Unfolding Max Callaghan's memories

Max Callaghan is a visual artist from Adelaide/Kaurna Country, South Australia. In 2017 he graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Honours from Adelaide Central School of Art and was included in Hatched: National Graduate Show 2017, at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. In 2018, Callaghan held his first solo exhibition at FELTspace (SA). In 2019, he was awarded an annual studio residency at ACE Open (SA) and held a solo exhibition at Rubicon ARI (VIC). In 2020, he participated in an artist-writer collaborative exchange program initiated by FELTspace (SA). His work is held in a number of private collections.

This conversation took place in February 2021 on the occasion of Max’s Firstdraft exhibition Tomb With No Windows.

Readers please note that this interview contains content, themes and descriptions of mental illness, trauma, hospitalisation, and chemical and physical restraint.

Max Callaghan, Tomb With No Windows, 2021, installation view, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

Max Callaghan, insect clothing, bruises, terrapin that ran away and then returned, face that you ran away from and never saw again, acrylic, oil and paper, 38 × 65 cm, installation view, Open Studio Group Exhibition, 2020, ACE Open. Photo: Sam Roberts. Courtesy the artist.

Firstdraft: Your work is intensely personal, and in it you centre some very confronting experiences – how has your practice shaped or transformed your relationship to your memory and trauma?

Max Callaghan: My practice has allowed me to slowly unfold memories, to revisit confronting experiences on my own terms, to unravel them at my own pace and to try and see what they mean clearly. It has allowed me to turn difficult experiences of treatment in a psychiatric hospital into something that communicates a sense of what this experience feels like and means to me personally. It has also allowed me to understand and communicate its social significance.

“My practice has allowed me to slowly unfold memories, to revisit confronting experiences on my own terms, to unravel them at my own pace and to try and see what they mean clearly.”

FD: There is an enveloping and immersive quality to the way these works have been installed – what were you trying to evoke through this presentation?

MC: The space my work is presented in at Firstdraft is a similar size to the seclusion room at the Margaret Tobin Centre in South Australia. It also only has one point of entry/exit and no windows like the seclusion room that I spent time in. The paintings were installed in a way that related to a memory I have of dragging my face across the walls in a clockwise direction round and round the room for long periods of time. My face was warm and the wall was cold. The paintings sit on the walls in relation to the scale of my head and body dragging itself around the room. I hope the viewer can walk around the gallery in a similar way and share the memories of the things that occurred in the room and the physical feelings of being in the space. Perhaps this is a bit like an embrace.

Max Callaghan in his studio. February 2021. Photo taken by his mum Philippa. Courtesy the artist.

Max Callaghan, Running naked into a carpark, I tried to do a dance for someone who didn’t want to eat grapes anymore, my warm yellow water-soaked clothes, my tongue on the floor, 2019, oil on canvas, 55 × 65 cm, installation view, From Running into a Carpark Naked, 2019, Rubicon Ari, Melbourne. Photo: Sam Roberts. Courtesy the artist.

“ The paintings are a way of showing. The titles are a way of describing. They come from the same place, are connected and inform one another, and grow from each other and together.”

FD: The colour brown recurs throughout these paintings and in the colour of the walls – what is the significance of this colour for you?

MC: This colour was the colour that I remember the seclusion room to be, the feeling of the room and how it has intensified or exaggerated emotionally over the last 6 years, the strange colour of the concrete, the shadows made by murmuring fluorescent lights, the colours that relate to having to go to the toilet in the corners of the room because there was no toilet in seclusion rooms in SA at that time, the wet mustard yellow colour of shorts that I was given from lost property, they weren’t mine but I was told they were mine, that fell in a puddle of urine, the sickly feeling of the environment, the colours of the wall with no light coming in through windows and the woozy feeling of the chemicals I was restrained with.

Lill Colgan, I listen to a voice telling me to listen in a cold room with no people or windows. you watch from another room and let someone taste their own warm yellow water from the floor and then let a snake bite them to make them go to sleep and then give them a honey sandwich in the morning., 2019, oil on canvas, 55 × 65 cm. Photo: Sam Roberts. Courtesy the artist.

FD: The titles of your works are poetic and often revelatory, as if transcribed from a diary, and they can be read almost as independent texts. How do you develop titles and paintings? Do they grow in tandem or does one come before the other?

MC: I wanted the titles and paintings to be honest and personal like a diary, to let people into this hidden space and the feelings and experiences that took place and can take place in it. 

The titles and paintings both come from an internal place relating to memory. The language and imagery that become titles and paintings come from trying to listen to and see memories and their associated feelings and language. The paintings are a way of showing. The titles are a way of describing. They come from the same place, are connected and inform one another, and grow from each other and together.

Max Callaghan, Tomb With No Windows, 2021, installation view, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

“Art can question and communicate the complexities of who we are and it can heal and it can console and it can make you angry and it can release anger and it can reveal things that you didn’t know existed and it can make it possible to talk about things that are impossible to talk about in other ways and more. It is an outlet for things that don’t have an outlet but that need to be let out. ”

Max Callaghan, Lounge room, seclusion room, 2020, oil and acrylic on unstretched canvas 200 × 250 cm, installation view, Tomb With No Windows, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

Max Callaghan, studio, ACE Open, SA. Courtesy the artist

FD: Do you have a favourite or particularly memorable exhibition that you saw at Firstdraft, and why?

MC: I have never been to Firstdraft in real life because I live in South Australia but I really enjoy reading about the exhibitions and looking at the photos of all the different artist’s work. I have particularly enjoyed looking at Aida Azin’s Brown Pillars, Tamara Baille’s Ribwreck and Nabilah Nordin and Nick Modrzewski’s Love Cushions over the last year or so. In 2018 Elyas Alavi had a show at Firstdraft called Daydreamer Wolf that went on to be shown in Adelaide on Kaurna country at ACE Open. I did manage to see this in real life and thought it was one of the best things I’ve seen. It was heartbreaking and physically affecting with so many different elements that were beautifully handled and linked together. I will remember this show for a long time.

FD: Why did you become an artist?

MC: I am lucky to have a dad and an uncle who were professional dancers. I am also lucky to have parents that are supportive and open to me pursuing art.

Art can question and communicate the complexities of who we are and it can heal and it can console and it can make you angry and it can release anger and it can reveal things that you didn’t know existed and it can make it possible to talk about things that are impossible to talk about in other ways and more. It is an outlet for things that don’t have an outlet but that need to be let out. 

I saw documentation of Tehching Hsieh’s year long time performances in my early 20’s and it made me think about the passing of time and what life is. A civil engineer or a doctor, who I appreciate in a different way, have never made me feel like this.

These are some of the reasons I have chosen to try and be an artist.  I will keep trying my hardest.

“[Artists] made me think about the passing of time and what life is. A civil engineer or a doctor, who I appreciate in a different way, have never made me feel like this.”

Max Callaghan, Tomb With No Windows, 2021, installation view, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

FD: Where to next? What projects and plans do you have for the immediate and longer future?

MC: I have two bodies of work, one that has the working title Sand Toothpaste and the other Ashes worn as a hat, that I have been making over the last year. I am trying to write about and finish developing these bodies of work at the moment.  I would like to show them in the not too distant future.

In the last month I have also been working on some patterned-based paintings made from words, making ceramics on the weekends round the side of the house I’m living in and have started collaborating making tapestries with my mum.

I would like to keep doing all these things and see where they lead, and keep trying to read and learn and listen and remain open to other things that come up along the way.

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