Untitled 2015 | 27h x 22w (image size: 19h x 14w) | RK013
Framed - White | Ink on paper
Dogfight is a name this street artist uses for anything they do, whether it's graphic design, clothing, stickers or whatever...it's just a name.
"I thought it sounded cool, I liked the idea of taking something that already meant something and giving it my own spin. To me, I'm not even thinking about actual dog fighting, which is totally rank: I like dogs! It's more about the "fight in the under dog", like saying "it's not the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog". The underdog will rise kind of thing.
I came up with the dog character in its current form around 2001-2002. I originally paired the dog with a pig character named Bacon and was gonna do a comic on the two of them named "Bacon Bones", but instead chucked 'em on some stickers and went about sticking them about the place.
After a while I scrapped the pig, stuck with the dog and came up with the name "Dog Fight. I had gone under a few different names before then as well. The actual dog character doesn't have a name or if it does it's just "dog" (like the Dog out of Footrot Flats). It's just an every day dog, no particular breed or gender...purely a dog.
I wanted to create a character that could kind of exist in its own right. I always have a Dot & The Kangaroo type thing in my head where I wanted the dog to live and exist in our world, but as a cartoon, where people could see and enjoy him without it really belonging to anyone except the viewer at that time, so obviously graffiti and street art were the perfect outlet for that, as the dog could pop up overnight to inhabit an area without all the non-sense of who put it there or why, simply that it's here, you live here, it lives here, now play nice!
I've never had the plan to be known myself. In fact I often do things especially to reflect this. I wanted the dog to be known: hopefully by the time I go the dog will just be known as an iconic trait of Sydney and my friends, family and son can continue it as a permanent fixture of Sydney's landscape....like pigeons and cockroaches."
