From Hillarys To Hollywood (Shaun Tan)

A brief interlude from the Melbourne trip.

Every city loves a local boy made good story, but Perth even more so given our legenday ‘isolation’ which makes world acclaim utterly unfathomable.

© The Ponder Room

Sitting in the audience I pondered whether Shaun ever thought he’d be standing on the stage of His Majesty’s Theatre opening up about his life.

Given his initial comment about being intimidated, maybe not. If he did I doubt his dream would have included hoots, hollers and a warm motherly embrace from the audience.

Described as an author, artist and many times award winner, Shaun ignored the elephant in the room (a certain Hollywood award) and gave us a very personal insight into his life and creative processes.



© The Ponder Room



While he was inspired by books like The Wild Things, The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight and Animal Farm, Shaun was quick to add that he was also inspired by the scenery around him. A point reiterated when he showed us his early sketches of West Coast Highway.

It was fascinating to see how those same images reappeared in The Lost Thing. Next time you watch it notice how much the initial beach scene echos the concrete embankment and steps at Metams Pool, North Beach.

© The Ponder Room

Shaun spoke a lot about recurring images in his work, like the small animals ‘watching the folly of humans’, ‘the strange visitor’, or the experience of ‘dislocation through immigration’. While The Lost Thing shows a boy coming across a large lost thing at his beach, the roles are reversed in The Arrival, where a man is dropped into an alien environment and comes across a strange creature.

Alienation and the ‘mystery of existing’ was another theme, where he explained ‘what does it mean to have no identity or language, like The Lost Thing’, adding ‘would people reject it, ignore it, make it invisible, or embrance it, explore it and see if there is a revelation?’

On a personal level he spoke of the support from family, school friends, and his wife, along with Diago their colourful parrot, the inspiration behind many of the mutant critters he conjures up.

Watching Shaun’s work displayed on the large screen I pondered….

© The Ponder Room

1. Are we seeing the next Tim Winton, another creator of fascinating worlds and creatures? Sadly his comments suggest that, for the moment at least, that wont be the case, as the experience has put him off. Commenting that he prefers stills or pictures he explained that for him ‘film is like the journey over time, but the picture is a map of the whole experience’.

Thankfully though he still has a compulsion to draw as he sees it as a ‘constant exercise in learning how to see’, and exploring ‘the mystery of existing’.

I’m sure that will please the long queue of readers waiting to get their book signed. I can’t remember the last time I saw the queue stretch from the foyer right round to the toilets.