Go Suga

When he was nine, Go Suga moved from Hiroshima to Australia. His father was looking for a less hectic life for the family, for a closer connection to nature, and a culture that was not so focused on peer pressure. 
“It’s good, in a way, to work as a group when you want to keep the community clean and stuff,” says Go, at a café near his home in Varsity Lakes. “Here, we do things as a group but we have more freedom.” 
While his father loved the sense of freedom on the Gold Coast, Go struggled. Maybe struggle isn’t the right word. “I really hated it,” he says, “being separated from my friends in Japan.” 
Eventually, Go found a new group of friends at Benowa State School. But as he entered his teen years, he may have found a bit too much freedom. “It was fun but we were naughty. I didn’t love school. I didn’t finish school.” 
Go felt he had failed at his first crack at a Gold Coast life and began fantasising about Japan. Maybe that is where he belonged after all. At 19, he returned to Hiroshima and lived with his grandmother. Go found a job but he spent so much time commuting he came to feel it wasn’t much of a life. 
Reluctantly, lacking a sense of purpose, Go returned to his family home on the Gold Coast.  
“I was bored, feeling like a failure, and one day my dad said, ‘You like drawing. Why don’t you see if there is any art related stuff you could do?’” 

Go had always drawn, for fun, but graphic design was not something he considered or even understood. He didn’t like computers. But he went to TAFE on the Gold Coast to enquire. The program had already started and he had missed the cut-off. Even if he could sign up, he needed a portfolio. 
What was a portfolio? 
“They told me what to do, helped me along, and I submitted. Even though it was closed they accepted me, the teachers. And this was the turning point of my life. I had hated school but this was different. They were so helpful. They worked with me after hours, and soon I was the first one in and the last one out.” 
Go calls his teachers, at TAFE, Sensei. They introduced him to art and graphic design, to surfing, to computers, to creativity and experimentation, to a career and a distinctly Gold Coast life. 
Not that it was a straight line. He started a business with a friend, and it went a bit sideways. He designed quick ads for community magazines and, in between jobs, discovered his passion. 
“I started doing these sketches, waiting for the next ad. That was another massive turning point. That was when I decided I didn’t just want to be a graphic designer.” 
Go shows us the sketches, and you can see early hints of what has become his artistic style. Though he wasn’t sure what it meant to be an artist. Friends encouraged him to look it up online, and he learned that to approach a gallery he needed a body of work. 

“I didn’t know what that meant at first, that you needed a few pieces in your own distinctive style. But I just started doing it. That was a golden time. Up until then I only drew in black and white, influenced by Japanese manga. But graphic design had taught me to use colour.”  

Rather than start modestly, Go took a risk and reached out to what he considered to be the top gallery on the Gold Coast: 19 Karen Contemporary Artspace.  
Terri Lew, who represents artists from Australia and around the world, was open to this artist who had just recently looked up, “How to be an artist?”  
Go laughs when he thinks of Terri. “She is so awesome, because she doesn’t sugarcoat anything. She told me, ‘Bring your work in. I’ll take a look. But don’t get your hopes up.’  She took me on. And I thought, yes, I made it.” 
Terri is another sensei.  
Since then, Go has become a leading pop artist on the Gold Coast and in Australia. He has exhibited around the world, and he reached one of his life goals: a solo show in New York City.  
“In a place like Tokyo, this path would not have been possible,” he says. “There are no second chances. Here on the Gold Coast, if you are willing to have a go, everyone is so helpful. This place gives you a second chance, second or third or fourth.” 
Go has a family now, a wife and two kids, a dog, a van, and a graphic design job he loves at BSC Supplements. “Sometimes I am sitting on the couch and feeling this is 100 per cent the happiest moment of my life. And here it’s all intertwined: the surf, nature, the vibrancy, the active people, the art.”