Rprsnt conference review

Went to the Rprsnt conference (http://www.rprsnt.com) on Fri 14th and Sat 15th October at Luna Park, Sydney.

The event was organised by Luca Ionescu and Kevin Vo of Keep Left Studio (http://www.kleft.com - splash page). They're also the people behind Refill magazine (http://www.refillmag.com).

Luca chose a lot of the speakers he's met or made contact with via his Refill magazine. He was already very familiar with the designers' work and his admiration and appreciation of their work showed through. So the program had that uniting theme of designers' work he admired. The selection was reaally quite diverse and consisted of designers who were into graffiti art to tattoo and photography to movie titles to textile art. Many of the designers' work had a 'street' or underground, DIY feel to it.

The presentations were delivered in interview format. That worked pretty well. Luca or Jason asked questions of the designers and this was interspersed with the designers' work. They had two large screens on either side, at the front, with one showing the show reel type images and video, and the other screen zoomed in on the designer/s being interviewed. They sat in the middle of the stage on beanbags or lounge chairs to make it look like they were sitting in a casual lounge room.

Supreme/aNYthing/Neckface. Neckface wore a ski-mask. Someone in the audience asked why he wore that and he said because that was who he really was. They produce
skatewear/streetwear. They were drawing since young and basically don't fit into 'conventional' society so they dropped out of school. Neckface said he was already participating in art shows and things and he didn't feel he needed to go to art class to learn what he was already doing. He said that people like his work and ask him to participate in shows and things, and they don't ask him what degrees he has. He was very anti-establishment. Just wanted to do his own thing, do graffiti, skate and stuff.

Collider (http://www.collider.com.au). They've completed a lot of commercial film, digital video and design work. They did the McDonald's 'Inner Child' ad. The music was composed especially for that ad campaign.

Marc Atlan (http://www.marcatlan.com) couldn't make it due to the last minute personal reasons.

Odd Studio (http://www.oddstudio.com). They consisted of 3 guys. They've worked on the Matrix, Star Wars Episodes II and III, and Superman and heaps of other stuff. They create creatures, monsters etc. They just started creating monsters, creatures etc since they were young and now they're doing it professionally. Their attention to detail is amazing, and they have to study anatomy and have to look closely at gory images all the time to depict their creatures realistically. Sometimes, they're creating bloodied faces etc so they have to look at some images of accidents as well.

An audience member asked about their most unusual gig. One of their clients wanted a cast made of her dead husband so they had to go to the morgue and make a mould of him etc. The client was very appreciative of the piece at the end but the guys said they probably wouldn't want to do that kind of project again.

Angela Boatwright (http://www.killerofgiants.com). She's a photographer who photographs mainly underground, heavy metal bands. She also now represents a few photographers. A few of the speakers spoke of their work appearing in Thrasher magazine including Angela.

She started photographing bands for zines and things since very young and just worked her way up to bigger and bigger gigs from there. She talked about just doing it, and people will see what you're doing and see your passion for it and will want to be a part of it, whether it be knitting mittens or whatever. She had a real dislike for digital photography though as she felt it just isn't like a real, traditional camera.

Ash Boland of Umeric (http://www.umeric.com). Umeric are from NZ and consists of Ash Boland and Von Dekker. Love their illustration work. They've done music video clips, illustration etc.

Elliot 'Askew' O'Donnell (http://www.disruptiv.com). He's a graffiti artist. He was so passionate about his work. He described his grafitti artwork in great detail and how he loves to collaborate and sometimes you have two or three people working on the same piece of work, and how they add to each other's piece. He explained his style of tagging, the colours used, how to get particular effects, why he did certain bits the way he did, what he was trying to say in certain pieces, the shapes of the letters, the 3d look of some of his work. It was really interesting to hear about. I had never really heard about graffiti art before and was walking back from the train station that night and noticed some graffiti art and took some time to look at it more closely.

Brand New School (http://www.brandnewschool.com). They mix up their mediums and produce film work, they also make things then film them, they do collage work, they do illustration work, photography work etc. They did a series of 10 second clips for MTV and would come up with a different idea for each clip. It's meant to be a mini grab during the commercial break to stop people from channel switching. They also did a similar thing for an international music channel. They mentioned it was great to see the top song in Hungary or Japan, as it's a very different style to the American music videos.

I wrote the above the day after the conference and had intended to write up the rest of the presenters. But haven't come back to this post till now, and it's already been 2 weeks since the conference. I didn't take any notes whilst there as I sometimes find, if you're busy taking notes, you miss a lot of the visual material that is being beamed up onto the screen. They didn't allow any cameras or taping of any part of the conference either. So I'll just list out the remaining presenters and their websites.

But basically it was a good 2 days with diverse range of designers from various design areas. They had a delegates pack too if you bought a ticket for both days and it included a book with the designers' work in it.

Andy Howell. Skateboard gear, streetwear. http://www.andyhowell.com
Lizzie Finn. Fabrics, sewing, designer, illustrator. http://www.lizziefinn.com - really like her work.
Mister Cartoon. Graffiti art, tatooing. http://www.mistercartoon.com
Estevan Oriol. Photography. http://www.estevanoriol.com
Rob Abeyta. Illustrator. http://www.suprememundane.com
Pablo Ferro. Titles designer, montage film sequences. http://www.pabloferro.com/filmmaker1_all.htm