For many young people, the idea of working in a retail environment is all too familiar. The sheer monotony of the often-long shifts and the fear of that one last customer just before closing time is a near-universal experience.
That sinking feeling is what Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist Abbey Lucas, 20, explores in her latest work ‘My Mundane’, which is being showcased this weekend at ‘Elevate’. The art show will feature a showcase of 15 emerging local artists.
I caught up with Abbey before the exhibition to chat about her work, the inspirations behind it, and the double-edged sword of upselling in the retail world.
Hey Abbey – thanks for chatting with me! How are you feeling this week? You’ve got some pretty exciting things happening.
I’m excited and nervous. There’s a lot happening so my brain’s just trying to take it one step at a time. I’ve got an art show on Saturday, which is really exciting!
Ooh – tell me more! What’s the exhibition, and what are you showing there?
The exhibition is called ‘Elevate’, it’s an emerging artists exhibition at Backdock Arts. It’s going to be a lot of different artists from different backgrounds and mediums. It’s really hard to summarise it because there’s a lot of photography, there’s going to be drawings, painting, sculpture – there’s no distinct theme either. It’s just letting emerging artists show off their work, which is really important.
My work will be a photo piece that I did last year (above). It’s a photo of my face covered in meat. It looks at the working experience for young people essentially. It’s looking at feeling suffocated in a work environment, but kind of also looking at some of the beautiful elements of the work environment. For me, this work looks at meat and portrays meat – and to me, I thought when I would sit at work in the deli, I would enjoy setting it all up and making the dead meat … look nice? I would bury myself in the dead meat because I felt like I was drowning and suffocating in that job – I thought “If I stay here for the rest of my life, I’m going to be so depressed!”
That sounds really intriguing! How did you get involved with Elevate?
There’s a Uni group at my studio that makes art and does a lot of exhibitions. I thought for once I would submit to it. I was thinking about it and I was just like “Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s submit to this exhibition.” I thought it was just going to be a small thing at Uni where we get our work together but it’s a proper exhibition! So I kind of submitted to it without really knowing the whole potential of the exhibition, which is really exciting. I knew the people who were in charge of it – and they’re great artists and people – so that’s kind of how I found it.
Is this the first exhibition you’ve put yourself forward for?
This will be the second ever exhibition I’ve put my artwork forward for. The last one was at the beginning of last year. So this will be my first artwork in Brisbane City; but it’s my second exhibition… which is still very exciting!
That’s about a year and a half. What sort of progression have you seen in your work in that time?
My artwork has changed a lot. It used to really explore different topics that surrounded me – and it still does do that. From last year to this year, my art practice has really focused on myself more, and my experiences and translating that to other people – translating experiences that we all relate to. So it’s gone from a wider scope to now “Here’s my personal experiences – let me show you them in a way of opening up to others.” It’s kind of like a therapy now, rather than just a form of expression.
So what I’m hearing is that you’ve become the ‘tortured artist’?
I have! I definitely have!
Could you give me an example?
So, I’ve made a couple of works – one work recently called ‘Let me be Your Villain’ which is examining relationships which fall apart and feeling like the villain of people’s stories.
There’s another work where I looked at consumerism in general, but more specifically my experience with consumerism and how as an employee in retail how I feel about selling things and being a part of a larger issue of consumerism and buying unnecessary items. All the works are created from a point of personal experience first, and expressing that, rather than just a topic.
I love that you mention working in retail, given what you’re exhibiting later this week. Could you tell me more about that influence there?
The ‘My Mundane’ work originally started with working in a grocery store deli. It started from my experience of feeling like I was suffocating in that job.
One of my more recent works looked at the fashion industry and retail, and upselling to people and how I feel like I’m manipulating people to buy things. I do that all the time and I know that’s a bad thing, but I get praised for it! So there’s this relationship there of “Well I’m doing a bad thing, but I enjoy getting praised for it.” So that’s kind of the approaches I’ve taken looking at work – that suffocating feeling and the conflicting feeling of doing your job and knowing it’s wrong.
I think that’s such a universal experience.
It gets to a point where if I upsell really well I’ll print out a receipt and go “Look!” to my manager. I feel like it’s a conning act. It’s awful – but you feel so much excitement and happiness because you get told you’re doing a good job and you get liked more by your boss.
Yeah - I definitely feel you there! Let’s move on from the world of work. Could you talk me through some of your artistic inspirations?
My influences are a bit all over the place. Number one, and number one always, is Marina Abramavić, who is a performance artist. I could froth over work any day! She’s just so exciting to me. She’s kind of masochistic in her art and I’d like to do more like that. Another artist would be Barbara Kruger – her colour scheme is definitely represented in my work, and she’s a very big feminist, which is also something I like to embed in my work a lot.
Outside of those two traditional contemporary artists, I would say the drag scene influences me a lot. Drag influences me so much and wearable art influences me so much. The way you can contort your body, or change how you look and how over the top it is really influences me. Another one would be the Instagram artist Pissy Pussy – which is a great name!
So stuff like that, and the drag queen Yovska – I really like their stuff as well. I like the drag and wearable art that doesn’t have a specific gender in mind – that just looks really artistic and interesting. Sometimes I get influences from films and shows I watch too – but the drag and wearable art, makeup and body artists too – they always influence me.
Would you consider creating your own drag character?
I don’t know. I’ve considered doing more full body wearable art that very much can go into the world of drag. I just think for me personally it’s more a look and a concept, but I wouldn’t want to participate in the performance aspect of it.
That’s fair enough. It sounds like you’re not too keen on the gender performance side of drag either?
Yeah – it’s more of a visual representation of something, a conceptual representation than a gendered representation for me.
So would you be more likely to say, walk a runway, than do a lipsync performance?
Yeah. I mean, I like to just be out in public. I would say a performance artist is very much in that realm of just existing in form and existing in the attire and taking photos. I would like to explore more of walking the runway and capturing it live. I think that would be really cool – I just haven’t delved into it yet.
Awesome - sounds like we'll have to stay tuned for that! So, my favourite thing to ask creatives like yourself is “Who is your most left-of-field inspiration?”
Let me think about that one! I would say… most recently, it would be the film ‘The Lighthouse.’ The visuals of it – I have them up on a pinboard behind me! I have two captures of shots from the film and I look at them and want to play with shade, and lighting and these really intense expressions. If you’ve ever seen the movie, it has all that, but it’s also the most bizarre movie – it just doesn’t make sense.
That’s quite famously a black and white movie – is that something you like to play with?
I had this joke with a friend this morning – they said “Whose art is that in the studio space? Oh it’s Abbey’s… that makes sense.”
I typically use blacks, whites, greys and reds – and that’s kind of a stable for me. I don’t know how it happened – I think it might be my subtlety of drawing on Barbara Kruger as a reference. It’s just kind of followed me, that colour scheme.
Tickets ($5) to the Elevate showcase on the 6th of August are available online.