A look inside the Marion Rd house that has become a piece of art in its own right
JUNGLE Phillips found redemption through art. Painting, he says, may have even saved his life. Take a look inside his amazing Marion Rd house that is a piece of art in its own right.
HEART power beats all. That’s the message Adelaide outsider artist Jungle Phillips hopes to convey through the striking paintings that fill almost every inch of his Marion Rd home.
Jungle’s house is something of a landmark on an arterial road dominated by car yards, takeaway shops and 24-hour gyms. It’s a shining beacon of colour and love among the grey.
The fence and front yard are covered in art — everything from totem poles to painted boogie boards. Honk the door horn (there’s no bell) and the inside reflects the outside. Art hangs on every piece of every wall, and in some places Jungle has done away with the canvases altogether and painted straight onto the ceilings and cupboards.
Next to the pictures are his mottos, affirmations written with his unique spelling style. Troo hart power kummin at yar. Hav hope, hav sum love. Dare too dreem. Follow yor troo hart.
Every piece has a meaning, and every visitor is welcomed inside and guided through colourful cavern.
But it hasn’t always been like this. For a long time there wasn’t a whole lot of love in Jungle’s life. He found it hard to smile. Indeed, he didn’t have that much to smile about.
‘A PRETTY FULL-ON CHILDHOOD’
YOUNG Peter Phillips grew up on the cold, poor streets of Hobart in the 1950s and 60s. This was well before modern art museums and farmers’ markets made Tasmania the tourist mecca it’s become today. This was Tassie version 1.0 — isolated, impoverished and rough.
“I had a pretty full-on childhood,” Jungle says.
“(Timber merchants) Kemp and Denning owned all the houses in our street. We were poor, but everyone else was poor too.”
The son of a violent alcoholic with gambling problems, Jungle learned early that the best way to avoid a fist from his father was to keep quiet and pretend he didn’t even exist. He spent a lot of time in his own head — it was the easiest way not to make his dad angry.
“Dad would come home pissed, as usual, and he’d yell, “Oi, mum, get me a smoke!”,” Jungle says.
“If mum said no, then crack! He’d hit her. He’d hit me. A full-grown man hitting a little kid.”
Besides his imagination, Jungle’s other refuge was the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. He’d wander the halls with his brother Wayne, soaking up the colonial art and artefacts from foreign lands. This, he says, was where the seed that would one day grow into an obsession with art, was planted.
“I became a daydream believer,” he says. “You know, like the song.”
Tragically, Jungle witnessed the suicide of older brother Steven as a young man. Younger brother Wayne also later took his own life.
The artist moved to Victoria where, he admits, he went off the rails. He fell in with a bikie gang who bestowed him with his nickname (“They said I was thick and dense, just like a jungle,” he laughs), drank too much, got into trouble.
“I did go to the dark side for a while, but it wasn’t me,” he says.
“I’ve always believed that there is hope for all. Plenty of people tried to knock that hope out of me, but I was defiant.
“It came to a point when I was living in Melbourne that I had to make a choice: was I going to live, or die? I chose to live.”
‘THERE’S AN ARTIST IN EVERYONE’
A CAR accident in 1991 was the final straw, and Jungle moved to Adelaide to put some distance between himself and his old life in Melbourne.
At the same time he picked up a paintbrush for the first time, and he’s barely put it down since.
His bold, naive paintings now hang not only in his house but in galleries around the world, and he’s recognised as one of the country’s great outsider artists.
And now he has a muse — dance partner and close friend Fran Ferrauto, who’s taken up painting herself with Jungle’s encouragement.
“I met him when I was out dancing at Port Adelaide,” Fran says.
“He came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jungle of the famous art gallery’. I’d never heard of him! Then he gave me a painting.”
Now Fran’s artwork, inspired by the drip painting of American legend Jackson Pollock, hangs on the walls next to Jungle’s in the Marion Rd house/gallery.
“There’s an artist in everyone — there has to be — and Jungle has helped bring that out in me,” she says.
“When it comes to art you just have to do it,” Jungle says.
“Don’t think about, do it. There is a never-ending source of inspiration all around us.”
Beyond next week’s SALA exhibition, Jungle is most excited about his selection for the University of Queensland’s prestigious National Self-Portrait Prize.
“I’m honoured and thrilled to be part of this,” Jungle says of exhibition, which has a first prize of $50,000.
“My hope is that I can get up to Queensland for the opening and take my 84-year-old mum and Fran with me. I think that would be the best day of my life.”
■ Jungle and Fran’s SALA exhibition Hartland will be opened by Sunday Mail columnist Peter Goers at 2pm next Saturday and runs until the end of August. Visitors are welcome to call in to 558 Marion Rd, Plympton Park.