Daniel Lee has always been fascinated by the relationship between humans and animals.

Owen Leong’s solo exhibition Birthmark recently opened at Anna Pappas Gallery in Prahran, Melbourne. In Birthmark, twelve half-human, half-creature photographic portraits are displayed along the walls of the gallery. Their gazes resist an easy reading, their commonality their shared Asian-Australian identities and the Australian native moths that mark their faces. Whether the moths are masks or part of the skin is a concept that Leong plays with. Situated on a separate wall is a portrait of Tom Cho; unlike his moth-marked companions, he has a nasty cut across his cheekbone with pink liquid oozing upwards into his sideburn. Cho’s image is the cover of his book, Look Who’s Morphing.

Kamahl laughs when I remind him of the reason for this interview, but none of us at Peril knew, long ago when the theme of this issue was chosen, that Kamahl would soon be thrust back into the spotlight.
“Let me tell you the origin of that phrase,” he begins in the voice that made him famous. I could try to describe its depth and resonance, the way it draws you in, but most of Australia, as well as international fans, know that already.
Flying out from Amsterdam from a November 13th …

PYUUPIRU
Interview by Owen Leong
Translated by Daisuke Harada, Alix Horngacher and Miki Matsumoto
Original Japanese transcript (PDF)
Pyuupiru is an artist living and working in Tokyo. Known for creating elaborate polymorphous three-dimensional works based on delusions and obsessions, her more recent ‘Selfportrait Series’ explores physical and psychological transformation. Created over several years, this work powerfully documents the artist’s experience of sex reassignment surgery. Pyuupiru has exhibited at the Yokohama Triennale and Yokohama Museum of Art. Her performance and installation work has also been commissioned at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. I caught up …

HARUKA YAMADA
Interview by Owen Leong
Translated by Miyoko Hoshino
Original Japanese transcript (PDF)
Haruka Yamada is an emerging artist based in Tokyo and a recent graduate of the Joshibi University of Art and Design. Her latest work explores female fantasy, cross-dressing and sexuality. The artist invited women to describe their fantasies of an ideal boyfriend. She then transformed each woman into her ideal man through drag. The resulting work is a series of photographic portraits accompanied by narrative texts. I spoke with the artist after her recent solo exhibition at Galleria Nike.
PERIL: Can …

Tom Cho, as well as being an editorial adviser on Peril is also an author in his own right. We caught up with him just before the release of his new book “Look who’s morphing”.
Peril:     “Look who’s morphing” has a pretty unique cover – it’s a portrait of you! How does this reflect in the content of the short stories inside?
Tom: Putting myself on the front cover of my own book is a playful move – and a bit audacious. That’s also how the book itself can be seen: …

Kelly Mollenido Robson creates complex fictional products, in which fairytales are moulded, vacuum-packed, and marketed for contemporary consumers. Robson was commissioned by Wheelock Art Gallery in Singapore to undertake a residency and stage a solo exhibition during the Singapore Biennale 2008. She used this opportunity to ‘internationally franchise’ and launch the Singapore branch of The Plant. Robson’s precision moral compasses, free range harvested fairy dust, and 24-hour multi-worry absorbers, form part of her ongoing series of products and therapeutic tools for the consumer.

Shigeyuki Kihara is a multimedia and performance artist of Samoan and Japanese descent. Her work is based on research of Indigenous cultures of the Pacific, and explores Samoan culture, history and spirituality. Often inhabiting both male and female roles in her work, Kihara interrogates Western systems of classification and explores notions of body and gender.

Nam Le’s first anthology of short stories “The Boat” has met with critical and commercial success internationally. Peril was lucky enough to catch him on the run.

On the day the Bill Henson story broke (May 25, 2008), another art-controversy story made the front page of Melbourne’s broadsheet, The Age. Van Rudd, nephew of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, had his work, “Special Forces (After Banksy)” banned from a Melbourne City Council exhibition for which, after invitation, it had been specifically prepared. The CEO of the City of Melbourne, Kathy Alexander, told The Age that Rudd’s painting was rejected for two reasons. “One, [it] was decided that it probably didn’t fit with the broader objective of the …