Atkins Labcast

Atkins Labcast Episode 48 - Ervin Janek

• Paul and Kate Atkins • Episode 48

Share episode

SALA is here, the South Australian Living Artists' Festival runs through the month of August and features around 10,000 artists' work. A stellar effort by our little State.

In this episode, I've travelled to Ervin and Belinda's cottage in the Adelaide Hills to record this episode. Ervin's SALA show is entitled "Last Dash to the Finishing Line", suggesting this may be his last solo exhibition at 85 years old.

Ervin is a refugee from Hungary, this exhibition is a reflection on his life, on his psychological growth after experiencing more difficulties than any one of us should. Ervin is a beautiful optimist, a true humanist.

Belinda, his partner, has written a book of poetry on his life called "Sparrow", I'd encourage anyone to read it, it is remarkable : https://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/store.php?product/page/366/Belinda+Broughton+%2F+Sparrow+%3A+poems+of+a+Refugee

Please visit Ervin's exhibition, and spend some time looking at his photography, it is remarkable: https://www.instagram.com/ervinjanek/

More about the exhibition, including Paul's notes from the opening speech can be found here: https://www.atkins.com.au/paul-atkins-the-captains-blog/ervin-belinda-and-sala

SPEAKER_02:

G'day listeners, welcome to episode 48 of the Atkins Labcast. In this episode, well, I'm doing something different. I've headed up into the Adelaide Hills, into the little hamlet of Lenswood, and I'm sitting in the quaintest cottage, the most beautiful modern cottage owned by Irvin Yannick and Belinda Broughton. There's a story behind the cottage, which I'm not sure we cover in this episode, but Irvin and Belinda have had a A pretty tricky few years when they lost their house to the bushfires up in Cuddly Creek. I think it was 2019 or 2020. And this cottage that I'm visiting is, well, what's risen out of those ashes. But also, Irvin's had an absolutely fascinating life. There's been a book written about it. But at the heart, I'm interviewing him because he's a photographic artist. He's in his 80s, so you have to listen for his background. beautiful Hungarian accent. Belinda's there to help fill in the gaps. It's a fascinating story. He's got a really interesting body of work. After you've listened to this episode, I'll encourage you to, well, perhaps go and visit the exhibition that's on show, but also maybe Google Irvin. I'll include the links here so you can have a look at his work and It's really interesting. He's a fascinating living artist. We're very lucky to have him here in South Australia and have him still making his work. So enjoy this episode. So tell me where were you born?

SPEAKER_01:

I was born in Budapest in Hungary. In the 24th of March 1939.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a tough, tough time to be born in

SPEAKER_01:

Europe. Yes, after the war. Before I was in the war, when I was four years old, I have been in jail by the Nazis for a year. in solitary confinement at the age of

SPEAKER_02:

four. At four? What crime did you commit at four?

SPEAKER_01:

I think my father was Jewish

SPEAKER_00:

and

SPEAKER_01:

my mother was Catholic.

SPEAKER_02:

That will do it when the Nazis are around.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think his mother was Catholic, but his father was Jewish. He actually kept a secret. But his stepfather was French Resistance.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. So when did you get out of... How did you get out of prison at four? I'm sure a four-year-old doesn't...

SPEAKER_01:

The Russians.

SPEAKER_02:

The Russians...

SPEAKER_01:

The Russians freed us and it was the first chocolate I ever tasted in my life. It was given to me by a Russian soldier.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you remember anything before four? When... Your life before prison?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Very vaguely. Because... Because my father was Jewish, my grandmother was a very strong Catholic, so she gave my mother to the church to become a nun, and then she got pregnant, they wanted to take me away from her, but she didn't let that to happen, so she took me home, and then my grandmother stole me and gave me away down to a village, for two years. Then my mother met another gentleman called Rene. I don't know his last name. Rene. And it took them two years to find me. And then they find me and they took me home.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So what age was that when they took you home?

SPEAKER_01:

Two.

