The story of Craig Redman and Karl Maier’s shared creative journey began with a childhood encounter. Both Queenslanders, they each visited World Expo 88, an experience that ‘really blew our minds,’ says Redman. Almost four decades later, that memory has found its way into Craig & Karl: Double Vision, a major exhibition opens at Cairns Art Gallery this September, following its showing at Griffith University Art Museum in Brisbane – in a building located on the former Expo 88 site.
This connection is more than a curious coincidence. The expo offered the two young artists an early encounter with the fascinating possibilities of public art, design and visual culture on a grand scale. Their own practice has since taken those ideas into the international arena, with public works in London, New York and Hong Kong, and collaborations with global brands such as Adidas, Apple, Ikea, Nike and Sephora.
Now, for the first time, their work is being presented in a regional Queensland gallery.
‘We couldn’t be happier to be here,’ says Redman about returning to the state. ‘The exhibition is a tribute to the place that brought us together.’
Double Vision: Craig & Karl – quick links
Double vision
Redman and Maier didn’t actually meet at Expo 88. That came later when they were both students at the Queensland College of Art and Design. After working together as co-founders of international design collective Rinzen, they became ‘Craig & Karl’ back in 2011.
Today, Maier is based in London and Redman in New York, and they continue their highly-successful collaboration across two continents.
‘Our practice is just the two of us, working from different countries and collaborating daily to create new and interesting stuff,’ Redman says. ‘We spent many years working together in the same studio in Australia, so we have a good understanding of each other and how our partnership works.’
The exhibition’s title Double Vision refers to their creative partnership and their shared interest in the idea of duality. Sculpture, painting and installation are parts of a visual vocabulary that is instantly recognisable, with saturated colours, bold graphic forms and striking patterns, all imbued with humour and optimism.
It is a language that has travelled particularly well and their work has occupied some of the world’s most visible commercial and public places.
A uniquely Australian perspective
In Cairns, Double Vision will be presented at the Cairns Art Gallery in the Court House Building, a heritage building constructed in 1921. The juxtaposition is striking, with the contemporary visual world of Craig & Karl, developed for international audiences accustomed to large-scale visuals, filling this historic, heritage-listed building that has its own layers of Queensland history.
That sense of place and being matters to the artists. Even though they both live overseas, the artists agree that the influence of home is still strong.
Maier says that one thing they lean on is the Australian sense of humour. ‘We see that as something unique, and we try to inject it into everything we do,’ he says.
‘The longer we live outside of Australia, the more we appreciate the wry sense of humour that’s so specific to growing up there, and the more we lean into it, because it’s so different from how other people see the world.’
That attitude underpins the exuberance of their work, which often talks to ideas of community, identity, imagination and love, not in an overly earnest way but with joy and playfulness.
For Craig & Karl, creating art is ultimately about provoking an emotional response. ‘Our aim with any exhibition or installation is to create a shift in the visitor’s emotions,’ says Redman.
The artists want gallery visitors to pause for a moment, to find an emotional response, and hopefully feel a little more optimistic.
Returning to their Queensland roots
After three decades of collaboration, and a career that has taken their work around the world, Double Vision brings Craig & Karl home to Queensland.
Rather than looking backwards with nostalgia, the exhibition is very much about the now and looking forward. They are two internationally acclaimed artists, both shaped by Queensland, whose work can now be seen in a very different type of public space, one with its own stories and history.
The exhibition will be launched with a free evening event on the Court House Lawn of the Cairns Art Gallery on 3 September. Taking place as part of the Cairns Festival, the gallery will be open late and the lawn come alive with Craig & Karl’s inflatable Mateys, plus fun for the whole family.
Alongside hoop play and food trucks, an array of quirky and colourful characters from VOiiiD collective will also be roaming, dancing and performing, and the collective’s DJ Bcharre, who blends dance, sound, wearable art and visual theatre, will be on the decks. Adelaide DJ Ruby Chew will then take the party into the night and onto the dance floor, spinning a smorgasbord of old and new hits.
