A Rough Sketch To Conquer The Galaxy

 
Story by Farrin Foster | Photographs by Harry Freeman
 
The two percent art collective is made up of seven young people your mother wishes she gave birth to instead of you. They are intelligent, creative, talented, interesting, friendly and goddamn good-looking. And somehow, they’re still likeable. And they tell me they’re going to take over the world, one artwork at a time.
 
This, I think, is a pretty ambitious move. A lot of people have tried to take over the world using more obviously powerful means (like armies for instance) and still failed. But ambition and motivation are two things these guys have in bucket loads, qualities they needed when they started their own semi-permanent art gallery back in September and will doubtless draw on as they attempt to set up independent exhibitions over the next couple of months.
 
  
I sat down and talked to four of the seven (Harry, Katie, Patrick and Sean: Present….Louise, Claire and Chloe: Absent) and I have to admit I was intimidated by them. For me setting out in life with the desire to be a writer seems pretty uncertain (in fact it tends to keep me up nights), but setting out with the desire to be an artist is a squillion times worse. The world needs words in some form or other, but art is (debatably) optional. The two percent crew understand this and embrace it, but aren’t fazed by it. While I’m waking up every morning wishing I had just decided to get a real job, they’re bouncing out of bed and rearranging the world so that art is their real job. 
 
And this means they get to do what they love, which is something we all want, but very few of us ever really get. How did they do it? Well, they just kind of…did it.
 
 
“The only way you can do it sometimes is by doing it yourself…with the collective we wanted to find people who were committed to doing this kind of thing; like-minded people who thought the same way as artists and just get out there and do it,” Harry says. 
 
“We just want to be practising artists,” Katie throws in, mercifully saving me from having to ask what ‘this kind of thing’ is. It’s a simple aim, but actually achieving it is complex, particularly if you want to do it your own way. The two percent kids don’t want to compromise their artistic expression just so their art gets hung on a wall somewhere. They are politely and respectfully resisting the pull of ‘selling out’ to the mainstream Adelaide art scene. When Patrick describes the current opportunities available I can see why they feel the need. 
 
“In terms of opportunities they’re quite specific….if you really wanted to make money you could paint pictures of the Flinders Ranges and sell them to a quite conservative gallery that might buy them, that’s not to say that art isn’t nice, but its more about doing it on your own terms,” he explains.  
 
 
And they have done it on their own terms, but out of necessity that has meant they’ve done it on their own. There’s a price to pay when you set up your own gallery, set up your own exhibition (called ‘Two Rooms’), run that exhibition yourself and fund it all yourself.
 
The price is obviously monetary, but apparently health is also a tradeable commodity. I’m pretty sure Patrick’s got pneumonia; his cough could have been an interview subject all on its own. But advanced lung infections are what you get when you work all night so you can pay the rent on your gallery space and still have time to attend uni and paint.  
 
 
All the guys have the same story: working double time to pay for their success. But the point is they have been successful, and I guess it just goes to show that all those clichés we grew up with (think…you can achieve anything if you just try) were probably based on some modicum of truth. If these seven unknown artists can start something which receives real respect from the art community then the rest of us can probably achieve something one day too (if we can be bothered). Two percent stuck their necks out and instead of getting the axe; they got mad props from some seasoned art professionals. 
 
“A lot of people who we respect and admire came to the opening, came and had a look during the day and they really just said that everything was great. That’s been one of the best things about it,” Patrick says. 
 
 
Of course the other best thing about it is that quite a few of the two percent artists have made their money back, and some more to boot, through sales. So this whole deal is not just about feeling warm and fuzzy inside, it’s about feeling warm and fuzzy while still being able to pay for groceries. As they look to the future, I can see that grocery money is pretty small scale in the world of two percent ambition. They are talking revolution. 
 
“I feel like us and other Artists Run Initiatives are probably a new generation that’s going to nurture Adelaide art for a little while…I think we have to have an awareness that we’re in a hazy time and that we’re defining it and we have to be really careful what we do,” Sean says. 
 
I think we can all have faith that art in Adelaide is in good hands, which is what I expected to learn when I started writing this story. But there was definitely something more going on with those guys. 
 
They gave me a little more faith that the whole world might not be totally doomed to failure and destruction. Two percent are seven young people about my age, but unlike all the other young people my age (including me) they aren’t lazy, self-serving and self-defeatist. They have drive and that drive means they’re doing something, and they’ve avoided the trap of being goody-two-shoes, insufferable know-it-alls while they’re at it. If there were more people like this around then maybe we could fix some stuff (like the environment) and maybe mums everywhere would feel genuinely proud of their spawn, rather than just obliged.  
 
You can check out the new frontier of Adelaide art in two percent’s next exhibition which you’ll have to pester Harry for details on harry@harryismyname.com.
 
 

 

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