SPEAKER_02:

And then by four, your father, the Nazis picked you up, and your whole family?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

My mother and my

SPEAKER_00:

father. Mother and stepfather. Sorry? Mother and stepfather.

SPEAKER_02:

Stepfather, yeah. Now, we're meeting because you've got a show that's an exhibition of photography that you've got, and the very first image is of you with... like a farming implement next to you in the shadow, suggesting that you may have been, and you said to me, I was, I may have been a farmer. So who, which one of your, was it your stepfather that was a farmer? Was it your father? No,

SPEAKER_01:

no, no, no, no. It was the people who were, who they gave me away to.

SPEAKER_02:

Ah,

SPEAKER_01:

the

SPEAKER_02:

foster family. And how long were you with them for?

SPEAKER_01:

Two years.

SPEAKER_02:

Two years, yeah. Okay. So if you felt you were in that environment, you would have been a farmer on the land in Hungary and there'd be a different life.

SPEAKER_01:

It would have been a different life and I still clearly can remember. I think my mother gave me a... What do you call this? Braces. Braces, yeah. And I remember how they ridiculed her for it. Yeah. You know, I was two years old and just... And then I heard their name was Mezai and I was very, very confused when they talked always bad about my mother. And then my mother came, picked me up once and that was the first time ever I heard somebody telling a lie and it was my mother. And so I was wondering, my mother told me, don't worry, the mezzanine is coming in the next rain.

SPEAKER_02:

So you didn't become a farmer. Where did you go and where did you grow up from there? Where were your teenage years spent?

SPEAKER_01:

Because I was a relatively young child, they always took me away from my mother. So I was in and out of the institutions, whatever you call them. And then I was basically a street kid. My mother was very busy working. And so I have to survive. I remember as a young boy, I asked the question always, who am I beside man culture? What am I conditioned to? And because I didn't have a father or anybody, there was always one person I could ask that question and that was me. And so that's how I grew up until 1956. There was a revolution which was very bad because At the age of 16 and a half, I was given 18 years of jail. 18? 18 years of jail for writing anti-Stalin poetry, and I got

SPEAKER_02:

caught. So you were writing anti-Stalin poetry? Yeah. That's not a healthy thing to do back then, is it? No.

SPEAKER_01:

I wasn't very smart. But I got caught, yeah. And then 1956, the revolution came. And all the political prisoners were freed. When you came out, looked like the whole world was there, but also the uniform. And they seen a 17-year-old political prisoner, so I put a uniform on you, and next thing you are in the army. And I remember. One morning the sergeant with umbrella was raining, yelling at us, left right, left right, marching on the street. And he told us to run up to the market, open market, around and back. And I forgot to turn back and I finished up in Perth.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a long run. Blimey. So, okay, so how old were you then?

SPEAKER_01:

Seventeen.

SPEAKER_02:

Seventeen. You escaped. Russian encampment for your art, for your poetry?

SPEAKER_00:

It wasn't Russian then. That was during the revolution. So he was fighting with the freedom fighters. But then the Russians came back and were obviously going to win. So that's when he ran for the border.

SPEAKER_02:

One

SPEAKER_01:

of my hardest things was that I was forced to shoot a man. Because in jail... There was one guy who used to torture me because it was a political prison. Put you into a spinning chair and you spin around until you throw up. And then they put you into a single cell. And I went into a single cell. There was a tiny little window there. It was sunshine. and some were ready to i don't know how come up with the thing of you know that's only my body yeah yeah and i looked at the sunshine said i can do anything with that but i can't touch

SPEAKER_02:

me

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and uh But

SPEAKER_00:

you were saying in 1956, again, he met up with that man whose name was translated Butcher Rose, because his actual name was Rose Butcher. And yes, that was...

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. And so when you were... Let's just wind back a little bit. Poetry, was that... natural for you, or was it what every young person was doing then, responding to Stalin? No,

SPEAKER_01:

I used to recite poetry a lot.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so the art was flowing from

SPEAKER_01:

you. Yeah, it was a matter of faith. It cost

SPEAKER_02:

me my virginity. Did it?

