!! Q&A !!

!! OMG, a Q&A with interdisciplinary artist Ryan Van Der Hout !!

Torn Self Portrait by Ryan Van Der Hout

Torn Self Portrait by Ryan Van Der Hout

When you wander into the Toronto Sculpture Garden right now, you’ll find New York-based Canadian interdisciplinary artist Ryan Van Der Hout’s To Reflect Everything – an outsized mirrored sphere that recalls both a disco ball’s joyful character and a satellite’s transportive enticement.

The concept and composition of Van Der Hout’s piece, which is on view in the Sculpture Garden until mid-May, navigates notions of queer utopia, identity, and transcendence. And it invites visitors to pause in contemplation via literal and metaphorical moments of self-reflection, highlighting the impact of our fragmented selves and environments in relation to the idea of incompleteness in belonging.

To Reflect Everything And Show Nothing by Ryan Van Der Hout

To Reflect Everything And Show Nothing by Ryan Van Der Hout

To Reflect Everything nestles nicely into Van Der Hout’s oeuvre, a compilation of photographic, public and sculptural works which explore vast themes including grief, queer becoming, and nostalgia; their piece To Reflect Everything And Show Nothing from 2022 is an interesting companion to the larger sculptural piece currently on display in Toronto’s downtown core. The photo is a compellingly abstracted portrait of the artist, who is sporting drag makeup, refracted through the showy grid of a disco ball’s surface.

Begging the question “Who is that?”, Van Der Hout’s image reveals so much about the human condition’s preoccupation with identity definition and construction through a camp lens, which ultimately reveals tantalizingly scant information. In the Toronto Sculpture Garden, Van Der Hout allows us all to step into a similarly fractured, albeit fantastical, world to consider this question of ourselves.

I was eager to have Van Der Hout further illuminate the inspirations behind To Reflect Everything and dig deeper into the depths of his practice for this Q&A. Dive in after the jump!

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!! OMG, a Q&A with photographic fiber-based artist Kyle Meyer !!

Artist Kyle Meyer

I first met the artist Kyle Meyer in the spring of 2022 in New York City. A friend of mine had posted on Instagram about a must-see artistic happening in Greenwich Village: Meyer had “wrapped” an enormous amount of fabric around the interior of an empty 19th century carriage house that was about to be demolished, and dripped dye of all different colors on it.

After arriving at the address Meyer provided to me through DM and texting his number, the artist bounded out from the building and began giving a tour of the space—which was now a phenomenal display of hues and textures (informed by whatever structural elements, such as a fireplace, was behind the fabric). Completely gobsmacked by the gorgeously transformed interior, I had to know more about this creative and what compels him to keep innovating his practice.

Prior to this project, Meyer had explored the connection between photography and fiber arts through a number of works, perhaps the most striking of which are the pieces in Interwoven. Here, Meyer photographed gay men he had befriended while living in Swaziland, a country with a hyper-masculine culture and where homosexuality is illegal. Meyer fashioned head wraps—typically worn by women—for his subjects, and after their image was made, he utilized the skills he was acquiring through a local textile apprenticeship to weave these photos into large-scale textile art pieces.

A piece Kyle Meyer's Interwoven exhibition

A piece Kyle Meyer’s Interwoven exhibition

More recently, Meyer collaborated with Willie Norris, who in addition to helming an eponymous label is also the design director at Outlier. In the brand’s seasonal collection reveal this past September, two outfits featuring the dynamic dye work of Meyer appeared—and your spring wardrobe won’t be the same without it.

Willie Norris x Kyle Meyer

Outlier x Kyle Meyer

Meyer, who spends summers on Fire Island, has also made use of its surroundings (another part of his practice sees him burying pieces of fabric to discover how the land modifies it) and in other instances, its inhabitants to develop an aura reading-esque assemblage of pieces. For this, willing subjects select a series of colors from question prompts and are then shrouded in fabric and coated in those colors. The fabric is eventually cut and woven into an abstruse work of art.

“They’re somewhat portraits,” Meyer muses. “Portraits of people who have asked to participate in this work. I’m not soliciting participation. I could never just say, ‘I want to dye you’ – someone has to be compelled and want to do it, because it’s an intense and intimate process.”

Given the temporal and varied expanse of his work, I was excited to speak with Meyer about the Outlier collaboration, and what it’s like living and working on Fire Island.

Read the full Q&A after the jump!

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!! OMG, a Q&A with DJ Fat Tony !!

