The Ed Templeton Issue Playlist
- Text by HUCK HQ
- Photography by Deanna Templeton
Huck is stoked to have artist, photographer, skateboarder and documentarian of Southern California Ed Templeton guest editing our latest issue. Ed has brought together the creative people closest to his heart to fill every page with colour, character and counterculture.
In this playlist we’ve selected some online treasures from Ed’s world, but stay locked to the Huck site for a host of personal playlists from the artists, photographers and filmmakers featured in the mag.
Beautiful Losers
Around the mid-2000s the art world were beginning to cotton-on to the fact that something was exploding under the radar. Ed Templeton was a key figure in a new generation of DIY artists who drew on the aesthetics of skate, graffiti, punk and hip hop. By 2008, the deal was sealed: Beautiful Losers, the self-reflexive documentary by curator Aaron Rose, had shoved self-propelled artists like Ed and Deanna Templeton, Barry McGee, Thomas Campbell, Cheryl Dunn, Shepard Fairey, Harmony Korine, Geoff McFetridge and others onto a world stage and, from there, their stock kept rising.
Encinitas Realization
Skate-and-oh-so-much-more photographer Tobin Yelland took a pop at contrived California in this funny short film, Encinitas Realization (1999), made by artist Chris Johanson. Tobin gets in front of the camera to embody what can only be described as your typical So-Cal surfer douchebag, focussing his mind on his ‘nowness and futureness’.
Toy Machine – Welcome to Hell
One of the pivotal points of Toy Machine’s rise as a creative force came when, with Jamie Thomas’s help, the company made a video Welcome to Hell (1996) that was perfectly timed to the mood of the era. The film inspired skateboarders to see themselves as more than just pursuers of a way of wasting time. Welcome to Hell helped cement street skating’s idea of itself as a creative way of life – a transcendent way of looking at the world.
New Deal – Useless Wooden Toys
Ed featured in videos for a number of brands before he got the chance to get in the driving seat, take creative control and shift the game into the next gear with videos for his own brand Toy Machine. Useless Wooden Toys in 1990 for progressive skate company New Deal was Ed’s first ever major video part and was released the same year as he wasted the opposition with his first place at the Münster World Cup and announced himself to the world.
Huck 45 is out July 10, 2014. Get it now on our web shop or subscribe to make sure you don’t miss another issue this year.
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