With the world class line-up on display this year you could be forgiven for being distracted from the 'VA' aspect of Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival. It would be your loss though, apart from an underlying lean toward the natural world and uniform standard of excellence each artist is utterly unique. Here are a few that will catch your eye at MM&VAF.
Wintercroft
If you've been on Instagram anytime in the last few years you've probably seen someone sporting one of Wintercroft's 'low polygon masks'. Steve and Marianne Wintercroft design and supply the digital templates for the fantastic creations, so that you can download and build them at home, with options including most of the extant animal kingdom, mythical beasts and even Halloween horrors. Mr Wintercroft himself will be there to present a coveted Golden Ticket to the 'best mask in show' at the festival, so get folding.
Rhys Gordon
Rhys Gordon fell in love with tattooing in his teens and we're so happy that he did. Gordon's work combines the traditions he learnt while spending eight years in studios in London, Amsterdam and Thailand with his deep love of Japanese tattooing. He's bringing his exhibition Behind The Lines to this year's MM&VAF, which uses live tattoo demonstrations, photography, illustration, film and artefacts to uncover the history and modern place of body ink in Japan, Polynesia and the West.
Thom Stuart
Thom Stuart's work is a visual delight, a cavalcade of natural and urban environments captured in abstract washes of colour. Regularly working in both the studio and the street, Stuart has wed a wide array of influences, from graffiti and surfing iconography to musical sub-cultures like hip hop and punk, into an arresting and unique body of work that explores the dead space in landscapes.
Conrad Square
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Brisbane-based graphic designer and fine artist Conrad Square is our favourite kind of artist, the kind that goes big and bright. The 29-year-old's charming mech characters are inspired by Japanese pop culture and the neon sprawl of Tokyo, and are constructed from simplistic shapes and lines filled with striking colour. In contrast to his sweet style, the concepts explored in Square's pieces range from false sources of contentment and urban decay.
Beastman
Influenced by the symbolism and design aesthetics inherent in nature's repetitive geometric growth patterns and organic landscapes, Bradley Eastman aka Beastman's multidisciplinary works are a trippy exploration of abstracted landscapes, evolutionary life forms and human intervention conveyed in his own distinct visual language. His concentric lines and tessellated patterns combine to create a mesmerising whole, evoking the naturally occurring micro and macro beauty of nature in a single glance.
You can catch all these brilliant artists and a whole heap more at the Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival on 26 Aug, New Maroochydore CBD. Check out theGuide for more info.
