Inside look at youth and being human

Skateboarding and travelling with skaters has given Ed Templeton a continuing, intimate access to young people’s lives. Documenting what goes on around him through photography and painting has been Templeton’s method of working as an artist all through his career. "Basically I am always around very young kids as a skateboarder. They are familiar with me as a pro skater, so I have a great access to them without being a stranger."

Ed Templeton’s photographic work has all to do with his travels and associations with the skateboard world. His photographs of skateboarders shooting guns, smoking, taking their first steps in their sexual lives and experimenting with drugs make use of the snapshot aesthetic but transcend photography as a memory backup and enter the realm of art.

Similarly, Templeton’s board graphics and ads for Toy Machine - the Blood Sucking Skateboard company - go beyond selling a product. They communicate with the skateboard community on an equal level and comment on the consumption driven culture and the role of marketing in homogenizing our society.

FAST LIVES

Although he’s often labelled as a ‘street artist’ or ‘skateboard artist’ Templeton’s works have never been specifically about skateboarding and he has never been a graffiti writer. In a similar way that artist Nan Goldin’s photographs of her intimate circle of friends act as a window to a world of bohemian lifestyle, Templeton’s photographs of skateboarders’ lives talk about the wider reality of being young in today’s America.

"I think by default the work is about youth: hard, fast lives fuelled by money at a young age, the coming of age, being a teenager, living in the suburban USA, relationships, travel… If you are a skateboarder, you will perhaps be able to take more away than someone who is not. But I want any person who sees it to take home a story from what I am doing. An outsider looking at these images can hopefully get a great inside look at youth and being human."

The photograph of Arto Saari in a hospital bed with a drip in his hand right after heart surgery at the age of just 17 is a touching portrait of the vulnerability of young life. It’s a photograph of one of the most respected professionals in skateboarding. There’s deep intimacy about it, seldom present in the image conscious representation of professional skaters.

FROM SKATESHOP TO GALLERY

The international skateboard community has been very supportive of its own. Skateboarders are interested in things that other skateboarders do in other fields. Art has also been an important part of the culture since the very beginning. Ed Templeton’s art started getting recognized outside the skateboard culture through his association with the New York based curator Aaron Rose and his Alleged Gallery in the 90’s. In 1999 an Italian collector bought his series of photographs called Teenage Smokers from his show at the Alleged. She then entered the series in a competition in Italy, where the series won the first prize. Sitting in the jury in Milan that time, among others, was Jerome Sans, the curator of Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Shortly after winning the prize in Milan, Templeton was invited to have a personal show in Palais de Tokyo.

The widening scope of his audience hasn’t affected the way Templeton goes about his work or what he hangs in his exhibitions. "I am doing the exact same stuff I always do. If anything, I can use these nice venues to expand and do bigger and better things."

Templeton’s current access to the nice venues hasn’t distanced him from his roots in skateboarding either. "I just did a show in Vancouver at Rick McCrank’s skateshop, AntiSocial. I never want to get to the point where I can’t do a show at a skateshop."

BEAUTIFUL LOSERS

The work produced by the group of artists who started working with Rose in the early 90’s and currently extensively displayed in a touring exhibition and an accompanying book, both titled Beautiful Losers, has since become known loosely as ‘street art’.

"People in general love to label things, and it does make things easier to digest. So this term ‘street art’ goes way beyond graffiti into any kind of art someone does as long as that person is a surfer or skater. Very weird."

And while Templeton points out that there are many others, not associated with the movement around Alleged Gallery, doing similar things, it is predominantly the Beautiful Losers that have become to define ‘street art’ in much of popular media internationally. The exposure of skateboarding artists like Ed Templeton and Mark Gonzales and the UK based Side Effects of Urethane Collective to a non-skate audience has done a lot for the wider understanding of skateboard culture. Similarly, the involvement with the art establishment has given a lot to skateboarding, and its favourite artists.

But to swap a career in skateboarding for a career in art? "I think about it all the time! But I am a Lifer. There is no stopping me from skateboarding. I love doing Toy Machine and plan on doing that until it goes out of business. I am getting older, and I am glad that I have other things to do with my time once my sponsors don’t need me anymore. But I will always skate."

Tuukka Kaila
skater and artist

INFO

Ed Templeton was born in 1972 in Orange County, a suburb of Los Angeles. He got into skateboarding in his teens and became a professional skateboarder in 1990. Templeton started his own skate company Toy Machine in 1993. Since then, he has been the president, team manager and art director of his company and continues to ride pro for them. At the same time, Ed Templeton has made a steadily growing career for himself as an exhibiting artist.

Templeton’s works are part of the URB 05 - First We Take Museums exhibition.