Niqui Toldi’s Unbeing exhibition at Junky Comics: girls and anxiety

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

In Niqui Toldi’s illustrations there’re lots of girls - short hair, long hair, smoking, angry, pierced, bound.

But really, all these girls are Niqui. They’re like a self-portrait - a manifestation of how she feels and is. And they’re a way of grappling with her own life and self-identity. 

She says: “it’s just sort of a way for me to deal with how I’m feeling internally because I’m not always good at externalising how I feel to other people.

“It’s sort of a way for me to separate myself from being too vulnerable at the same time. It’s being vulnerable but without being completely vulnerable.

“Because it’s not always necessarily completely obvious that they are almost me.”

The girls seem sad at times, self-destructive, lost, with hands anxiously clasping at the ground or onto a cigarette or a match or a scalpel. And they do really display anxiety quite well - where nothing bad is happening immediately but you’re trapped sitting there half naked smoking and feeling helpless with a whirlwind in your brain.

This ‘Unbeing’ series looks at the last year of Niqui’s life. 

“A lot of things happened - a relationship I had of four years had just ended, my grandmother who lives alone and I’m her only blood relative... had a stroke so I’m her main contact.

“Then I was getting more responsibilities at work and it was the first year I’d been medicated and properly diagnosed for my anxiety.

“So it was a huge collection of all these things happening in the one year.

“I just started to deal with it - started drawing it.”

But it’s not that easy. Putting on a solo exhibition was a big deal for Niqui. 

“Because of my anxious nature and shyness I’ve always been really reluctant and I almost hold myself back.

“So this is the first time that I’ve really let myself put myself out there.

“Even last night at the launch, it was exciting and I was nervous and people had started coming in.

“And maybe five people had come in that I didn’t know and I just started crying up the back, which is really ridiculous because this is a really good thing, this is a fun time.”

Of course it went really well. People sardined themselves into Junky Comics, admiring what I guess they thought were imaginary sirens. 

If you really think about it, Niqui’s works remind you of the true purpose of art. They show that out of anxiety, self-doubt and heart ache you can make something. And it can be beautiful.

Fantasise with Elle-Louise Burguez

Words, styling and creative direction: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

Artwork and styling: Elle-Louise Burguez

Elle-Louise Burguez makes you wanna take a dive into a tropical watermelon pool, escape into a technicolour peach world and have a dreamtime about love and loneliness in a pastel rainforest.

The Sunshine Coast-based artist’s work has the same ethereal escapism of Cicely Mary Barker’s illustrations while still being pervaded by a kind of raw uncomplicated emotion.

“I want people to look at my art and just feel playful again.

“It’s kind of child-like and taking people back into that child-like view of life where everything’s playful, everything’s fun, there’s not too many worries, and simplifying life.

“And I guess as soon as they look at it, I want them to feel either really positive or maybe it will evoke a sad emotion in them. But as long as they’re feeling something in my art, that’s really great.”

Elle’s works seem unadulterated with a lo-fi purity. Ostensibly they seem simple and euphoric. But in actuality many are highly detailed and don’t always present innocent blissful themes.

The scenes, her characters, are in a way mesmerising. They can envelop you in a dreamy wonderland, which is both enticing and melancholy.

It comes from all different places.

“Sometimes it’s really personal,” says Elle.

“I might recreate a scene in my day or something I’ve done and enhance it to make it a bit more interesting.

“Or I might see something on the internet or in a magazine, like a piece of furniture that I like and I’ll draw that or I’ll just randomly create other stuff around it.

“I think I just really daydream when I do it and just maybe all different random influences come together at once and then they just explode.”

Elle’s family is laced with musicians; her late grandfather was in a jazz band, she has a pianist for a father and many of her extended family members teach music.

For a while, Elle thought her vocation lay in music.

“When I was a kid I’d always draw, just for fun.

“I’d literally draw so much and make my own magazines and stuff and design stuff.

“I kind of gave that up when I got older and focused more on music and film.

“Then I think I broke up with my boyfriend or something else and thought, ‘I need to do something, I need to focus my energy into something else.’

“And I just went out and bought a packet of Textas from the shop, which I love, those Connect-A-Pens, and went home and started drawing and really loved it.

“As soon as I started sharing what I did, that’s when I became obsessed with it.”

Elle-Louise works with Textas, watercolour paper, watercolour pens, watercolours and just fine ink pens to draw detail.

Like many artists, drawing is a process of catharsis for Elle. It’s part of that deep mediative quality of absolute focus, distraction and ultimately creation.

“Well a lot of the time it’s really healing for me and it’s like my escape and if I’m feeling a certain way and I draw, I know I’m going to feel 100 per cent better afterwards.

“The whole process of it is really enjoyable for me. Just getting lost in my own world, it is escapism.”

Take a minute. Let yourself get absorbed into Elle’s transcendental paradise. All everything is for a moment is just your own private Elysium.

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