For her recently-released sophomore album, How to Grow a Sunflower Underwater, Alex Lynn aka Alex the Astronaut collaborated with ARIA-nominated creative director and artist Giulia Giannini McGauran to create a suite of artworks, including the album cover and art for the singles Haircut, Growing Up, Airport and Octopus. This is their first collaboration, which resulted not only in the five beautiful artworks, but a profound creative blossoming for each of them.Dee Jefferson talked to them as the album was released, and it was clear from their lively and free ranging conversation (in which they laughed constantly, and often finished each other’s sentences) that the two are not only collaborators but friends.
Alex, what led you to Giulia as a collaborator for your latest album?
AL: Before this, I only cared about songwriting. Everyone always asked me, ‘What are you going to put as the album art?’ And I’d be like, ‘I don’t know, some photo.’ And then when it got to this album, I said, ‘Oh, I think I’d like to have a little bit more of a part in it. So I was going through a bunch of photographers with my manager, and we went onto Giulia’s website, and looking at all the work that she’d done, and all the colours, I just remember being like, ‘This is perfect’. I sent an email to the address she had on her website and I think she replied the next day. Giulia said, ‘Let’s Zoom today.’ And then we were on Photoshop, and she asked, ‘What colours are you thinking?’ And that was the start of everything! Giulia has been the wizard with the stick at the front, guiding us along.
Giulia what was the first step for you, creatively?
GM: Alex was probably the most prepared I’ve ever seen any artist be. There was a 45 page document of inspiration and dot points that she emailed me. It was like a thesis [laughs]… I’d listened to the music for her new album, and I was like, ‘This is all the stuff that I’m thinking of, but I’ll halt that until I know what Alex wants to do.’ Reading that document gave a really brilliant insight into Alex’s mind and the creative process, and also meant that we started at the same point.
Alex, you went from not thinking about artwork much at all, to having a massive thesis – how did you get there?
AL: Up to this point I didn’t have the language to say what I liked – I just didn’t have the vocab to talk about the artwork. During lockdown I had too much time on my hands, and so I went turbo on my whole album, including the artwork part of it. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m completely artwork illiterate; how do I start?’ … And my first task was: find 100 artworks that you like. And it didn’t take that long – I’d just go into record stores and think ‘I like this one. I don’t like this one.’ And then eventually I said to myself, ‘Okay, what do you like about them, Alex?’ – like I was in English class [laughs]. I worked out that there were four categories of artwork that I liked: a photo with overlay on it; a painted person, like the Lorde album or Hobo Johnson’s album; and covers with a photo of something random, like Nirvana’s Nevermind, with the baby; and covers with big letters. I put all of these into that mega-document. That document was so over the top, it was just so intense. I feel like everyone that works with me is like, ‘Oh my god’.
GM: I much prefer a more unfiltered kind of approach, because then you can actually get a sense of what is clicking and how you might combine ideas – that’s a lot more interesting than had you just refined it to a simpler brief.
Giulia, you’re known for your music photography and illustrated album art – for example Tones and I’s Welcome to the Madhouse for which you were nominated for an ARIA. But for this project, you created paintings. How did that happen?
GM: From the get go, Alex wanted to do a painting. I’m not a painter, but I said ‘let’s do it!’. I did do a drawing degree at the Victorian College of the Arts and we’d done painting, obviously – but I’m not a painter. But that’s the thing about the music industry, you have a lot of freedom. I used to be like, ‘Oh, but if you’re this kind of artist, you’ve got to do it like this’. And then after so many years, I said ‘I’m not staying in my lane!’ In this case, during a lockdown, I said to myself ‘Do I want to spend 50 hours painting? Yeah! That’s exactly what I want to be doing.’
AL: Most of the people I worked with had been in one lane: either photographers or graphic designers. I’d never really worked with visual artists. So talking to Giulia, that was the first thing that I found so incredible, she just said, ‘Yep, I’ll do that’. There’s something so special about how interested Giulia is in all of these different elements – with absolutely no ego about any of it, despite being incredibly talented.
For the album cover, what was the process of getting from the first idea through to final artwork?
AL: Giulia said, ‘In the first album, you’re falling – so I think there’s something to do with falling and gravity, or playing with that’. And then Giulia did a sketch of a person – and to see it go from that to where it got to was pretty amazing. There were points along the way where I said, ‘This isn’t quite right’ or ‘Is yellow the right colour?’ or ‘Should I be wearing something different?’.
GM: I think the healthiest part of collaboration is where you get pushed into a place that then you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I’d like that, but now I really like that’ – and actually you end up liking it way more than your original idea. Also, the ideas were already in the music of the album – the music was this treasure trove of all of these amazing visuals and concepts. The sounds and the instrumentation was so big and full and inspiring, so it’s like we were working in this sandpit of great ideas.
Giulia, the album cover came first – and then you made artworks for four singles – Haircut, Growing Up, Airport and Octopus; how do they relate to each other?
