on a mountain in Tasmania, under a full moon, when the lyrics came to him.
He didn’t jot ideas down in a notepad, or record some voice notes in his phone. Instead, Ashby’s process is to wait for inspiration to strike and then he types his lyrics using an old-school typewriter that he was given in Pentridge Prison.
Melbourne-born Ashby is an international contemporary, public and performance artist, whose practice over the past two decades has included painting, film, sculpture, performance, directing, ghostwriting, music and major public commissions.
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In 2021, the notorious jail was re-launched as Pentridge Arts and Ashby was invited to be one of the inaugural resident artists, working in Pentridge Studios and then exhibiting his work – which he paints while on a skateboard rolling back and forth on a half-pipe in front of the canvas – as part of the Emergence exhibition.
“I have a traditional typewriter that was gifted to me from Pentridge Prison,” he explains, “so I take a typewriter to regional Australian locations and I just let the lyrics type themselves on an A4 sheet.”
“There’s no edits at all,” he says of his idiosyncratic, organic process. “I sing exactly what I got. It’s the one draft and I just let that flow through me.”
Collaborating with ACAXIA’s Emanuele Mamo in the studio to turn his divinely inspired words into tracks, the world will soon be treated to the debut single, La Luna, which is from the forthcoming EP Always Neo.
Ashby first announced the upcoming EP in a fairly grand way, in a public art “billboard takeover”.
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Ashby, whose internationally collected artwork first came to attention in 2009 with his photographic collage of President Barack Obama catching the eye of art collectors at Art Basel in Miami, had shown titles All You Need and Always Neo in the world’s largest public art fairs, Cube Art Fair in Miami and New York coming out of Covid.
“I did paintings that were related to this music called Always Neo so I took over 50 billboards across Miami and 100 billboards in New York, with my work,” he says.
While La Luna is a pop song, he says the six tracks on Always Neo will all be a different genre featuring a different vocalist and he’s been working on them for the past couple of years. They were originally intended to be the soundtrack for his upcoming feature film, Bliss with Cash Savage, which is scheduled to be out this December, however, time with other musicians inspired him to also release them separately.
“I’m always working on multiple projects and after painting some big name musicians, and being on tour with them, studying them to do their paintings, in a way I have crossed over into music, so I’m finding my path with that.”
Music has played a big part in his performative paintings, with Ashby’s recent Inner Essence series seeing him paint subject portraits – or more specifically, their aura – while riding his skateboard on a half pipe, supported by a live musician, in front of a live audience.
As part of the Renew Shopfront Activation Program at Docklands, Ashby has a gallery and studio space where he has been painting a range of musicians and other well-known personalities. “We’ve done 30 portraits there,” he says of this first series, where Sam Newman, John Foreman, Zana Pali, Bessie Kay, Scott Major, Steve Alba singers Tania Doko, Phil Jamieson, Fred Leone, Dallas Frasca and Lisa Edwards have all been immortalised in this way.
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He took it up a level earlier this month when he presented Sonic Flight at the Alex Theatre in St Kilda, skating while painting – or is it painting while skating? – Channel Nine newsreader Peter Hitchener and reality TV star Kate Laidlaw.
The venue change represented a jump from a 50-seater to a 500-seater but Ashby’s ambitious vision for this next series is global. “We shot this as a film, the last two paintings in the theatre, and in the studio, to then take it to festivals to hopefully perform in front of a large audience with 10,000,” he says, adding that the concept already has international interest.
“We have over 200 interested venues in New York and Vegas, so they’re waiting to see this video to then start rolling it out abroad,” he explains. In these works, Ashby creates a basic linework of his subject, then he seats them on stage facing the audience but behind the canvas, so as he paints their aura on top, as he rolls back and forth on his skateboard, the audience can see what he is adding, but the subject must wait until the final public reveal at the end.
“The witnesses are in the audience, the subject and supporting musicians on stage and the painter is a pendulum. I do a Q&A after every show, and people are in a trance-like state because of the pendulum, that sound bath, that rhythm, I don’t stop for one hour. So people are just being invited into the painting process, the layering, the moving parts,” he says of the effect it creates for all involved.
For Ashby, who says he’s always been able to see auras since he was a skateboarding kid, Sonic Flight combines all his skills and passions, so his plan is to take this as far as he can for as long as he can. “How cool would that be? I’ll still be rolling at 80!”
To keep up with Brett Ashby, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Brett Ashby.
