Monstrous Magic

Garrett: I thought – if he doesn't like this idea, which I thought was funny at the time, that it will end everything and I can go on my way, I won't be wasting time.

Will loved everything about the bloody cow's heart.

Will: The audacity of it, and the drama and the theatricality. Like Garrett, I love to be shocked. And my favourite filmmaker was John Waters, and in his film Pink Flamingos someone sends Divine [the movie's drag queen protagonist] a human shit in the mail. And I find that so hysterical. So that was like, my version of getting the John Waters human shit.

The right people had found each other. Not just in a personal sense – but in a professional sense, too. Both were already talented visual artists in their own right, but together they would become 'The Huxleys': an extraordinary performance art duo whose other-worldly costuming, photography and videos defy categorisation.

The pair like to call themselves "gay terrorists", and that certainly captures the explosion of queer attitude they bring to their work. They put on a "stadium glam rock show without music" for Dark Mofo. They documented an "Elvis-inspired queer alien road trip" across rural Victoria for a photographic exhibition called Disgraceland. They've more than once blessed the streets of Melbourne with a work called As Camp As Christmas – an exuberant Yuletide parade of glittering Australian flora and fauna in human(ish) form, from Sturt Desert Peas to dancing prawns and marching crocodiles.

Their work for the past decade or so has spanned all manner of mediums: murals, catwalks, gallery events, photographic fine art, live performances, videos and exhibitions. It's Big Glitter; it's surreal and sexy and shocking and spectacular; it's provocative and silly and always fun. If nothing else, it's loud.

But off-stage, the pair have an unexpectedly calm energy. They are gentle, almost softly-spoken. Sitting side by side in their Melbourne studio, surrounded by the "organised chaos" of their wonderfully bonkers creations, there is an undertone of warm adoration in the way they speak to and of each other, and a sense of delight and mischief at being asked to reflect on what they do.

NTS: What do you guys write on official forms when you're asked for your occupation?

Will: It took me a long time to not feel like a wanker for writing 'artist'.

Garrett: And also, it took a long time for us to actually be able to be artists and survive.

Will: For a long time, I worked in film and television and hospitality. And just in the last ten years I've started to get used to writing 'artist' on my form. But my mum still sends me jobs in, like, banks [laughs]. I think she's just from a generation where she's worried – and sometimes it is a worry, sometimes we have months that we don't have much work. But I'm committed to being an artist at the moment.

Garrett: Yeah, I write 'artist' as well. That's what we do, and that's how we make money, and that's how we live. It's very fortunate. And it's hard not to feel like you're making it up in a way, because it's the dream. I remember being 18 or 19 and just writing it for fun, just being cheeky.

Will and Garrett's origin stories are key to understanding their successful careers as gay-terrorist-artists. Both grew up in the somewhat conservative era of 1980s Australia, Garrett in the Gold Coast and Will in suburban Perth. These "very backwards and homophobic" places were not welcoming of difference, certainly not of queerness. Quietly, they idolised iridescent stars like David Bowie and Iggy Pop and Grace Jones. But they existed in a world where wearing too much colour in public was frowned upon.

Garrett: Growing up, not being able to wear pink was a real challenge for me. There was a saying on the Gold Coast – 'you wear red, you're dead'. I bought a red skivvy, and was like argh! [Garrett cowers, covering himself up with his arms].

Will: I wore a purple tracksuit to school once, and I got a choc milk thrown at my head, and it was one of the worst days of my life. But I loved it so much, going there to school in this purple suit, and it had applique dolphins on it... it was obviously a wrong choice, but I loved it. I feel like now, all the work that we do, we're making up for lost time.

Garrett: We often joke and say, 'don't suppress your children because look what happens!'

Will: We're interested in this idea that Freud had – he said that if you repress something, it comes back in a monstrous way – and that's what our art is. It's the return of the repressed in a monstrous form.

There's a small irony in the fact that while Melbourne has been the place where they've found their community and flourished for 20 years, they've also found it can be closed and colourless in its own way.

