DANIEL WALKER Has a chat with talented arty type Benjamin Reeve.

He’s as comfortable on the street with a spray can as he is with a paint brush and oils in a studio. His canvases range from paper, wood or linen, to the deck of a skateboard, or the side of a Brisbane city train. Boasting a string of exciting jobs including graffiti artist, mentor, DJ, Japanese toy designer, scenic artist and prop maker; he’s worked on Australian films, Hollywood blockbusters and recently the Dr Who television series. With a degree in Visual Arts and a Masters in Creative Advertising, his home is decorated with amazing paintings, sculptures, toys, and the biggest collection of vinyl records I’ve ever seen (in your face, Valley Markets!). He’s also a very friendly and down to earth guy - he is Benjamin Reeve. I caught up with him to learn about the man behind the awesome CV.

So what are you working on at the moment?
At the moment I’m doing a new series which is a bit of a departure from, or not really, it’s sort of an extension of what I’ve been working on. I was born in Papua New Guinea so a lot of my early work I used to incorporate things from PNG into my work. Issues related to my growing up there. And it’s sort of come full circle where now I’m really incorporating a lot of issues that had to do with that but more actually looking at the stylistic qualities of PNG line drawings. A lot of my painting I do is really quite delicate, a lot softer than what you normally see. I’m incorporating this PNG design and line work through it. Using a lot of iconography, like Bird of Paradise. Saying what I want to say and what I normally say but using elements from that sort of background.

Have you always wanted to be an artist?   
I’ve always painted since I was a baby. It was really weird growing up, at school people would say “I don’t know what to do when I grow up” but I’ve always known so it was hard for me to understand people. I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve had a passion for art since I was a kid. When we moved to Australia I wanted to really put my artwork out there but it’s hard to get galleries to take your work when you’re twelve. People don’t really take you seriously, I just wanted people to see my work so that’s actually the angle that I took, and why I started doing graffiti. I thought I could get my artwork out there and I was just bursting to be creative. That way the average person could see it so that really appealed to me. I started doing graffiti in 1987 and back then I was the only person in the north side of Brisbane that did it. So it wasn’t because I saw it and thought it was cool, it’s because I just wanted to do my art. But then it grew and heaps of people joined forces with me. The whole PNG culture is very tribal and I took that on board with my graffiti crew and we treated it, not like a gang but like a tribal group. It was a very different way of doing it because it was more about art than anything else. A lot of the stuff I did was that same style of PNG line work.

Was most of what you were doing illegal?
Oh it was illegal! I had heaps of commissioned work; I’d approach people and ask if I could do murals on their buildings. So that was good because they supplied paint so I always had paint to go to the train lines with. But then I got to a stage where I didn’t want to do it anymore – I wasn’t interested in that illegal aspect of graffiti. So I refused to incorporate that into what I was doing. I did my Bachelor of Arts and then my Masters and I got really into refining my skills and painting using traditional methods, like the old school way of painting oil paintings. A series I did of mugshots recently took two years to complete, because it’s layering and layering and glazes. Once I finished it I was so sick of having to take so long to do each painting, I wanted to just get free again, get that feeling again like when I was a kid and you’re completely free and you just go random. So with the last series I did I was just bringing that back again, not being precious about the oils anymore – using oil paint but also getting spray paint in there and freeing it all up and it was really rewarding for me. But now I’ve progressed from that and so I’m going back into the old techniques.

I’ve always been creative, I make music as well so that’s always been a problem for me because when I paint I can’t make music and when I make music I can’t paint so there was periods where I didn’t paint, I just sketched. I lived in Tokyo for four and a half years and during that time I recorded an album over there and we did concerts every weekend so that was a really big thing for me and I obviously didn’t do much art. But then when I came back to Australia I did my Masters and was back to painting.

What do you play?
I produce with samplers and I DJ as well so I’ve got a ridiculous amount of records hoarded up in my house.

