A surprise hit at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair last December was a jarring series of prints that depicted Biblical scenes such as The Crucifixion and Moses' parting of the Red Sea from the perspective of Google Earth satellite imagery. Entitled "God's Eye View", the series heralded the arrival of Sydney-based creative collective The Glue Society in the art world. The buzz in Miami capped a year of diverse accomplishments that, when taken together, further solidified the multi-disciplinary group's claim that they're perfectly comfortable tackling the unpredictable.

Last year, they helmed spots in the Thai market for Panasonic Lumix through their worldwide representation with @radical.media; created and directed a Virgin campaign through Sydney-based Host (an agency that operates minus a creative department); created pop-up stores and web virals for long-time client Elle Macpherson Intimates; helmed the Pangea Day "Tank Driver" promo for Johannes Leonardo and placed billboards in India, Iraq and Iceland to promote the new time slot for the Aussie TV program The Chaser's War.

Co-founded by former British agency creatives Jonathan Kneebone and Gary Freedman, Glue is now 10-years-old and 12 members strong. Wary of being pinned down or called an "agency", evolving the craft of directing is still very much at the forefront of The Glue Society's work. Among their current projects is a TV series for a major American cable network. "In America, we're probably perceived more as directors than we are anything else," says Glue co-founder Gary Freedman, from his New York office. "In Australia we're probably equally regarded as directors and as creators of ideas and concepts. In the past year, I think the work's been of an equal spread."

What was the inspiration for the Art Basel "God's Eye View" series?
It's really driven by [designer] James Dive and it was something he was passionate about doing - exploring, manipulating images to recreate scenes from the past as scenes from Google Earth. That evolved into recreating iconic scenes from the Bible, which felt like a classical art theme that's been done throughout the ages. This is another, more modern, point of view on those stories.

How do you balance art projects with directing ads?
It's certainly hard to be thinking about directing something while working on something that requires a different head space. Personally, when I'm working on something as a director, that's all I'm doing.

What did you enjoy directing in '07?
I liked [the] Virgin Broadband [campaign]; it was something we had written and we were doing with Host, so there's a degree of freedom that came with the way we approached the project, particularly as director, which I was in that instance. It was nice to direct something that someone else in The Glue Society had written because there's an understanding there in the way that you embark on the project.

We believe the Internet should be free for everyone, so I guess it was a form of protest, if you like: broadcasting famous things from the Internet into public spaces using the projector. We had this giant projector and filmed in a loose, spontaneous sort of way. That kind of filmmaking is enjoyable; I wouldn't say it's a documentary - it's not, it's an ad - but it's a slightly looser approach to filmmaking, which personally, I like doing.

What interested you about the Pangea Day "Tank Driver" promo? It ended up being quite timely with the controversy around Tibet and the Beijing Olympics.
Leo [Premutico] and Jan [Jacobs] sent the script over and we had a read of it and it immediately struck me as an interesting idea. It was one of those instances where with a limited budget and a smaller team of people you're able to shoot the thing in a less constrained way than when it's a bigger, more cumbersome kind of project. ["Tank Driver"] retains an element of mystery about who the person is driving the tank because you don't see him, just his point of view. The guy who's standing in front of the tank has always been an enigmatic figure. I was quite keen to retain the enigma around him, even though we're seeing him face on. I felt like that was important; you are seeing things and feeling, in some sense, an emotional shift. We're not suggesting heavily one way or the other what really was going on, so there still is some degree of mystery but it still forces you to question things.

Glue has been working with Elle Macpherson Intimates for nearly five years. Why has the relationship lasted so long?
As a company, they don't have a requirement for a conventional advertising agency for the majority of the year. But as a fashion brand, they want to tap into creative people, photographers and directors. They're using us for what we do, which is purely creative work - we're not an advertising agency and we've never claimed to be.

INFORMATION
production affiliations: Repped by @radical.media worldwide for spots.

a decade in advertising: "We're getting phone calls from clients now asking us to take on a project without a pitch," Kneebone told Boards last fall. "We were always trying to create a working structure that allows us to do all the things we secretly wanted to do but to remain in advertising."

The Glue Society http://www.gluesociety.com
@radical.media http://www.radicalmedia.com