Words: Christian Thompson - Coast Lines Magazine

In the lead up to SALA, local wave rider and mud slinger Gerry Wedd talked art, surf and music.

Gerry was born in McLaren Vale but grew up in Port Noarlunga and started surfing when he was around 11, as well as walking all around and exploring the place.

“My older sister was a keen surfer and had a car so I made occasional forays with her down to Middleton but I really grew up surfing at the South Port river mouth - there’s a small reef there called Little Rincon - then you would graduate to Trigs and then down to Seaford. I was very much a grommet. There was a bit of a pecking order back then…

Gerry says there was a bit of hierarchy out on the line-up that is probably still there but it was much more pronounced back then. “You really had to earn your place.

“It may sound silly but Port Noarlunga is kind of my spiritual home - the formative years - when there were still paddocks everywhere and it was ok for an 11-year-old kid to hitch to the surf. It was such a really great time to grow up there.

Some folks say the surf isn’t what it used to be on the mid coast but Gerry says that is nonsense.

“I would have started surfing there from 1967 onwards and for many years I lived in the area and even when I moved away, I still came back there to surf. It’s not better or worse. Nothing has changed. It’s just something grumpy old folks say.

Gerry 1970. Photo supplied.

Gerry got his start making art from a great friend of his parents called Frank Lee, who lived nearby.

“I always drew. He was a water colourist and also an illustrator for a couple of magazines and he would drop around and see me drawing and give me all this encouragement and advice about how to make a drawing better. I think there may still be some of his watercolour caricatures of local identities on display at the Port Noarlunga Hotel. 

“I was drawn to art at school but my mum also made pots – she did a TAFE course and started making pots in the house. She’d be making pots on the kitchen table or in front of the TV. I saw her making things and then selling them… bringing money into the household from doing something that she really loved. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but I’ve thought about it a lot, more recently. She really was a role model in that way – I was like ‘oh you can actually do that - make money from something you love.’

“I always thought that because I kind of gravitated towards those kind of pursuits - and I also really wanted to surf whenever the surf was good - a creative life and a surfing life could go hand in hand. You can be in control of your own hours.

“When mum was making and selling things it got to a point where she was wanting to make larger things – like a big bowl or something and I taught myself from books how to make rudimentary things. I was kind of doing a weird apprenticeship with her in a way.

Surfing and beach culture – and the Fleurieu itself has influenced Gerry’s work over time. There’s a lot of surf imagery and references in the work he does.

“I went to Art School and started making pots and I was very reluctant to use that kind of pop culture imagery because ceramics is so embedded through history and then this thing happened where I submitted some work to (Australian fashion brand) MAMBO.

“When I started doing work for them, the director said - what we’re really interested in is your relationship to surf culture - because I was a bit of a nerd about that stuff and still am, so I started doing work for them that was really rooted in surf culture and one day I think I kind of looked at one of my pots and thought - why am I not doing this with my own work? All of a sudden, I got this sense of freedom about how I would address the pots.

“And then I just started adding a lot more imagery that was to do with surf and popular culture and music to my pots, which was kind of interesting because that’s what all the old ancient Greek pots have on them. They have songs and stories. So I was actually being incredibly traditional, without consciously knowing it.

“With the Ancient Greek pots it was the first time I’d really seen text on ceramic objects and I think I kind of stole that and writing and listening to lyrics is a good way of starting narratives – and narrative imagery.

“I started to illustrate songs on pots, but I would work the other way as well where I’d think of an image to put on something and think really hard about what kind of text might either underline the drawing or even question it in some way. I love the play between image and text.”

Gerry has also done work with tiles.

“As I got more and more interested in the history of ceramics, I really began to love the idea of utilitarian art. My wife and I went to Mexico when we first met and I saw a whole lot of really interesting tiled work there that was influenced by Spanish ceramics and it showed the potential to tell or allude to stories on a functional surface.

“Then I started looking at tiles from Holland and all over the world and I like the way that the people who decorated them quite often weren’t great at drawing and so they have a really nice clumsiness and freshness. I like the idea of the tiles being kind of like a ceramic canvas.

“I’m in the midst of a 650-tile project at the moment which is kind of driving me crazy! But it’s also very exciting.

“I did a big piece for a thing called Australian Art Now a bit over a year ago at the Art Gallery of NSW, which they purchased and they’re going to put it up in the new gallery in the next month or so. That was a really big tiled fireplace surrounded by the lyrics of Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (The Smiths) and I did a lot of playful stuff to do with the kind of aphorisms that people display in their houses - like Home Sweet Home.

Gerry used to be in a band, The Artisans, which had a bit of a Manchester influence.

“We were half art school kids, half English people who had grown up listening to all that music. And when we were playing around at places like the Exeter Hotel, I used to paint backdrops for the band so the whole maker / artist / musician / band thing was very strong. I did a lot of the posters along with Mark Kimber. We were all at art school and they wanted a singer and I wasn’t a singer as such but I was one of those people who knew the lyrics to all of the songs.

For SALA Gerry is a part of a show at the South Coast Regional Arts Centre at Goolwa called Riposte and also has a show coming up at a place called The Q on Hallett, involving around 20 artists called Just Jugs from 3-23 August. (https://www.salafestival.com/artfuel/program/view/10307/just-jugs)

Riposte shows from Thursday 25 July to Sunday 1 September at the SCRAC, Goolwa Terrace, Goolwa.

Gerry has kindly donated one of his artworks - head to the Fleurieu App's WIN Button to enter in the draw!

Gerry in his studio. Photo supplied.