How did you find doing art at university? Was it restrictive?
No, I did my Bachelor of Visual Arts at QUT and that was really freeing actually. I majored in sculpture because people advised me not to do painting because they’d try to teach me how to paint and through my whole life I’ve developed my own particular style.

What was the inspiration behind your Mugshots series?
It’s just this idea of all these celebrities, immortalising them in that one moment that they’d rather forget. Immortalising this one moment where they’re sitting there and they feel so guilty and you can see it on their face. You see their mugshots - the lighting’s not good because it’s just taken by the police -  I’m just attracted to those images because I think that people are so obsessed with celebrities and it annoys me. People are constantly following them, chasing them and seeing what they’re doing and the idea is that you walk into a room and there’s all these celebrities – they’re quite large – and they’re just staring at you.You have to walk past them all, but they’re not running this time you are, and you feel threatened by them. You almost feel this real guilt from seeing them that way because they’re high or they’re drunk or whatever. There are a lot of choices I could have made as far as the actual celebrities that I featured, but I was very specific about the ones I chose because the whole thing’s about role models and I think these are the role models. I actually did a graffiti piece about a year ago in a night club here and I painted a giant picture of Paris Hilton, and there’s that Sex Pistols cover to God Save The Queen where the eyes and the mouth are covered. So basically I painted her perfectly, including her eyes and mouth and then I just blacked out the eyes and mouth. Tthen I did a big piece next to it in that Sex Pistols font that says “God Save The Teens” and that was where the inspiration started. I was thinking “What has Paris Hilton done to the teens?”

It kind of shows the person behind the persona. By sort of crushing the celebrity humanises them but also sympathises with them.
Exactly. What's really interesting, is that from the people I know who have seen my paintings, everyone has a different favourite. I've recently sold 2, Heather Locklear and Robert Downey Jr they’re actually the only two who are a little bit older in the series so I found it interesting that they were the first ones picked up.

Do you like being present when people see your work, to be able to see the different reactions?
Yes, it’s really fascinating. I’ve never had a show where I’ve had so much feedback and so many different responses from people. Actually one woman went in and saw Edward Furlong and said “Oh my god, it’s K.D. Lang!” Sometimes I don’t understand people's comments, but on the whole it’s really entertaining.

You were behind painting the traffic signal boxes in Brisbane. How did that come about?
I did a lot of damage when I was a kid and I felt like I wanted to make it right. I saw what was happening with graffiti. When I was doing it we had particular codes, we wouldn’t do certain things. Like we would never damage private property. As I got a bit older it was out of control – kids were just going nuts – so I ended up thinking I want to give back so I started this group. Basically it was a mentoring group, I’d get kids who were getting into trouble from graffiti, going to court and stuff like that, and I tried to teach them skills. I tried to pick kids who were really artistic but sort of wrongly directed and didn’t really know what they were doing with themselves. I used to always tag those power boxes, and I was walking through the city one day and I thought, maybe we should do them. The whole purpose in the first place was to paint them to fit in with the surroundings, but then it got taken over – it was a political thing – which was really sad for us because we were doing it for the kids. But then we started painting the council caravans, which is a fantastic canvas for kids, painting cityscapes on them and stuff like that, and that was successful for a while. But then I ended up moving to Japan and I gave some of my film jobs away to one of the kids that I was mentoring and he’s doing really well now – he has a clothing label. It’s amazing to see how things have progressed, how these kids have taken these skills on and have not gotten caught up in their old life. I had a lot of friends that went to jail and a lot of friends that passed away because of it, so it was just important for me to do it.

I had a major issue when I tried to leave graffiti culture. I nearly went to jail but I won the court case. It was a pretty heavy time, and then a few friends died and a few went to jail and I just wanted to separate myself from it. But because I was the leader of my graffiti group it was very hard to leave. It took a long time for me to detach myself from that, and so I really tried to push it away for a long time. I didn’t want to bring it back into my art. It’s just recently that I’ve sort of reengaged it, which is so freeing. It’s like, wow, I can develop now!

