There would be no stretch of the imagination involved if one was to suggest that Melbourne artist Makatron has been making waves in the past year with his exhibitions, murals and street art. As part of the Everfresh crew, who have a large array of colossal murals and more subtle pieces spread across both Burn City and the world, it can also be said that he, along with the rest of the crew, are at the top of their game.

As an individual artist, however, his work conveys a thoughtful, and at times chaotic, interpretation of personal interaction with both the environment and the people contained within it. His extensive travels, coupled with his unique personal experiences and his love of the grittier underside of urban art have all combined to present a unique, emboldened style that has garnered him a solid body of fans.

Invurt recently had opportunity to conduct an in-depth, thought provoking, and generally kick-ass interview with Makatron, wherein he explains his work and ethos, and where racing a courier bike through the streets of Sao Paulo fits in to it all …

So, whats your background, and what inspired you to become an artist in the first place?

I’ve been drawing and painting all my life, and I currently, somehow, get by with doing a mix of murals, canvas, illustration and, occasionally, some design – which is in the order of my liking.

I was one of six kids, and we had a big house. We drew and painted all over the old part of it, covering two bedrooms and the hallway.

Have you had any formal training in art or has most of your creativity been self taught?

I studied fine art in a small college in NYC for 2 years when I was 20, and I did a few years of illustration in oz, this opportunity was amazing, not because of the school, but from living in NYC for about four years it made me want to travel. For six years my aim in life was to work as a bike courier in as many cities as possible and paint in every place.

As far as playing a part, well, I don’t believe that a good artist needs to go to an art institution, but it can help to achieve some longer term goals. It can also give you some friends who are in a similar stage of life, but i believe I have learnt more and influenced more from the streets. There are some techniques + principles which I have held onto, and being exposed to and forced to study certain artists or movements probably left some marks on me.

With respect to street art and the other guerrilla work that you often practice, what is it about the broad range of styles interpreted within that scene that most draws you in?

I love large scale things. I like characters and freehand things. I like artists who can freestyle on the spot and create from their hand and mind. I like the feeling of coming up with something while you’re slightly paranoid or under a time limit, it keeps you on edge and you know you’re alive. I also like hidden obscured things, like some crazy wall down a dead alley, but also high profile high risk spots too. I have some history in graffiti and bombing (which I see no point talking about on the record, or the variations of my name which I may use), but most of the time when I am painting illegally I resort to using a spot for a character more than I do words. I think perhaps because graffiti has an ego element, there’s essentially nothing more egotistical than writing your own name really big, because my ego isn’t a strength. I appreciate the hard core bombers for a few reasons – firstly, they go hard for what they love and secondly, they drive the balance towards the unsanctioned side of the scale, which means people accept as a reality of their city, and all cities, that everything can’t be ordered or controlled. I think people are more willing to have their wall/house/shop/alley or whatever painted because of that. I also see a lot of art forms in the different types of bombing, tagging, throwies, block letters etc … but I rarely do it as I’ve never really been that good at it.

In terms of the methods you use in your artwork, what is the difference between your street work as opposed to your studio work?

A can is excellent; it’s this small rocket pack of paint which goes on most surfaces quick. I also like to use acrylic buff paint. This is cheap or sometimes free, and you can cover a large surface quickly, so often I’ll use a combo. Sometimes I’ll pack a bag with a 4 litre of paint … often yellow, a few cans, then jump on my bike … I’ll buff two or three areas then go back and spray on top. I also like to climb places, and there is that moment when you’ve buffed somewhere up high, and you’re waiting for it to dry a bit in order to paint on top, which is serenely peaceful. As far as my subject material on the streets? I often do a variation of some character or birds head or a worm or something. Its mostly animals, but this is always evolving. I’ve often though that if I had of decided as a teenager to reproduce an image, something high contrast like black and white, something that is accessible to everyone…. like an image that all people understand what it is… and just did that in all the countries I’ve been to, it would be a way to make a name for yourself – but to me, drawing and the generation of ideas is important so that I’m able to constantly evolve and get better.

