Please Welcome…HUNTER.
The first time I heard of this nineteen year old artist was swimming through the cyber river of the web and I stumbled across his 4/8/2010 never forget photograph. After some casual web stalking I found Hunter’s website, Huntermadeit.com .This guy ‘s little patch of cyber property sure packs an awesome creative punch. You are soon to realise that Hunter cannot only draw, he is one of those scarily creative people who can put his mind to anything and produce something provocative. Your talking to someone who is really doing something interesting; I am not talking about the Anish Kapoor creative who is riding the gravy train of government commissions and commercial ventures with Belgravia Bankers. It’s all about the business of creating.
An average day involves me waking up at 7:07am to the sounds of birds and windchimes and rustling trees and my neighbor verbally abusing her small puff-cloud of a dog named Bailey. That poor pup can't even take a piss without getting yelled at, although I'm sure it's deaf. Or pretends to be deaf. I enjoy breakfast with myself staring out the window, sometimes at the wall, whichever is more inclined to carry on with some sophisticated-according-to-who breakfast dialogue. … I'm stuck in this horrible rut of having to do whatever the fuck I please every day. Cycle to class? Stay home and draw? Work on a poster? Dumpster dive?
Hunter uses readily identifiable hallmarks of society; words, domestic objects, creatures reminiscent of a common animal and uses this base familiarity to create a thing which casually slaps you in the face. Yet, at the same time he makes you giggle and let’s you think that he has slapped the person next to you harder, and made them cry. Finally, you can both turn around and laugh at them together. Hunter coins it ‘hugfuck the world’. ‘The border between veneration and insubordination towards a subject is some place I tend to take casual strolls. My work stands up for the people who believe their reality is shaped by their perception. More specifically, the positive heads. And fuck the "ignorance is bliss" name attached to a positive attitude; we are a different breed’.
This attachment and glorification of the traditionally weird or outcast is resonant in all of his work. Hunter’s drawings create characters who take a quiet presence in the world, who could be easily passed by if not examined carefully. ‘There are new ways to address the unfavorable, the unfortunate, and the unbelievable and I'm on the prowl with my teeth out for those images that say it best’. For the viewer, we must really look to find the detail and irony in his works and yet, Hunter’s work can be contrastingly confrontational. Using literal dialogue, Hunter expresses the anger and annoyance of his subjects and perhaps their inability to connect to the reality of the everyman.
Most of my drawings are kept company by a family of words, yes. I have fun with picking away at the mind's obsession with finding a correlation between the two, the mind's obsession with organizing and naming and applying contexts to those names. Getting too locked in to "how things are" is dangerous and will lead to stagnant waters. Really shitty stagnant waters like what's behind supermarkets in retention ponds. Sometimes the interaction between word and image is intentionally blatant in my work, sometimes not. Sometimes it should be blatant to some, but is not. Perhaps that's my friendly little stab at the viewers who choose to remain unconscious. I am aware of my audience and constantly ask if they are aware as well.
Hunter’s practice at its very essence speaks loudly to this ideal; of craving a mundane or stable reality with no real means of achieving this . A desire which can be related to on one level or another for those who relate to his works. If you can’t you are probably looking at Hunter’s creations and not realising that there is a big fuck off finger pointing at you.
Sometimes I feel like I should just leave it all behind, you know? Everyone deserves to experience the liberation of having to show up to work the same time every day. Life is so damn short, I want some consistency. One day I'll take the leap…This is me talking at nineteen years, who knows where I'll end up. I just hope I never completely figure out anything, that would be boring.
All images are used with the permission of the artist. Copyright 2010
All text and quotes are copyright of somenewplace 2010
Leading drawing by Hunter Apple Debt
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