Fantastical artistic

PHOTOS Dave Southwood

With their international cult following, the Blackheart Gang must surely be one of South Africa’s most talented illustration, animation and art outfits. However, usually they’re too busy to show us what they’ve been up to. A treat for anyone in Cape Town this festive season is a rare exhibition of their work at A Word of Art until 17 January 2013. VISI chatted to the perennially elusive Ree Treweek and Marcus Wormstorm.

Originally the Blackheart Gang was Ree, Marcus and Jannes. What happened to Jannes?

Originally things were different than they are now. The Moon used to be much closer to the Earth and dinosaurs ruled the world. Everything is constantly changing and evolving. 

How do you work together to come up with the ideas behind the artworks?

We manifest a world that only we can see. Life is sinister – everywhere you look someone is trying to steal your pie. Anyone disagreeing with us is a dreamy teenager that bunked history at school. Let’s face the facts, because that’s what we tend to deliver – the facts.

Our stories aren’t sweet little nursery rhymes that you would rock your baby to sleep to. These are the histories of a realm six feet below the ground. Just because our stories are vividly illustrated and don’t come in the format of a dull textbook they seemed to get dismissed by “historians” and other “learned” men.

What is the production process that then happens? Are you yourselves physically drawing, printing and sculpting?

We stumble on sensations and tidbits of histories, and then set off after them, tracking them for years through the jungles and deserts of our minds. Over time, pieces of the puzzle slowly begin to fit together as we start to find pictures of characters, depictions of events, diagrams of plants and descriptions of wars. 

We then brood, drink and argue violently with each other for years as we piece these histories together. Once the stories are solidified in our minds, characters and artifacts begin to manifest themselves as sculptures or prints. Sometimes we have to travel to the ends of the Earth to find them.

Your artist motivations, biographies and descriptions are always obtuse and fictional. What is your motivation behind this?

The worlds that we explore are full of creatures and environments that are so unlike our own that it may at first seem this way. In reality the life and stories of the Household are not so different to those of our world. Pain, suffering, war, love, revenge and drunkenness is the same wherever you go. All lives are strange and obscure.

The information on this exhibition says that it explores the relationship between tribalism and colonialism. Can you explain a little more? 

The exhibition is based on a conflict between two different races. The Imperialist Bearocratic Bears and the Tribal Cannibalistic Moles. 

They exist far away in a rather insignificant corner of The Household in a world simply called The Bog. The Bog is a toxic jungle potent with possibilities, a realm of radical biology and addictive plots. It is here, in these jungles, that one will happen upon the Moles, a proud and ancient race. The Moles are the custodians of the jungle and the realm. It would have remained so, if not for the Bears.

The Bears are an industrial bunch who began to settle in The Bog around a hundred years before our story begins. They initially did this to harvest the ocean of natural gas found below the jungle, but soon found something much more enticing – honey. The bears could not get enough of the sweet jungle nectar, and as they grew increasingly wealthier they also grew increasingly fat, and they all did rather well.

Unfortunately for them, the Moles were also quite partial to jungle honey. In fact the Moles’s entire society is based on this sticky gold, and so it’s only logical that they should be quite impartial to the fact that the Bears were stealing their national resources and were chopping down their jungle. So in response the Moles began chopping up the Bears, who in turn fired at the Moles with pistols. These skirmishes quickly escalated into one of the bloodiest and drawn out wars in the history of The Bog.

Do you use fantasy as a mirror to the world, or is it pure escape?

The Household mirrors our world very closely. Perhaps our adventures into its interiors initially began as an escape from the reality of the surface world.

How does Ree balance the Blackheart Gang and Shy the Sun?

Shy the Sun certainly funds all of her Blackheart Gang expeditions – she works hard.

Where does the Blackheart Gang fit into the rest of Marcus’s musical repertoire? 

It’s another way for him to be able to do whatever he wants to do.

Will the Blackheart Gang become a full-time venture?

We’ll see… step by step… In the near future a new book, more exhibitions, our next film, a play, a fashion line and a publishing house. Then it’s developing an entire institute of learning. We see ourselves settling down on a man-made, completely self -sustained island following the warm climate in the Indian Ocean. We will mastermind international exhibitions, collect various museum artifacts, all the while living the life of a pirate’s luxury – bartering with trade ships, sipping fine wine and shooting golf balls into the ocean. Don’t come looking for us – we’ll find you. 

Will we ever get the other two episodes in Tale of How?

Both stories are documented. We’ve been thinking that The Tale of How would make a great interactive book. We thought the other two episodes would be great hidden among its pages… Something that the viewer could take time to find and explore.

The Tale of How from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

theblackheartgang.com

A Word of Art, Woodstock Exchange, 66 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town, www.a-word-of-art.co.za