I Grew up in Ardrossan on the Yorke Peninsula. About an hour and a halfs drive from Adelaide. When I was around 14-16, some time around then, I’d come to Adelaide every weekend where I noticed all the sticker art, stencil art getting up on the walls before everyone sort of shifted to Melbourne. I spent about two years trying to track down everyone who was involved. Went into all the clothing stores around town and asked “who does all this sticker art around town?” and they were pretty vague, they seemed to think it was guys from UniSA that were putting it up. So I started doing all my own sticker work and putting that up when I came to town every weekend.

 

Working in photoshop on the computer, creating characters and stuff then printing them off on stickers. I’d put them up, pretty much, anywhere there were other stickers and because I was only generally down for the day, I had to operate in daylight and so it was actually my parents that kept watch while I was working. So to the street-art world, all this stuff would emerge every week and they didn’t know who I was because I’d left town.

 

 

After school, I moved to Adelaide, lived right in the heart of the city, from there I could sort of walk around quite freely with my work. I’d walk into bars wearing my back pack and say, “do you take art here?” and they’d say, “yeah, whatever”. And from that established contact with pretty much most of the bars and clubs in Adelaide and sort of build up a bit of a rep about myself through my artwork and started having exhibitions that way.

 

That spawned around second or third year Uni. One of my lecturers was going to give a lecture about stencil art and I approached him and said you might want to take a few examples from my work, considering I’m a stencil artist. This very quickly turned from him giving a lecture on stencil art, to… me giving a lecture on stencil art. Immediately after that, everyone in the course knew me. It was one of my mates whom made the joke, “everybody knows Joshua Smith” and that stuck and would serve as a great tag name. A few years back when I was running my own clothing label and selling stuff through Chapel Gesture on Union Street, I had these badges made up with the tag on them and they were pretty much the only ones that really sold out.

 

 

I found that as soon as I got out of uni I did what every other graduate did, which was go out and market yourself, try and get a job. Being a fresh graduate, you think you’re going to get a job right off the thing, and you find the harsh reality of the real world is that there just aren’t the jobs out there. You have an interview with a studio and you show them your portfolio, which is the same as everyone elses work from Uni. You go in and the guy will say “wow, I’ve only seen 300 of these. Oh this one! They’re still doing this at Uni are they?” So from there I changed strategy completely. I started putting a lot of my artwork in there and during interviews the people would skip past all the Uni stuff and stop at the artwork saying, “right, this isn’t Uni work – tell me all about this.” So from there pretty much all the graphic design studios where I applied pinned me as an illustrator, which is pretty much what I market myself as today.

 

It’s pretty cool living in the city because I don’t have to drive, I can walk everywhere. My favourite place to eat would have to be the Markets, and at the moment I’m loving the Russian stall in there which sells Piroshkis. I’m not sure what’s in them but I sum them up as Russian hash browns and they’re awesome. Maybe a place that’s a bit dodgy, but not really, is York Street that runs behind the Austral and Hungry Jacks, parallel to Rundle Street. The only time I’ve ever been threatened I was walking down that alley with my dad’s 35 millimetre camera and a junky skipped out in front of me, “how about you give me the camera?” To which I replied, “how about you fuck off?” and kept walking.

In terms of real street art? There aren’t that many left. The Adelaide City Council, as soon as everybody left for Melbourne, saw that as their opportunity to dramatically crack down on the street art.

 

At the moment it tends to be the older class that are buying these works, which is a bit surprising. Generally most of the people that turn up to my exhibitions are the younger crowd. They do have money to an extent and they’re very willing to spend money because they’re young people and they spend money like whatever. But at the price ranges that I put my stuff at because it’s taken me so long to do, it prices it out of their existence. So young couples that are looking to decorate their town house with something cool, older art crowd who still get what I’m trying to talk about. They’re usually the people who pick it up. I’ve got a contact in Perth who’ll buy my art work no matter what the cost, just because he wants something cool on his wall. Which is OK in my book.

