'Magnifying Lesser-Known Melbourne Artists / Interview with Foley Magazine
Foley Magazine is a hard-copy music and arts magazine created to help support and promote the work of local and lesser-known artists during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its first issue, ‘Forest Kingdom’, was released last month and featured works from and interviews with Zig Zag, Jordan Oakley, and Spoilsport Records. Kelly Herbison caught up with the magazine’s creators — Madison Woods, Alannah Sawyer and Eleni Vitale — to discuss the learning curves involved in creating the first issue as well as what we can expect to find on and between the covers of Foley in the future.
Hey there Foley team! Can you please introduce yourselves and say a bit about your roles at the magazine?
Hey! First of all we just want to say thank you for featuring us! Foley Magazine was created by Madison Woods, Alannah Sawyer and Eleni Vitale. We all went to university together and are each involved in different areas of the music industry including performance, management, and events. As this was our first time making a publication, we kind of shared each role so that we got a chance to be involved in each aspect of production. This was actually really great, as it allowed us to collaborate our ideas and distribute the workload evenly!
There are a whole heap of music publications in Melbourne, which is of course fitting, given the amount of music that is consistently being released from our local artists. Did Foley arise from a desire to see something in particular that you thought was missing from this scene?
There are so many talented people in the industry and we have a lot of friends with amazing projects that we wanted to support and showcase to the greater community. Especially amongst the COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, the music scene has needed all the help it can get. We wanted to exhibit smaller local musicians and businesses and assist them in gaining more exposure amongst the pandemic madness. We also wanted to create a publication that was diverse and provided equal opportunities for all music members! :)
You released your first issue, Forest Kingdom, in October. First of all, congratulations! You’ve mentioned that the issue name stemmed from the idea that music can transport us to magical places that are not always available in our day-to-day lives. Were the contributors asked to produce content that aligned with this theme, or did you come up with it after receiving their submissions?
Thank you! In the initial stages of planning, we knew that we wanted the magazine to follow a specific visual theme for each edition. We created a small brief and a Pinterest board of ideas which we sent to our lovely visual artists so that they were able to create something that matched the theme, but also interpret it in their own ways. This led to an array of beautiful works, ranging from delicate soft palettes to edgy skull mushroom gardens! You can see each person’s own individual artistic style which we love!
Can you tell us a bit about the process of developing the aesthetic of Foley? Did you work closely with any artists in particular to develop your look?
We wanted to create a specific aesthetic through the use of pastel colours and our cohesive theme. Each edition is going to be focused around a different colour, and we chose a pastel green for this first edition because we felt as though it represented forest imagery whilst remaining delicate and magical. We communicated a lot with each artist who contributed, however we spent a lot of time working closely with our front cover illustrator Simone Scandrett. Simone is a close friend and we had fallen in love with her and her artworks which we thought were perfect for our chosen theme. We pitched our idea, and she came up with a few different designs, which we then chose our favourite for the cover. She definitely helped shape our ideas for the magazine visuals and branding of this first edition.
While there are plenty of music publications around, it seems increasingly rare to have one that you can actually hold. How important was it to you for Foley to be holdable? Do you think that physicality offers a special mode of engaging with content?
It was important for us to create a tangible product because the way that audiences interact with each page in their hands provides a different experience in comparison to viewing an article online. The experience is a lot more intimate and personal to the reader, and it feels more like a piece of art or something you can treasure forever. As our magazine is going to be published seasonally, this also creates a sense of excitement and anticipation as each edition is limited to a certain period in time.
Whose work were you most excited about including in Forest Kingdom?
There were so many amazing artists and businesses included in this first edition, it’s super hard to choose favourites! But some of our most memorable participants were Zig Zag, Woodes, and Common Cult. These three had some really great insights into the music industry and how important community values are in the local scene. They also create amazing music which everyone reading this should listen to!
Were there any notable learning curves or surprises that you encountered when producing the issue?
There were a few learning curves that we came across as this was our first time producing a magazine! The most notable one was the design aspects and structure of the magazine as we pretty much had to teach ourselves how to use design software. It was a bit of a struggle, but now we are fairly confident and think that the next issues will be a breeze… we hope at least! Another surprise was time management and meeting deadlines. It's definitely a lot of hard work but we are a tight knit group and communicate almost every day which makes it a lot easier.
Have you started work on issue #2? If so, can you give us any hints about what to expect to find in there?
We are in early stages of planning for the second edition, but we have chosen a theme and have a few people who we would love to feature. We also have had a few people contact us with submissions which is super nice! Our next edition will be out in January and here is a small hint for the theme… think ‘blue’.
Do you have any particular goals for the magazine, or are you planning to let it evolve in whatever ways the contributors take it?
As we are at the start of our Foley career, we are kind of just letting it evolve in its natural way, however we do have a few goals that we would love to achieve in the future. We would like to grow our audience and possibly sell our physical magazines in various stores around Melbourne, and maybe make a subscription so that readers don’t have to think twice when each edition comes out!
Finally, is there anything that you are excited about – both in terms of Foley and the music scene in general – that you would like to share?
Now that Melbourne is starting to open up as restrictions ease, we’re super excited about the possibilities for the future of Foley! For our next edition, we’d love to include more venues and live performance reviews once it is safe to attend events again. We’d also be super keen to eventually organise a launch party with performances of some of our wonderful magazine participants. Ultimately, we just want to hang out with all of our music friends again and jam out :)
Thanks so much!
Thank you for reading this article. Before you leave the page, we’d like you to take a moment to read this statement. We are asking our readers to take action and stand with the BIPOC community who fight and endure the oppression and injustice of racial inequality.
Here in ‘Australia’, Indigenous people are the most incarcerated population on Earth. Countless lives have been murdered by white police, white government policies and this country’s white history, institutionalised colonialism and ongoing racial oppression. Racial injustice continues today under the phoney, self-congratulatory politics of ‘Reconciliation’ and the notion that colonialism is something that must be denied and forgotten, an uncomfortable artefact of the past.
Feeling guilty is not enough. We must take action, pay the rent, educate ourselves and acknowledge that empathy and sorrow for past actions is insufficient if this does nothing to prevent our current reality from extending into the future.
Please consider making donations to the following organisations (the list is so small and the work to be done is so large, do your research to find more grassroots, Indigenous-lead community organisations):
Indigenous Social Justice Association - fighting to stop Indigenous deaths in custody
Firesticks Alliance - who campaign for Indigenous land management, cultural burning and looking after Country