Back in May we wrote an article about Australian street artist Lushsux. At the time he was busy mashing up 50 Cent with other iconic figures such as Taylor Swift, Donald Trump and Post Malone.
Since the article, Lushsux certainly hasn’t slowed down. His work is continuously posted on social media and now a 4-part Lushsux documentary has been launched via IGTV and Vimeo.
The documentary was brought to our attention by Jason Ng, a Producer who works for Australian film company 76m. He’d seen our previous Lushsux article and thought we might be interested.
The documentary titled ‘Lushsux: Meme Streets’ follows, the now legendary, Lushsux as he paints and discusses his work. Each episode is an easy watching 7 minutes long (as long as you can cope with a lot of swearing) and gives a great insight into the controversial artist.
During our various emails back and forth we fired over a few questions about the documentary, which the Directors, Sam Odlum and Johnny Yayo kindly answered:
Why did you decide to create the documentary?
– Melbourne has been one of the most locked down cities in the world during Covid so at the start we were just looking for an interesting project to work on while stuck at home. We’d talked with EP Mike Larry about doing a Lushsux doco for a while and it seemed like the perfect time. Lushsux is just an interesting guy – his relentlessness in regards to painting means there’s always something going on with him… whether that’s beef with 50cent, the Israeli government, Chinese troll armies, graffiti legend Cope2, or the internet overlords.
How long did it take to put together and over what period of time does it follow Lushsux?
– We started discussing and documenting the project at around the time Covid kicked off and Lushsux was deep in his beef with 50cent. It took about four months to figure out the story, gather the media and do the 3 interviews with Lushsux then another 5 or 6 mths to edit the four episodes. They’re only 7 mins each but we wanted them to be potent in story, gags and interesting content, so that’s why they took so long.
What’s the response been like?
– The response has been great. We’re glad people were able to get a kick out of it and see a little bit into Lushsux’s world. It’s easy to just see his pictures pop up on your social media every day and not understand what it takes to be that prolific. I think most people appreciated getting to see a little bit of that. Some others just wanted to have a whinge about the face blurring technique or music we used.
Any plans for more on Lushsux or other artists?
– Potentially. We have some other video projects coming up with Lushsux in the future – not necessarily Meme Streets related. We also have a feature film project that we’re working on next year that will involve some prolific artists from the graffiti world.
Anything else you’d like to add?
– We’d just like to say thanks to you guys for checking out the episodes and taking an interest in the story. We really just made these for people to check out during lockdowns and quarantine so if you haven’t checked them out yet, go check them out on our Instagram’s -(@samodlum @johnnyonelife @itsmikelarry @lushsux)
What’s most interesting, for us, about the Lushsux documentary is although he portrays himself as a laid-back guy, just having fun at others expense, he is clearly very astute. He understands the world we live in. A world driven by likes and shares. He utilises the power of social and traditional media, choosing iconic political leaders, pop and film stars knowing these are what will give him the most press.
Lushsux’s work is tongue-in-cheek satire of the here and now. It doesn’t take itself too seriously… which could be seen as a much needed wake up call to those he’s chosen to ridicule.
