Q&A: Ben Quilty to take on Adam Goodes portrait for NPG

I BECAME an artist because I didn’t have anything else that I was really interested in.

Ben Quilty in his Southern Highlands studio. Picture: Andrew Quilty

I BECAME an artist because I didnÂ’t have anything else that I was really interested in. At the end of year 9 I went and saw the career counsellor at school and he said to go back and concentrate a bit more on maths and economics because thereÂ’s no real future in art, and I thought well actually I would rather die Â…

I loved art school, but when I finished I had nothing to do, no job,

I was unemployable, so I went back to Western Sydney University and studied digital media and visual communications and that was equally exhilarating. When I left university I still couldn’t get a job so I put some time into having a real career, but still with a creative bent, as an editor at Channel 7 in the news and current affairs rooms. But it was always just a hobby to facilitate my art practice.

When I won the Brett Whiteley travelling art scholarship in 2001, I was 28 years old, and still working as a full-time editor. My boss came in and said “don’t think you can leave and just walk back in here as a freelancer”, which was heartbreaking because I enjoyed working there. Later that afternoon a handwritten note came into the news rooms saying “Congratulations Ben, good luck with your new career, warmest regards, Kerry Stokes”. I felt like going and pinning that on my boss’s forehead.

I think the best way to tell a negative story or to look into the darkness is to use humour. In the show I reference Myuran Sukumaran [of the Bali Nine, who was on death row at press time]. He has become a friend, and this friendship is very tenuous and it is too easy to forget his position – the darkness that he faces – the show allows me to talk about those things and shine a torch into those dark places that quite often we simplify in Australia.

Growing up in Australia, as an art student and then as an artist it was always pushed on us that we should go to Paris and London and maybe New York and Berlin, but intuitively I wasn’t interested in that history. I felt I was more a part of Southeast Asia than I was of Europe and so I have always wanted to engage with Asia and have always been intrigued with understanding their story.

Traditionally painting was seen as a decorative art, and paintings were made for entertainment, before TV and film and digital media. But I think the most interesting thing about painting now, in terms of contemporary art, is that it has gone right back to its beginnings, as in cave painting, to tell a story rather than just being beautiful. I try never to put a mark on a canvas that is anything but about telling the story of that particular painting. So I never feel like I want to fill in parts for no reason – if there is a white space left, it is left for a reason, because I have nothing to say there.

There was no inspiration for using the Rorschach inkblot technique. One day I was trying to make a very thick painting, I made a really terrible self-portrait and thought what a waste of paint it was. So while I was trying to scrape the paint into the bin, I literally just squashed it against another canvas, and when I pulled it apart I thought “why haven’t I thought of this before?” It still didn’t work, and as there was nothing intrinsically interesting about it, I scraped it off and was left with this incredible ghost-like image underneath. And that was it. I had years of work in front of me to work out what it was about.

I completely disagree with the trend towards people saying Australian artists can’t draw. People have to find their individual and unique voice and if it includes drawing then it includes drawing. If you make everyone draw they will end up being clones of their teachers. And therefore there is no new visual language. It worked in the Italian Renaissance because painting held a very important position in our society. It doesn’t any more. It is not going to come back. Today, like it or not, art might involve a video camera or an installation – and yes, a lot of [that] is crap but a lot of painting is crap, too.

The National Portrait Gallery has commissioned me to do a portrait of the 2014 Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes. I think he is an incredible symbol of the glue that binds this society together. It is the first commission I have agreed to since Afghanistan as I don’t usually do commissions. This is because they are always about someone telling you to do what they have thought of. The NPG will let me do what I want.

Ben Quilty’s exhibition Straight White Male is at Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, till March 1.