I first met Matt Huynh at a meeting for FBi magazine, where he introduced himself as a comic artist.  I remember thinking that with his jaunty black bob, pale skin and thick black-rimmed glasses he kind of looked like a cartoon character himself.  This made him easy to spot at arty events – first at the zine fair of the inaugural This is Not Art festival in Newcastle and again at the Hope Street markets for young designers.  When my brother came home one night raving about the crazy talented comic artist who had won the Cut & Paste competition with his bold, graphic and dark illustration, I knew exactly who he meant. So I figured it was about time I actually spoke to Matt directly about his work and his most recent win.

The Cut & Paste design competition is unique as it's a deliberately staged event where four rounds of artists face off in groups and use digital drawing tablets hooked up to screens to create images based around a designated topic. It’s done live, in 15 minute blocks with crowds paying to watch the spectacle and cheer the creatives on.  I make the mistake of likening Cut & Paste to a sporting event and Matt immediately recoils. ‘As a sport?! I don’t like sport!!’  I try to explain that all the elements are there – it’s live, visual, competitive, performance like, the artists are all trying to get in the zone.  ‘You make it sound like ‘Oh I’m going to win, I’m going to do this,’ he laughs.  ‘It was more like, I was really really nervous. I was so nervous that all I could think about was the screen and doing the best picture that I could and something I was happy with.’ He won with his illustration of 'To be popular at parties', a dark and almost monochromatic drawing dominated by black and shades of crimson.

Matt was probably the kind of kid that primary school teacher’s like to describe as quiet achievers.  It’s fitting then that he makes a similar distinction between illustration and comic artistry, having worked in both fields but preferring the latter.  ‘Illustration is one image, it’s all about showing off,’ he says, ‘Comics are all about harmony, being subtle and poetic.’

 Last year Huynh worked on what he describes as a ‘super-collaborative’ project in his local area of Cabramatta, a project that attempted to capture suburban stories and express them visually.  The project was a welcome counter to mainstream media depictions of the neighbourhood as either a tourist destination for foodies in search of a Vietnamese fix or dangerously dominated by drugs and gangs (think Little Fish). The timing was ideal for Huynh who had just returned from his first trip overseas with a new appreciation for his surroundings.  ‘I saw everything with new eyes and I wanted to show off little areas, the mundane stuff – things like carparks.’

It took him a year to quietly lay the groundwork of the project before he even began drawing. Personal stories came to him via email, phone calls and ‘secret tapes under the table.’ It sounds like detective work but he maintains that during the research period, he wanted to communicate ‘in whatever medium that I could get them to be most comfortable with…whatever made them feel most natural.’  The project manifested itself as an exhibition and book and Matt admits that he was anxious about how his subject matter would react to seeing their life-stories and experiences in comic form.  With a deep amount of respect and reverence for the individuals he met and the incredibly personal stories they shared, it is unsurprising that reactions to his work were overwhelmingly positive.

 Yet despite the collaborative nature of the project, Matt maintains that everything he draws is autobiographical on some level.  ‘Even fantasy stuff is really personal,’ he says, ‘I mean Star Wars has got to be autobiographical!  It’s like anything you do, whatever you do, whether it’s selling to someone or talking to someone or baking bread – it’s all autobiographical.’

 Throughout our conversation he argues for a complication in the way we read, approach and understand comics, one that is divorced from the straightforward and disposable nature of superhero comic books and Manga digests. And he thinks Sydney is the perfect place for an exploration of what comics can really achieve.  ‘A lot of people say it’s bad that in Australia, there’s no real industry for comics but I think it’s kind of good because we don’t have any pressure,’ he says. ‘At least in Sydney you can pitch it to anyone, it’s not like there’s an established comic crowd,’ he says, optimistic and excited.  ‘You can target designers or writers and if that doesn’t work – you can target the butcher! It’s nice.’

With Nicki Greenberg's recent adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby into a graphic novel and the emergence of comic publishers in Australia, Huynh thinks appreciation for comic artistry as an epic process is growing.  That said, he is hopeful that a distinctly Australian style will develop over time.  ‘At the moment kids are growing up with international comics, international values and aesthetics.  We don’t have anything we’re giving them, although I’m not saying you have to draw the Opera house or koalas.’

 On this note he is apologetically opinionated.  ‘It’s kind of pompous,’ he says as a disclaimer, ‘but except for street art, I think comics are the last true art.  If I'm being cynical, there's no money in it but really there’s so much left to do.  In Australia we don’t have a Mona Lisa and we don’t have a Beethoven.’

 Just don’t expect Huynh to be heading up any kind of comic revolution any time soon. He’s not looking to start an art movement and thinks the change will be organic.  ‘I don’t want to tell people what to draw,’ he says, ‘but I want the comic creative base to at least know the potential of what they’re doing – it can be an entire culture defining thing, it could be really cool.’

http://www.stikmancomics.com/