Kane is a skater, artist and filmer who runs Glue Bag
The name Glue Bag came about sometime when I was living in Cardiff.
It’s an outdated joke aimed at people who still huffed glue from plastic bags.
The name stuck and upon moving to South East Asia the name had a greater relevance here, as noxious glue is still the drug of choice among people getting high on a budget.
Prior to leaving the UK I was on the dole, eating ready meals and making home made screens from discarded frames.
We made our first run of T-shirts, which were then sold at City Surf Cardiff. We had a shitty Hi-8 camera and 4 tapes.
After a few days filming we would then capture the footage and then rewind the tapes and record over them again. Everything we did had a very DIY feel to it and I believe as skateboarders we all carry a similar trait to creating something with only the resources you have in front of you.
I always try to capture obscurity in my art.
My own personal art differs a lot from my skateboard related work in its aesthetic but when it boils down to it the subject matter they often co-exist. I’m currently doing a lot of reading on the subject of Art Brut and outsider art. I like the idea creating works of art without any prior knowledge of what “good” art is. Western culture introduces art at an early age and with it creates a subconscious aesthetic that we are bound to.
The Gugging psychiatric clinic in Austria invites artistically talen ted patients to live in the house and create works of art.
The work coming out of that place is really inspiring.
I’ve been watching more British and European skating recently, Jim Craven‘s Seven video earlier this year was banging. It seems Europe is a really good place to be at right now, there’s so many independent brands doing their own shit, which gets me hyped.
We started Glue Bag with no intention of having a set team or even sponsoring anyone. We wanted Glue Bag to be a collection of skaters and artists from around the world collaborating and putting more of an emphasis on the creative and feel good aspect of skating. It took a while for people out here to get the concept of filming for a brand that doesn’t even sponsor anyone but now the locals are always keen to go out filming and sales are up.
I think what The No Comply Network’s doing is a cool concept. There is so much emphasis on the people on the boards that people often forget how much work needs to be done behind the scenes off the board.
Filming alone takes up so much time, then editing and designing graphics and meeting deadlines is all time consuming. There are some super talented people on here and its cool to see how everyone approaches their art differently.
This has been such a productive year for us, a few months back we released the first full length Saigon scene video. We somehow made it work without any outside sponsorship and it really shows the eccentricity of Vietnam and the locals there.
You can watch it here
Since then we’ve moved to Thailand and have released our new clothing range and are currently working on our new deck series and racking up clips for a future street video. Ill be dropping a small edit this week that has some absolute bangers in from some really underrated Thai skaters.
I’m also working on getting my art in to galleries and just doing as much as humanly possible without dying.