My methods in the studio are somewhat different, but I use similar concepts or themes, like sex, violence, machines, nature and relationships. I often have the sketch, then put that on the canvas .. then get messy with acrylics and spray, and I generally try to let it get crazy… then bring it back closer to the sketch. When I’m refining a piece, I like to use poscas a lot, and I have a few tiny brushes. Another thing that helps is to know the consistency of the paint, and the amount you have on the brush. Sometimes I’ll let the paint be watery so it can drip… or when it’s flat, the colours mix themselves in strange ways… I have a lot of techniques like blowing with straws or using toothbrushes, putting sand in the paint, not mixing the colours properly so they are applied with the brush randomly, different chemicals, even hitting the board with a chain to give it depth and texture.

I used to work as a bike mechanic, so I have a pretty good workshop. I believe in buying good tools including art stuff, but I often paint on things I find. So I often attack a canvas like I’m working on a project. I like to have all the tools ready so I don’t have to look for shit and go with the flow.

In what way do you attempt to improve your methods, and how to do try to strive increase your levels of proficiency with your art?

I think by living in Melbourne, and having a lot of good artists here, that it really pushes everyone to keep going and creating. I also have a constant yearning and drive, which I think will never stop, and I think that I am most happy in life when I am not satisfied, striving towards goals, or balancing a lot of projects at once. So for me everyday has to be fully utilised. I hardly ever do nothing, or be unproductive. I rarely watch films or TV, and if I am travelling local or internationally I always have music and books to read, or sketchbooks to draw in.

Can you tell me a little bit about your history with the Everfresh crew and how you came to be a part of it?

It goes back to when I used to work with Sync as a bike courier. I used to hang out in the old studio a fair bit as it was close to my house. Its strange how it all happened as I called Sync one day to ask how much rent he was paying, as I was looking at getting a studio near my house. He said “we were just talking about asking you to the crew”, and after that my art life improved dramatically. It’s hard to describe, because its like a graffiti crew, we’re tough! Like the toughest gangsters around, but we lean towards the art side of things. Some guys have a history with stencils and paste-ups and a wide variety of things, which suits me fine as its not a constricting to what I do. Sometimes perhaps it is a little constricting, or has influenced me towards a style though, like when we are all painting a wall with characters which all have a fat black outline and a key-line, it doesn’t always sit so well when your piece doesn’t have those elements. Sometimes I’ll take a different approach to a wall and its elements, or how the wall should be approached in regards to the method or background integration or whatever. Sometimes you have to put your foot down, and sometimes you have to compromise, and sometimes you just gotta hide the fluro mud colours so people don’t go crazy with them! One thing about doing a wall in the street is that often you can’t leave a big black one colour area, as people will tag that area much more than say the face of a character … but I like negative space because it gives a lot more attention to the other parts of the piece.

In terms of the success of Everfresh, what are your personal thoughts on the way in which many of its members have found a certain infamy within both the commercial and underground circles of the Melbourne art scene? Do you feel that the artists and the studio as a whole has achieved a good balance between the two states?

Well, everyone is an individual and has their own beliefs. Everyone has taken jobs that prostitute their art styles, selling out to some degree, or selling a product or selling a style to sell something for someone else. Some guys do graphic design full time, which for me is using creative abilities and skills to produce visuals that sell stuff, but personally the last six months have been awesome and I rarely take on design jobs. I’ve had some strange ones in the past, one of the oddest jobs I did was some years ago was graffiti letters for a Jewish bah mitzvah, saying “mazel tov” or congratulations and the kids name – that was all painted in fluro, then on the day the kids would tag their names under the UV light… and I guess they’d win a prize or something. It was good money for the time and effort I put in …

But I’m rambling, and the question about achieving a balance … Well. Generally it’s well balanced, some guys are much more active in the street like Prism or Mayo than they are in the galleries, and some have their gallery art stuff and then just bomb in the street. Personally, for myself, I don’t think that there’s enough of both.

It’s been mentioned elsewhere that you have an affinity for technology and exploring the conjunctions and affiliations between human – machine interfaces – what is it about this area of sociology that fascinates you?

For years I’ve had an undefined …. word? idea? Belief? … or a system, or maybe even a philosophy, that all things in life can be talked about in terms of man versus machine, or the psychological argument of nature versus nurture. My limited understanding of Freud is he was all about people having secret desires to fuck their mothers. I also read a book about Jim Morrison when I was a young teenager, it talked about ‘kill the father fuck the mother’ – the Matrix films also delve into this sort of thing a lot. That said, my philosophy isn’t very well defined or easily explained, but as an example; a bike is a machine, and the human element makes it work, but it gets blurry when the human is working like a machine riding from Sydney to Melbourne, eating kilos of food and drinking so much water to churn out the kilometres.

