Trevor Dickinson Finding Home in Newcastle
THE OH YEAH, I FORGOT ABOUT THAT: A DECADE OF CHANGE SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF MR TREVOR DICKINSON, ARTIST EXHIBITION IS ON SHOW AT THE NEWCASTLE MUSEUM UNTIL 27 FEBRUARY. AND FOR LOVERS OF ALL THINGS NEWY, IT'S ESSENTIAL VIEWING!
In celebration of the museum's ten years of operation, the exhibition focuses on the past to draw attention to the present. It features more than 20 works, including two new pieces commissioned for the show. Trevor Dickinson's art has become synonymous with not only the museum but with the city of Newcastle as a whole, through his many quirky murals and his outsider's vision of the inherent beauty and fun to be found in the everyday life of the city and its surrounding suburbs.
Trevor hails from England but has lived in New Lambton since 2002, when he moved here with his Australian wife and two daughters. He worked as a designer in fashion and on licenced brands such as Star Wars, The Simpsons and even Thomas the Tank Engine. When he first arrived in Australia, he continued designing from home, but he found it hard, as an outsider, to tap into the local arts scene.
Newcastle at that stage was still in the 'hangover' period from the BHP closure and was in the early stages of transforming into the arts and innovation hub that it now is. He was not happy in Newcastle at first. He felt distant, alienated and couldn't find his community. So in 2009, he made a concerted effort to get himself out of his house and draw what he saw from his outsider's perspective and with an obsession for the underappreciated urban environment.
He collected his drawings in self-published zines and then branched out to include tea towels, cards and prints, all sold under the Newcastle Productions brand. It was a tongue in cheek 'tourist' brand for locals, and it became his full-time career.
"At first, I was worried that Novocastrians would take my drawings the wrong way as I was looking at a side of Newcastle that could be a little rough and not often represented. But the reaction was positive - to the extent that I was even commissioned to paint a few murals by the council." (Quote from The Book of Newcastle by Trevor Dickinson, 2020)
Newcastle City Council engaged Trevor in 2011 to create a mural on Hunter Street that pointed the way to the beach – and so began the great mural love affair between Newcastle and Trevor.
He has since created several such murals – the Newcastle Beach Tunnel in 2011, the photo walls in Museum Park in 2012, the shark mural at Mayfield Pool in 2013 and his favourite piece, The Merewether Aquarium in 2014.
"The Merewether Aquarium is probably the piece I'm proudest of," says Trevor. "I wanted it to be a tourist attraction in its own right. I'm not sure I've managed to do that, but I know that it brings a lot of joy to the locals. Murals and photo walls are a wonderful way for my art to keep living and being part of people's lives through the photos and selfies that they take."
"...SO RATHER THAN JUST CONNECTING WITH NEWCASTLE, I'VE LEGITIMATELY MADE MY MARK ON A SMALL PART OF THE LANDSCAPE. IT'S ALL BEEN VERY UNEXPECTED AND A REAL PLEASURE."
Trevor presents the overlooked details of the city and suburbs with fresh eyes, whimsical details and a fun heart. Nowhere is this more evident than with his collection of One Hundred Letterboxes of Newcastle Australia, where he went out searching for unique letterboxes and drew one of each number. They were exhibited in 2011 in his first solo exhibition held at the Lockup in Newcastle.
"The letterboxes are another example of me noticing the differences between where I grew up in the UK and Newcastle Australia. I was a paperboy when I was small, and the letterboxes in England are slots in the doors. So letterboxes were a new thing for me! I became addicted. I felt like I was discovering an invisible world."
Trevor's work on the letterboxes inspired a similar style project in Australia's capital. In 2012 Trevor took up a residency at Megalo Print Studio in Canberra. He soon found himself doing for Canberra what he'd been doing in Newcastle. Trevor sees similarities between the two cities.
"Both Newcastle and Canberra have suffered from a bad reputation in terms of appeal to the broader community. People in other places have an attitude of "why go there?". Newcastle was the steel city, and Canberra was a city with no character. Yet both are smaller cities with robust arts and culture scenes.
When I tried to break into Sydney, it was much more challenging because it's too big. Drawing recognisable locations was perceived as too touristy, and that's not what I want to do.
"Canberra and Newcastle are small enough that locals recognise buildings and locations across the full city. It enables me to get more localised with the work, into the nitty-gritty of place. And both cities were experiencing a transitional phase, so now, they're blossoming and seen as quite hipster locations. My work records things that change, things that are in transition, all from an outsider's perspective."
Trevor went on to create the Beautiful Bus Shelters of Canberra – photographing all 483 bus shelters and then creating a series of more than 80 illustrations of the iconic Canberra structures that were designed by Clem Cummings in the 1970s.
"As an out-of-towner, I immediately noticed the funky concrete cylinder bus shelters that everyone else took for granted. That's my thing – I love to take something that defines a place that no one notices and make it into something to appreciate – something that will connect to the locals."
The Beautiful Bus Shelters of Canberra was a project that ran over eight years and is now a beautiful, 166-page hardback book. Books are the next great frontier for the artist who loves to create permanent records of their work.
