Interview; Aidan Miskella of Ascot Pattison
We had a chat with Aidan Miskella of Melbourne-based creative agency Ascot Pattison.
Despite forming only a few months ago, Ascot Pattison sure did provide the goods at their Debut exhibition in April. The walls of Saint Charlie’s were lined with work by Jacques Romanin, Gen Murphy, Katelin Smith & Lex Kroussov, with Jacob Fitzgerald & Archer performing on-stage.
A couple of weeks before the big event, we met up with Aidan & Jacques at a cafe in Fitzroy to discuss where the boys were at in their journey as both creatives and curators. The analogue pictures in this article are from that afternoon; the words are from after the Debut event.
Holly; So your first Debut Exhibition was in April at Saint Charlie Tap Room & Grill. How’d you go about organising such a well-rounded night?
Aidan; Well first of all the show took quite a bit of preparation because I seriously had no idea what I was doing, it was a big first for me. I sorted the venue out first because I was like okay if you have a venue then this can 100% go ahead. It was first meant to be at a warehouse in Brunswick but then that didn’t work out so we booked out Saint Charlie Taproom and Grill and yeh from there everything just sort of fell into place quite quickly. The people who displayed work were all my really close friends so that made the whole planning a lot easier and a lot less stressful for me because I was able to trust them to get the work done and ready in time. The two music acts, Jacob Fitzgerald and Archer were just people I know through Instagram and who I’ve seen perform a few times before at other gigs so I hit them up asking if they’d help out and perform for the night and both said yes and the rest was history.
H; And it was an awesome event. What are your thoughts on the night?
A; I can honestly say it was one of my favourite nights of my life. Hands down. Everything went perfectly there were no fuck ups everyone had an awesome night, people were dancing, talking, and most importantly, drinking. The turn out as well was more than I thought, I kept seeing new faces walk up the stairs some who I knew and others just random passerby’s who had strolled up because they fancied a look, and that’s what made me the happiest I reckon, the fact there were random people coming up, having a look and enjoying themselves.
H; We’ve noticed that you guys have been doing some voluntary rubbish-picking around the local neighbourhood (love that). What’s the motivation behind putting your time towards this?
A; The clean up - this is just getting started now, we had one a few weeks ago where we actually picked up 27kgs of rubbish from a 1.5km length of Moonee Valley Creek. I wanted to start this because I’ve been seeing things on social media and in the news and David Attenborough documentaries and the earth is really fucked up and it’s all our fault and our neglect towards it and our ignorance to what we should be doing.
H; Last but not least - what’s next for Ascot Pattison?
A; Well it’s a pretty short story for how we were born, so I’ve been wanting to start something like this the last few years but haven’t been surrounded by people where I was able to do so, and now I am so that really helps. But really what happened was we had been going to these other art shows and having a few drinks with mates and my mate Jacques and I said to each other “dude we could so do this”. and then from there I started planning out our Debut show at Saint Charlie’s and that’s when Ascot Pattison was born!
Images by Emily-Layne Kapetanovic & Holly Blackmore.
Keep up with Ascot Pattison here.