Surf Art

Oils and water do mix. Stephen Lacey looks at the rising tide of surfing inspired art

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 5 January, 2009 : - - Byron Bay's industrial estate is hardly the most inspiring destination for the weary traveller, yet tucked away among its sunbaked factory bays a besser block showroom displays some of the most exciting art in Australia.

Sea Cell was opened in 2006 by the same blokes who own and operate Sea Surfboards. Art shares wall space with the boards themselves, which is only fitting, as these are magnificently crafted vessels.

The works fall under the shady beach umbrella known as surf art - inspired by the sun, sand, surf, sex and surfers. Once maligned by the art establishment as pure kitsch, surf art is starting to gain respect around the world.  "We're seeing an interest in surf art from countries that don't even have a surf culture," says Andrew Crockett, author and publisher of a recently released book on the subject, Switch-Foot.

Artists have captured beach scenes for more than a century, but it was John Severson, a Californian surfer/artist and the founder of Surfer Magazine, who popularised it as a genre. In 1955, Severson exhibited his abstract paintings depicting the Californian coast and longboard riders at a gallery in Laguna Beach. Eight years later he featured one of his works on the cover of his magazine. It showed that surf art could also be fine art.

Crockett says that in Australia the genre was alive and well by the early 1960s through such magazines as Surfabout and Surfing World, which often featured art on their covers and the beautiful photography of Surfabout's founder, Jack Eden, and others such as John Pennings.

"The photos from the golden era of surfing really show an art form in print, but when you look at what innovative filmmaker George Greenough was doing in 1970, he took the connection between art and surfing to another level all together," Crockett says.

In 1971 Greenough's landmark in-the-tube movie sequence "the coming of the dawn" from his 1970 cult film The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun was picked up by Martin Sharp and his Yellow House art collective at Potts Point and used in an installation, along with works by Magritte and Hokusai. Here was surf art being enjoyed by serious people, in serious spectacles.

Read the full article at Sydney Morning Herald

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Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Surf Art - Surfersvillage

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