By SETH KHOURI
Photos CORY ROBERTS
There’s a point in the making of an exhibition where play gives way to pressure — where loose ideas harden into stretched linen, and instinct becomes commitment. For Venn Miles, that shift arrived in the final weeks leading up to Act Out, Desire Me, a body of work that leans into memory, performance, and the slippery terrain of desire. Working until the courier knocked, Miles speaks with a candidness that mirrors his paintings: playful, erotic, and deeply personal without ever feeling heavy-handed. Bodies emerge as unreliable recollections, colour becomes performance, and the studio oscillates between distraction and discipline. Venn joins Seth at a pub in Surry Hills to reflect on his process, sexuality, and the freedom found in romanticising both art and life.
SETH KHOURI: Hey Venn, how are you?
VENN MILES: I’m very good thank you! How are you?
SK: I’m doing well. You told me over text you were spending the morning moving the art into the exhibition, how did that feel?
VN: Yes! Everything was delivered this morning, I’m quite relieved now. It got photographed for the catalogue this morning too. I am still working on the notes which is very like me. It was brushes down when the courier knocked on the door.
SK: Working till the last minute it seems!
VN: That’s honestly such a large part of my practice, never working at the last minute but always up until.
SK: The last time I saw you, you were in the thick of getting ready for this exhibition. How has the past couple weeks been?
VN: It has been hectic! It’s definitely post-playtime. I got offered the show early January and those first moments are very playful, thinking of new materials and new ideas. When I saw you last that was coming to an end so these past few weeks have been a lot of canvas stretching and serious painting. Sadly no playtime.
SK: Can you share more about that early playtime as you’ve put it?
VN: I wish I had a really interesting method, in reality I put on really trashy movies while I paint!
SK: What kind?
VN: Lot’s of action movies. On the last day of painting I watched Men in Black 2. It has to be something I’ve seen before otherwise I’ll get distracted by it.
SK: What’s your letterboxed top four?
VN: O Brother Where Art Thou by the Cohen brothers, Blue Velvet by David Lynch, Dog Tooth by Yorgos Lanthimos, and Paddington 2 of course. I’m most likely watching one of those as I paint. As for the playtime. I have this continuous ideology behind my work. I like to view each body of work as a chapter in a memoir I’m writing. I’m very driven by memory and real life experiences. Using things I’ve come in contact with as catalysts to put on the canvas. As I’ve matured it’s become this almost erotic memoir, morphing into this psycho-sexual narrative of where my sex life has been heading. It has added a really personal layer to it that I have found to be really freeing.
SK: What led you down that route?
VN: I really just love to paint bodies, really these amorphous pictures of humans which are unreliable, which ties into memory being unreliable. It’s an almost falsehood of what a person looks like because I’ve misrembered. This has latched itself onto all my work. I really like to romanticise my entire life.
SK: How long have you been making art?
VN: I started essentially during the early days of COVID. I had just returned from a ten-month trip around Europe and Central/South America and I wasn’t really doing anything–like everyone else at that time. I found a box of old oil paints my nan had given me, from there I just started painting and posting and people would buy them from instagram.
SK: How long from that did you then pick up a pattern in your craft?
VN: It actually took a really long time. I would definitely linger on what I’m doing now for a while but actually developing it into something sustainable took quite awhile. I would chop and change between styles yet nothing stuck, which of course is just a part of the process.
SK: I’m very interested in the moments people don’t see. Were there stretches where nothing was working?
VN: Oh definitely! I need a deadline. It’s honestly heartbreaking that I can’t force myself to work without one so there are many long stretches where nothing really happens. I put a lot of bad pressure on myself during those moments. It’s not till I get a deadline till things start working. I’ve found cheat codes out of that which help.
SK: What are some of the cheat codes?
VN: They’re nothing too crazy. A still life drawing really helps. I also like to set a timer, giving myself a fake deadline.
SK: Do you find that temporary moments of distraction help you focus on the bigger goal?