Will: One thing that I do say about Melbourne over the years, is I think sometimes the art world can be very serious here and very hard to penetrate. And that whole thing about people wearing black in Melbourne – it's real.

Maybe that sea of self-serious black is precisely why The Huxley's unrepressed kaleidoscopic monsters have been so warmly embraced – on stage and on the street, where some of their costumes have migrated to everyday wear for the pair. It's an invitation to be curious and take risks, even for those who might not quite understand their artistic intentions.

Garrett: "The only question we hate is when we're out performing and people say [he mimics an obnoxious drunk] 'Are you a chick or a dude?'".

The impression is bang on. You can picture this bloke, beer in hand, flummoxed by the faceless sequinned-something before him. The Huxleys laugh and roll their eyes.

Garrett: "They need to know how to relate to you, which is silly because you're a shape, or you know, an object. We never in our costumes really think of gender. I like that space in between when it isn't gendered, there's so much freedom in that space."

Freedom is the driving principle of everything The Huxleys create. They "don't say no to each other", and their entire creative process is rooted in a sense of joy.

Will: We usually start with an idea that makes us laugh – something absurd, or something that is close to our hearts.

An absurd idea, for example, of a band without music.

Will: We both grew up loving all these glam acts. So we love that visual but we don't have any musical training or musical background – we love the spectacle. And so we were like... wouldn't it be funny to throw everything that we can do at a performance? So we made music videos, we had back-up dancers, fake musicians and pyrotechnics, costumes – everything you could have at a rock show. We had a wind machine! It was so over-saturated – but then removing sound made it super weird.

Garrett: And the audience were quite amazing, because for the first half, they were really confused, they didn't know what was going on. But I think they just clicked on and realised, and then they started cheering our name and they got it.

Of course, art doesn't always land perfectly. Once, during a live cross on breakfast TV to promote a festival they were performing at, they described their sequinned sea urchin costumes as being inspired by "giant fluffy anuses". This audience did not 'get it'.

Will: 'Anus Gate', we like to call it. Like most commercial TV programs like that I don't think they really cared about the art, and certainly hadn't done any research on us, otherwise they may have been more prepared for what they got. The producer just kept yelling to give it 110% before they started rolling.

(Will gave his 110% by explaining sea urchins have an anus where you might expect the mouth should be, and added that "they love Ricky Martin".)

Will: We got wound up really fast and cut off air. And the studio was horrified. We all then went to bed and woke up hours later to see it had gone viral. My Mum even had a friend in the UK that asked if it was her son talking about anuses on morning TV in Australia. Anyway, we now love the story and I'm glad it's documented.

But even people who aren't into sphincter-esque sea urchins would have to appreciate the craftsmanship involved in creating them. The Huxleys' costumes are extraordinary pieces, better thought of as wearable sculptures, and all the more impressive when you learn Garrett (who does the bulk of the sewing) is self-taught.

Will: It's all through trial and error and experimentation. We design everything together and come up with the ideas for the looks. I help with the construction with the skills I have – tulling, glueing, hand-sewing or whatever needs to be done. But Garrett is a whizz on the Janome!

Part of the delight of a Huxleys costume is marvelling at the engineering ingenuity involved. For one project, they designed cane toad suits –full body, gold-sequinned onesies – and rigged up an internal contraption to puff up the inflatable sacks on their chests.

Will: We are vibrating inside with fans and batteries... it's ridiculous, but also perfect.

Garrett: A few years ago, we branched into some inflatable costumes, because they take up less room. And to our knowledge, people have not – and rightly so – combined sequin and inflatable together, because they don't really speak well to each other. But we decided we were going to do it.

They did it. A whole series called Gender Fluids about sea creatures that can switch sex – a tribute to how the natural world is so smart and creative.

Will: We took them to the beach and photographed them. And it's very challenging the work that we do, being in costume and taking the photos. Because there's so much that goes wrong, and it's only ever Garrett and I. We do self-timers, and when you're dressed as a starfish without arms, trying to operate technology... I feel like behind the scenes would be even funnier.

