SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 GQ.COM.AU 209pizzas – all the shit stuff with no customer
service. I just knew I didn’t want to do that
forever and blindly pursued what my heart
was set on.”
“Lister is the street artist but there are many
other aliases I operate under because I have
multiple creative personality disorder – it’s
a blessing and a curse, but doing this thing for
so long, I see opportunities that I personally can’t
take that one of my aliases can... it enables me
to communicate in many different dialects to
different styles of painters – from full-blown
graffiti artists to fine art and Kandinsky and
I can talk de Kooning for days. But it’s not my
whole life, it’s my way to exist on every platform,
on the movements that have gone on or are
current – it’s how I’ve immersed myself in, well,
I hate to call it an industry because it cheapens
it, I’d call it a lifestyle.”
“I don’t associate myself that much with my
work and I don’t associate my work with being
anything outside of ordinary or special – it’s not
like I’m fixing kids’ eyes in a third world country,
that’s worth clapping for. I’ve been shocked for
many years getting the attention I get in other
countries doing what I do, because so much of it
is positive and really affirmative – especially
having been raised in Brisbane and being
this freak anomaly and the community not
comprehending what I was doing.
In some cities I’m meeting celebrities and
going to fancy parties and then in a different
city I’m chased by the police and put in jail
for doing the same thing. It’s abstract, I guess
you have to be like a tree – this flexible entity
that’s ready for anything.”
“I heard someone say recently that people don’t
change, they just get better at being themselves,
so maybe I’m just getting better at doing that and
what I’m doing technically, conceptually and
philosophically – I’m interested in questions and
I’m interested in other people and their answers
to things.
I’ve always tried to maintain that I’m only
as good as my last production and only as
good as my last decision. It gives me hope to do
better and I’m never interested in making shows
that aren’t as good as my last – I put a lot of
pressure on myself to do that but I don’t find it a struggle as much as I find
it exciting and a challenge and I enjoy that.”“The Sydney show is more text based and I want to have a wolf raping
a girl, I want these guys carrying a dolphin up to a club but he’s got no ID,
I want a tired stripper, there’s going to be a guy and girlfriend trying to
put a condom on and it’s flaccid ’cause that’s a slippery, difficult job and
there’s a guy in a wheelchair who’s going to have all these women trying
to have sex with his chair covered in all these dildos. I want it to be
Australian and I want neon text and I want there to be plants and an
Adidas-tracksuit mum with a pram – things I see out during the day.
I want it to be beautiful but also somewhat disturbing – maybe that’s in
the technique I’m painting in or the subject matter that I choose.
I don’t want to be provocative – these are the paintings I want to hang on
my walls, that’s when I’m satisfied. I’m attracted to the works of Adam
Cullen and the Chapman bothers and Goya to an extent – I’m not so
much into the grotesque as I am into the bizarre or the absurd or the
sexually taboo – they are interesting fields and I like the idea of being
naughty and myself having to explain that and then that taking me into
a conversation that wouldn’t normally happen. And that then has people
talking about things and thinking about things they don’t really do.”“I was into speed and coke and I was just fucking going crazy, it was nasty.
But it’s all good now. I’ve recorded heaps of my life – when the camera’s
there I’d shoot and always have been a documenter, I guess. And in this
film my wife leaves me and I go through this hellish divorce, I go to rehab
in Bali and get done for drugs and graffiti – the last 10-15 years have been
crazy. The film’s honest and I don’t try and hide anything – and I can’t
wait to see people’s reactions to it.”“I’m interested in spreading my seed and pollinating the world though all
these different disciplines with my stylistic approach. Creativity is in
every shape and form a way of venting energy. It’s magical and I can’t ever
think of my practice as a means to survive. If an object is eventually sold
or put in auction – I can’t think like that as these paintings are not an
object, they’re a story. I love them.” n Lister’s new show runs September
13-29 at Nanda\Hobbs Contemporary, Sydney; Meet The Listers is expected in
cinemas early 2018; anthonylister.com