Or it can be explained in a creative way; people, myself included, spend so much time in front of computer screens that they become attached and “at one” with the machine. This is good and bad. Its good, as it makes you more powerful and you have greater abilities, like making a website or speaking to people across the country. On the other hand, it can be a negative thing, as people become reliant on these technological tools. My surname Makatron is another simple example – its a Norwegian name, but I’ve never been to Norway. My family has an Irish background, but in Irish etymology, Mac means son of … like MacWilliams or mcdonald or something. So there are both natural and human elements, as well as the obvious “tron” part … there is a town called Trondheim in Norway, and I think it comes from there.

Lately, in the last 6 months or so, I’ve been heavily leaning towards the natural side of things, and not trying to keep up to date with programs or shortcuts at all. I’ve been doing more and more stuff by hand, ie walls, drawings, canvas etc. I also havnt felt much of a need to convey roboticisms in plants or ideas such as that, but have become more interested in the animal kingdom, especially the connections between of human emotions in animals and vice versa. Sexual attraction has also been in my thinking, in regards to how people see things in relationships and the confusion, or mixed message, that you can surface when there is an attraction-repulsion paradox. This is all tied up with the machine world too, all those mixed feelings. I read the book that became Bladerunner [Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep] and it has a lot of underlying themes in regards to attraction to androids and whether they are real feelings. Even though the female is technically an robot, she’s also a real hottie, and the sex was good … but the protagonist has to kill her anyway.

I’m rambling, again, not everything has so much thought put into it like this… sometimes its just fun just to paint without all the thinking.

Travelling features heavily in your life – not so long ago you did a tour to Brazil – do you believe that travel can play a large part in the evolution of an artists work, and in what way does travel influence the way you view your own work?

Absolutely. Travelling is amazing for artistic development, and for me its become essential. You often find yourself in some crazy places doing crazy things. When you’re high on hallucinogens, racing without a helmet on a bike with no breaks around a foreign city, without being able to speak the language, dodging cars, trying to win a courier race – well, you really start to see the world in different way, and it can be very eye opening.

I don’t race anymore, but those are good memories. A lot of travel was aligned with ex girlfriends or to be in a city where there was a courier event. I went to Brazil last year for a few months. That country, in particular Sao Paulo, is awesome for street stuff. They have a unique style of letters there called Pixacao, and they have some massive murals there, but its pretty broad the range of art styles. In Brazil, I feel like they’ve developed styles somewhat more than Australia and Europe have, both in graffiti and art in general, that is independent of US culture. US culture feels like such a big part of Aussie culture; in music, language, sports, food we eat, wars we go to, etc. Nowadays the Internet makes it easy for people to share things and see new things. I really enjoyed my time in Berlin too, more or less the same reasons, massive murals, heavily graffitied and lots and lots of art. Some other favourite places for art influence are definitely NYC, Brooklyn in particular, Amsterdam, Copenhagen (Christiania), and although I have my issues about Australia, like its too conservative, semi racist, somewhat ignorant and consumerist, all in all life and art is pretty good.

Can you tell us a little about your current projects, what you have been working on recently?

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been painting about five days of the week an underpass for the freeway. It’s basically a bike path and about 240 sq metres… or two walls about 60 metres long. I’m more or less the project manager for this, and about 8 people will paint in total. This is a big budget job as Citylink, the freeway constructers, are paying. I’ve also been remaking my site with some help, and its nearly at a good point that I’m happy with, basically its a Blog, and its got a few other pages showing murals, street stuff and hand held art.

I had my first solo show in December 09 which went really well, and, if I swap a painting for a car tomorrow, it will have sold out. I plan another show in a year here in Melbourne, but I’ve about getting a body of work together to do some in other cities like Perth or Sydney. After having a solo show I’ve been flat out with things,  a few commissions and so many more random emails about art for sale. Its flattering and humbling, but its also encouraging.

To finish off, what are you views on the current state of the arts within Melbourne and Australia at this point in time?

I think Australia is a little conservative, but overall it’s not too bad. I know enough people that make a living from their art or music, but these things can always be improved …

Makatron will be displaying work in the Hello, My Name is exhibition at the At Large Gallery during March. Check out Makatrons website, and the Everfresh website, for more images and information on his past, present, and future projects.