SPEAKER_01:

Tell me more. Maybe not. I came home because I won the competition. The next door neighbor, who was a doctor, and her husband was a doctor too, but he was on day shift and she was on night shift. When I came home, she heard what had happened, and she asked me too, what have I done, and all that. So I told her all that, the poetry thing, and next thing, I was in her bedroom, She dropped my pants. It went on from that on. The funniest thing, it was I couldn't tell my friends because we used to dream about it because she was such a beautiful

SPEAKER_02:

woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, how fabulous. So your poetry put you in prison and cost you your virginity. Yes. Okay. When did poetry, did it become, when did it become visual art? Because you're known as a photographer.

UNKNOWN:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

now, but you're also known as a poet and all sorts of things. When did photography become a part of your life? You got to Perth, was it?

SPEAKER_01:

Got to?

SPEAKER_02:

Perth, when you arrived in Australia, was that when photography?

SPEAKER_01:

No, photography, photography started off with me because when I was 13, A teacher, art teacher, told me I should never try to be an artist because he wanted me to draw something and I wanted to do freehand drawing. And I was a cheap little boy, so I told him, well, they wanted me to copy something. So that already exists, but that one is not finished yet. And then he told me I should never try to be an artist and learn how to draw. It had such a psychological impact on me. That's when I started photography. So I would have to photograph everything and all my hard work is to start with photography.

SPEAKER_00:

He didn't start photographing at that age but we used to make toys and I believe from what he's told me that his first camera he bought because he wanted to make puzzle games and the image, because he thought he couldn't draw, he can draw, beautifully in my opinion. But he thought he couldn't, so he got a camera in order to make the puzzles. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah. I was thinking, you know, when you mentioned you're told by your art teacher. My wife has had the same experience. She was... The art teacher said, no, you can't do art in matriculation year. And, you know, it's her everything. But, I don't know, teachers have a strange... I don't understand. I mean, some teachers, I'm not suggesting that all teachers, but some teachers, they really misread the situation. I mean, if she was to look at you now with your career, you know, who knows? She probably is and went, well, I got that one wrong, you know. So in Perth, you made your way to Adelaide. Is that where you ended here or did you have time in Perth?

SPEAKER_01:

There's

SPEAKER_00:

quite a few things missing there. When he first came to Australia on the refugee boat, they went to Bona Gila. Yes. And then he, as so many of them did, and after Bonnegilla, you know, basically all around Australia he was working any other thing he could find, all sorts of stuff. Work was plentiful then. So it was no problems to just decide, oh, I'll give up this job and go and see if I can mine or, you know, what I can do. And then he went, he... So he did travelling after that to go back to Europe to see his mum.

SPEAKER_02:

This was late 50s?

SPEAKER_00:

Early 60s. Early

SPEAKER_02:

60s, okay. And so when you came and settled here in Adelaide, toy making was something you picked up. Yes. And photography became a part of what you needed to make these puzzles. Yes,

SPEAKER_01:

sure.

SPEAKER_02:

So what... This is how you fed yourselves, you made toys. The photographic art must have always been there though, and your skills with the camera, and it became more and more interesting to you, didn't it? Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

See, the thing was that I did have a certificate to be a biological laboratory technician, but My wife left me with a two and a half year old boy. So I didn't know, I couldn't go to work because I had to look after the kid. It was a single father. So then I remembered when he was two years old or so, I made him a little wooden dog. And I thought, oh, that's what I'm going to make. Make wooden toys and call it educational toys. and that's how it started

SPEAKER_02:

so was that here where we are now on this were you living here when you started that

SPEAKER_01:

toys

SPEAKER_02:

no

SPEAKER_01:

in sydney

SPEAKER_00:

no in adelaide in adelaide

SPEAKER_02:

so so here here we're in lobothil here and uh in 2020 you had a tragedy your your place was consumed in a bushfire yes and you lost your toy making factory which has been everything you you look your photographic studio your house

SPEAKER_01:

yes everything went yes

SPEAKER_02:

and you were you know you were forced to then rebuild. And how old are you now? Excuse me for asking, but how old are you now?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I can't remember. Eighty-five.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So that was your 81 when this happened to you, was it? Or 82? Eighty-one. That's not a very kind thing to do to someone. No. To have to start again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You see, I used to... I had a lot in say, double arousal. meaning clean slate as well. I'm 80 and I can start again, hope you do. Yes, spiritually, yes, you know, but emotionally, you know, the old wooden house going and all that sort of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm very happy with what we're good now, but...

