7Blades: An Online, Seven Board, Surf Exhibition

Gash Surfboards had been planning their 7Blades exhibition for a few years. It was scheduled to premiere over Easter in Torquay, but for obvious reasons that didn’t go ahead. Rather than let the planned exhibition go to waste, the men behind the project opted to take the display and the tale behind it online. 

In short, it’s seven varied boards shaped by Greg Brown, glassed by Paul Cousins, with art by Simon Buttonshaw.

Everything from an eleven-foot glider to a five-and-a-half foot snub-nosed thruster is included in the 7Blades range. None of the boards have been surfed yet, but they will be in the future, and this will be documented. 

The three Gash craftsman. Shaper, glasser, and artist.

Gash surfboards isn’t a new brand. In fact, Greg Brown started shaping under this name back in the 80’s and throughout the early 90’s you could see Gash advertisements printed throughout surf magazines and those iconic tees on the backs of Victorian locals. 

“In this new iteration of GASH, the making of these boards in all their layers have been combined.” Mick Sowry penned for the relaunch of Gash and the 7Blades (read the full piece here).

“Greg shaping in that idiosyncratic way great shapers seem to develop. Custom tools. A rock as a weight. A tape measure without numbers. Master Glasser Paul ‘Cuzzo’ Cousins, and his son Will, the polisher. Finally we get to see the how. The swift, precise dance around a catalyzing medium. Exact. Practiced. Perfect. Art and craft transcending themselves. With speed, time and money leaving the equation, magic happens.

“Simon’s attention to detail. Painting a board in his far south western Victorian ‘cave’, with his young son Prahlad watching on as, brushes laid out methodically, he disappears into the images, reaching back decades and living in the moment. The passing on of The Knowledge.”

The birth of Gash in 1989.

Above, you can view a short film on the creation of this series and the reincarnation of Gash Surfboards. Then we suggest you click on over to the digital exhibition. 

While you can only view these boards via a screen at the moment, as soon as it’s safe to do so, we’re assured that the doors to the real exhibition will be wide open.