 

 

My number one person who’s work I love at the moment is Danika Wells’Heitman (aka Nickas). Her stuff is just off the hook. She’s got six or seven illustration styles and the first time I met her in an exhibition, her stuff just blew me away. Paperhorse kids in general are pretty wild in what they’re doing and the ex-a-sketch people as well.

 

For a long time in Adelaide there’s not been much happening. Everything was happening in Melbourne. Everyone is now starting to get a bit sick of the Melbourne stuff because it’s all sort of the same. I think because a lot of guys have shifted to Melbourne the new kids have seen this moment as their time to shine. I think the accessibility to new technology has propelled their work and makes it look a hell of a lot better. Because the street art scene and illustration scene, internationally, is so rich and vibrant these kids are taking all the really cool aspects from everywhere and remodelling it and coming out with their own stuff. And their stuff looks so much better than everyone else’s stuff. To be perfectly honest, I actually get nervous each time I see stuff from the new kids. It’s intimidating because it makes me realise “shit I’ve been in the game for eight years, I’m no longer new school. I’m very much old school now.”

 

 

Yeah, that’s a funny story. Well, not really. IdN Magazine recently featured some of my work and attributed it to Joshua Smoth. If you look on the keyboard you’ll see the ‘o’ and ‘i’ are neighbours and it was a typo but still, annoying. My friend actually rang me up and she was like, “I’m going to have to get another badge made up.” I had to laugh. 

 

Let’s take the example of the Stars and Dust show at Value King (Clubhouse Lane). I spent an almost solid three months working to get that show done, get those 6 pieces ready. I had to work out a photo shoot, narrowing down images, research, redrawing images, cutting it out, painting it, getting canvases, sponsorship and organising stuff with the gallery. And when you really break it down you’ve got the opening night which is the most important thing of all. You’ve got about four or five hours in which to sell the work you’ve spent three months working on. So if there’s anything to stuff you up, that is definitely the time you don’t want to know about it. Most of the people who will buy a work, will be there at the opening night and while they may not purchase a piece on the night, if you establish a contact there and sort of, talk yourself up something chronic, they might come back in two or three days and pick something up.

 

 

Usually it’s music that keeps me company. Anything from Mod 60s stuff, metal, to punk to rock to acoustic, whatever I’m into at the moment. At the moment it’s all pretty much electronica stuff - Cut Copy and Presets. I like that with this work I can start and stop it at any moment. Once I’m off the computer, there’s nothing locking me in, so if I’m not feeling it I can stop, get some lunch or go for a walk. Just the same, I can start working at 10am and finish at 2am if I want to. When I actually complete a stencil, and have it painted on a canvas and peel the stencil back there is a pride about it, like I’ve given birth to another canvas.

 

Not really. I’ve got a few pieces from an old exhibition sitting in my Garage that either need to be sold or burnt.

 

I think the government here hasn’t really grasped that there’s all this brilliant talent here. If they injected more money into it, if they helped street artists have exhibitions. If street artists weren’t forking out of their own pockets for exhibitions, they could find that it would be very beneficial to the state. Just look at Melbourne and the graffiti tourism industry.

  

No, I don’t think so. I do what I do because I love it. If I can get paid for doing what I love then that’s a really good thing.

Japan! My contact in Japan is a photographer whom works for a Japanese dance outfit what does funk, hip hop, break dancing whatever and they’d have these art exhibitions that would be on the side attached to the performance. These days my work is mainly being exhibited in night clubs around Japan. I’ve sold two pieces. The first piece I sold to a plastic surgeon in Japan to hang in his waiting room. The last piece I sold in Japan was actually to the guy who actually owned the string of nightclubs my works were exhibiting in. So if my knowledge of Japanese movies has taught me anything, he’s probably a Yakuza boss.

 

Ideas circulating around a 60s surf theme. Beach boy-esque, think Gidget flicks, longboards, Hawaii Tiki statues, Hawaiian shirts etc. But one of my other friends said I should do paintings of robots… robots surfing?

 

Some of the older crew might not like it but I think… the more the merrier.

 

Check out Joshua Smith's website.