“Thumbs up (we must be living right)”, 2008-2010, Collection of The Minneapolis Institute of Art
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Andy DuCett and I’m an artist from
Minnesota. It’s up North. It’s like South Canada. I’m currently Visiting
Faculty in the MFA Program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
“Why we do this”, 2012 (detail on 12,000 sq. ft. exhibition at The Soap Factory)
Describe you practice in 5 words.
I like looking at things.
“Why we do this”, 2012 (detail on 12,000 sq. ft. exhibition at The Soap Factory)
Who or what inspires you?
Everyday vernacular and situations. I get a
lot out of walking around and looking at stuff, making connections and
celebrating mysteries. My ideal artist statement would read something like this:
You: “Hey Andy, do you want to come over
and look at this?” Andy: “Absolutely”.
We’re surrounded by thousands of things at
all times: ideas, objects, histories, networks, contexts, memories, etc. My
practice as long as I can remember has been concerned with contrast and
juxtaposition and what happens when different things are put next to each
other. I love how certain arrangements vibrate in ways that others don’t.
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, my parents
put a limit on how many times a month I could re-arrange the furniture in my
room. They were afraid I was going to wear out the carpet; I was moving
everything around 3 or 4 times a week. I loved the feeling of waking up and
seeing familiar things in different formations. The old was new for a few
minutes. It’s a great span of time while it lasts. Those are the moments I’m
looking for in the studio, when the arrangement vibrates.
“Please mow my lawn OR other acts of neighborly kindness”, 2015, Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art
What are your chosen tools?
It depends on the project. I started as a
graphic design intern when I was 15 and did that until I was 19 or so. Those
interests evolved into multimedia design and animation, which lead to painting
and drawing in college.
The “paintings” started getting more and more
three-dimensional with the inclusion of found objects and have grown into
larger scale constructions and room-sized installations. The drawings have
grown in their own way as well, and are usually done in pen, pencil and colored
pencil. All of that is to say that I have a few tools in my toolbox, or
different ways of approaching an idea that helps keep things interesting and
new. I just can’t seem to commit to one way of working, which is just fine with
me.
PS- If I had to pick a favorite tool, it
would be my 12V Dewalt cordless drill that I bought in 2003. It’s been a real
champion.
“Untitled (nothing to see here”, 2011
Can you talk us through your making process?
It usually begins with an hour or so of just
being in the studio, re-familiarizing myself with my materials. It takes me a
while to figure out where to jump in. I’ll do some cleaning, put things away,
listen to a few records, shuffle some things around, and before I know it,
connections are being made and the work has started.
I always felt somewhat guilty that it took me
so long to get started before I realized that my making starts with looking,
just like every jump needs a crouch before it. Input leads to output.
“Laying low (prepping for a calculated response)”, 2010
Your work can be quite dense and large, do
you ever restrict yourself?
Haha. A lot of the dense and large work WAS restricted;
you should have seen them without any editing.
Most of the projects I work on take a long
time to simmer. Because of that, I generally work on a few different projects
at once, so I can balance making and reflecting. Some are complicated and take
a while, and some are limited to a few components. When I started making more detailed
drawings and installations around 2004, I wanted something else to work on that
was more immediate. I was at a “Car Boot Sale” in London and found someone’s
photos from their 1967 trip to Yugoslavia. They were beautiful! So many
mysteries I’d never solve! Why did the photographer choose that moment to capture?
Who were these people? What was the deal with the compositions? I really liked
the idea of unintentional collaboration. I limited myself to only adding one
element to each photo, something that would complete what the photo had
started, but also embrace the spirit of each photo.
That’s a long answer for a question about
density, what I should have said was “Yes.”
“Currently standing where some have stood”, 2007
Has your experience as a tutor affected the
way your approach your own work?
Definitely. I’ll often find solutions to
questions I’ve been having when giving feedback to a student. It’s easier to
solve your own problems when they’re worn by someone else.