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, it's an amazing... an amazing place it's so beautiful but it isn't what you had and you had the clean slate which is a a good you know it's a wonderful gift and all of that but it's also a tragedy that sits there that you would be carrying through um i can see with this exhibition uh that there is some of the tragedy borne out in the show but you're not you're not rolling and reveling in it which is not the way, of course, to handle anything like that. It's to make it a part of what you are and move on. But it's very, it's like, that's a big thing to face at that age. It's difficult. Has it stopped you making art?

SPEAKER_01:

Not really.

SPEAKER_02:

Slowed you down a little, maybe?

SPEAKER_00:

The fire itself, no. No, the fire itself, I don't think so. Because the first year afterwards, even while we were, well, the very first thing... we did, I think, was buy him a scroll saw so that he could be working on woodwork. And one of his lovely ex-wives bought him another printer, another digital pigment printer. So he was beginning to work, and he worked right through that year, wherever we were, through all that displacement, on all sorts of stuff. So he was quite productive in the first year. The last couple of years, less so, I think, just because of ill health. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah, yeah, yeah. With photography, you're doing... Your photography has always been multiple image exposure layer, occasionally single shot work, but it's always very conceptual. You're always trying to tell a deeper story behind that work. Do you find... Are you looking for words as well with your photographs or do they speak for themselves?

SPEAKER_01:

I think I want them to speak for themselves.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you like your viewers to take what they want from them or are you trying to tell a story?

SPEAKER_01:

Take them what they want to learn. See what they see, make up their own mind. Don Downstone opened an exhibition for me. And that's when I told him, he asked me, what's the title? So I said, whatever you see is the title.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. He used to, he had one exhibition that he, actually it was at CCP or Light Gallery. And he called it Unfinished Allegories. And it was very story-based pictures. But he didn't want to limit people's ideas of what the stories were. And so he called it Unfinished Allegories, one term, you know, to whatever, with the idea that the viewer finishes the story.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very clever. It's interesting. It is. I mean... I like I personally like to be very singular about it and I know artists people work all different ways but it's a real challenge to make something and let other people read it it's like it's a gift that you're giving them to do that you're not saying here read my story it

SPEAKER_01:

was one incredible memory for me I had a dozen girls modeling for me, and they said, what should we do? I said, look, I'm the guy here, you are the art, and we are students. So you are the artist, so I'm the one with the camera, I just push the buttons and you do what you want to do. So the table closed off. I said, you do what you want to do. Matter of a second, they stripped off. And then they started to make this Egyptian dance. It was one of my best shows. I loved it. I remember the guy was praising me as a great artist. I said, no, I was just a photographer. You were there.

SPEAKER_02:

You were there for the happening. Yeah, that's so interesting. Before digital... where you worked in a dark room as part of your studio. Yes, yes. And you're doing multiple exposures in print?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh yeah? The

SPEAKER_00:

multi-exposures weren't done in the dark room though. All of the work that Irvine does with multiple exposures and stuff like that is all done in the

SPEAKER_02:

camera. So it's not cutting prints, outlining prints, it's all in camera exposure? Yes. So I'm sure the Hasselblad is gone as well? Oh yes. They can go to the moon but they can't be in a bushfire. Funny that. Yeah, so with the work since the loss of the camera, you're purely digital in the work you're doing now. How have you found Photoshop and the digital process? Have you taken to it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, because I did find it much easier. In a sense of, with the Hasselblad I needed, if I wanted a double exposure or something like that, I needed to take a light meter always, yeah? With the digital I just put in how many shots I want and just click, click, click, click. It works it out for you. Give you more freedom

SPEAKER_00:

to create. But the work is still all done in camera. Photoshop was only used, and still is only used, in order to print. So contrast, spotting, and so on.

