Tone makes art so bad, it’s good.
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At the corner of Wyndham St and Knight St in Shepparton, Tone emerged from a vehicle, wrapped in a multi-coloured scarf, contrasting their ‘Sam McPherson Sucks’ T-shirt, with rings peeking from the corners of both nostrils.
She’s effortlessly cool, much like their artwork.
The Shepparton artist, known for their biting pairings of images and text, pulls out their most recent collage.
It’s bronze framing on the outside and playfully gruesome on the inside.
Cut-outs of a rose with legs for stems, blood dripping from eyes, and a prominent chunky cross perched atop a gravestone have been pieced together and assembled to form a poetic composition.
The sole words on the page read, ‘Love is a warm gun’ and underneath ‘When will it end?’.
“It’s not quite finished yet,” she said.
It’s hard to look away.
Yet it’s deceptively easy to make, as Tone will demonstrate this weekend.
Riverlinks Eastbank is hosting Mini Mart, Shepparton’s first art fair, on Sunday, June 30.
The event, facilitated by Greater Shepparton City Council’s Creative City Strategy, features creative workshops, talks, activities and more than 20 stalls by local visual artists.
At Making Bad Art: A Vision Board Workshop, Tone will introduce attendees to their world of collaging mania.
“I’m going to spend an hour yapping to whoever comes about how you can retrain your brain to make really bad art and see a lot of value in it,” she said.
“It’s about redirecting the value we place on creating from the destination of having a ‘good piece’ of art you walk away with.
“It ties into my other values of, if you have things to do, and it’s for you, and it’s because you like to do it, that’s a form of self-care.”
In addition to their workshop, Tone will have an art stall at the event, selling six prints that strike a hair-raising and mind-spinning chord.
“I’ve also made a bunch of little bracelets, and all the money from the little bracelets is going to Olive Branch, which is a foundation that is sending cool, good sh*t to Palestine,” she said.
Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots effort to amplify and support oppressed and occupied peoples on the quest for collective liberation.
Night after night, Tone has been propped up in bed, carefully stringing bracelets together until their fingers ache.
The genocide in Palestine can seem distant, and the price-point of the bracelets might be puny, but each sale (and every little effort) adds up, the artist says.
“Nothing ever feels like enough,” Tone said.
“We always feel very hopeless when we’re in situations like this, watching a genocide happen, and it can be really difficult in this economy to find ways we can do things without it taxing on meeting your own needs like paying rent.
“(By making the bracelets), I can give back in a way I’m really passionate about.”
Tone does not shy away from the dark corners of civilisation.
In fact, it’s where she draws the most inspiration.
“There’re a lot of controversial things that inspire me — chaos, lust, blood dripping from a skating injury, that kind of thing — where if we don’t see the beauty in it, it can feel hopeless or useless,” she said.
“And I see a lot of beauty in my friends, what we do living regionally, and how we make fun out of nothing.”
Tone loves and lives the sticks she lives in, but when you rub them together, sparks fly.
“We want things to do in regional areas, and maybe this (Mini Mart) isn’t what you’re exactly looking for, but when we have a good turnout at things like this, it creates space and a demand for other things to happen,” she said.
“And we don’t know what’s going to be there — we can advertise as much as we want, put it out there and say who is going to be there, who’s workshopping what.
“The thing is, you’re not going to know and feel the energy of it until you’re there.”
Mini Mart is on Sunday, June 30, from 10am to 4pm, at Riverlinks Eastbank, 70 Welsford St, Shepparton.
Bookings are still available for Tone’s Making Bad Art workshop, held in the meeting room on level one, from 2.30pm to 3.30pm.
Their workshop is open to all ages and costs $5 (includes all art supplies).
For a complete list of stall-holders and to book a workshop, visit https://minimartshep.com/
To find out more about Operation Olive Branch, visit https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch
Journalist