By NOEL MURPHY
“SOMEONE was definitely trying to grab that night,” says Red Whyte of the surf dumping that inspired his latest artistic efforts.
Crunched good and properly at what’s he dubbed The A Kingdom, aka Point Addis, Whyte was slammed underwater, clouted his head on a rock and turned his ankle slipping and sliding trying to clamber out of the surf.
“I crawled on to the beach and a couple of fishermen helped drag me up the beach just on dark,” he says.
“It was a bad girl’s evening for me.”
The inimitable artist-musician-photographer-surfer’s never been one to be dragged down by adverse events. But the brush with mortality left him thinking.
The result was multifarious – a movie, a photo exhibition and music – all in Whyte’s edgy, singular psychedelic blues-rock style. It’s an event which the Surf World theatrette is staging tonight.
As Whyte says: “It’s a two-part movie based on a short story of a near drowning experience I had a couple of years ago.
“I wanted to share the experience in a creative way. There’s nothing new in the band-movie format but this is a bit different – starting out quietly before turning pretty psychedelic in the end.
“The whole thing revolves around the short story in the CD booklet about a surfer’s close call and brush with death.
“The movie depicts the imagery of the traumatic event and the band Surfusion plays the live eerie soundtrack to the footage.
“Up the back wall of the Surf World theatrette are 44 enlarged photographs of the coastline west of Bells. Also adorning the stage will be some incredible pieces of carved woodwork by Tony Gilson, creating the mysterious vibe on the night.“
