Bunurong visual arts consultancy Kaptify originated from humble beginnings as a graffiti tag during 1989-90 circa, morphing with an idea for a type of streetwear clothing and an anarchy/activist-type of brand or business.
The wording and spelling are derived from the concept of capturing a thought or image, and captivating through unique creation. At the time, I liked the words ‘capture’ and ‘captivate’, but the spelling didn’t really work well as a graffiti tag. There was no calligraphy flow. I needed to have letters that went down and up and had a curl.
So I used tagging conventions to come up with a name using ‘capture’ and ‘captivate’ as baseline words. As an example of convention, instead of using ‘C’ I used the letter ‘K’. Often in graffiti tagging naming conventions, ‘C’ and ‘K’ are interchangeable. So already Kapture and Kaptivate are looking like unique words.
The ending of both words required a curly letter, so I added ‘fy’. I was fortunate there was an ‘I’ in Kaptivate, so from here I came up with Kaptify: an original subjective word using contextual graffiti tagging conventions to create.
The Kaptify art style is unique, inspired by patterns in the natural environment, integrating themes of landscape, geology, ecology, cultural symbolism, Australian landscape art and urban expression. It is also influenced by local Melbourne artists Hugh Dunit, Nancy Cross and Richard Galbraith, and the works of renowned artists Salvador Dali and Albert Namatjira.
When you see Kaptify Art, you know it is Kaptify Art.
