Thanks to Ariana for  her 1st guest interview for Invurt with Creature Creature. The interview took place a few weeks before their latest show BRUISER opened at Chaotic Gallery, so some of the answers are in the past. Thanks to David Russell for the photos.

I first came across the stunning works of Creature Creature whilst having a wander through Brunswick St Gallery in late 2012. Their works were featured in a group show, Shape Shifter, curated by Cameron Brideoake. I recall wanting to take home the entire series of their works, but simply didn’t have the cash flow (an recurring problem when addicted to art!). There was a beautiful work on board that featured a snow-capped mountain scape painted within two symmetrical cranes that truly captivated me – the colour palette and oriental style was very appealing.

Since then, the dynamic duo Ambrose Rehorek and Chanel Tang have been incredibly busy during 2013, kicking it off with a brilliant solo show, Red Leaves, at Espionage Gallery in Ambrose’s home town of Adelaide. The adorable couple have moved into creating paste-ups featuring their signature icons the dragon and the unicorn. You can find these both inside and on the façade of Three Monkeys on Chapel St, Black Cat in Fitzroy, and throughout the laneways of Melbourne.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Creature Creature in the lead up to their solo exhibition Bruiser at Chaotic Gallery in Windsor, which by the way was a stellar event! I was thrilled to walk into the opening and join such a supportive crowd, see the ever-accruing red dots, and to top off my night, discovering that my favourite ginger beer Lick Pier was sponsoring the event. The evening was a wonderful celebration of the efforts of these two brilliant artists – they truly deserved it. The works they produced for the show were fascinating, as they have clearly progressed in their style while staying true to their Eastern influences. The female samurai was a strong theme in the pieces for Bruiser – you can see these breathtaking works HERE.

A – Tell us what you’ve been up to since your first solo exhibition Red Leaves at Espionage Gallery in Adelaide earlier this year…

CC – A variety of things, that solo was like a launching pad for us. Before that we were in a lot of group shows at emerging galleries and that kind of thing, but once we did the solo show and came back we found that the exposure level was a lot higher, and there were a lot more opportunities for us, it really put us on the map, so to speak.

We’ve got a lot more into street art since we came back; we’ve done a lot of paste-ups around Melbourne, and random jobs like painting a coffee machine …

A – How did you get that gig? I saw that on your Facebook page, the coffee machine looked great!

CC – A coffee machine suppliers company in Italy contacted us, they wanted some artists to decorate them for the International Coffee Expo. We’d never really done anything like that before, it was a bit different to what we usually do as it was on a 3D surface, and unlike painting on vinyl toys as it was almost spherical. We primed it first, used acrylics, and used a gloss coating over the top, so we hope it holds out well. That was a great experience and opportunity to do something different and fun!

Aside from that, we’ve kept on making art, and are focusing on our upcoming shows. We have a solo show coming up, ‘Bruiser’ at Chaotic Gallery, we’ve started with Rtist agency as well, they have a group show soon so we’ve made a few pieces for them.

When we came back from Adelaide we were signed to Rtist Agency, so we’re hoping there will be heaps of opportunities coming up with them as well. They’re helping us to develop a range of work that will be good for their clients, as they’re beginning to focus on the hotel, apartment and interior design industry, assisting artists to find commissions down that avenue, so we’re going to be a part of that and hopefully we’ll get some great jobs out of it! They are still to launch the agency, which will start with the group show, so it’s still early days.

We just had a show at Black Cat, just a small show that we organised a while ago, because we love the venue, we go there all the time, and they’re really good with showing artists and commissioning works, so we just had some of our paste ups there and a few lino prints as well. It was a great little show to lead into Bruiser.

A – Let’s hear more about the concept behind Bruiser …

CC – The concept of the show started when we did a piece on a skateboard that was of a female samurai, for the show Shape Shifter at Brunswick St Gallery, it got a lot of attention, a lot of people loved it. Then Ambrose’s dad sent us a photograph of a real female samurai, a historical portrait, and we were amazed because we didn’t know that they actually existed! We thought it was a fictional thing, but they actually existed, they’re called ‘Onna-bugeisha’, which basically means ‘Japanese female warrior’. The basic premise of Bruiser is a series based on female warriors, and a lot of weaponry and armour, which is what we’re interested in, so the show will play with that kind of theme, but in ‘Creature Creature’ style.

A – Do you plan to work more on the streets?

CC – Yeah we definitely want to keep that up, we did a paste up on the outside of Black Cat, which was quite fun. But we want to do more, we’ve set up our style with the Dragon and the Unicorn, but we want it to evolve and become more elaborate and detailed, so that’s what we’re aiming for. We’d also like to do more large-scale works like murals. We’re going to put a paste up in Revolver around October too, so that’s one to look out for.