‘It wont always be this way‘ is an exhibition of Peter Strong’s latest multi-media collection, made in the Covid lockdowns of the last few years.  It fuses, screen printing, painting, and stencil art as well up up-cycled toys, set building wood and reclaimed ink from screen printing jobs.

The exhibition includes homemade screen-printed vinyl record sets of remixes he did for the UK Anarcho-Punk band, Crass. The DIY art style for these was inspired by the band who have endorsed the project.

“I like to work in the same way a D.J selects tracks for a set, pulling out various stencils and
screenprints from the Vectorpunk image archive and layering them onto the surface”.

Using a mix of different designs and themes, Peter Strong creates visual forests that use a variety of mediums to create a certain atmosphere in a chosen space.

In some instances, he uses repeated and re-contextualised images exploring the idea of ‘art resistance’ to the mainstream culture’s ever more present visual language of competition and manipulation.

Peter Strong is part of the Tortuga warehouse, an artist run initiative established in St Peters early in 2008 and is now established as a local gallery that up until the Covid disruption had regular shows.

Join us for the opening and hear Dingo Gringo, Sample Minds and Grumblemorph.
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DINGO GRINGO is the didjeridu and electro crossbreed of a sound by Charlie McMahon and Peter Strong.

Charlie fronted the seminal Gondwanaland band that prefigured world music and Indigenous cultural revival by a decade and Peter cut his name in the dance music free party/rave scenes of the 1990’s.

Peters’ background is in arts and activism. In 2016 he produced the epic ‘Do it Ourselves Culture’ documentary that told a story of activism as it blended with dance music in Australia since the early 90’s. He co-created ‘ Ohms Not Bombs’, an urban/outback travelling sound system project which have were active in the 90’s and 00’s fusing events with various environmental and social justice issues. Recently he has campaigned against WestConnex and was a candidate for the Greens in the 2021 local Bayside Council elections.

In Dingo Gringo Peter plays samples and programs the bands tracks. Besides his Gondwana band, Charlie has toured and performed with the likes of Midnight Oil, Sunrise Band, Bart Willoughby, Janes Addiction , and Carlos Peron. His recorded music is often used as sound track to evoke an Oz essence and played on soundtracks of Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

He has a long association with Indigenous folk and was the opening act for PM Keating’s historic Redfern Speech in 1995. Prior to his music career, Charlie worked for 6 years in the Western Desert establishing water supplies for Pintubi clans returning to their traditional lands and that work led to the surprise discovery of a family with no prior contact with the modern world, aka the Pintubi 9 in 1984.

While being well versed in traditional lore Charlie’s work is contemporary and Arnhem Land elders credit him for ‘inventing complex and interesting new ways of playing didj’ He invented the pitch shift didjeribone which is a joint venture with Qld artist Tjupurru

SAMPLE  MINDS emerged around 2011 playing sporadic events associated with Tortuga Studios, Dirty Shirlows, Sunday Dub Club, and various warehouse events in Sydney. The band is Pumps on Drums, Sid Sidlow on Guitar, and Peter Strong a.k.a Mashy P on electronic production and guitar.

Starting off as a kind of sample Mashup band the 3 piece has now incorporated dub, reggae, post-punk, ambient, and space rock sounds into the eclectic mix.

Sample Minds latest release and backbone of their live set is called Echo Clash which is an agit-dub infused journey through various styles sometimes spitting out a social and environmental media and news samples, at times, meandering to meditative dub driven downtempo ambient soundscapes and then ramping it up into global bass, doof infused post-punk and reggae jam.

GRUMBLEMORPH is the solo live electronic music wing of Peter Strong.

The live project was active in the mid to late 90’s as a solo project existing along side other jamming, social and activist collectives. Peter was involved like Non Bossy Posse, Vibe Tribe, Ohms Not Bombs, Organarchy Sound System and Reclaim The Streets.
The music backbone of Grumblemorph is live analogue grooves peppered with digitally captured sampling.

Now in its second incarnation after a 25-year hiatus, the latest project is a remix project of the UK anarcho punk band Crass working towards a release later this year endorsed by members Crass and the label that represents their discography ‘One Little Independent Records’. Their seminal ‘Feeding Of The 5000’ album is given the Grumblemorph remix treatment in techno and drum and bass styles. More details here on how you can support the project that’s a fundraiser for the Addison Road Community Centre.

The Grumblemorph live set is more about on the fly playing of micro synths in a way to traverse
unexpected sonic territories in the realm of post rave acid squelch. Check out some Grumblemorph’s sounds here and here