The West Australian Pulse 2022: Raoul Marks goes from art at Applecross to Emmy Awards with streaming giants

While you might not recognise the name Raoul Marks, you’ve probably seen his work if you watch Netflix. For the past decade the Perth designer and animator has been part of the Antibody Film Lab production team behind the main titles for popular streaming series such as The Crown, Westworld, American Gods and The Night Manager. The Applecross Senior High School graduate — part of the 2000 Year 12 Perspectives exhibit, now known as The West Australian Pulse, which opened at the Art Gallery of WA this week — has won Primetime Emmy Awards for the title sequences of HBO’s True Detective and Amazon’s Man in the High Castle. Marks and Antibody co-director Patrick Clair have earned 19 nominations in the most outstanding main title category at television’s top gongs. While he works behind the scenes, the last time Marks attended the Emmys he sat in the row behind Julia Roberts and in front of Billy Crystal. “You randomly run into a bunch of celebrities,” he said, adding that he had a long chat with Irish actor Chris O’Dowd at one of the “crazy, over-exaggerated” after-parties. “There’s a bit of rubbing shoulders with celebrities which is pretty exciting for a scruffy boy from Perth,” he said. The critically acclaimed first series of True Detective was the first major project he collaborated on with Clair, who was previously best known for his work on the ABC’s ground-breaking Hungry Beast. “It was great time. We were very lucky to be part of that moment,” said Marks, who returned to Perth last year with his wife, respected curator Annika Kristensen, and their young son. Currently working out of a tiny home office in North Fremantle, his current projects include the opening titles for an adaptation of a book by science fiction doyen William Gibson. “There is a team of people in different parts of the world that work on these things.” Marks said good opening credits are like an “airlock” where viewers step from the real world into a fictional on-screen universe. As for the “skip intro” option available on streaming services, he is “obviously not a huge fan” but understands binge-watchers may not want to sit through the titles more than once an evening. Asked for his own favourite opening sequence, Marks settles on The Crown, and wonders whether the Queen has ever watched the acclaimed Netflix drama. “The Queen didn’t really have a choice to become the Queen, it’s foisted upon her,” he pondered. “But it’s also a kind of cage. “It’s quite a heavy, historical process becoming the Queen, so there’s elements of it that feel primordial and ancient. “It felt quite a fun thing to explore visually and we did it quite well, I think, so that’s essentially what makes me happy with it.” As part of Antibody, Marks has also worked on campaigns for MTV, pop superstar Billie Eillish, fashion behemoth Louis Vuitton, sneaker giant Adidas and video game franchises Halo and Far Cry. Somehow, he also finds the time to make his own art, specifically the non-fungible token (or NFT) series Astro and Popzero. In 2015, he created a title sequence for design festival Semi-Permanent, featuring a detailed model of an astronaut, the 3D files of which he shared online. The open sourced files have been downloaded more than 40,000 times, rocket-fuelling the proliferation of astronaut-based memes on Instagram and crypto platforms. The influential Fremantle-raised creative, who is expecting his second child with Kristensen later this month, is currently part of the first ever exhibition of NFT artists Boston’s Pellas Gallery, which runs to April 23. While he is coy about his overall sales of his digital and physical art, he describes the NFT art scene as “lucrative”. In October last year, an anonymous collector paid $136,000 to own the NFT of his three-minute video OG Astro – The Genesis Short. “It’s not a bad way to subsidise the salary,” Marks said. “I guess I do it because it’s an interesting new thing to explore for me, using the skills I’ve developed over the years to make a new type of artwork. “I’ve always been making art for other people essentially.” Marks said that the NFT art scene had potential to bring new collectors into the mainstream art world. “Those people that made a bunch of money selling Bitcoin and buying the art, are going to grow up and want art with a bit more depth to it,” he explained. “They’re going to go ‘I could buy this jpeg or I could go to a gallery and buy a piece by an artist with broad appeal’.” This month Marks and Kristensen will officially announce a donation of $100,000 to the Fremantle Biennale. The designer was happy to be back in Perth, describing the great homecoming sparked by the pandemic as a “reverse brain-drain”. Marks also has an auction later this month as part of Sotheby’s coveted Hong Kong Contemporary Evening Sale in collaboration with renowned Chinese artist Jia Aili, plus works from Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yoshitomo Nara and other top modern artists. The West Australian Pulse 2022 is at the Art Gallery of WA until July 24.