VN: Kind-of! It’s almost like drawing in the margins of your schoolbook, focusing without focusing which is liberating within practice.
SK: Do you then make a lot of work that never leaves the studio?
VN: Not too much really. I have some but I’m quite stubborn and I’ll force myself to make it work. But I’ve definitely scraped things.
SK: Has that made you protective over your pieces?
VN: I used to be. Even though they’re inanimate pieces of art I used to hope they’d all end up in a good home. Now I see no use in that. Being a commercial artist excludes that kind of thinking.
SK: Do you care if people get it?
VN: Oh definitely! I mean people create to be understood more. It’s a way of letting people in without overexplaining yourself. It’s very validating when a piece of work is completely understood. But people interpret things so uniquely. For this exhibition I have almost over intellectualised the art with my choice of materials. I’m quite material focused, even outside of art. I love natural fibres which does feel quite cultural with Australian artisans sharing that interest.
SK: What materials are you using for this exhibition?
VN: Everything is linen!
SK: How different was that to paint onto compared to canvas?
VN: A few of them were clear primed linen, meaning you can see the raw fibres. Comparatively to canvas it’s a lot smoother, almost buttery. The oil of the paint glides so nicely, making it really enjoyable to use. Canvas can be quite jagged. For texture, that’s amazing but this linen has been a really nice experience.
SK: Do you exclusively work with oil?
VN: Not entirely. I have two pieces in this collection composed of acrylic. I used to be quite dedicated to oil, truthfully in a pretentious way. It wasn’t until my first solo show that I realised I wasn’t better than acrylic.
SK: What does a really good studio day look like?
VN: I’d spend the morning stretching, doing a few varied sized canvases.
SK: For a moment I thought you meant physically stretching. Downward dog into cat and cow to get you started.
VN: Ha! My body is a temple of course! But no, stretching canvases. From there I’d spend the afternoon painting. In between there’s definitely brief journal moments of scribbling things down.
SK: Do you journal a lot?
VN: Oh definitely, I am on my second journal for the year!
SK: Do any little journal drawings become real pieces of work?
VN: Almost always. The stakes are so low for journaling, there’s no bad journal entry. When that pressure is off and it’s just an A4 book and some graphite I can’t fuck up really. I find that my best ideas are in the journal first.
SK: On the flip side, what does a bad studio day look like?
VN: It finishes at lunch I can tell you that. Nothing is working and I’m forcing a lot which is quite frustrating. Painting itself can be very frustrating. I find it quite funny when someone says they love painting because it’s so meditative. Not the way I do that’s for sure.
SK: It’s always a white woman with an easel in the spare bedroom and a canvas she bought from Spotlight.
VN: Please, that’s exactly it!
SK: Have you found yourself being changed as a person while preparing for this exhibition?
VN: Due to it being an inherently erotic show, there was definitely a drive in my sex life. I don’t know what particularly came first, I may have just been extra horny these past few months, but this sexually explorative side of me which I didn’t particularly hide has been pushed out more which is quite fun. It has made me think of sex a lot, and more the performance of it.
SK: I’d love to unpack the word performance a bit here, that’s usually not a word linked to intimacy. How do you think that materialised in your work?
VN: I do think because the use of bright colours and free-flowing bodies within the work is quite performative, it’s hard to “critique” the performance of sex, also because I find it quite fun. I think putting on that overly sexual persona is fun.
SK: We spoke briefly on caring if people get it, but how do you hope they understand it?
VN: I do hope people take it lightly, viewing it as art for art sake rather than something to be dissected.
SK: That is something quite countercultural. On one hand sex is understood as something light and palatable but at the same time it can be quite taboo.
VN: Oh definitely, there’s a naivety there. In my case it’s not just sex but also gay sex. I of course don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel being a gay painter.
SK: No you’re the first!
VN: What an honour!
SK: Well thank you Venn.
VN: No thank you!
