Jon Pryer: Off the Leash, in the Art Factory

August 15 2009 — December 6 2009

Words from Jon Pryer, taken from Jon Pr

yer: Off the Leash catalogue, 2009.

When I was a boy I thought as a boy, but now I think as a dog…

UK memory > When I was a boy my father brought a mongrel puppy home; he’d seen a man carrying it down the pier where he worked, to drown it. I spent a lot of time in dad’s shed, I learn’t how to make things, we thought about and made things and the things where the objective.

A bit later > I studied sculpture and industrial design in Melbourne, which lead me to a career in industrial design, model making and special effects. I’ve designed all sorts of products which you’d see every day. As a designer solving the clients design problem is the objective. As an artist I design and make things, but it’s expressing a thought or prompting a thought that’s the objective; what was I thinking, what are you thinking; are we right, can we be wrong, is wrong ok too, does it matter if it makes us smile, making us cry would be harder – maybe it should do that.

Stuff > What I’ve learnt from my dogs, dad, design and effects obviously influences the techniques and media by which I express my thoughts, of; half imagined memories and dogs off the leash. As Aldous Huxley said “experience isn’t what happens to you, it’s what you make of what happens to you”.

Our old labrador had beautiful black velvet ears, I thought they’d make a beautiful purse.

Now > Have you ever watched a dog dreaming, running in his sleep; I do that, I trip over and wake up falling, the falling is so real, but I never hit the ground.………… call me dog boy.

For Ollie and Campbell