Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2022 - Student interview - 06. Mathias Decker

MATHIAS DECKER: Hi, my name is Mathias Decker, and I studied visual arts at Edmund Rice College in Wollongong. So, my body of work is about what the ocean presents, pretty much. It's the-- capturing the fine detail in the ocean and trying to show my perspective of how I experience my life and my perception of the ocean to the outer world and community.

Growing up on the East Coast of Australia, like on the coast pretty much my whole life, I've always been in the water. And ever since Year 5, so, I've been taking photos. I saved up for a camera around Year 7, and since then I've just been, like, with my surfing and everything, I've always wanted to merge both my passions together of taking photos and being in the water.

And then I've had a lot of support from the surrounding community. We've got a good community of people there who like to take photos in the ocean, especially one guy down there called Ray Collins. So, he's helped me out a little bit as well with my body of work, choosing my artworks and just kind of guiding me through this process. And it's kind of all just fallen into place really.

So, in around Year 8, I bought my first water housing. Forked out a little bit of money for that, and we just kind of filmed each other surfing, and like, going to all these waves around where we lived, and then sometimes travelling up the coast or down the coast, and just having fun really. And then it kind of led to when I won the Moran. It kind of opened my eyes a little about what I can actually achieve with my passion of photography and the ocean. And ever since then I've kind of just always been wanting to get the camera out there and just show my perspective of the ocean.

So, waking up in the morning early because the best window to take photos in the ocean, I personally think is between just before the sun comes up and around 10 o'clock, which gives you that real nice iridescent colours in the water that the sun produces through the waves. It's hard waiting for swell because it's always unpredictable. Like, nothing normally ever lines up, but when it does, you can get really special moments that never happen again.

That's what I love about the ocean is that one thing in the ocean will never ever repeat, and even the smallest detail, which I try to achieve, to find in the ocean with the 70 to 200 mill lens, trying to capture all the finest details. And no matter what really the conditions are, like, I'll always try-- see-- if I turn up to somewhere, I'll try, I'll just jump out and see what I can do with what I've got because you never really know with-- it's probably the most unpredictable place on the Earth.

It's the struggle to get up in the morning alone and, like, wake up at, like, 4 o'clock in the morning, drive down the coast, or if you gotta paddle out for like a 25-minute paddle, just swimming out in the water, that's pretty demanding when you know there's sharks swimming underneath you. And shooting the 70 to 200, it's hard because you're sitting so far back, and you're trying to stay above the water. So, you're kind of treading water, try to get above what's in front of you, like that bit of foreground, so you can get your subject in the back.

Being selected for ARTEXPRESS has also been a massive motivational push for me to keep doing what I'm doing as sometimes in this career, like you'll see other people's works and be like, oh, I'll never be as good as that. But every time someone comments on something or you get selected for a prestigious award like this, it's just a great way to, like, reflect on your work and be like, you can do it. Just keep pushing yourself.

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