A lot of a successful teacher-student
relationship is based on trust. I expect a lot of my students, asking them to
take risks and be reflective in their work. I think part of that understanding
is that I wouldn’t ask anything of them that I wouldn’t be willing to do in my
own practice. It’s important to have that be a part of my art conscience when
I’m alone in the studio. My own voice reflected back at me, waiting to see if
I’ll challenge myself the way my students are.
“Mom Booth”, 2014, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
What are you working on next?
Right now it’s creating proposals and having discussions
about potential projects, it’ll be exciting which ones develop into dates on
the calendar. In the interim, I’ve been doing a lot of drawing, mostly in
pencil. I’ve made around 40 or so drawings since May, which is a huge number
for me. I like the way that pencil has added some immediacy to my process.
Other than that, I’m in conversations with 2 or 3 other artists about doing
some collaborative projects with spaces around the country, and finding ways to
interface with different situations and contexts. I’m excited about the horizon,
it feels like there’s good artistic energy out there.
“Walk with me?”, 2015, Bargain Spot Project Space, Ten Chances, No Hustle Artist Residency program, Edinburgh, Scotland
Any specific subject you would like to
discuss in this interview?
How do you feel about a long monologue about my
hopes and fears about the upcoming season for the Green Bay Packers? Or how neglecting
to add Brian Eno’s “Ambient 1: Music for Airports” to a top ten list I recently
filled out has been gnawing on my soul? I’d be up for either one, let me know
when you want to grab a few beers and really dive into those.
That’s
maybe the most
difficult question, isn’t it? Authorities would say that I’m 27, living
in
Switzerland. I grew up in the south Italian part of Switerland
called
Ticino. One of the worst and most beautiful place in this country. I
just
finished an MA in Contemporary Arts Practice in Bern, and for three
years I’ve been managing an art space in Lugano with some friends.
If I really have to say what I
do, I simply answer that I’m an artist. Normally this answer engages a lot of
discussions. More precisely I manage different materials, I draw, I write and I take part in performances. When I’m bored of the art world (almost always), I
just go to concerts or stay on my balcony all day long. I’m quite slow in
everything I do. But people say I do a lot… so it’s fine I think.
I have no personal furniture.
I’ve furnished my room with found objects that I collected from my
flatmates. My room fits in a car and I’m
planning to move from Switzerland soon for a while. But don’t ask me where. Ok,
if you ask I would say Italy. But I don’t know yet where exactly. Everything is too
nice and comfortable here. Somehow unreal. It’s like sleeping for years in a big
bed with clean sheets. I will probably come back but at the moment I feel like I
need a kick in the butt.
I’m an aquarius, I live in the
air.
Ecken, painted wood, Centre Pasquart, Bienne 2016
Describe you practice in 5 words.
Handcrafted, ornamental, repetitive, flat,
modular. l’ll offer you a bonus track: Uselessfull.
I don’t really speak German but I think they are used to composing a word out of
may words. That’s very useful.
Sleepknödel, Old bed sheets, old t-shirt, tape, acryl, concrete, Dienstgebäude, Zurich 2016
Who or what inspires you?
My musician friends. Punk. My bedroom. Couches. My body. Artisanship. The
idea of people living alone in the woods. The Black Mountain College was a nice
discovery for me. I dream of opening a place inspired by it here in Ticino.
Routine Again, Performing the Black Mountain College, Hamburger Bhanhof, Berlin 2015
What are your chosen tools?
Pencil and paper.
Zusammenkunft w/ Lucas Herzig, 24hrs Project, Tart Gallery, Zurich 2015
Can you talk us through your
making process?
Yes I can try. I have two
main and separate practices: writing and making visual things. I can’t do both at the same time. I write for weeks, or I manipulate material for weeks. I have a big
archive with very different pictures that I collect daily. I have never published or
presented my texts. I use them more as inspiring pictures which are part of my
archive. I combine them and usually start from there. Then I draw the idea. Finally
I choose the material and the technique. Or the contrary. The architecture of the space is also an element that I
consider. And then I literally start with a production that is often
exhaustive, repetitive and drives me crazy. I love the moment when, as a friend
said, the material starts dictating what you do.
