After the Sweet Streets Urban Intervention opening, I dutifully hitched a quick lift over to Backwoods gallery to catch the last ten minutes or so of the opening for Elphs show, Dataloss. Walking in, I noted his illustrative-styled work splashed across the walls, and smaller sections of work placed amongst it. To say cool and tidy in reference to the work is an understatement –  the piece I loved most, a retro-styled motorbike and rider, all greens and sepias and loose but definitive lines, had a red dot next to it – lucky buyer there.

We’d tried to get hold of Elph for a few questions before the show, but as is often the case, the lead-up to an opening can be a real busy time for an artist – but, after settling back at his home in Scotland, he gracefully took some time out to get back to us, setting a background story with some great responses, which, in juxtaposition to my viewing of his work, rounded off another amazing international show at Backwoods Gallery ..  cant wait for the next one – and cant wait until Elph makes his way down here again.

Can you tell us a little about what it was like growing up amongst the street art scene in Scotland? How did you first find yourself involved, and what lead you to become so passionate about it?

When I got into painting graffiti, the graffiti scene was tiny, we all knew each other pretty well and still do pretty much to this day. It was pre-internet and seemed like the  most exciting thing you could be down with.

How is the Scottish scene today? and what differences, if any, can you denote to portions of the Scottish street art scene that you wouldn’t necessarily find in other parts of the world?

The Scottish scene is still small but productive. I think one thing that stands out in Scotland is the ‘menchies’, otherwise known as ‘mentions’ written by a great deal more people than traditional graffiti, some people write their nicknames, some write gang names and some people write their full name like ‘Big Davie McCloud’. Not the most undercover!

Here’s a comedy version of a Scottish ned:

You seem to draw a lot of inspiration in your work from comics and such, but what other esoteric influences do you have that others may not know about?

I’m pretty into Golden Age American Illustration, from Rockwell to Bernie Fuchs bernie-fuchs, when the magazines were using illustrators like a manual version of photoshop, I love that they seemed really loose but the whole thing was held together with the line work, they also worked to crazy deadlines.

Through doing design work I collected a lot of old printed type and graphics and recently acquired some really nice blueprints from an old factory we used to paint in.

There is a Scottish painter called Peter Howson ) he worked in bars and hung out a lot in them too and would often draw people he met, the faces look pretty lived in.

Can you tell us a little about the idea behind your recent show Dataloss, and what the name signified?

Originally I was going to call the show ‘Elph’s Data Recovery Service’, but went for Data Loss instead, for the last few years I’ve been playing around with lots of things on the computer, probably more than I have been drawing, which has led to missing out on things, I’ve been learning stuff, but computer-wise I learn slow.

I just finished my website (https://www.akaelph.com after about 5 years of changing it design-wise and it’s in Flash which is becoming outdated. That’s the way it’s staying now, I suppose I will make a light version for phones, but for the moment it’s all flash.

Anyway back to the title, I’m sometimes slow at working things out plus I’m slightly OCD and a lot of the time it’s trial and error, so this leads to problems with deadlines and also in my life outside of work wife my wife and child becomes affected by this, so the Data Loss isn’t really in a computer sense but more so in real life.

That probably sounds mental.

How did you find the preparation for the show, and the logistics of it? Shipping work, helping organise it from overseas – was it a fairly simple operation or has it had its moments?

The preparation for the show went well, I kept the work small, so I could transport it easily on my person, in case my belongings went missing and went to make the bigger pieces when I arrived.
I would have liked to have made some bigger pieces earlier that could have been shipped out but never got round to it.

Next time!

You have a very illustrated style meshed with your own take on street art themes, what is that you generally aim towards when you first start out either drawing or painting? Do you have a clear vision in mind or is your work more organic in nature?

With drawing it really depends, for a graffiti lettering piece it usually comes from a doodle, I try and never use an eraser so it all flows quite well together and it also helps me go with intuition rather than thinking too much about it.

With characters it can be an image or photo that I’m inspired by to start a drawing off and then I just keep adding.

Dataloss was a mix of photography, small scale acrylic/gouache drawings and a large scale mural painting in the space – if you had unlimited time and resources, not to mention a teleporter of some kind, what kind of show would you put on?

I’d like to do some largescale detailed gouache paintings, gouache has been a bit of a new discovery for me and it really helps get precise line work, something I couldn’t get with acrylics so easy.

Also I’d like to make some more things in the space, possibly some sort of interactive pieces either with sound or animation.

One thing I noticed in Melbourne in exhibitions and speaking with artists is that performance pieces seemed to play an important part, I like that too.

Do you have any clear cut favourite artists amongst the Australian street art scene, and if so, why?

I’m a big fan of Lister, since I first saw his work, he’s a hard working dude. My hosts for the Ghostpatrol and Miso also seem to have a high output rate which I really like.

Ever since I was young I really liked Atome IBS, and obviously, who could forget Lush, man is a genius.

There’s really a lot to take in when you come to Melbourne, I was lucky also to go visit the Everfresh guys studio too which was great to see.

What were you most looking forward to in your stay here in Australia, besides opening the show? You used to live here in Prahran, tell us a little about your time here back then?

I was just looking forward to experiencing being in a different city and wandering about, even if it was only for a short time. I lived just off Greville Street for two and a half months 1999, with my mate and his girlfriend at the time who was working on Brunswick Street. We were prettyskint so we didn’t do too much, went to Revolver for booze and dancing and I painted a little.

I remember seeing a lot of stuff by Perks and Mini at the time and Merda was doing a lot of graphics too. The first ever painting I left in the street was in St Kilda, I couldn’t fit it in my case so I stuck it to one of the bollards on the roadside, I’d never did anything like that before and didn’t really think about doing it again until meeting Adam Neate in 2003 at the Unabomber show.

What plans do you have in store for the immediate and long term future now that this show is over, do you have any specific goals that you want to achieve over time?

Hopefully I’m going to continue doing the gouache work, I’d like to do some posters again, I think hanging out with Miso & Ghostpatrol and witnessing their productivity has inspired some new ideas.

I should have an album of music out next year with Gamma Proforma (http://www.gammaproforma.com), it’s pretty experimental as I am no musician, I made some sounds a while ago for a show and we named it ‘Space Jazz’, it’s pretty daft.

Images courtesy of Backwoods Gallery – there are a whole bunch more here, so go and check them out. Also check out Elph website, and Backwoods Gallerys site also – many thanks to Ghostpatrol for hooking up the interview for us as well.