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Matthew Thorne

"Art enables us to reconcile with the kind of strange knowledge that we already possess inside of ourselves, that we're one with a very large and universal consciousness and there is no separateness. That we're all the same."

Filmmaker and artist Matthew Thorne, born in South Australia, divides his time between Adelaide and Athens. His work spans film, photography, and writing, which he uses to explore Australia, identity, spirituality, and relationships to land. Eftihia Stefanidi sat down with Matthew to talk about his award-winning short film Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black), spirituality, and how it is to live between two cities that hold many contrasts.

Photography & Interview  EFTIHIA STEFANIDI

EFTIHIA STEFANIDI (ES): What is the role of an artist today in your view?

MATTHEW THORNE (MT): It is a good question. I think the role of the artist in our time has become a very economic one… it’s almost Medici-esque. The artist and their art are like a political force now, and that political force is often co-opted by powerful economic actors. We are deep into this. Allowing a new or reinvigorated aristocracy to justify itself through patronage. It’s a kind of very low-level manifestation of that special quality that art has or is. Like it’s just the very edge of the latent power that art contains, which is so potent and so powerful. Even only the edge of its aura has something incredible to it, that even that edge, that residue, has immense value… and in the centre lies something more, something transcendent. Something that enables us to reconcile with the kind of strange knowledge that we already possess inside of ourselves, that we’re one with a very large and universal consciousness and there is no separateness. That we’re all the same — this is a way of seeing that doesn’t have a place in this neoliberal contemporary Western thing — when we look at an artwork and connect with it, I feel we do so in a way similar to remembering. We see something and it affects us because we already know it. Do you feel this? If you look at a great painting or photograph that you connect with, does it feel foreign or familiar to you? 

“I don’t think the artist is particularly special in any way. There is no difference between the person driving the bus and the one making art in that sense. It’s all art.”

ES: Yes, I agree that there is a feeling of familiarity in these things. What we are drawn to is very much a reflection of who we are. It is inside us. Take, for example, the paintings or books we like; they somehow correspond to parts of our own interior fabric. Would this mean that you believe that part of the role of the artist is in bringing connectedness to people? 

MT: Every role is like that. I don’t think the artist is particularly special in any way. There is no difference between the person driving the bus and the one making art in that sense. It’s all art. I would really like to not be an artist all the time. I wish I could have a more regular job, more routine in life, a sense of stability and familiarity in that way, which is not really available when you work as an artist. There is another kind of access in this, which is also powerful.

ES: That sounds as though it isn’t a personal choice? 

MT: That’s the thing. I don’t know if it is a choice. I’m sure you knew you were going to be an artist when you were a kid. You had a calling for it… and then you have to honour the calling. And that’s really difficult, and painful, because mostly the thing that you’re called towards is also not what’s easy. It’s what brings suffering… and suffering is grace, as they say, and that’s really beautiful to surrender to. To surrender your life and your work to that journey of becoming. We all have a different pathway through this life, this reality, this illusion, you know? But it’s all there for a purpose, and art has a very clear purpose; when you see it, when you feel it, when you connect with it, it’s simple, and it’s obvious, and it’s beautifully outside of the world of duality, outside of beauty and ugliness. It’s just working on us, with us, in this essential way. 

 

“[…] If you’re lucky in your life, as an artist, you get a few of those kinds of works. And in making them, you get to be close to something that is really different to how we usually live our lives. Something transcendent.”

ES: There are themes of spirituality in your work, and I wonder what “spirituality” means to you? Do you make this kind of work because of your own spiritualism, or did you encounter your own relationship to spirituality through your work?

 

MT: I know nothing. I do nothing. That’s what I keep learning making the work. And I say that because I used to make a lot of commercials – which is a very industrial creative industry. Back then, what I made required immense effort and work. It was energy and it was pushing. And then there’s these other things – this other work – that is just happening… and you don’t have to try, because you’re not doing it. You’re really not doing it. 

 

ES: It comes to you; you’re just the vessel. 

I would even say you’re simply playing a part.

I know that because I experienced it when I made this film last year, Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black). It’s set in the Australian desert within an Aboriginal Anangu community. I made it with my friend Derik Lynch, it was about his story as an initiated, queer man, an artist, performer and actor. He’s a storyteller, and a very important cultural leader, and he kept saying: ‘this film is already made.’

