Sleuth was an iterative project that Joshua used as an experimental storytelling art project from 2012-2019 that investigated the word ‘spirit"‘ and how it applies to the Australian landscape.
It involved - audiovisual performances, comics published in various magazines, and zines. Performances and exhibitions have been spread across several states of Australia (and even the Indonesian archipelago) like random clues to a massive mystery waiting to be solved.
Sleuth - The Pulse
Art event in 2016 at Visual Bulk in Hobart involving the Hobart Improv Collective and Josh’s ongoing Sleuth project. 3 hours of solid drumming with all others welcome to join the soundtracking to 3 continuous projections of artworks about how we could begin listening again to the country around us.
Sleuth - The Transcontinental Distress
In 2014 was approached by Meanjin magazine to make a comic for them, and they gave me the unusual instruction of “do whatever crazy thing you like” … so I did. I made a comics experiment along the lines of the Sleuth exhibition from 2012 where I rammed several comic stories together into the same space to see how the reader makes their own connections between them.
I started to make my own connections as I was writing them and it became a comic about the Australian literary theme of obliteration in the landscape.
Sleuth - The Delegation
Sleuth: The Delegation
Josh Santospirito (TAS) at
Sawtooth ARI,
4 - 26 April 2014
Review below by: Patrick Sutczak (April 2014)
It seems that on the 27th of February in 2007 when the citizens of Canberra were ducking for cover from a violent supercell thunderstorm, something strange was happening in Lake Burley Griffin. With all eyes on the sky, it is easy to understand how eight freshly-awoken gigantic persons made their way from all corners of the country to converge at the Molonglo meeting place to address a rather urgent and worrying situation – the spirituality of Australia has tainted, the task of managing the fire is no longer in check, and Old Man Gum is coming. Something must be done!
Josh Santospirito’s exhibition Sleuth: The Delegation is a larger than life tale about where Australia is at, and where it all went wrong. Played out as excerpts from the imaginary diary of William Dobell detailing the minutes of this extraordinary meeting, fact and fiction become beautifully entangled through illustration and a delightful give-away publication that tells the story, and recreates in miniature what dwarfs viewers on the walls.
Santospirito has depicted his ancient Giants by making them, well, giant. All around the Sawtooth Project Space, his large-scale illustrations enhance the concept and place the viewer in the centre of his fictional (or was it?) meeting during the factual weather-event of 2007. Poised in deep conversation, the characters with unexpected names like Charles, Sim, Agatha and Leon, sit in the waters with grim faces, fingers raised, fists clenched giving weight to the words Santospirito has written. Excerpts from the meeting clue us in that the Giants have woke from their slumber because the humans have not tended the Eucalypts, the wisdom of fire-stick farmers has been replaced by selfishness of new humans and their new gods, who have brought about their disconnection with the land through diversification.
With Polly, we learn that the sleeping giants ‘wake to a billy boiled and burnt’ suggesting that colonisation was the problem from the get-go and it just got worse. The solution? Leon thinks they ‘must re-animate the world’, while The Waldheimerin ‘feels like something has gone foul’ but is unsure what to do. She goes on to mention ‘the ants’ while fearing that ‘they would realise their power’. It isn’t explained who the ants are, but on a overhead map of where the meeting took place, Capital Hill looks suspiciously bugish.
Primarily working in comics, Sleuth: The Delegation is a part of an ongoing series from Santospirito’s Sleuth universe exploring the Australian psyche. The treat of the Delegation entry is that it is so immersive and viewers can self-guide around the ‘meeting’ thanks to the playful diary of William Dobell. In a foreward to the diary, Santospirito notes two strange things about it – one is that its ‘existence is remarkable to say the least seeing as Bill carked it in 1970’, and the second is that what Dobell witnessed in 2007 could only be described as ‘an unusual event’. It is a fun introduction that lightens the load before we really start thinking about where Santospirito’s creativity feeds from – an interest in language, anthropology, culture and psychology.
Clever and skilful, Sleuth: The Delegation has a touch of humour, a dash of fact, a little bit of fiction, and a resonating message all rolled into one.
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Of course - this exhibition needed to go to Canberra so in April 2015 I found an opportunity to take it to the Tuggarenong Arts Centre where it was exhibited to the amusement of the ACT locals.
Sleuth - OMG
Having been approached by Island magazine to produce a comic and an article for issue 137 in 2014 I decided to start revealing what I thought Sleuth was all about - a global conspiracy of destruction.
I have since turned this comic into a 4 minute live performance reading with visuals and sound effects and performed it at The Tasmanian Writers festival, Ubud Readers and Readers Festival, Comic ConVersation and various other underground events since.
Sleuth - The Origin
In 2012 I had an exhibition in the Paddy Lynn Memorial Space at Inflight ARI in Hobart. It was an experiment about how to place comics in a physical space and what happens to the meaning when you do.
This exhibition also travelled to Alice Springs in 2014 and was shown at Watch This Space ARI.
I didn’t realise at the time but this was slowly to become a longer iterative project that I have been returning to that investigates the concepts behind the word ‘spirit"‘ and how it applies to the Australian landscape.
