From the-toast-your-libidinous-powers department: Pro surfer releases all-nude film!

"I felt really free. It was wonderful!"

It’s a particularly unwelcoming day at the Australian bureau of BeachGrit. An onshore wind of a ferocity surprising this late in spring licks the face.

Cold, too.

I’m slumped over my little corner desk with drool hanging down like an icicle.

I was warmed, briefly, when The Daily Mail revealed that my favourite female-identifying pro surfer, Felicity Palmateer, who is also known by the widely used abbreviation ‘Flick’ , was about to release a short film followed by an exhibition of fine art of her surfing in the nude.

The film/exhibition is called Skin Deep and is a project three years in the making, with cinematography by the noted RED-slingers Rick Rifici and Dwayne Fetch.

Flick’s boyfriend, the journalist Jonathan Jenkins, is a dear old comrade and is the producer of the film and exhibition. Flick, said JJ, is the daughter of the world-class ceramicist Warrick Palmateer and has been painting longer she’s surfed.

“There’s creativity in the family,” he says.

Since Flick was attending to various physical ailments, back, knees etc, I asked, in a stage whisper for this is the elephant in the room is it not, if the pair was terrified of provoking the ire of Facebook feminists etc.

In this new era of puritanism where even the brush of a school bag upon the unlovely ass of a woman involves the cops, it is a brave, and truly progressive, woman who celebrates love and sex as it was in the fabled Age of Aquarius. 

“The goal of art is to provoke conversation and to capture people’s imaginations,” says JJ. “It’s there to stimulate conversation and contemplation. Everyone has a platform now on digital media and some will agree, some will disagree. Some will be inspired, some will be repulsed. That’s the nature of life.”

Still, says JJ, “When you see the finished product, how high-end it is, you’ll see how far we went to create and then convey that beauty.’

The four-minute short, which is cut to a Rufus track and who reportedly sent Flick an email expressing their joy over the film, will be released in two weeks, maybe less, and the art will be exhibited throughout 2019 in Sydney, Western Australia and California.

Watch the lil teaser here.