“Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I’ve been to sea, I’ve fought ’gainst every odds – and I’ve gained the victory.” – from the sea ballad Snarleyyow (‘The Dog Fiend’), by Captain Frederick Marryat
“You don’t recognise the quote?!” Max Rex Fox is indignant. The artist, a New Zealander who first dropped anchor off Southeast Asian shores 15 years ago, gasps in mock horror. “It’s pretty old. It’s from Peter Pan in 1912 – Captain Hook’s explanation when he’s surprised by a hot mushroom chimney from an underground house. I’ve always liked the expression. It’s family friendly, expressing frustration without offending anyone.”
Expressing ideas without causing offence is a sentiment core to Fox’s work, as evidenced in a new exhibition at Tepui charmingly entitled Odds, Bobs, Hammer And Tongs. Lively splashes of watercolour swim across the paper’s surface, their vibrant energy barely contained by the artist’s simplistic lines of pure, hand-etched pigment. Here, a dancing monk. There, a stumbling drunk. In one particularly psychedelic painting, a tiny photograph of Marilyn Monroe – clutching the hem of her skirt – radiates concentric black-and-white ripples like a porcelain pebble skipping across a celluloid pond.
A globular figure, glowing orange, bends and stretches beneath a bulbous parasol: this is Fox’s i-monk, a jolly interpretation of one of Cambodia’s most iconic everyday images. “I wanted to stay away from realism: this isn’t my religion, isn’t my country,” says Fox. “I can use the idea but I can’t repeat how the Khmers do it because that’s their angle. He was walking along the road, he had his headphones on and he was listening to some sort of pop music or something because he was keeping time as he was walking. Basically, he was dancing along the road in his robes with his umbrella and everything. Given that monks are supposed to be non-materialistic and be these very spiritual beings, it was amusing to see he was having so much fun! The only thing that was missing was a bit of KFC in his hand.”
In Dance Of Oppression, the artist captures an intoxicated street dweller endlessly spinning on his heels in the corner of an alleyway. The Drunk represents one of those moments familiar to all but the most dedicated teetotalers: “He was a Khmer man, pretty drunk, and he was trying to step off the kerb and down into the road. He’d step back and have to put his foot out again then he’d step back again. I think his depth perception was playing tricks on him and he wasn’t sure how far he’d have to step! [Laughs] People want fun; they don’t want to be overpowered by depressing images. This is life – and it’s happy. Well, sort of happy. The context might not be happy, but the images are.”
WHO: Max Rex Fox
WHAT: Odds, Bobs, Hammer & Tongs art exhibition opening
WHERE: Tepui @ Chinese House, Sisowath Quay & Street 84
WHEN: 6pm May 23
WHY: “This is life – and it’s happy.” – Max Rex Fox