The West Australian Pulse 2022 retrospective series: How artist Amy Perejuan-Capone’s career took flight

Amy Perejuan-Capone’s Year 12 Perspectives artwork certainly captures what most teenagers were talking about back in 2004, Australian Idol.

Taking inspiration from religious iconography and pop artists she had been studying ­— Warhol, Rauschenberg and Oldenburg ­— the Lockridge Senior High School student superimposed 2003 Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian as Jesus on a Pepsi logo background in her exhibiting artwork, Idol.

“You have a lot of imagery of pop stars with whatever they’re sponsored by, like Pepsi or Coke,” Fremantle artist Perejuan-Capone said.

“It felt immediately obvious to put the Pepsi logo as Guy Sebastian’s halo and then the bleeding heart was a bottle of Pepsi.

“I was worried that might be a little controversial because it could potentially be a bit offensive, depending on how sensitive you are to any kind of subversion of the image of Jesus. I was especially concerned because Guy Sebastian was quite open about his faith. Hopefully he would have found it funny. It’s nearly a two decade old mystery.”

Perejuan-Capone was the first student from Lockridge SHS to have her art chosen for AGWA’s Year 12 Perspectives exhibition, renamed this year to The West Australian Pulse.

She said the experience made her feel seen and that it did not matter she came from a working class family or less prestigious education.

“AGWA itself, at the time and before, wasn’t really on my family’s radar as a cultural thing to do,” she explained.

“I felt really proud because my dad had never stepped foot in AGWA before and my Nana didn’t really go there much, then after I had my artwork in the show she’d go every year to see Perspectives.

“It was important for me but it also exposed my 80-year-old Nana to AGWA.”

It gave Perejuan-Capone the first stepping-stone to pursue a BA in Fine Art at Curtin University before travelling to artist residencies in Iceland, Greenland, Switzerland, Japan and Taiwan where she learnt from other artists and was immersed in different cultural landscapes.

Now building large sculpture, Perejuan-Capone’s most recent solo exhibition was her biggest yet, where Sky Cave at PICA last year drew inspiration from her family’s pioneering roots in WA’s hang gliding community during the 1970s and 1980s.

Her dad, a machinist who worked at the Midland Workshops until it closed, has been teaching her skills in making replica aircraft while she investigates her family’s history in aviation.

“I feel like Perspectives is part of my life that I’m glad I had and I would never change it because I’m in a really good place with my career,” Perejuan-Capone shared.

“We gain an incredibly diverse range of perspectives from the people who are in an exhibition like Pulse. What’s different between when I was in it and now, is that we’ve got social media and the internet.

“We didn’t have the same pressures, distractions and sensory overload. Spaces like AGWA to stop, contemplate and reflect are even more important.”

The West Australian Pulse 2022 is at AGWA, April 26-July 24.