Surfing Islam

Phillip George is attempting to heal ethnic tensions within Sydney’s beach culture with a range of Islam-inspired surfboards.  The Australian artist embellished thirty ‘Inshalla’ (God willing) surfboards with motifs taken from Islamic art for his recently opened Borderlands exhibition.  The project was seven years in the making, gathering steam after the 2005 Cronulla beach Lebanese race riots.  George traveled throughout Australia and the Middle East for inspiration, noting the importance of sport to Australia’s developing cultural identity:

We are so culturally insignificant in the world that we rely on sport to booster our national pride.

I have actually transposed a lot of my photographic images – the work of the tiles and shots of the mosque – on to a surfboard so that they become a lot more acceptable or easy to digest for an Australian audience.

BBC: Sydney art fuses surf with Islam

Borderlands: Phillip George