SPEAKER_02:

So when you're looking, when you're creating, it's purely a camera moment. You're setting it up and staging it and then shooting it.

SPEAKER_00:

And then perhaps double exposing it or creating, taking an artwork and double exposing it with a scene or whatever he does. Oh,

SPEAKER_02:

that's interesting. Because, you know, there are so many ways to... skin the proverbial cat that you can approach creativity when you're making work are you do you sit down and you're you something comes you want to do or do you just start taking pictures and then an idea comes from it how do you work that way

SPEAKER_01:

basically take advantage of the situation as it happens and you know that's what i said before with the models too And I was very lucky, I had about 80 models then, you know, art students, and they were very creative themselves. Yeah. So I did control them to that and that and that. But then I suddenly realized everything must come from somewhere. And the way I realized that, there was one photograph I called the Laughing Angel. Well, I was holding my hazard blade, the girl was sort of being a young girl just dancing around there, Then I realized everything must come from somewhere. So from that on, I didn't model them to sit and do this with the floor.

SPEAKER_00:

Can I speak a little bit for that? Of course. Sometimes his work is very, really, very straightforward. At other times he'll paint everything and just create a completely different, like in some of these photographs, early photographs in this show, where he creates a situation. There was a point where he was painting not only the scene, but all the people as well. And so those were fairly straight photographs. But he always had ideas in his head that he was trying to work towards. He used to say he'd like to put a film in one ear and take it out the other. But, yeah, so he works very many different ways, actually, he has over time. Oh, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think a lot of photographers and photographic artists do, you know, they're opportunistic in that. But there's always things going, there's an undercurrent and... You know, I think you're very attuned to what's going on around you, and I think things that happen to you are inside you, and then you're reacting to them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah, yeah. I've found that a lot of artists are, they're like antennas, and they're very sensitive antennas. And, you know, big things can be very destructive to them, but they also... They pick up on it and then they feed it back to us as other humans and we then get to see that interpretation of the scene. It's absolutely fascinating. So tell me the title of this show. It sounds very final, but this isn't going to be your last show, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's very hard to say. I'm 85. He is 85. But when did

SPEAKER_02:

your mother pass? You said she lasted...

SPEAKER_00:

She was about this age, 86, something like that. Okay. But his grandfather lived to be 108. Grandfather 108. So there's a good chance. So, yeah. This frightens me. The title was... He was looking at basically, you know... leaving this motor coil soon enough and some illness and things like that that make it fairly obvious that it's not going to be you know he might probably won't live to the age of his grandfather and also the making of photography is harder than it has been so he is more into more immediate things like woodblock printing and sculpture and stuff like that, more hands-on stuff. So I think the thing is it may well be the last solo photographic show. He may have other shows, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_02:

It's hard to imagine you not making work.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I do these wood blocks. Yeah, the

SPEAKER_02:

wood blocks are beautiful and they're so simple. And those little

SPEAKER_01:

sculptures.

SPEAKER_02:

When I first walked into your place and I saw them, I thought, because it was my first visit to here, I thought Matisse drawing, you know, with single line drawings, just simplifying things. Because operating cameras, there's a lot of technology that gets in the way uh woodblock making is a very simple process and very elemental and so yeah i can see that it's i can see how that works going oh that's lovely well your show opens next uh saturday week i don't know if this podcast will come out uh then but um i'll um i'll I'll really look forward to seeing the response because as you said it's not just about the work it's how people feel about it when they see it and how they take it and what they say about it afterwards and so I'm really looking forward to that side of it because I've been to a lot of your exhibitions but I've never had the honour of of speaking about it beforehand and opening it. So that's lovely. I'm looking forward to that. We

SPEAKER_00:

just want to say thanks already. Oh, it's lovely.