About this Short Film
No description available for this film.
Film Details
Country:
Australia
State:
New South Wales
Category:
Open Entrant Documentaries
Genre:
Personal Story
Festival Year:
2026
Filmmaker:
Andy Meier
Film Transcript
It's like Australia's version of Bigfoot and it's like an Aboriginal character. I called him yetis at first and then I started calling Quinkens after the original Quinkkins. What it is, it's a figment of imagination and I only started seeing it after I had the brain injury, and that's what I communicate with. I just do depictions of that character in sort of forms or scenarios to try and explain how I perceive things and express myself, sort of thing.
I reckon when you get hit on the head, you get frontal lobe damage and the other side of your brain compensates. Like you're good at geometry and that, like I'm good at the drafting, mechanical drafting and all that from it, but I didn't know what it was till they told me. Acquired sorn syndrome. Yeah, reckon I've got good aspects of it.
I did my course and the 3D stuff and then I learned a lot of it on the job. I did the boiler making for ships, conveyors, worked at Vley's, the defence contracts, F35. Well, I've finished up with it now. You do 500 drawings and then when you do another 500. So, it's too much overwhelm with brain injury. So, I'd rather do that.
When I woke up from the head injury there was a lot of anime or manga on the TV in the hospital and I heard about Tekashi Murakami Superflat Art Movement and that was the only sort of movement I could see my characters going into. So, I sort of chose that one — sort of like a virtual conceptual art movement where it's like quantum; say you interpret it from a westernist point of view in a strange sort of context. So, it's not like that it's Japanese art, it's outside that, so that's quantum. I interpret the quantum equations into like a form of abstract painting. You can get wave functions and you can do a lot of spirals or shading with the equation, and you interpret the mathematics of that into a rendering. Yeah, there's all different ones and you can — how long's a piece of string — you can find the one you want to use to render a certain aspect of your painting.
I use the bathroom, the bedroom or anywhere I can because it's like a compulsion. I'll do it automatically. It wasn't really a case of where I was going to do it; I just did it. But it was a way to process it because it was hard to comprehend things and express things or communicate — problems with communication.
I've got Osperers too. I didn't know I had it for a long time; when they told me I had it, it explained a lot of things about misconceptions and stuff like that and I was diagnosed really later in life. So, yeah, it was kind of like a reprieve when they told me I had it. I don't understand people's social cues and that — interpreting whether they're angry, happy or sad — then it's kind of tricky to do, but it's part of the quiet brain injury or quite civil syndrome, so I could possibly do more and more and become like an outlet and develop lines of communication. You create a world of your own or you create scenarios because you don't understand the real world one. So you create your own scenario, your own world.
I have an overall concept in my head. I sketch it onto the cardboard, cut the stencil, lie it on the ground, and then put the 20 cent coins on it, airbrush around it, and then I'll do the acrylic over the top. Sometimes I'll pour it on there too, like Jackson Pollock.
I've had exhibitions at Brangaroo, the Japan Foundation, Aralo New South Wales. I did one in the brain injury thing there and did talks and I've had exhibitions at Gossford Regional Gallery too. It inspires me. At the start I didn't even consider that. I want to have a bigger auction and sell enough to fund a studio where I can go and paint. Yeah, pre-cast concrete studio, because if I had a space I could do a bit more. I'm most proud of getting recognition for what I do, expressing yourself through that, your thoughts on what it is, whereas opposed to before that they just sort of try to stereotype you but now you sort of have a voice, gives you an individual voice. Yeah.
Filmmaker
Andy Meier is the filmmaker behind this entry. See every Focus on Ability entry from Andy Meier.
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