Neu ratbag: “I really don’t want to be restricted by anything, in any capacity”

Art exists everywhere, in everything and anything, all at once. From one’s mind to their surroundings, creativity and inspiration can be drawn from anywhere, any time. “I’ve been doing art my whole life, without any doubt at all. There’s been no part of me that’s ever questioned it,” admits Sophie Brown.

Performing using the moniker ratbag, it’s clear Sophie understands art and its role in her life. Now, her art exists all around her - band members deemo, fritz, slug, and eugene, are an excellent example - but it was all brought to life from the 21 year old’s teenage imagination from one simple thought: “What if I just create a world, and I think about it really hard every night and I add characters to it [as] a distraction?”

From then, every night, beings and creatures - like, say, deemo or slug - emerged from her mind, swirling and creating stories which she would spend “hours” imagining at night, losing herself in the possibilities. What she perhaps didn’t realise at the time, though, was that it was a distraction from everything around her.

In tandem with the growth of Sophie’s world, that distraction then became a purpose: “I went into my last year [of school] thinking that my art board was going to be a world and that all the characters were going to have names, and I’m going to have repeats of characters in different mediums and make it out of clay.” It was then, simultaneously, that Sophie found herself branching out to music, “It was a bit of an addiction,” she says about starting to write songs. “I couldn’t stop doing it… it really made so much sense, I didn’t feel like I was learning how to do [music]. I just felt like I was in the right place finally.”