After a sell-out NYE performance, electronic producer-DJ Stace Cadet returns to La La Land (Brisbane) for another serving of tempo-raising dance music next weekend.
With 25 million streams globally, his massive club hit 'Energy' was awarded the #1 ARIA Club Record for 2020 as well as being nominated for an ARIA Award for Best Dance Release."There were two things that attracted me from an early age – music and art," Stace says.
"Before music championed my time, I was an art director, graphic designer for many years, and even longer ago I was an artist.
"Myself and a friend ran a shared studio space in Adelaide curating shows for young up and coming creatives around town. I guess like a lot of artists it started with a love of hip hop and graffiti.
"You could say that music and art go hand in hand though. One is usually synonymous with the other. Here is a list of five artists that have either influenced my creativity or hold my interest due to their creativity."
Cleon Peterson
Cleon Peterson's art depicts a world in which deviance is the norm and violence, sex, and drugs bring a hollow pleasure.A former drug addict who initially struggled to recover, Peterson does not rely on symbolism or allusion, as many other artists do; instead he depicts a chaotic and chilling reality: police brutality, stabbings, and strangulation. Peterson portrays a world in which hostility and violence are rendered senseless and without context.
Cleon has fast become one of my favourite artists due to his bold depiction of the world we live in. With no bars held, his confronting images outline the chaos and brutality of the sometimes morally bankrupt environments around us.
As a songwriter, I have always been attracted to strong storytelling. I was always intrigued how artists like The Whitlams, Pharoahe Monch and Death Cab For Cutie could so beautifully articulate a feeling, place or time. The same can be said for Cleon and the vivid portrayal of his visual storytelling.
Doze Green
In the 1970s, Doze Green was a hip hop pioneer. A member of the legendary Rock Steady Crew – the group that pioneered breakdancing – the subway-tagging graffiti artist often participated in breakdance performances at SoHo and Lower East Side galleries.Moving from walls to canvas, Green's recent paintings, influenced by the art of the Edo Period in Japan and created with gesso and sumi ink, incorporate his signature style of figurative abstraction and use of letterforms while at the same time posing metaphysical questions about the nature of narrative, the physics of time, and the possibility of immortality.
He calls them "biological entities, a swarm of arrows coming in from infinite perspective".
As a young lad, my love for art started with my love for hip hop and graffiti, taking my Poska to anything I could find on the way to and from school. My older brother (John) like any older brother was my hero and introduced me to the world of hip hop and graffiti.
I remember running down Melbourne train tracks at early hours of the morning in all-blacks from the age of 11 or 12. Alongside my brother and his friends, I would wait for the trains to stop so I could throw up my sh.tty tag 'Dork'. Doze Green is the best of both worlds for me. Fine art and graffiti.
Joi Murugavell
Joi's art is spontaneous, whose characters frequently act out life experiences, capturing the beauty and pain of the human experience and the soul in flux. Her art is often abstract, bright, biting, humorous – and always on the edge of either feeling good or being another way to bleed.A few months ago, during a heavy isolation drinking session at home, I was scrolling through Instagram and stumbled across Joi Murugavell. Joi is a Sydney-based artist whose work I instantly fell in love with.
After a few short messages back and forth on the gram I purchased her piece, 'The Loonies'. I later found out that Joi actually listens to a specific song while painting her pieces.
Joi recently painted and sold a piece titled 'The Circus' after listening to my record – you guessed it, 'The Circus'.
Anthony Lister
Anthony Lister is a contemporary Australian artist. Lister helped pioneer the street art movement in his home city as a teenager and is considered Australia's premier 'street artist'. His scrawling, figurative style employs charcoal, acrylic, spray paint, and oil.In short, there is nothing like home-grown talent. Lister's lose depictions of superheroes and content alike have always done things to me. Again, his street style background resonates with my inclinations and his work heavily influenced my own as a young artist.
Lister, if you're reading this (you're not), I need one of you pieces in my studio please!
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Needs no introduction. A true inspiration I'm sure to all the aforementioned artists. My only goal at this point is to have enough success in music to afford one of his original paintings.Stace Cadet plays La La Land (Brisbane) 16 April.