And I kept asking, ‘What do you mean it’s already made mate?’ and Derik kept saying: ‘My ancestors have already made it. We’re just here. We’re just filling the story, doing the storyline.’ I didn’t get it then at all. But he was right. It was all touched, all preordained, and everything in that film was happening for a reason. I know that because I’m a very flawed human being and somehow so many of those flaws got put away so that I could help make that film. So many of my limitations didn’t exist in the making of that work. You’re just playing a role in those moments. You are the necessary vessel through which something else must move.

And if you’re lucky in your life, as an artist, you get a few of those kinds of works… and in making them, you get to be close to something that is really different to how we usually live our lives. Something transcendent.

“Athens feels particularly powerful to me. I don’t know why. But it has this deep, transformative, ancient, difficult, critical energy, and I think you can see that energy working on everyone.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW THORNE

ES: I’ve heard you talk about the film before, and something that stayed with me was when you said, “We think we are the ones working on our land, but the land is working on us.” Could you walk me through this line of thought? 

MT: I’m from Australia and a descendant of colonial settlers… most people in Australia are the same, through waves of migration over the years. So, this settler-type of mentality remains there today, so in the deepest part of our psyche this country is to us a land that must be “tamed.” 

On some level, we’re still functioning as missionaries; Catechists with Bibles and building tools in our hands, headed off to build the new world… this is a mentality that demands separateness, and disconnection. This is absolute opposite of what I learned from Derik and his Anangu community. They have a 60,000+ year old relationship with that land. Deep knowledge and understanding. Knowledge that I am not qualified to really talk about…. And I learnt over and over from them that the land works on us. We don’t work on it. Out in that desert where we made the film – where there’s very little of the modern world – you can easily feel that power. 

But I think that the land is working on us like this everywhere. It is working on us even in a massive concrete megalopolis like Athens. The power of the land is greater than our little termite cities that we make across it. Yes, we build all the buildings. We put up all this “stuff.” We transform the surface. But the energy within the land, emanating through it, that is still there, like a rushing current… it’s like pouring through us… and into us. It’s energy, and so are we. So there is this kind of interaction going on…

Athens feels particularly powerful to me. I don’t know why. But it has this deep, transformative, ancient, difficult, critical energy, and I think you can see that energy working on everyone… it comes with friction, alongside the beauty. It’s not perfection. It’s not unadulterated bliss. But perfection is also imperfect. Bliss is also blind. Athens has balance. Up and down. Yin and yang. Masculine and feminine. Joy and suffering. Resistance and flow. I think that fluctuation is the access this land gives to the sublime. The energy. Athen’s is not just one thing – it’s all things. So it shows you something as it’s rushing towards you…. this big unrelenting energy it has. And yeah, it’s often overwhelming, but it’s ‘beautiful.’ It’s powerful. It’s the crest and the trough. The wave and the ocean…. the whole thing of life… not just a part.

“When you’re in the flow, everything that you’re doing, you’re just doing it. You’re not trying, there’s no pushing. It just is. That is what we need with our cities, with our land, with ourselves. With everything in our lives.”

We cut the film here together back in 2022… and everywhere in the world that I’ve gone with Derik he didn’t connect – but in Athens, he said, “I love it here. The energy is so strong. It feels connected to home.” I think that is because of the energy in this land, and in his.

I often walk to Dionysiou Aeropagitou from Kipseli, especially if I am having a difficult day, and I meditate on the hill looking over Athens as the sun sets. There is an energy that I feel in that process. In the walk. In the land. In the people. In the sitting. You can feel it radiating off everything. That energy reminds me of how I feel when I am at home in Australia. It reminds me of the energy I felt sitting out in the centre of Australia with Derik… sitting by the campfire with his family hearing Tjukurpa. It’s different land sure, and different stories. But it’s all one thing too. Like a big open door. This enegery in the land is showing us everything, teaching us, interacting with our bodies, our flesh, our DNA, changing our energy, transforming the mind… It’s one with us, even if it seems separate to us. 

In connection to that vastness of the land… maybe we feel how something of how we are also endless… limitless… unbound…

“I learnt over and over from this experience that the land works on us. We don’t work on it.”

