Husband and wife Misha Hollenbach and Shauna Toohey are “Perks and Mini” the inspirational pair behind Melbourne-based international fashion art and design brand P.A.M.
Voxfrock editor Janice Breen Burns meets one half of the remarkable whole.
Video and photographs BELOW: Monty Coles, www.theloupe.org for the National Gallery of Victoria
(Shauna Toohey, on Misha Hollenbach’s shoulders, above, wears PAM Luminescence cutout dress in silver, $616. Shop it here. Main photo, above: from PAM collection)
MISHA HOLLENBACH IS MOOCHING ABOUT in the airy forecourt of Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, a bearded, youngish-looking scruff (He’s 42). At the gallery’s noisy crowded meet-and-greet for 300-odd artists involved in its blockbuster Melbourne Now exhibition, he’s remarkable for being unremarkable: no self-conciously off-beat all-black outfit, no dyed-purple or orange hair, no goofy spectacles or clanking jewels to declare “I’m an artist”. Just a bland-ish chap in a very nice hooded anorak. Not ignored, though. The gallery’s fashion curators cluster around him, then peel off, then another cluster of admirers comes, and they peel off. He’s alone, then not, then alone, then not. He seems easy in his own company either way, doesn’t blink when I elbow off yet another cluster and hold up a digicorder.
I want his thoughts on life, the universe, fashion, art, everything. I want his take on it all. I’ve got five minutes. Ten, tops. And he plunges in without hesitation, a man of quick, deep thoughts. “I’m more human than artist,” he says at one point and, from anybody else, that might ring like a slogan. Anybody else, and I might cringe. But he’s genuine, and his own proof; art is integral to human existence, no more remarkable in his life than drawing breath. “It’s waking up and doing and making and not really doing anything specifically because it’s within the perameters of being an artist or a contemporary artist or a fashion designer or even a builder. We cross over all the time; design, fashion, art, publishing, music…It’s all just – human.”
Mr. Hollenbach and wife/co-creator (including of one small daughter) Shauna Toohey act on ideas. (If there were a slogan to suit them, it would be Nike’s: Just do It.) They are prolific artists (prolific humans), recently described by the director of London’s Tate Modern gallery Christopher Dercon (one of many galleries to acquire their work) as among the world’s most significant contemporary fashion practitioners. They are also, arguably, Australian fashion’s most successful export. I first twigged this more than a decade ago at Australian Fashion Week during an interview with the owner of uber-cool Paris fashion and design retail phenomenon Colette. It was her first visit to Australia, spurred by admiration for a certain small, off-beat Melbourne label she had recently begun to stock. If P.A.M. were any clue, she imagined Australia must be a thrilling frontier of rich, original fashion pickings.
So what, I asked, did she think now, after three days of Australian fashion runways? “Errrr. Eet eez very seemeelar to what we see last year,” she said, as diplomatically as any obviously irritated Frenchwoman (she had come a very long way) could be. “Non, we’ll not be back, I don’t zink. But we’ll continue P.A.M. We like P.A.M. very much.”
Mr. Hollenbach and Ms. Toohey still supply Colette and host private showrooms in Paris four times a year. They have lost count of the countries in which their designs are sold, but next year, will double their showroom sessions in Paris to accomodate even more buyers at a commercial boutique fair. This octopusian empire including their Australian operations, is managed with a total staff of five, no four, no, five, says Mr. Hollenbach, not entirely sure.
“We travel considerably for art shows too,” he says firmly. (I notice, when we dwell on one aspect of P.A.M. too long – its fashion, or retail, or design or music or… – he jumps to another aspect as if the variety of work is vital to acknowledge.) “I just finished a mini residency in Paris (painting) and last year Shauna and I did a long residency in Frankfurt.” The German invitation came from the new director of an extraordinary, old museum of ethnographic art, closed to the public since the 1950s. “He was revitalising and opening it up and inviting contemporary artists in,” says Mr. Hollenbach. “It was very long; a few months, and it opened our minds to more residencies and travelling for longer periods.”
Would they consider moving to Europe? “No, just travelling longer but, we’ll always come back to Melbourne. I love Melbourne and we have a young daughter. She travels a lot with us, but she’s grounded here.” There’s a house in Carlton the little family is fond of too; “We made our own house,” he says. “No, not the bricks but, I did smash up a lot of bricks and kept them smashed, used them smashed.”
Is there any creative discipline Perks and Mini wouldn’t try? Apparently, no. “It comes back to energy; seeing and doing and meeting people. I think the world is wonderful. I never get jaded. I don’t think I could ever run out of ideas just because the world is so big and we are very open and there are just so many things that inspire us and we just want to be a part of it and….”
Flatout fans take in the P.A.M video installation at the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Now exhibition. Photo: Monty Coles
Upstairs on the NGV international’s third floor, admirers are swarming into video installation Mr. Hollenbach and Ms. Toohey created for Melbourne Now. “It’s a bit of a dionysian revelry thing,” he says earnestly. “It’s a party thing, a club thing that’s been a very consistent inspiration for us for about 10 years now…”
Why am I not surprised.
For love: Perks and Mini
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