DJ and music producer Fat Tony is currently enjoying the continued success of his award-winning best-selling memoir, I Don’t Take Requests. A harrowing depiction of his addiction and recovery journey peppered with humor and vivid accounts of some of the most creative eras in fashion and music, the book catalogues Fat Tony’s travels, tribulations, and friendships with the likes of Boy George and Leigh Bowery. It also shares details about his drag performance as Dusty Springfield in a London Fashion Week show for the line Joseph in 1986.

Check out this newly surfaced clip of that moment:

 

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A post shared by Fat Tony (@dj_fattony_)

Style is like a secondary character throughout the memoir, with Fat Tony delving into fond recollections of what he and pals were wearing during their most debauched exploits in great detail (while other memories are expectedly fuzzy, if able to be conjured at all).

When describing the rise of the club night Kinky Gerlinky, Fat Tony recalls that “People were over drugs and back into fashion”, and name drops cult labels like BodyMap as readily as Vivienne Westwood and Versace. At one point in his book, Fat Tony spills about Donatella Versace shouting to him as he DJ’d a fete for the Italian brand: “Aiii, Fat Tony! No K, NO PLAY!!” –apparently a catch-phrase during his more wanton moments.

“There are certain dates I couldn’t remember what I was doing, but I could remember exactly what we were wearing,” Fat Tony says of why fashion is so integral to his life story’s plot. “That narrows [details] down, almost perfectly pinpointing a certain era or a certain time.”

In 2020, Fat Tony founded his own London-based label Arrogant Hypocrite; his partner, Stavros Agapiou, has since pushed the designs into streetwear territory as its Creative Director. We love the TNUC tee, which launched in June along with an assortment of casual looks. Musician Mnek and artist Tracey Emin are both fans of the brand.

Mnek and Tracey Emin model the TNUC T-shirt by Arrogrant Hypocrite

Mnek and Tracey Emin model the TNUC T-shirt by Arrogrant Hypocrite

On the music front, Fat Tony has been bopping around the U.K. and Europe playing gigs from intimate (like extended sets in the “Wild Room”, a dancefloor-meets-bathroom in the famed Hï Ibiza nightclub) to massive, like the Ministry of Pride event he played in July.

His devotion to lewks makes it obvious why Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue, Edward Enninful, asked Fat Tony to be Vogue’s resident DJ, and why he continues to be the name of choice for events thrown by the likes of Kate Moss.

We caught up with the DJ, producer and meme lord in between gigs to find out more about Arrogant Hypocrite, bringing back his bitch tracks, and why Ibiza still has his heart.

Read the full Q&A after the jump!

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!! OMG, a Q&A with Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu !!

Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu

Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu

Jamie Stewart’s debut novel Anything That Moves begins with an author’s note. It reads:

“If we are related, please, for the love of God, do not read this book.”

The book charts the more notable sexual exploits of the author’s history across 31 chapters. It’s true that familial dysfunction, self-flagellation (of the non-erotic variety), and moral chaos take as much as part of the narrative as the expanse of sexual tales do here.

Those familiar with Stewart’s band Xiu Xiu will have their sea legs in their distinct ability to confront the terror of mortality and the irony of the underwhelming thud of life with a blunt humor that reads as tongue-in-cheek as it does eviscerating in its honesty.

Jamie Stewart has made a career of inhabiting this space, and with their debut book Anything That Moves, Stewart very much takes the throne there.

Anything that Moves by Jamie StewartXiu Xiu songs are often packaged in pummelling power electronics and vocals delivered with an emotional intensity that leave you hoping they aren’t in fact autobiographical. Ranging from the earliest sexual awakenings of their youth to the depths of sexual depravity years into being on the road with their band, these personal accounts leave no question of the brutal reality of their origin in Stewart’s life.

Like some sort of a post-MTV Marquis de Sade, Stewart’s stories are at once horrifying, hilarious, tragic, and often just fucking disgusting. Anything That Moves is a visceral read that you can take to the beach. The stories are frequently quite hot, but this is not erotica—they veer bareback into extremely uncomfortable territory. That discomfort takes many forms—and although heavy, Stewart navigates the thud of life with a refreshing candidness.

It should be mentioned that the book does explore some of the more unsavoury aspects of sexual self-discovery that crosses into (and for the most part remains in) some potentially, if not likely triggering territory for its readers. The following interview may do so as well (this is your content warning)!

Earlier in the month, Xiu Xiu released their album Ignore Grief (stream the album right here):

We talked to Jamie about the parallels between their work as a musician and their newfound role as an author, how the horror of sex can make you a better person, and the origins of unforgettable pick up lines such as, “Hey, little mommy, let’s fuck.”

