Click here for Part #1 of this feature interview with acclaimed Melbourne Artist Michael Peck.

Even though not always directly pictured in the products hanging on the walls, the aircraft of World War II are the most obvious objects that are associated with Michael Pecks recent show at Melbournes Metro Gallery, The Landing.

“It’s definitely a concept show,” he remarked. ” .. you saw the painting of the plane I did for High Definition – all of the paintings for the show are around the theme of WWII aircraft.”

“When I was a kid, I used to make model airplanes … and the first memories I have of my grandparents are of making model planes at their house. Last year, both of my grandfathers passed away within a month of each others,” he lamented.

“I started thinking about this idea, and how these planes actually linked together four generations of my family. My grandfather had been career Air Force officer. My other grandfather, who was in the war … well, he never really talked much about it, only snippets of interesting things that happened. He remembered all the bombs coming down in the blitz, and one of the things he told me was about this plane crashing on the outskirts of London, where they lived. In the morning, all these kids were climbing around on the airplane and exploring it and playing on it – so many people who saw that painting were reminded of something like that.” – no shit, I thought.

“So there were all these thing that came up when I was thinking about this idea – about how planes are really powerful symbols. It was funny, seeing how people viewed them. They often stirs up memories, no matter what generation they are – its a fascination of the “plane”, not just as an object, but what it represents. A crashed warplane is an object that’s come down to earth as a result of a violent situation, but there’s just something beautiful about it. I used to make model airplanes, but kids don’t really associate a model of a warplane as something that is violent – they see it as something that they take the time to put it all together, and at the end, the model sits there as a sculptural object.”

“I don’t know what thing is that we have about planes, but even things like going to the airport is something special – sure, there are probably people that travel for business everyday who it might be different for, but for most people going to the airport is something special.”

At the edge of the conversation, an idea as to the shape of things behind our conversation was forming, and, just as I thought I was beginning to get a grasp on it, he threw me a complete, yet brilliant, curve ball – deification.

“My friend was telling me one day about Cargo cults,” he explained, as I felt my heads swirling from the spirals. “They these strange indigenous cults amongst the Pacific islands places like Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Philippines. During WWII, the airplanes would come in and drop off cargo – and these cultures had never seen a lot of this stuff. They started to associate the planes with something that brought wealth, as if it was from their deity.”

“After the war, when the planes and the soldiers left, they were trying to get the planes to come back, so that they could get more things. They started to building stuff, like full scale aircraft out of sticks and bark, and they started worshipping them. Then, they took it as step further and made headsets and other items out of organic matter – sticks! They made mock runways, hoping that the planes would land. They’re mostly all gone now, but there are still some that exist – they sit there on the edge of these makeshift runways on the tops of mountains, just waiting for them to return …”

Spiraling indeed. An apt enough word to try to convey the many layers of thought in the works – and at that point, I began to get the sense that it could possibly be a bottomless void. That I was the plane itself, crashing down in the violence of war, wondering when the spiral would end. Yet, like the children in his paintings climbing amongst the savaged ruins of broken winged military ingenuity, I also realised that the planes in the story of the Cargo Cults held the memetic virility that our association with objects often purport.

These “memes” or viral ideas, are also one aspect that allows us to build our personal associations with a piece of artwork – and, in the case of Pecks work, the meme spoke of flight as a form of freedom, or in the case of the cults, as a form of gift. That such man can make objects hold an intangible, resolute power, for all their simplicity, is a sublime concept.

“What I’m really, really interested in,” he summed up, after our breakfast had been well and truly consumed, and our second coffees cleared, “is this idea of an aircraft as something that is transcendental. They take you somewhere, sure. Yet for some reason its just a magic object that you look up at. It conjures memories – and, for me, there are just so many things that make them into an interesting object. I honestly don’t see planes as the most important object, but its a way for me explore something very personal, and also as a way to link my art back to my family.”

… and that was it. It was that moment, the way in which he almost flippantly summed up the entire, year long, intensely personal endeavour, that all the disparate strands of conversation and explanation formed a knitted weave of almost-understanding. I felt privy to a feeling of rare, precious clarity. It changed my perception of his work, and yet it also reinforced all of my initial, raw emotive responses to it.

Yet, even given that clarity, I do know that there is never any way to truly discover the last layer of meaning behind any artists work. To do so, would be to render art as an equation meant to be solved, instead of the unfathomable, beautifully fractalised entities that they truly are.

For all of the symbolism, all of the research, all of the drawing, all of the many layers behind each piece, there are only more directions – more thoughts, more musings. This is, in my eyes, the most tangible of reasons above all others, why Michael Peck has enjoyed the success that he has been granted. Yes, he is an amazingly talented artist. Yes, his compositions are gorgeous. Yes, his breakaway, fade in, fade out washes are meticulously rendered. Yes, the balance between images that are blurred and crisp, focused and sharp bring a sense of unreality to each piece of slipstreamed realism – but even those things are not what makes his works shine.

No, the true reason I believe that Michael Peck stands amongst one of the most important emerging artists in Australia today is, for all the complexity here, a simple one – and that is that there is really is no end to the pathways in which his work leads you, no end to the spiral, and no end to the evocation of our inner imagination when we look upon them – and, thankfully, there almost certainly never will be.
 

Take a look at the feature documentary above for a visual insight into the world of Michael Peck.

For a bunch of photos from the opening of Michael Pecks show “The Landing” click here. Also, check out Michael Pecks website, as well as the Metro Gallery website for more information on the artist!