GM: There’s something very special about not just creating one thing with someone but rather being able to create multiple things. In a way the first one’s the easiest, because you’re starting from scratch, you’re developing a style; you’re developing the voice, the visual language around that artist, and finding the tone, and representing the album as a whole. Which is quite a wide conceptual sort of thing – it’s got to encompass all of these things. And then there’s that pressure of doing the second artwork, where you think, how do we grow from here? And how do we cement certain things and isolate certain concepts from the cover, and then make that the entire language for this campaign? What are those elements that we are extracting? And how are we growing each piece along the way? And that’s where the pressure mounts as each new artwork goes. And for each one, for your own sense of fulfilment, you kind of want to grow – but you have to also stay within the visual realm that you’ve created. So you’ve got these parameters that you set for yourself, and then you grow from that. And that was a cool process.
It feels like we’re in a golden era for album art, why do you think that is?
GM: I think in a way it’s to do with the resurgence of vinyl. But also, I think it’s to do with the internet and the fact that the fight for attention with the internet is so ferocious. When an album cover gets released, there’s this sense of celebration, and it’s a real visual identifier for the concept of the album. I think in lockdown, it [cover art] allowed artists to still have their moment, visually, before the actual album came out. I’ve been doing this for about ten years, but lockdown kind of cemented for me the importance of having those intensely thought-through visual moments that represent an album.
You’ve had a really interesting journey from art school to creative director. Talk us through that transition.
GM: I’ve always felt like I’ve been in a funny position, because I just feel like I’m in the visual art world, but I don’t think the visual art world thinks I’m in its world at all! I did drawing and printmaking at art school but then I got RSI halfway through, so I moved to photography, and just kind of had to figure it out. So I’m not a particularly technical photographer; when people ask, ‘What settings is that on?’ I’m like, ‘The ones that freakin work, okay?’ After art school I did a Masters of Advertising, looking into developing brand personality for emerging Australian indie musicians. But the way that I practice as a creative director is still exactly the way I started conceptually at art school.
Where do you look for inspiration?
GM: Funnily enough, I always try to not look at photography, because that’s my medium already, and I also do a lot of digital drawing as well. So for inspiration I look at sculptors, painters, visual artists in all forms. I started out being obsessed with Caravaggio, and when I first started making work, it was all dark and I was obsessed with that mix of white and yellow light. I love the theatre and the forms of Caravaggio’s paintings. Earlier on, I remember getting really obsessed with John Brack – when I was in grade five. I just pick these tiny things that an artist does, and I become sort of hyper-obsessed. And those micro-obsessions end up coming into my work. For example, Vincent Namatjira – I love his brushstrokes; or Howard Arkley, and the softness of his lines; or the softness in the marble of Bernini’s sculptures. And I like the work of Graeme Base, how he’s able to make his images and scenes really full. That’s something I really want to explore, in terms of adding 3D elements to my work.
Alex, do you think working on the artwork for this album will change the way you approach art?
AL: Yeah, I guess it always felt like art wasn’t for me. I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t get it. You know, my parents took me to galleries, but they were kind of like, ‘This is art. And it’s here. And we’re going because we’re supposed to’. It always seemed like a very exclusive world that I didn’t fit into… it didn’t feel accessible. It was not until recently – with this album, really – that I started looking at it. Giulia kind of changed my perspective. I’ve started thinking, ‘Oh that painting’s really cool. I wonder how they did that.’ My partner now works in art, so I go to galleries with her. But I don’t like the quietness of it [galleries]. I’m so used to concerts – the music industry is loud and there’s so much socialness and casualness, and always late at night. It’s just a different environment. When I’ve gone with my partner to art events, it just seems much more fancy. Obviously, there’s different pockets, there’s the perception of art, versus the reality.
GM: Conceptual thinking is just a muscle; creative thinking, it’s a muscle. If you work and work, the more you develop it. Alex just animated the visuals for her entire Splendour in the Grass set, so she’s now creating visual artworks herself.
You’re both solo artists who also work in incredibly collaborative industries; what do you enjoy most about that cross-disciplinary interaction?
GM: I really think art and music is the perfect collab. It allows you to have a more full experience and use your senses. I wish I could make records that smell; that’d be fucking cool, adding that to the mix. I think the art world and music world are too separate for their own good. The reason that musicians are so great to work with is because they think in a similar way to visual artists.
AL: I feel like I’ve been so lucky. I’ve always thought, you know, I’m a musician, that’s what I do; that’s my lane, I gotta stick to it. But getting to collaborate with all of these different forms of artists – whether it’s Giulia, or videographers, cinematographers, or directors – it’s amazing to meet all these different people who are all trying to tell a story, we’ve just got different tools to do it. It’s so rewarding stepping into different lanes.
Feature image: Artist Giulia Giannini McGauran (Left), Musician Alex the Astronaut (Right). Photo: Jamie Heath. Courtesy: the artists.
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