You did your Masters in Creative Advertising. Do you think that understanding arts commercial aspects is important for artists these days?
Completely. I did my Masters because I wanted to learn how to develop selling and promoting myself. When I was ten I used to lock myself in my room and paint – mum thought I was a bit mad – but it was that romantic notion of an artist. But when I went to Japan I worked for a while in a toy company designing characters and we had to go to these lectures about target markets and promoting yourself and I’d never thought about that before and I was just like, “this is awesome!” I could learn how to promote myself rather than just doing the art and not doing anything with it and that’s why I decided to come back to Australia and do my Masters.

You’ve done a lot of work in film and television, including Dr Who recently. How did that come about?
When I did my Bachelor of Arts my final piece was a huge woven fence made form grass and stuff like that, and behind it was this light-box with a drawing of Aboriginals all chained together – it was quite a full on piece – and a guy came up and said “wow, will you come and work with me in the films,” and I was like “yeah, cool,” so from there I worked in films for years. My first film was Street Fighter.

What did you do in the films?
I did scenic art – painting the backgrounds – and I did a lot of sculptures and props. A lot of creative jobs. They sort of got me in to do unusual pieces. Like Street Fighter was set in Thailand in the future, but I had to do these traditional Thai-style paintings on these buildings that were traditional, but in the future, so they gave me a brief saying we want all these different aspects and then do what you think would be the graffiti in the future there, but incorporating traditional means. So after I did that they got me in to do any unusual jobs. Occasionally I’d do big graffiti pieces, like in the film Paperback Hero I had to paint a big piece on a giant road truck that was filmed going over the Sydney Harbour Bridge so it was pretty cool seeing that in action. I didn’t work on films again until I came back from Japan but for Dr Who I was put in a different role, which was set dressing and buying. So whenever I walked through the studio I could smell the chemicals and see all the guys working so hard making all the moulds and I was like “I’m going shopping!” so it was a lot more fun and enjoyable for me – I just loved it. The reason I actually stopped working on films was because when I got home at the end of the day I didn’t want to paint anymore.

Do you treat painting as a job, like devote set hours each day to work on your art, or do you have to wait for inspiration or motivation to strike? 
I never used to but since I’ve returned from Japan I’m a lot more focused. Living over there it’s a different way of life and you really direct yourself and focus on what you do. I’ve adopted that style of thinking now so when I do things I treat it like a job, but it doesn’t feel like a job.

Were you influenced by other artists growing up?
When I was ten I used to constantly go to art galleries and look at the great masters’ work. When I was in high school and they were trying to teach us about Salvador Dali I was like, I taught myself all this stuff when I was ten, you know, come on this is old news! I think there’s so much more out there. It feels restrictive that schools still teach about particular artists like Dali and Picasso. I love them but god, the art world’s changed mammoth amounts. I’ve always grown up studying art, the great masters and stuff like that

I suppose you have to know the rules before you can break them.
Yes, when I painted with oils I used a lot of the old techniques,. I refused to use black – a lot of older painters would only use blues and reds to make their own blacks because it’s warmer and incorporates light when the light hits it. I still use all of those techniques sometimes, but now I just don’t care!

Are there any young up and coming artists you’d recommend keeping an eye on?
There’s a kid called Shida, who’s showing at Cylinder in Fortitude Valley soon, and he is amazing. He’s kind of graffiti based but not really. To me his works almost look tribal, so that really appeals to me. The way he paints is very unique – I’ve never seen his style of painting before. When I started graffiti it was all about being original and then I felt that people would just imitate other people, so it lost that aspect for me. I still have those old values and I really respect someone that’s coming from way left of centre. He’s amazing, check him out!

What advise would you give for any young people wanting to pursue a career as an artist?
The only way to do it is just get out there. Get a website, get your stuff out there and just promote yourself. Just keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it because you can’t just sit in your bedroom and think that it’s gonna happen because it doesn’t. Just get out there and make other friends that are interested in art and join together and create something that’s more of a collaboration. The more you make contact the more of an impression you’ll make and people will remember you.