Adam & Eve

So you've got a place in Bali?

Elke: Yeah, I share it with some friends. We took a two year lease on a small villa, it means when I go back and forth I have somewhere to go to and don't have to look for new accommodation. It's affordable, convenient and makes sense.

You do all your manufacturing there?

Elke: Yep. There's other designers and artists I share the villa with too and we all live between Australia and Bali so it works out.

Who are they?

Elke: There's a guy called Fraser. He's an artist originally from Perth who used to work for Insight. He's over there at the moment working as a freelance graphic designer and doing his own art . There's also two other fashion designers who have a label called My Pet Square, they run a business together in Sydney but go back and forth as well like me.

Next time I'm in Bali I know where to go!

Elke: Yep, you've got friends.

So, you were over there on holiday with Elke, Christopher?

Christopher: I've been a bit of a Bali hater to be honest with you.

Elke: He's been a Bali-phobe. He was terrified of Bali.

Christopher: Elke's like "you cannot hate it without ever being there". I really had to see what Elke was doing over there so I went over and had a ball of a time. It was really good.

Elke: I was quite surprised. I was so terrified he was going to see all these things he's scared of but Bali's got so many different sides, really horrible tourist sides and serene isolated parts. It's really easy to steer in the right direction.

Christopher: I was like, Ive got a scooter and I want to get out of the main parts and check out the things that aren't so touristy. We were driving around rice fields alot and looked at all these different scarecrows and that's where we kicked off the idea.

Elke: My place is in a more rural or villagy area than the parts of Bali that most people see.

So the idea for this story was quite spontaneous? Was there much of a plan? How did it come together?

Christopher: It was like, lets do a little project and…

Elke: You kind of pitched it. "Why don't we make scarecrows?" Our own versions using different elements of visual Balinese culture that we like.

Christopher: So the idea was to be renegades and make our own scarecrows with readymade…

Elke: … and unexpected parts of Balinese culture like patterns, fabrics, colours and things you find that are really unique to Bali and to recombine them. You wouldn't see them as scarecrows but the feel of Bali recontextualised in a way.

The black flags and pieces of material. These were already there?

Elke: Yeah, they were there and really beautiful already without having to do anything to them.

So they were inspiration?

Elke: Yeah.

Christopher: Once we had the idea we went to markets and set ourselves the task to find weird objects that felt Balinese and a bit foreign to us in the form of fabrics, bird cages and things that they use.

Elke: Yeah they put sarongs around their temples for ceremonies and make these little ceremony dishes. All the unique things that we found we collected and put them all together spontaneously.

Did you bring them all back to Sydney with you?

Christopher: They're in Elke's room in Bali!

So, are the fields part of your land or did you have to get permission to use them?

Christopher: They're all different spots but not too far from Elke's place.

Elke: We drove around and I was scared because I didn't know the laws and there are all these cultural misunderstandings. You don't want to be disrespectful by walking through their fields, and there's also meant to be snakes. So, Christopher, being the photographer, got to stand on the edge and I was like the stylist / assistant and had to take off my shoes and walk through calf deep mud and…

Christopher: That's the thing, you see rice fields but don't really know how they're contained. They make clay walls and that's how you walk between the fields.

So you saw that with your telephoto lens , while Elke was in the mud?

Christopher: Yeah, from the safety of the road and footpaths.