Deaf artist Gonketa wants you to think about what meanings can be drawn from everyday hand gestures
What sound does an empty spray can make when you drop it? Jaycob Campbell, an artist who was born deaf, imagines it sounds something like gon-ket-a.
“Often in comic books you’ll see onomatopeias – pow or bang, that sort of thing. One night I was on my computer making a comic and in the story someone was throwing out an empty spray can.
“Obviously as a deaf person I didn’t know what the sound was, so I googled it and it said gon-ket-a. And I thought, cool, I guess that could be my name,” he explained.
Within the dark stone walls in Northcote’s Wesley Anne, I spoke to Jaycob with an Auslan interpreter generously provided by the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Jaycob has been going by the alias Gonketa for almost three years, and in that time his following has swelled.
With the flair of manga, Jaycob’s art is bright and a little trippy. But his most common subject is hands, the shapes they can form and even the trauma they can endure.
Hands are our eyes in the dark and our most prolific tools, but hands are notoriously difficult to draw well. With 27 bones, the human hand can contort in endless ways. And if you look closely enough, the joints, segments, calices, veins and past traumas can tell you a lot about a person.
Jaycob is most interested in gestures, not only in contemporary sign language, but in the way the hearing community uses them, often without a second thought.
He recently held a solo exhibition at the Fringe, called Obscene Gestures, where he decked out the Motley Bauhaus with images of gesturing hands. Everything was thrown in the mix, from sign language gestures to the “a-okay” symbol.
“I didn’t realise how varied I could actually make this one symbol. And each time I drew it I improved my skills.”
He wanted to encourage people to look at their own hands and think about the spectrum of meanings that can be drawn from them.
At first, however, Jacob was resistant to drawing and painting hands because he didn’t want to feel like he was conforming to a stereotype.
“I didn’t want people to think I’m only drawing hands because I’m a deaf person. But I found myself still drawing them,” he signs. “A lot of deaf artists out there draw hands throughout their work, which I can understand. It’s a big part of our culture.”
In a small pocket-sized sketchbook he brought to the Wesley Anne are detailed drawings of sports players hands as they pass balls, play tennis, and more.
He says sometimes while he’s waiting for a coffee, he’ll flick through a newspaper or magazines and take photos of hands to draw later. If he wants something a little more out of the ordinary, he’ll turn to his mates with hand injuries.
“If I see someone with a broken thumb, I’ll often ask them if I can take a photo. I’ve got friends who play football, so it’s not that uncommon. I’ve also got tradie friends who have nail wounds and scars from workplace injuries,” he signs
“Often I want to put things down really quickly and move to the next piece. Tom Gerrard gave me this book, he was my mentor at the Fringe Festival.”
Jaycob sought Tom Gerrard – a globally renowned street artist – out as a way to be more involved with street art, which he’ll pursue next year. He’s done a few murals in the past, but the show at Fringe Festival has been the biggest so far.
“I want to increase that scale and do something massive.”
Next question – does he have a favourite hand gesture? Jaycob thought for a moment, then gave me the middle finger.
“I guess that’s a bit of a go to,” he signs, laughing.
“People in the wider community think there’s something offensive about it, but for us in the deaf community it’s just another hand shape. It depends how you’re using your expression and your body language.
“If you do it like this,” he jerked his finger out at me. “It can really mean ‘fuck you’. But it could also mean, I’m available, or I can do that. It can mean a number of things.”
Jaycob has always enjoyed art, and after graduating high school he jumped straight into studying art at TAFE (before deferring). But he only really started taking art really seriously this year.
“Deferring from VCA wasn’t an easy decision. Looking back now I don’t think I was working hard, I suppose I was a bit lazy. This year is when I thought, hang on, this is something I really need to do. I said to myself, ‘this year is my year’.”