Mad Max meets heavy metal in Top End artist's backyard

Perth Now

2 days ago

Joe Stark's backyard brims with discarded street signs, number plates, bits of wrecked cars, motorcycle springs and the odd empty beer keg.
While working as a groundskeeper, Stark is often drawn to the glint of metal as he pulls weeds, mows lawns and walks bush tracks around Nhulunbuy in East Arnhem Land.
From this collection of detritus he creates otherworldly creatures: horned cows carrying surfboards, banjo-playing demons, grinning dogs and crocodiles riding scooters.
"It's spiritual madness crossed with Mad Max and surf culture," Stark told AAP.
"I would probably be living under a bridge - if I didn't have a wife and kids - surrounded by stuff."
Stark, a longtime artist and surfer who moved from the NSW Northern Rivers to the NT in 2019 to support his wife's dream to work as a remote nurse, is fully immersed in Top End life.
Being constantly wary of crocs, buffalo and snakes, getting electric shocks while welding in the wet season and marvelling at the characters in the peninsula mining town of 3000 have all influenced his madcap art practice.
He will soon tow a four-metre sculpture called Man and Dog From The North Country through central Australia to Queensland's Gold Coast for the SWELL Sculpture Festival.
It will be among some 80 works from artists around the nation going on show at Currumbin Beach.
Featuring a strong man and a toothy mutt, Stark's work captures his observations of a dog's life in the territory.
"Catching food, getting buffalo, sharing it around, it's just a way of life," Stark said.
"Sort of like the farmer who has the working dog, the bloke up here has got a dog to watch his back as well."
SWELL, in its 23rd year, will stretch across 1.2km of foreshore, set against a landscape that continues to recover from ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The Gold Coast was battered by the lingering wild weather system in March, with six million cubic metres of sand gouged from the shoreline.
The festival's artistic director Natasha Edwards said the ravaged backdrop was apt.
"I'm very focused on working with nature and not against it and our artists are too," Ms Edwards said.
"Often their works are telling stories about species that may be close to extinction because ... their environment has changed as well."
The setting also emphasised public art's purpose to connect people, places and stories.
"Nature is just doing its thing, it's behaving how it wants to and quite often we are in the way of it.
"We're getting better at listening to nature and finding our answers within it."
Stark, an art school drop-out, said his works would likely never be at home in a traditional gallery.
"Some galleries you go into are like hospital wards," he said.
"When I was at uni, they were telling me what art is and I thought, 'nah, just drop out and do your own thing'.
"I just love making crazy stuff."
SWELL Sculpture Festival runs from September 12 to 21.