Artist Michael Zavros on his embarrassing polling booth moment and new exhibition at GoMA in Brisbane
Artist Michael Zavros reveals how the epic fail he made at a polling booth marked him for life.
Artist Michael Zavros, 48, tells Bridget Cormack about growing plants, stretching beyond his comfort zone and worrying about his horse in the middle of the night
My new exhibition is making me … Nostalgic. A 25-year survey is like being on This is Your Life. My work takes a long time to make so each work is a decent slice of life, who I was or what I was doing at the time or maybe where I was, the different houses or studios I lived and worked in. Surveys are all about looking back but that can be a bit of a death knell. That’s why I wanted to make new work, very challenging, different things, things I’ve wanted to make but haven’t had the opportunity to do. I know my best work is ahead of me.
On my calendar, I can’t wait for … Anything in this year’s Brisbane Festival. Director Louise Bezzina is incredible.
On my bedside table there is …
A really handsome Devil’s Ivy. I love plants and I’ve been growing this one for about a year and I keep cutting the trailing vines and replanting at the base so it’s becoming luscious. My grandmother taught me how to strike plants especially from ones that didn’t belong to you. This one I pinched from the Calile Hotel (in Brisbane). It’s very happy here with me.
Here’s my best advice if you ever find yourself afraid … If you’re in danger, that’s not good but being afraid means you’re out of your comfort zone and for an artist that’s where the good stuff can happen. The stuff you want to do but aren’t sure you can do. I’m afraid right now about three different things and that’s a good thing. I think.
On my mind at 3am … is the young bloke who’s started coming to the gym with an ankle monitor on. And what did he do? And I shouldn’t provoke him. And my daughters who come to the gym now too, they better stay out of his way. At 3am I’m mostly thinking about my kids and their lives and their worries. At 3am I can hear my horse banging at something in his stable. He won’t wee in the stable and holds on until I take him for a morning walk. And now I’m worrying he’ll get a bladder infection.
Not on my CV is the time … when I was 16 and I was working at a polling booth. I might’ve mixed up some votes but that wasn’t the bad bit; that was when I tried to be chatty and asked a lady when her baby was due and she told me she wasn’t expecting. And then the lady cried. And then I cried. And then I became an introvert.
Life at 19 was … exciting. I was first-year art school and living away from home, somehow on my Saturday work money. I could do whatever I wanted, nobody knew where I was or what I was doing. And nobody was really looking at what I was making either. I could be myself or figure out who that was. In a pre-digital world we were looking outward rather than inward, at a world we inhabited rather than ourselves within it. And the ’90s was an incredible time to be a young person. I remember bright winter days in a grubby but beautiful brutalist Queensland College of Art campus. Students then weren’t slick and professional and wanting to be art stars.
Life at 48 is … a bit stressful. I’ve got three kids in three different schools, we’re trying to live in a house while it’s being built and all our stuff is piled high in my studio. My wife is trying to settle her 97-year-old dad into a home but he doesn’t want to go and neither does his cat. I’m giving up meat and wine. My four art dealers would all like me to produce more work for them and are all a bit angry with me and think I should leave my other dealers. On the eve of this great retrospective I’m embarking on major new works that I either don’t have the skillset for or that could fail terribly. I wouldn’t have it any other
way.
Michael Zavros: The Favourite is showing at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, June 24 – October 2, 2023.