The work of Stephen Fynmore

This is the home of Trailer Trash Design
- Stephen Fynmore’s web site.
I am a photographer and metal fabricator.

I have a Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts from the Canberra School of Art; and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism/Photography, from the University of Canberra.  I also have a DNF from the ATO.

I’ve had grease on my hands since I was twelve years old, when my father and I shoe-horned a lawn mower motor into the back of a bike frame and I push started it onto Belco’s newly brick veneered streets. Those were formative years.

My hands got dirtier – there was a freshly stripped and flat-blacked ten dollar Honda collected from the long grass late at night; the black Ducati; big low-flying loungeroom SEL Benzes; the soft seated Charles De Gaulle Citroen; and a T-bird.

I tried to do the right things. But it was difficult. I eventually got a job as a well paid government journalist. Code for ‘I write lies for a living’.

It wasn’t working. I went back to my Belco ways - a 63 Impala ragtop; a bull terrier X; and a house in the Canberra suburb of Downer/Bummer.

I was, and still am, listening to punk bands – L7; Bikini Kill; the Stooges; Rammstein; Nick Cave; Radio Birdman; and Public Enemy.

I don’t own any Jack Johnson, John Butler or Powderfinger CDs – and definitely no Julia and Angus Stone -  incestuous and definitely vain …

I was there the night a bunch of skinny, stoned kids flattened a set of tall glass doors onto four steroid baldened ANU bouncers – encasing their dangerous muscles under safety glass as Kurt Cobain ushered hundreds of the no-ticket kids safely across the glass bridge with his screaming teenage anthem – Come as you are.

I learned the metal skills - and the culture came easy to me. I was part of it – a president of the American Car Club – welcome in most doorways.

My pictures took me to the Canberra Shool of Art, and a Visual Arts Post Grad – based on the people I knew, and the places on the street I could go. Those photos take the viewer/voyeur where they could not or would not go.

Photography

I shoot film. Mainly because the cameras have dials and the negs don’t get stolen when some desperado turns your household of treasures into a shot or two of arm candy.
I generally shoot two-and-a-quarter square medium format colour. Photographs are high-res scanned, and printed archivally. I often adjust lighting, or remove a light pole with Photoshop.

Some of my photos are framed in highly finished recycled hard wood. I spray them in automotive colour – the candy apples; clears; and tints that I use on the custom car or bike that has always been in my garage.

I take lots of pictures but my work is never random. Trailer Trash Design is inspired by John Howard’s – now Tony Abbott’s World – and the darkness and unreality that falls upon many of us at some point in our lives.

Sheet metal and painting

My current work is figurative – life-sized birds; fish; and animals flying three metres above.

The bird as a weapon-of-war thing, happened when I was a clerk-class-one working on the wrong side of the counter at the Canberra City dole office in 1985.

I was always trying to figure out ways to go for a drive in a government car, which is why I can do very good roll-backs. I hated the office and it hated me. On one of my outings, the Defence Department was showing Bob Hawke a new fighter plane – and some old F111s – at Canberra Airport. I stopped on the side of the road for an hour or two. Life was better without mobile phones. I was right under the flight path when I looked over my shoulder. This thing was coming at me – an F111. The aluminium eagle’s force, felled me to the bitumen. There was nowhere to hide, and no hope for anybody in its gun sights.
This very evil bird inspired my current work – some 25 years later.

My birds

My birds are made from new and recycled metal, and detailed with mother of pearl from the modern day middens scattered in the bush not far from my place. Traded for smokes and beers they tell me.

Each bird is life-sized and different, depending on what I find in the local dumpsters.
I spend hours observing birds on the beach over the road. I then three-dimensionalise them in drawings.

I learned to draw with dimension and perspective using Stan Lee’s – How to draw Comics the Marvel Way. After drawing the birds in detail, I pick out the parts to suit the bird I have visualised – and start building with weld, lead, steel; and drilling, grinding and spray painting.

I hang them; drink a beer; look at them for a few days; and adjust them before they are ready to fly.

I make prototypes and production series birds. Prototypes bear the detail and evilness of warplanes. Production birds are less detailed, and need little explaining when the brother-in-law comes over for lunch.

Some carry the Trailer Trash Design broken chain brand … It means off the leash and escaped ….

Like me …

Stephen Fynmore