Best friends are hard to come by

By Rhonda Dredge

One of the great things about art is that it taps into an underlying feeling that has yet to fully hit you in the face.

Brian Donnelly was an outsider living in Jersey City across the river from New York when he first started out.

He joined up with a graffiti gang but his true talent was for character.

A sketchbook from 1993 shows an illustration of humanoid characters with large saucer eyes, pursed mouths and flaccid bodies.

One of the characters is about to pull a lever, presumably blowing up the world and all that it contains.

The illustration is not just an idea by a discontented 19-year-old but a fully-realised painting with a carefully shaded sky and an enclosure for the creatures.

Luckily Brian did not abandon his talent for illustration to run amok with taggers but he developed it to the point that he was creating his own characters and manufacturing them through his own Original Fake label.

BFF is his most-winning product; a koala-shaped character made out of blue hairy vinyl, with a nose and two crossed-out eyes above the head.

BFF stands for Best Friend Forever, and that’s where Brian (known commercially as KAWS) hits the right note. Best friends have died out. He proves that with the droopy figure of BFF in his latest release Gone 2019 as the creature dies in the arms of his mate.

Gone 2019 was for sale for $990 in the store at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and it was sold out; more evidence for the need for Companionship in the Age of Loneliness, the title of the exhibition.

Teenagers were swarming over the large-scale companions and others were left with the feeling that best friends are hard to come by.

These days everyone is a friend but old mates are too busy to catch up, hence the loss that is now part of everyday life.

The pat way Americans have of labelling complex emotions is annoyingly cute but this exhibition, despite its crass commercialism, does contain some truth.

The 21st century subject is incredibly busy receiving messages but most are from your provider.

This is a message to all those out there who still read print: head to the KAWS Inc website if you want to know any more.

Self-promotion is where it’s at and a vinyl BFF could be your answer.

This is a great exhibition, showing how a talent can be nurtured by the School of Illustration in Manhattan and Walt Disney, to the point that it replicates itself.

KAWS, Companionship in the Age of Loneliness, National Gallery of Victoria, until April 13.