"Art is more about affect than information, you arrive at your ideas intuitively" Stelarc was born in Cyprus in 1946, immigrating to Victoria as a young child with his family in the 1950s. His parents had no formal education, with his father having many jobs including being taxi driver, mechanic, tailor and eventually owning a vineyard. One of five children, Stelarc was the only child to pursue a career in the arts and attributes that to a high school teacher, Lloyd Jones, and an art school lecturer, Ken Scarlet. Studying in the 1960s, his influences were John Cage, Japanese Butoh, Andy Warhol, Marshall McLuhan and, in particular, the Conceptual Art practices emerging at the time.
He says, ‘I was majoring in sculpture, but then moved to performance, when I developed…
