Grant Hunter is a 26 year old Artist/Musician/University student. Co-director of Arthive gallery. He has exhibited locally, as well as in Sydney and Brisbane galleries. His art practice is eclectic, and includes Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Sound, Video, Installation - often in a comical pop-surrealist style.

What do you do? Make art and doodles things for myself and others with real tools like pens and brushes but also fake ones like computers. Occasionally show up at University and sometimes makes little films and music videos. Play music in a noisy pop band called Crab Smasher, also a grindcore band called Anal Discharge, and a folk band called The Night Of Love. Run a tiny little hobby label called Monstera Deliciosa, which so far has released a number of CDRs and Cassettes by various unknowns of the Australian experimental music underground, but plans to branch out into other media eventually.

What inspired you to get involved in Renew Newcastle? I was interested when I first heard about the project, I think it's a fantastic idea but I was hesitant to get involved due to my early perception of it as putting in a lot of hard work for potentially little reward . I guess I had my negative goggles on and saw it as a way for artists to be exploited by having them clean up these spaces, luring traffic back into the CBD, only to be turfed when they're no longer useful. After getting involved with Simone and Angus, and actually going through the whole process of setting up the ARI, I've realized that I was wrong. The whole experience has been totally worth it, if we had to move out tomorrow and set up on our own we'd be so much better equipped to deal with the various issues and conflicts involved with running an arts project, we have learned so much already. It's a great set of training wheels.

What are you doing in your new space? So far I've been catching up on a whole bunch of new works for some exhibition commitments that I forgot about, some illustrations for a magazine, some CD covers, and daily visits to the subway up the street for cokes and sandwiches. Putting together a group show about dinosaurs for the gallery. Having the studio is proving to be really great for my productivity, I can't get the free wi-fi to work so I'm actually getting some work done, and lately there's been lots to do!

Tell us about the space – what was its previous use? Anything unique about it? Your response to the space? I'm sharing a studio space on the top floor of the Arthive building with Simone Sheridan and Angus Crowley. It's where we all work on our own practice, but also doubles as an office/meeting space where we co-ordinate the gallery space downstairs and any other collective projects we might be cooking up. The room was quite neat and tidy when we moved in, so we're lucky in that respect as we haven't had to fix or clean anything. The fluorescent lighting has this intense bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz which sounds almost dangerous, but is quite comforting when having a sneaky nanna nap in the afternoons.

There is a strange height chart written on the wall behind the door, I guess there was a family of gypsies squatting up here. We get a little bit of sun and I can spy on the people in the mall with my binoculars, except on Sunday because nobody is in the mall on Sunday.

Links http://granthunter.blogspot.com/

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