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Tubular Cels - Artist Bio
Steve Cakebread
If Captain Goodvibes (Tony Edward's notorious "pig of steel" who became Australia's first surf cartoon hero in the 1970s) ever managed to get it on with one of the nubile surf groupies he was always lusting after, Steve Cakebread's Felch would be the bastard son produced from their unnatural union.
While decidedly un-porcine in appearance, (he obviously obtained his human looks from his mother), Felch has inherited his father's cynicism, laziness, sexual hunger and bad language. For this "bastard surf sprog of the new millennium" with the five-day growth, lanky (and receding) hair, milk-bottle glasses and puny body is to the Sensitive New Age Guy as a corner shop hamburger with the lot is to a tofu salad with organically grown rice.
Felch is also the alter-ego of his apparently SNAG creator, the adopted son (bearing a "genuine 13th century English surname") of respectable Adelaide parents who "don't swear" and who he hopes "don't read it." In fact, he even admits to hiding his Felch artwork from them whenever they visit his un-Felch-like Bondi home!
Cakebread began his drawing career "copying my father's drawings of planes: he did technical drawings, designing whole industrial engineering systems." Other early influences included the ubiquitous Mad magazine - "I thought it was incredibly subversive, even contraband" - plus the cartoons of Hanna-Barbera and Disney, and he was "totally into the whole Monty Python twisted humour thing." He also knew he wanted to be an artist...
By the time he was attending the South Australian School of Arts (along with fellow exhibitionist Gerry Wedd), Cakebread was developing "an extremely hard-core style", influenced by his Young Ones lifestyle sharing a house with "a sculptor, a film-maker, a performance artist, a graphic designer and a computer enthusiast. It was a totally creative household, making our own movies, having insane parties: these guys shaped my aesthetics".
"I was doing animation, writing a cartoon - featuring bizarre stuff I can't even understand these days - for a student newspaper, making my own t-shirts, getting into Dada and punk. Sadly it's getting impossible nowadays for students to do all the stuff we did: there's so many restrictions in their way such as the rising cost of rents, the HECS system, age limits on everything. But film and art faculties are still great places to expand your horizons."
Already a dedicated surfer - "in South Australia you have to be that way" - the graduate Cakebread then went travelling in Asia, Greece and Europe "getting pissed and partying" before returning only briefly to Adelaide. A brief stint with the Melbourne Age drawing a daily pocket cartoon followed, followed by a short time at the Hot Tuna compound in Taree and finally a move to Sydney, where he "freelanced for about five years, everything from drawing caricatures for a credit card company - they didn't like them, even though the subjects did, because they were too honest - to cartooning with The Bulletin." He now works full-time as a graphic designer.
The infamous Felch was conceived in July 1998 and first displayed to the public in the January 1999 edition of Australian Surfing Life (ASL) after Cakebread had been recommended to the magazine as a potential cartoonist. Since his first two ASL efforts were "considered a bit too dark for their readership", it's then editor Derek Rielly suggested a strip based around a share house. The first one showed Felch - who takes his name "from a slang word for a revolting sexual act" - leaving behind his respectable life "to live like a beach bum."
Right from day one, Felch has generated the kind of controversy that would please his porcine forebear. "I've received my share of 'disgusted parent' letters," Cakebread admits proudly, "and the editors love getting them too!" Keen to create an 'apathetic, loser' character" that was the opposite of the bronzed Aussie surf hero," he's also earned the ongoing wrath of "some of the old guard of surfers who don't like anyone lampooning surf culture." But does he care? Hell no, says the man "fascinated by people who can't get themselves off the couch to make cornflakes, who are totally apathetic and negative...all of which is the complete opposite of me. "
What of the many women who grace Felch's world? Our anti-hero (and his mates) are the type of Aussie blokes who'd define their perfect woman as a rich nymphomaniac who owns a chain of pubs. However, as Cakebread (who claims "most of my friends are women..") rightfully points out: "I love to have the women always showing up the guys, whether by being smarter, sneakier, classier or simply being better surfers. And despite the crew's best intentions, they don't get much sex: in fact, the only frames I'd had censored showed Felch getting some!"
His heroes: Cartoonists Ralph Steadman, John Kricfalusi and Robert Crumb. Andy Warhol, political theorist Noahm Chomsky. Jean Michel Basquiat, John Lydon, Damien Hirst, Todd Solontz ("Happiness" is the best film ever made)
His production technique: Draw the artwork up (rough) with text, then refine the drawing with black (Artline 200) pen, then do the colour -up with Pantone markers and water colours
Frustrations in life: "Self obsessed people, they shit me to tears"
His best surfing memory: Surfing 6-8 ft Chinamans (Yorke Peninsula, S.A.) for the first time when I was 17
Back to Tubular Cels Media Release
Tubular Cels - Opening 17 August 2001
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