City dreaming – an interview with Badaude

‘It seemed to be a hybrid of London and New York.’

That was Joanna Walsh’s first impression of Melbourne upon her arrival. Walsh, aka Badaude, is a writer and illustrator of graphic fiction and non-fiction. The Friday just past she was one of MWF’s Artists in Residence. Over three hours in the Atrium, with her progress projected on the big screen, she began creating a new work specifically about Melbourne and her experiences here.

Badaude’s Melbourne piece is unfinished, but you can click these pictures for a closer look at some of her other work.

‘Everyone knew this was my first time being here,’ she says. ‘Both people I’ve left behind in Europe and people I met when I got to Melbourne. They were all really anxious that I should give them my impressions of Melbourne right away, especially what I found different and what I found the same in contrast to where I’d lived in Europe. So I spent my first day walking around Melbourne full of anxiety, trying to discover the differences.’

It was a bit discombobulating, she says, not only because she was quite jetlagged, but because Melbourne actually seemed very familiar to those cities she already knew. ‘It seemed to me a very European city, or even a lot like New York. You have a lot of iron framed buildings. And, like the city of London and like New York, you have these big contrasts between Victorian and nineteenth century buildings and modern steel and glass buildings, all jumbled up together in the same place.’

The noise level rises steadily in the tiny and crowded MWF Green Room where we are talking. Walsh speaks louder to make sure the microphone catches everything, and it adds an unexpected but rather apt layer of tension to her story. ‘I walked around desperate to discover some real difference. I was feeling really anxious and really disappointed with myself when suddenly a bird flew down and stopped in front of me. I was very excited because this was a bird I’d never seen before. I had to go back and look it up afterwards, and I found that it was an Australian magpie. In England, they’re black and white but it’s a completely different kind of black-and-whiteness. They have formal bits of black and white rather than random blotchy bits. So I grasped on this difference with great joy and delight.’

Walsh’s work, it seems to me, conveys a quintessentially urban aesthetic, with a focus on crowded streetscapes and a unique ability to convey a sense of bustle and noise. I ask her about this, and she pauses and considers the assessment for a moment. ‘Yes, I think that’s true,’ she says. ‘Above all I’m interested in people. I’m interested in surfaces. I’m interested in surfaces as an expression of what people feel and think. Surfaces are quite helpless and we have a limited palette. For instance, I’m interested in fashion and the way we dress. We can only choose from the clothes we can afford, and that are available in our size. But within those constraints people come up with the most extraordinary combinations.’

There’s a strong focus on line as well as language in Walsh’s art, and so many of her pieces include rich segments of text filling every spare inch of space on the page. ‘They’re a bit like personal essays made with pictures as well as words,’ she explains of her larger pieces. ‘So there’s a lot of texture in it. Even when I’m just getting one point across I try to put a lot of other sub points in it. There’s a lot about structures and reflections in this piece on Melbourne. Also the way the cityscape is quite dwarfing to the human frame. Again, there’s that feeling of being overwhelmed by the experience or indeed what’s asked of you in that experience. That ties back into that idea about subjectivity, objectivity, and whether everywhere you go just reflects yourself.’

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You can find more of Badaude’s work on her website, or follow her on Twitter and Facebook. On Tuesday 28 August she’ll be featured on the Drawn to Stories panel with Bernard Caleo and Oslo Davis as part of MWF Schools’ Program.