Spontaneous furniture sculpting, a passion for pop and respect for radical feminists – the things you learn on a speed date with Chicks.
How was the [Adelaide] Fringe today?
It was good. Yeah, we gave a talk and it was very interesting. Part of the audience got a little bit offended and just left. And then we built a sculpture out of the furniture on the stage.
These things seem to happen at some of your gigs…
Yeah, I guess so. But some very interesting discussions came out of it. The audience asked a lot of questions ‘cos one of the artists was defining the difference between pop and art and how pop can’t function in the museum. He talked about that for about 45 minutes. And then we just said, ‘Well, we don’t see the distinctions between working in pop or fine art because, actually, it’s your creative work and you move around in all the areas’. And that’s exactly what we’re breaking down – these kind of barriers that people set up.
You’ve always explored the ways art, music and fashion are connected. Has your approach to this changed over the last ten years?
It’s gotten more intense because the work that we did in fashion …it was quite fun, but it was also orientated towards making our stage outfits and merchandise – quite functional in that way. Now we’ve developed that further. We design them for companies and we collaborate on a more business level, which for us is more interesting and it’s becoming more serious. We’re growing up more, I guess.
So, it’s ok to be ‘corporate’…?
Yeah, it’s also kinda looked down upon just because of the whole elitism of fine art…. But you know, we’ve always loved mass – mass products, mass media. Also, the art world has loosened up a lot in the last five, ten years and is embracing the movement between these areas.
A lot of corporations and brands these days are using artists’ work to boost their credibility. Do you think that’s a good thing or bad thing for artists?
It always depends on how it’s done and how successful it is. If it’s just making more junk in the world, then of course it sucks. But in general I think it’s just a good thing whatever it is. It’s [art] just integrated into mainstream society – these like super artists are just working in the background on making these insane consumer products. I find it interesting, but it can also get really cheesy… Like that stupid Louis Vuitton thing [with “superstar Japanese artist”, Takashi Murakami].
Which artists are inspiring you at the moment?
We’ve been working a lot doing performance art and we’ve been looking at American female artists from the 1970s. They’re like our godmothers, really.
Are the artists that inspire you today the same as those that inspired you when you first started out?
No, not at all. We used to be more like culturally mild and nice. It would be like depressing people like Sylvia Plath… and Virginia Woolf. Now, it’s become more radical and these anarchist feminists and stuff. We’re getting into feminism a lot at the moment.
That’s interesting. It seems that the world these days is kinda anti-feminism in a lot of ways. What do you think it means to be a feminist today?
Well, we don’t really see ourselves as connected to the traditional or the theoretical dialogue that goes on… We’re just trying to find new definitions for it and see how it can also function in new ways. For us, it’s actually a lot about networking and also we brought out the Girl Monster compilation – a three CD [all girl] compilation about a year and a half ago. And that was really important to build up a kind of a platform for new and exciting music to be released.
This tour has a real mixture of art, music, fashion and university performances – is it important for you to participate in all these realms now?
Yeah, this tour really examines everything that we’re interested in at the moment. And it’s great that we can come to Australia and stay here and work in all these facets.
Looks like our time’s up. Nice chatting to you.
Yeah, thanks.
Catch the Chicks on Speed this week at
L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival: 5th March
Roxanne Parlour, Melbourne: 7th March
Future Music Festival, Melbourne and Sydney: 8th and 9th March
Monash University, Melbourne: 12th March