Q & A

Since launching the Mambo website we've had several e-mails from students requesting information about Mambo for use in school and university assignments. Unfortunately our current study guide is out of date and there's no one here at the moment with either the time or interest in updating it.

In the meantime we've cobbled together a list of 10 of the most asked questions about Mambo and suggest that you use the answers in tandem with information that can be found either on our website or in one of the two Mambo books released to date: Still Life with Franchise and Art Irritates Life. (In regard to A.I.L. we probably should warn you that there is a commonly held view that reading this book you will know even less about Mambo than they did before starting. While this criticism is not without merit the pictures are "top shelf".)
Anyway, good luck.

1. When was Mambo launched?
1984.

2. Where?
In Australia, in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern, the spiritual home of modern surfing.

3. Where does the name 'Mambo' come from?
Mambo is an acronym for: Means of Acquiring Models, Bucks & Opiates.

4. What are the characteristics that best define Mambo?
Unique and original vision
Idiosyncratic character
Sense of humour
A willingness to take the piss out of everything and everyone, including ourselves

5. How much money does Mambo turn over in a year?
It depends.

6. Where does your inspiration come from?
"In no particular order: music, surfing, fast women, fast cars, fast food, tattoos and 70's airbrushing. Also movies about music, surfing, fast women, fast cars and beer – full strength, export quality beer." Jim Mitchell, Mambo artist.

"My pictures are divinely inspired. That's why they are both educational and spiritually uplifting." Reg Mombassa, Mambo artist.
"Robert Rauschenberg, Jamie Reed and the guy who painted those dogs playing pool." John Bochat, Mambo artist.
"The right-hand side of the brain. Also, God, drugs and women who take off their clothes and wrestle in jelly." Peter Star, Mambo artist.
"Out of the suitcase full of samples that the art director brings back from America every six months?" Candy, Mambo pool attendant.

7. What are your goals?
To provide the market with a unique and individual product
To crush our competitors (and grind their bodies into a bloody pulp)
To make an obscene amount of money
To see history wipe it's arse with George Bush (either one)

8. What is Mambo's greatest achievement?
There have been several, including:
Being invited to exhibit beside Revolution By Night - an international retrospective of Surrealist art, at the NSW state gallery in Australia, in 1994.
Being criticized by the Australian federal government for our support of a large and by-partisan campaign to stop the building of a second nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.
Our first appearance in a UK tabloid newspaper – in 1991, involving a man caught on camera robbing an Uckfield service station. Pictures showed the suspect wearing a Mambo sweatshirt with a 'Flower Power' logo on the front.

9. How can I get a job at Mambo?
Once you would have needed to know the exact order in which that old bald guy sucked Sarah Ferguson's toes just to get past the receptionist. Nowadays you only need to be sleeping with one of the designers.

10. Is there any advice that you can give me that might assist my career in the future?
Don't open beer bottles with your teeth
Insist on being paid in cash
Don't insult the rich until after you've been paid