LOBSTER II

THE NEW COLLECTION BY UNDERGROUND SUNDAE

Zambesi Melbourne is forging a reputation for supporting its local art scene andUnderground Sundae’s launch is a testament to that. Gathering together like-minded kin, with the curatorial assistance ofTyson Campbell,Anne-Mieke Ytsma has gathered ‘old and new friends’ as a collaborative exhibition that nicely bookend the collections campaign shot in Auckland byImogen Wilson. Imogen Wilson’s photographs depicts street-cast New Zealand models in their chosen environments. This notion of collecting interesting and talented people is integral to the brand.

Holly Russell, originally a photographer, feels there was a natural and easy shift from capturing peripheral moments and daily happenings or something she calls ‘moments of joy’ in film and digital format to creating small-scale sculpture work.

Samantha O’Farrell has spoken of being influenced by how-to manuals and the idea of a weekend hobbyist or tourist in craft and ceramics creating pieces that are purely ornamental; it is ceramics as process with an undefined outcome.

Lei Lei Kung dissects myth and fable; a phut cake piece rendered in clay recalls Antoinette and her particular brand of hedonism and that famously misconstrued edict ‘let them eat cake’ that eventually signed the Queen of France’s death warrant.

Sharmayne Grace MacLean transforms the discovery and play of childhood into a sinister relinquishing of control and autonomy over one’s body. The ‘body’ of the automobile is not too dissimilar to the agency one has over their own human one.

Philip James Frost and Harley Jones have both been collaborating with Ytsma in some form since the genesis of Underground Sundae. Jones’s contribution can be seen in the typography lent to the campaign imagery, and Frost in terms of the advertising material, packaging and handmade look books which defied conventional forms of mass production.

- Words by Carwyn McIntyre.