The July/August issue of GQ Australia will be on newsstands and digitally on Monday, July 20th!
A CREATIVE COLLABORATION WITH THE BURGEONING EUPHORIA STAR, SHOT BY ELORDI AND THOSE AROUND HIM DURING THE CRUX OF AUSTRALIA’S COVID CRISIS.
It’s been a chaotic time. But for many people, the past few months have also proved unusually productive. Maybe it’s puzzles, origami, or watching The Wire from start to finish. Or perhaps you’ve joined the ranks of the many born-again bread makers, regaling people with endless tales of your beloved sourdough starter, as if it were your own precious newborn child. The bad news is no one wants to hear about your sourdough starter. But the good news – if there’s any silver lining to what has felt like an endless series of global catastrophes – is that 2020 has fostered a new era of creativity.After months locked indoors, the country is finally emerging, blinking, into the daylight. But this has been a time like no other, and the lockdown has forced many of us to reevaluate the things that really matter – how we work and communicate, the way we spend our time. The old rules of how we do things have gone out the window, and maybe that’s a good thing. There’s no such thing as a ‘new normal’.
It’s something Sam Neill knows all about. For all his many accomplishments as an actor, Neill has used his downtime to get creative, shaping a second career as somewhat of an unlikely social media star. But he’s not your average influencer, posting images of his extravagant brunches or luxuriating on a beach somewhere. As he tells us in this issue’s Interview, he has been taking to Instagram and Twitter with a much simpler purpose: to cheer people up. You’d have to say he’s been successful, since it’s hard to look at the videos of him strumming his ukulele or recounting tales of his garden gnome, Sir Gerald, and not crack a smile. At a time when social media is so often full of cynicism and sniping, cheerfulness has never felt more valuable.
Another figure who’s been making the most of his free time is our cover star, Jacob Elordi. The Aussie actor got his first proper camera while he was at university and since then has been taking shots of his everyday life, charting his move to LA, landing his big break in HBO series Euphoria. Right now, he’s supposed to be filming the second season of the hit show, but with his regular plans thrown into disarray, instead he’s in Brisbane at his parents’ home, where his dreams of being an actor first began.
He worked on a photographic portfolio, along with his sister, Isabella Elordi, and his friend and fellow actor Alex Fitzalan. The resulting cover story feels loose and creative and free, in a way that truly captures this remarkable moment.
It’s impossible to know what lies ahead – even by the time this issue comes out. You’d have to hope there can’t be too many more crises, but given how 2020 has panned out, it’s probably a bet few people would be willing to take. And so rather than anticipate where things are heading, what we’ve tried to do with this issue is reflect how things feel right now, at this unique moment in history. It is a celebration of creativity in a time of crisis.