In fact, almost everything about what the Huxleys do seems like a logistical challenge. Storage, transport, toileting while in character.

NTS: Is there a logic to how you guys store all your stuff? Do you have some kind of filing system for everything, or is it just wherever it will fit?

Garrett: It's organised chaos. We've got shoe shelves, we have a wig box of all the most tortured wigs you could ever see. We have a box of latex masks. We have a box of unused anal beads that were part of a costume.

Will: We have a box called the Cousteau box, after Jacques Cousteau, the famous French diver.

Garrett jumps up to pull the Cousteau box down from a nearby shelf. From it, he retrieves a sort of sparkling blue spandex hood and pulls it over his head to reveal a fully made up face.

Will: And he used to wear this wetsuit mask that we have for every costume. We have sequinned versions of them, and we call them 'the Cousteau' because they're like his headpiece.

'The Cousteaus' have cut down on the time of applying – and later, removing – the full coverage face glitter that has become the Huxleys' trademark. (It's eco-glitter these days, for the record. And coconut oil, if you're wondering, is the secret to retrieving each last speck.)

Will: Yeah, that is really so gentle on the skin. Getting the makeup off is quite a procedure, and natural oils are quite good.

Garrett: We just live with glitter now, with glitter in the house. Our dogs, actually, we find glitter in their poo. And sequins. It makes it a bit more fun picking it up in the park, if you see a sequin in there.

Somehow, the image of the Huxleys laughing as they pick up shimmery dog shit in the park together, feels a perfect vignette of their lives together: ordinary domestic contentment, made transcendent by their art.

And after all these years together, has anything topped the cow's heart?

Will: Last year for my birthday, Garrett did this beautiful book of illustrations of us. They were some of our favourite moments that we've had travelling, particularly when we went to Greece. And it was so special to have this hand drawn little book of really special moments.

It's not quite as John Waters – but a bit more of a keeper.

Step 1.

The idea. Think of something totally nuts. Something that makes your partner-in-crime laugh. Something with roots in the things that are close to your heart – like queer love, or the beauty of the natural world, or the women who are your creative heroes, or simply the love of art.

Step 2.

Flesh it out. Sit together, poring over art references for further inspiration. Flip through the ridiculous amount of art books you have collected – pages filled with glorious visions of fashion, painting, photography, sculpture, music, pop culture and art history.

Step 3.

Start drawing. Scribble away. Don't worry that you're not great at sketching, just get the idea into a visual realm. Maybe even make a scrapbook, or a moodboard of artists and ideas that will help you bring this dream to life.

Step 4.

Shopping! Trawl through stores to find materials with just the right amount of stretch and sequin and colour to work. Look online if you have to. Patterned fabrics are rarely a good fit, because the shapes you design are so unique and abstract, but occasionally, they can inspire a new creation.

Step 5.

Construction time. Hard labour. Hours upon hours of cutting patterns, pinning, sewing and glueing. Bunching individual clutches of tulle up, and attaching them one-by-one in layers of frou-frou. Untangling fringes, sorting through beads, fluffing up feathers and fur.

Step 5.

Experiment. Dress-up in the costume and play around – see what type of hairstyles, make-up, poses and props complete the look.

Step 6:

Capture. Plan the shoot – in the studio or on location. Be well-rested and ready to sweat – these shoots take a long time. Set the self-timer and start snapping. Try not to fall over (you will definitely fall over). If in public, wave politely at any curious passers-by, and focus on getting the job done.

Step 7.

Bring the look to life. Work with Jules Pascoe, an amazing musician who creates bespoke originals and covers of your favourite artists, for you to dance and sing to in a live performance. Saturate the act with visuals: projections, makeup, and lots of pelvic thrusting. If you make each other laugh, you know you're onto a good thing.

Step 8.

Release to the wild. Gift this madness to the world, in published prints and live acts. Soak in the response, ride the joyous wave. Go home and put your feet up.

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The Huxleys are represented by Melbourne gallery Murray White Room, where limited edition fine art prints of their photographic and video works can be purchased.