SUMMER

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

Summer opens at Little Creatures’ upstairs gallery at 40 Mews Road, Fremantle, on Tuesday, December 22, at 6pm, and runs ’til Monday, February 1. Entry is free.

Love it or hate it, summer envelops Perth every year with a sweaty grasp, dividing the populus between those who worship the sun and those who cower from it. As a lad who has spent most of his life in Perth, digital artist Simon Boxer knows all too well about our city’s love/hate affair with the hot and balmy months, which is why he’s curated an exhibition focused on that exact topic.

Taking place at the suitably summery Little Creatures Brewery, Summer brings together artists from a range of disciplines and asks them to share their feelings about the heat and everything that goes with it.

Boxer and the pair behind creative collective Forks Open Doors, Otilee and Brendan Ninness, explain how the Summer exhibition came to be.

“Otilee and I originally had an idea to do a body of work that was anti-summer, so we pitched that to Simon,” shares Ninness of the initial concept.

Otilee adds, “It gives people an opportunity to have their own interpretation of summer. In Australia, you either love it or you hate it, and it’s interesting to see the thoughts of the artists involved and their take on summer.”

Boxer elaborates: “I think that not all the artists exhibiting have fun in the sun… I’m pretty impartial – I kinda like summer because it has a more optimistic air to it. I can’t get enough of warm nights but the days, I’m not so fussed about the days.”

In addition to Boxer’s digital artworks and Forks Open Doors’ illustrations, Summer will feature pieces from Rebecca Leigh, Jessica Singh, Nick Lowe, Luci Everett, Yolanda Stapleton and Mitchell & Dent.

“I knew a bunch of people whose work I liked, or who I’d worked with in the past, and I tried to collect people who would lend themselves well to the exhibition, including a few people I haven’t actually met – Jessica Singh who is putting on a solo exhibition at the same time, and Luci Everett from Melbourne,” says Boxer of how he chose the artists for Summer.

So what kind of works will the exhibition include?

“Originally we wanted to go with something that was really negative, tongue-in-cheek and low brow – we’ve stuck with that but toned it down and gone with a more sarcastic approach,” outlines Ninness. “We’ve tried to make it really Aussie and do a few different slants on it – more about skin cancer, bogans and Aussie culture.”

Boxer’s take on the theme is slightly less downbeat, “I tried to think about what I like about summer and that’s the warmth, and I also tried to go for landscapes in this series of digital painting. They’re all based on aspects of summer that I’ve experienced, some are nostalgic but in very subtle ways.”

Whether you long for hot days and warm nights, or yearn for the cold of winter, you’ll be among kin at Summer, and artistically inspired kin at that. 

_EMMA BERGMEIER