If there’s a seat belt in your sex sling, its most definitely time to buckle up for this negligently naughty must-read book of the summer.

Experience our very raw conversation with Stewart interspersed with spicy excerpts from the book, after the jump!

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!! OMG, a Q&A with Izzy Spears !!

Izzy Spears by Erika Kamano

Photo by Erika Kamano

Izzy Spears is coming for you and he has no intentions of making you comfortable about it.

After moving to New York from Atlanta, the musician (who also works in fashion) met Shane Oliver—the visionary behind NYC subcultural tsunamis such as GHE20 G0TH1K, from which later emerged his fashion movement Hood by Air.

Their burgeoning friendship solidified Spears’ intent to release music as a solo artist, after an onslaught of collaborations with Oliver and the HBA crew, who recently created yet another conceptually driven art and music collective called Anonymous Club—an amorphous creative community that finds Oliver championing young like-minded artists from a multitude of creative backgrounds.

Izzy became central to this scene, featuring on lead singles such as “Bleeding Out” on their debut drop Screensavers Vol. 1 in 2021.

Izzy Spears Monster coverFollowing short-lived creative jaunts with shitty ex-boyfriends, and the all-consuming umbrella of Anonymous Club, 2022 sees Izzy stepping out solo with a series of confrontational singles and videos and an upcoming EP, aptly entitled MONSTER, dropping early November.

We talked to the restless, rambunctious not-rapper about finding a creative community while maintaining an uncompromisingly distinct vision that aims to creatively pollinate with shameless f@ggotry, though with clear determination to exterminate what he sees as normalcy in gay culture.

Read the full Q&A after the jump!

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!! OMG, a Q&A with Boy Harsher !!

Boy Harsher - Photo by Jordan Hemingway

Photo by Jordan Hemingway

We got in touch with Jae Matthews and Gus Muller of the moody duo Boy Harsher at their home in Northampton, Massachusetts while they caught a breath from relentlessly touring. The region also provides the setting for the majority of their most recent project, body-horror film The Runner, released this past January along with an accompanying original soundtrack.

The film follows a woman with carnal, violent instincts as she navigates the treacherous, emotional, wooded terrain surrounding the band’s home turf, and is based around characters that the band has been exploring in various elements of their work for years now.

Boy Harsher has conquered major hurdles in order to see The Runner into the world. Just as the pandemic closed in, Jae was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, leaving her partner Gus to creatively explore how their band might look or sound when the two couldn’t work together.

Perhaps The Runner represents an overdue pause for the band who, since their inception in 2015, have had a non-stop approach to playing live in support of their albums, and they have the growing fan base to prove it.

We talked with the duo about the emotional depths and challenges they had to navigate to complete the film and album, how they resulted in the fog-drenched frames of The Runner, how horror is more terrifying when the threat lies within, and the perils of independent filmmaking.

Read the full Q&A after the jump!

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!! OMG, a Q&A with Mic. Carter of L’Uomo Strano !!

L'Uomo Strano Spring/Summer 2022

Left: Mic. Carter wearing L’Uomo Strano Spring/Summer 2022 | Right: The same look on the runway at Fashion Art Toronto

The name of designer Mic. Carter’s label might be L’Uomo Strano (which translates to ‘the strange man’ in Italian), but the Toronto-based creative’s catalogue of wearable delights is everything but off. In fact, Carter’s assemblage is a perfect synthesis of the times we’re living in, where optimism and angst rub up against one another on the daily. Throughout the pandemic, Carter kept busy crafting red carpet looks for the likes of Bilal Baig and Olunike Adeliyi, and dressing Vivek Shraya and Tynomie Banks, all while also producing seasonal offerings and displaying them with abundant drama during virtual versions of Fashion Art Toronto (“FAT”).

Carter’s current collection “Open Haus” debuted at FAT’s return to the real-life runway this past May; but it wasn’t the only the only recent opportunity for Carter to have pieces meant for public consumption on show. They also created the costuming for dancer Devon Snell as part of the collaborative artistic exploration staged by Toronto Dance Theatre called Performance Clash. And last week, Carter’s designs were worn by legendary choreographer Hollywood Jade on Canada’s Drag Race.

Hollywood Jade wearing L’Uomo Strano on Canada’s Drag Race

Having interviewed Carter during one of the city’s many lockdowns, I was eager to catch up with the fashion designer and educator (for both grade school and university students) and hear more about what influenced “Open Haus,” what it was like going back to the catwalk, and what utopia means to them.

Read the full Q&A after the jump!

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