Walking Man

I think this may be a first - here are some words about a 30 minute, made for TV documentary, which I was lucky enough to see (pre-broadcast) at The Backlot cinema. It's called Walking Man and and it's a film about the eponymous bloke who used to walk along Stirling Highway here in Perth for years. I think I'd seen him in the past, definitely many people I knew had, and if you're of a certain vintage, and from Perth, you'd know about him. He was quite the urban (living) legend. But I had no idea that he was actually a bloody good artist and he spent much of his life making art.

The film is seen through the lens of the Walking Man, Ross Seaton's relationship with professor Ted Snell, who chanced upon him working one day and asked if he'd be keen on an exhibition. Ultimately agreeing but, sadly, passing away before things could be sorted, the film continues as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, with pieces provided by relatives and members of the public alike. Seaton's work is quite varied - numerous sketches of a mystery woman juxtapose with geometrical shapes, occasional line drawings of animals give way to interlocking, non-representational expressionist pieces. Stylistically, he's all over the place, but that's one of his strengths. We're told by his brother that after working as a teacher for a few years he travelled to Europe to check out the masters. His work seems to be unfettered by any 'movement' strictures, though a lot of it's very linear - and curiously some works are covered in numbers, maybe measurements or deeper mathematical posers?

Whatever he was trying to get to the bottom of, he clearly had a plan and part of that was to continue producing art. The director, Luna Laure, tells the story as a celebration of Seaton's life as a artist, and the culmination of his work at the exhibition is a testament to him, as well as Snell's drive to give his work the platform it deserved. As Snell said, 'there are so many outsider artists, we just don't know about them.' Here's one mystery solved.

Special mention to Mat 'Cheeky' Cheetham for a top notch score and Brendan Hutchens of VAM Media (Executive Producer and the guy who kicked the idea off).

Walking Man will be on ABC TV PLUS on Wed Aug 10th at 7:30pm and then on ABC iView.

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