National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Home Sweet Home

PF: I came upon a Shaun painting at a Helen Lempriere Scholarship exhibition, in a sea of what was then termed ‘Grunge’, and here was this beautifully painted double figure; two historical figures. And I immediately recognised an extraordinary talent in this young painter; found him out and became quite engaged with his work, and immediately asked him to do a piece of work, for a very small amount of money, and to get him to do something that he had not explored before. After a couple of months Shaun rang me to say that the work was finished, and that it was a video. I thought ‘Oh, dear oh dear’ My heart sank. But I thought ‘No, this is good. I’ve got to support this, and I’ve got to be interested’, and he had arranged a studio at the Art School. He was still in the final year of his masters, I think, and he showed me this most extraordinary video piece of his skateboarding. I didn’t even know he was a skateboarder. I was just transfixed by the beauty of this image of this skater pirouetting in slow motion