Only in Bondi

“Art beats culture,” says Eugene Tan, Bondi’s own ambassador for the October ART Sydney exhibition.

This year, Sydney’s most popular annual art fair will present more than 100 galleries and the work of over 800 artists creating original painting, sculpture, drawings, ceramics, indigenous art and prints.

Last year, surfer and Bondi local Eugene ‘Uge’ Tan was the first surf photographer ever to be invited to attend and was extremely successful with his gallery there. Creator and owner of the locally famed surf report/photo internet site, aquabumps.com, Uge now has his own gallery in Bondi’s Curlewis Street to showcase his surf and beach photography which has evolved from culture to art over the years.

In 1999 Eugene started getting up early in the morning and photographing Bondi, Tamarama and Bronte surf.

“I just woke up, did what I wanted to do and emailed it to my friends,” he said.

Soon enough Uge realised that Bondi alone, as the moving and shaking capital of the coast, was the perfect place to grow his artistic portfolio.

“It’s more than a surf report these days; it’s more of an aquatic escape,” says Eugene who realises his main audience these days is not necessarily surfers but those who see the coast in a more romantic and artistic light.

Last year’s ART Sydney exhibition reaffirmed the fact that his exhibitions are original. From October 22 to 25, Art Sydney will return to the Royal Hall of Industries and so will Eugene, still the only surf photog invited. Although he has successfully taken some steps to move surf photography into the mainstream art sphere, he doesn’t have ‘any big theories’ on what he does. “People in Sydney love their locality and beaches and that’s why they buy the pictures,” he said.

Eugene plans to extend his business by opening more galleries overseas starting with Singapore in December, but he says he won’t give up on the Aquabumps website, where he still uploads the early morning’s photos each day.

“Both the site and the galleries need each other to survive. The gallery can’t exist without the readership of the site,” he said.

Bondi surfers will be pleased to know the site’s there to stay; since the start of Aquabumps much of our motivation to get up early for the surf has been to get our own mugs posted, ripping up some wave on Uge’s site.

The Weekend Australian Art Sydney, Royal Hall of Industries, Moore Park, from October 22 – 25. Aquabumps Art Glallery, 151 Curlewis Street, Bondi Beach. Phone 9130 7788.

– By Tom Edwards