"I started out creating zines to showcase my work, but it's more than that. I want people to be able to hold my art in their hands bound into a beautiful hardcover book. I love The Book of Newcastle, which collects all of my work over the past ten years and presents it with my thoughts about Newcastle and drawing. It's for locals, and it draws a line under a period of time. You can look back on it and see a city's development which is how the current exhibition came to be. I've also done The Book of Canberra, The Book of Maitland and The Book of Taree."
Trevor refers to the fact that Julie Baird, the Newcastle Museum Director, was leafing through The Book of Newcastle when she had the idea for the current exhibition.
"We were looking for a way to celebrate ten years. In the grand scheme of this country's ancient history, ten years is like the blink of an eye, but to Newcastle Museum, it is our entire history at Honeysuckle, and for Newcastle, it has been a period of rapid transformation," Ms Baird said.
"Trevor's book made that obvious. We love his work and his ability to find the weird corners of Newcastle that others walk by.
"We commissioned Trevor to do two new pieces for the exhibition and the celebration of ten years. He wanted to do the hooks, which have remained unchanged, but we also wanted him to do something new. So we were very excited when he chose to do a cabinet filled with historical pieces from the Oak Factory because it's so significant for so many people."
Through the artwork chosen for this exhibition, Trevor presents his own view of Newcastle, curating the identity of the natural landscape in the same way we curate its history, highlighting the specialness within the ordinary to present a personal visual portrait of the city during a time of significant change.
"From depictions of a dilapidated Merewether Surf House to the former Newcastle Signal Box and Queens Wharf tower, the works all portray aspects of the city landscape that have changed in the decade since Newcastle Museum threw open its doors to welcome millions of visitors to explore and enjoy our exhibitions of history, science, culture and our city's identity."
Trevor still draws everything by hand in permanent black, working with his mistakes and wonky lines and then colours his illustrations using photoshop. His style and techniques have developed over time.
"My design job before I became a full-time artist was a print designer for fashion. This was a job in which sticking to one style is a huge limitation. So I spent 25 years working in whatever style the current trend or season dictated. I would switch between surfwear, babywear, and summer florals to slick Star Wars graphics and everything in between. Spending the past twelve years developing and refining one style and technique has felt like a luxury.
"My drawings have become more detailed, but the big change has come in the way that I colour. In the past, I would use a maximum of five layers in photoshop, and it would take me just a couple of days to do the work. Now my colouring can have as many as 60 layers in photoshop and take two weeks to finish."
The other big development in Trevor's style is that he concentrates more on the atmosphere of his works. He wants to capture the moment as well as the architecture of a space. This development was inspired by the bus shelters in Canberra, where the same shape could look so different at different times of the day and in different seasons – it prompted him to look at the atmosphere, and it challenged him to record it.
"AT THE END OF THE DAY, I DRAW WHAT I WANT, AND I'M FORTUNATE THAT PEOPLE SEEM TO APPRECIATE THAT. THEY APPRECIATE THE ODD LITTLE DETAILS, THE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES, THE FACT THAT SOMEONE COULD MAKE SOMETHING SO ORDINARY LOOK SO COOL. "
"And I'm a true local now, here in Newcastle. I like it more and more every year. I feel part of it. It's becoming much more cosmopolitan, and my latest works are trying to capture that. The light rail piece in the current exhibition illustrates how Newcastle doesn't look like itself anymore. It's a modern city, but it's still an easy place to live."
Trevor's work and process continue to influence others, with many schools using it to teach. It's the concept of looking at your everyday surroundings and doing simple line drawings to create what is essentially a still-life.
"In the olden days, they may have used a bowl of fruit for a still-life drawing or painting, but I'm more likely to use a garbage bin. My style is easy to emulate, and it's exciting that kids are learning it. It inspires them to look around themselves. It's accessible, and I love that."
Trevor's own children are budding illustrators, and his own logo is created from a hand drawing done by his then 14-year old daughter, Lucy. His other daughter Ella was involved with the controversial youth publication of Inzine that came up for criticism by local councillors. She was the illustrator for the cover featured in the Newcastle Herald that railed against the youth of the day under the title Teen Mag Outrage. Trevor was so impressed with his daughter and her talent, that he hand-drew that particular cover of the Newcastle Herald as part of his own collection of artworks and included it in The Book of Newcastle.
One of the great things about Trevor's work is the fact that anyone can own it.
"My work is sold through shops, galleries, and increasingly online. Being a Boomer, I know what it was like pre-internet. It was almost impossible for such niche product to get past the curators and buyers who were in charge. Now, with little effort or cost, we can share work with a like-minded audience directly from our desktops, from new drawings to exhibitions and market dates. The old structure of making a living as an artist doesn't need to apply anymore. DIY is definitely the way to go if you want complete freedom."
To purchase Trevor's iconic artwork, check out his website www.trevordickinson.com
The exhibition at the Newcastle Museum runs until 27 February and is ideal for the whole family to enjoy.
It will be interesting to see his art in 10 years because he can't claim the outsider perspective anymore. Newcastle is home for Trevor, and he has no intention of ever moving away. It's home – for good.