 FILM STILLS FROM MARUNGKA TJALATJUNU  

ES: Returning to what you said about how the land takes care of its people, would you say that the land also takes care of itself? If, perhaps, we needn’t be so unnerved about what’s going to happen regarding climate change or the knock-on effects of gentrification? Like you said, we’re just puppets here and we might be messing things up, but are there greater forces at play beyond us self-centred humans?

MT: Yes. You’re right. On a grand enough timescale, no. The land doesn’t care. It’s changing. Everything is always changing. This is the only true law of the universe. The land is always changing. Transforming… change is inevitable. In all things. 

That’s not to say that I’m not an environmentalist. We should address climate change and be aware of our role in it. We should create something symbiotic in our relationship with the natural environment. I have no disagreement with any of that positioning. 

What I’m saying is that on a grand enough timescale, everything just “is.” Of course, that’s not the time we operate in… in the Tao Te Ching (the central text of Taoism by Lao Zi) it speaks of a way of being where, ‘when the dancer is really dancing, nobody is moving, and the dance goes on.’ Like when you’re in the flow, everything that you’re doing, you’re just doing it. You’re not trying, there’s no pushing. It just is. That is what I think about now… and maybe what we need with our cities, with land, with ourselves. With everything in our lives. 

There’s a doing that goes on in the construction of a city like Athens that involves a lot of pushing, you know? And then some little bits that just feel… natural… easy… you can feel it as you walk around. Certain buildings… streets… places… built or natural.

“I feel like in Australia we have two strong cultural heritages. We mostly ignore our First Nation’s peoples and instead draw almost entirely from our British mother and American father.”

ES: Talking about cities, I always return to what Zadie Smith once wrote about Manhattan: “You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality.” Do we essentially construct our own realities to cope with living in places?

MT: Everybody sees what they see. The eyes are useless, really. There is no objective reality. That’s why advertising works, right? That’s why you can sell a version of Athens… or anything… The way you want to present it. Ultimately, we just project whatever we want. We even do that with people. We project personalities onto others that are almost never accurate. And I think with cities it can be similar. We are constantly getting each other wrong because of this. 

ES: Isn’t that the beginnings of how we fall in love? Like with the ‘idea of someone’? 

MT: True. But, also, love is unique somehow, it’s like this simultaneously uncontrollable yet conscious choice, that we know is both those things. In it we can see the whole microcosm of our existence. Because all of life is totally determined, yet also totally chosen. 

 

“My time here in Europe has shown me an understanding of a very different relationship between the role of the artist and art, and our lives. It’s an essential relationship to the act of existing.”

FILM STILLS FROM MARUNGKA TJALATJUNU 

ES: You mean that in love there isn’t any free will as such? 

MT: It’s inevitable… I would say this kind of love is showing us things…the insanity of how in our lives we are choosing and not choosing. It is happening, and we’re ‘choosing’ it. And at the same time – in the moment it’s going or the moment it’s coming – we’re not choosing anything. It is just energy, shifting, changing, moving, all of its own. It’s not rational.  It just is.

ES: Speaking of choices, you are in flux between Greece and your homeland, Australia. In a way, two different realities – the messy and the more organised.

MT: I left Australia really late. I travelled overseas a lot from 23 after my Dad died. I did a lot of these kind of pilgramidges trying to find myself and my place… but I found it really hard to get out of Australia long term. I was basically 26 when I moved to Europe. I always felt like I had to. I wish I had left earlier. I felt trapped in Australia, like I had to run away from a culture I couldn’t fully connect with.

I feel like in Australia we have two strong cultural heritages. We mostly ignore our First Nation’s peoples and instead draw almost entirely from our British mother and American father. That was really limiting and aggressive… isolating I guess. Especially before I met Derik and his community, and their culture, their way of being, which was so deeply spiritual… and made me feel more connected. 

Europe felt like a place I needed to be to experience something different… and being Europe has shown me an understanding of a very different relationship between the artist and art, and our lives. It’s an essential relationship to the act of existing.

When I go back home to Australia, I’m incredibly grateful for the artists that I know here in Europe and the practices that I have witnessed and learnt from, as those practices frequently only exist for themselves. It’s not that artists don’t want to make money and be successful. We all need this. But there is another way of being. Artists here do their practice, investigate the reality, show the work, and there is still an ecosystem, even if it’s changing. The work is seen and has audiences, even when the artists are more or less, let’s say, “unknown.” 

That doesn’t really exist in Australia. You are either economically successful as an artist, or you are an amateur and it’s a ‘hobby.’

For you also, as a Greek that left and came back, you have a perspective on this place that many other Greeks won’t. And simultaneously, you also have an understanding that foreigners settling in the country can never have. It’s a unique perspective, the beauty of coming and going. Being inside, and out. It provides insight. I like that about my relationship with Australia now.

 

“It is a great gift and I am so lucky to be here. As someone who has felt so lost and disconnected from a sense of home, I cry often about Athens. I cry because it gave me a place that felt like home for the first time. I still struggle with feeling ‘home’ in Australia.”

 

 FILM STILLS FROM MARUNGKA TJALATJUNU     

ES: Do you ever still wake up and think ‘Wow, I’m an Australian filmmaker somehow now living in Kypseli’? Does it feel wonderfully random?

MT: It is a great gift and I am so lucky to be here. I always felt so lost and disconnected from a sense of home… I’ve drifted my whole life… so I cry often about Athens. I cry because it gave me a place that felt like home for the first time. I still struggle with feeling ‘home’ in Australia.

There are questions I struggle with about being here… about how it is changing… and how I am also starting to feel friction with parts of the change… with the gentrification and transformation… and also my part in that…

There’s like these two feelings I witness about how Athens is changing… one is about loss, and unfairness, and suffering, and pain… like something adding another wound to an already wounded society… and the other side of the same conversation is some kind of revitalisation of Athens. The arrival of new potentiality. When I talk about it with the cab drivers it’s either, ‘Everything’s fucked, I hate this.’ Or it’s, ‘This is the best Athens has ever been.’ Both are probably true. 

There’s a bigger question that isn’t my place to solve, which is about what we collectively believe every human has the right to have within their lives; the right to safety, comfort, a secure home, financial stability – all the things needed in this life. I don’t know what the change in Athens means for these things. I don’t think anyone does… but I know I get very emotional every time I come back to Athens after being away.

“I feel like those everyday complaints or challenges in Athens are part of how it charmed me… They are also about how much you can let go, which is a great lesson. Because when the plumber is late, what are you holding on to? Nothing. It doesn’t matter…It’s a great gift every time the plumber is late.”

ES: There is so much excitement these days with people moving to Athens, yet post-settling in, common complaints arise like: Why is the plumber late? Well… the plumber’s late because he’s laid-back, and that same laid-backness is what drew these people here in the first place. That allowance to be late because it was lunchtime and you had a bit of raki is embedded in the culture, you know? 

MT: Precisely. I feel like those everyday complaints or challenges in Athens are how it charmed me. And they are also about how much you can let go, which is a great lesson. Because when the plumber is late, what are you holding on to? Nothing. It doesn’t matter. It’s like a constant reminder; come out of this veil of ignorance. Come out of looking at the dancers, and not the dance. It’s a great gift every time the plumber is late.

ES: What is your favourite thing in Athens? 

MT: The people. 

ES: You mean seeing your friends? 

MT: No. 

ES: Just being around the people of Greece? 

MT: No, everybody. Everybody who’s here. I think they’re in on something.

“What I can say is that things that I thought in a moment were the most wrong for me, have often turned out to be the most right, or led me to places that were profound.”

ES: Do you have dreams? How do you see yourself and what do you want to do? Or do you live your life and take things as they come?

MT: Such a good question. These days I’m very careful to project what I think is right for me. Because I don’t know, and I get it wrong all the time when pretend I do. And seeing the self is almost impossible.

What I can say is that things that I thought in a moment were the most wrong for me, have often turned out to be the most right, or led me to places that were profound, that I didn’t even know I would go… So I try to surrender as much as I can these days to the work that is the life… and everything part of that work… good and bad. These concepts belong only to words, in our limited mind. Things just are. Sadness, joy, coming, going. It is all the work of life. All the journey as it is. 

I want to make a more films, to take more photos. To write more. To make more works that are connected to those transcendental things, and provide voice. To people, places, feelings, thoughts that otherwise don’t have one… that provide other ways of seeing. That would be a great gift, and it will be as it will be!

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