Fabrics, old bed sheets, guache, aluminium, Roadside Picnic w/ Lucas Herzig, Lokal-int, Bienne 2015
You’re originally from Ticino and
are currently studying in Bern. Did changing region, city and language inform your practice in any way?
I started calculating
everything! You know, Swiss people are very precise, especially in the German
part. This is a cliché but it is partially true. Sometimes I get mad because of
this rigid way of thinking. They have a funny onomatopoeic vocabulary to
express the sensation of precision. I’m a very messy person, but my work
started to be more precise and designed even if I try to keep a part of the
work uncontrolled.
You co-run the independent art
space Sonnenstube in Lugano, can you tell us about this project? http://diesonnenstube.ch
A few years ago, I was living in
Ticino for a year, working in a gallery. I was very disappointed because I
realised that there was very little possibilities for contemporary there (as opposed to commercial art). Right in front of the gallery where I was working, there was an
empty open space. Quite nice and not so expensive. So I called people around
me who were already somehow engaged in promoting art and music and asked them if
they were interested in opening a new space. We opened within one month. Today, three
years after, the space is still running. We host around six exhibitions and
thirty concerts per year. We try to build a bridge between the locals, the north
of Switzerland and Italy while promoting artists that are younger than 35.
Wasted, plaster, Museo Cantonale, Lugano 2016
What are you working on next?
Right now, I’m preparing a performance about
shame with my friend Juergen Bogle. And in August I will move into a new studio, shared with 12 other artists.
I would like to find the right way to
present my cheesy poems.
In January 2017 I will showcase the italian artist
and musician Giacomo Laser aka Gioacchino Turù in Sonnenstube. As a goodbye I offer you one
of his songs:
You are
currently studying your MFA at the Slade. Why the Slade amongst the other Art
schools?
A couple
of people had suggested the Slade MFA to me, and after looking into it more,
saw that a lot of artists I really love atm are graduates from the Slade, in
particular the MFA/MA Media. There are good tutors whose work I respect and
good media stuff/facilities etc… A big thing was the size, I think smaller
institutions suit me well, more intimate and nurturing, and it shares
similarities to Newcastle in that respect. Also it has a great reputation so
obviously that was a factor.
You’re originally from London yet have studied in Newcastle
and participated in a residency in Vienna. Do you think relocating to another
city changed your practice in any way?
Yeah, my
practice changed both times I relocated, I think being in unfamiliar places
helps to uproot bad habits or something.
What do you think those bad habits are?
I got
stuck in a medium or choices of materials, which I think restricted other ideas
from developing. I was convinced I was a painter at Camberwell (where I did my
foundation), but the paintings I made were pretty awful looking back, anyway I
started making installations in Newcastle which was so liberating and activated
a different type of thinking/making/possibilities. Vienna was another big shift
because I started using video and text.
Your work now seems very influenced by the online world. Did
you play video games as a child/teen?
I was
never a big gamer, I did play sometimes but it was never passion or anything. A
couple of years ago, connecting to an art project at that time, I did get very
interested in the virtual world Second Life. I (my avatar) spent some time
roaming around and taking part in pagan rituals, I was being a tourist without
feeling like too much of a voyeur because everyone playing is in disguise. It
did alter the way I think about virtual space and I do still find myself
referencing these gaming aesthetics.
You have already exhibited at the BALTIC 39, which is quite
an achievement so close to graduating. How did you find the whole experience?
It was
really exciting and just amazing to have a massive space with technicians to
help you install everything that felt like a real novelty. I didn’t have long
to make the show so it was pretty stressful getting everything together in
time, I basically didn’t sleep much. It was my first experience of working
closely with a curator, which was pretty insightful, she was amazing. Also I
had to do a filmed interview which was a real nightmare for me I hate being in
front of the camera and I struggle to string a sentence together sometimes when
nervous.
The work shown at the BALTIC 39 also included sculpture. Can
you explain the relationship between the video work and the Roman replica
figures?
I think
there is something bizarre that happens when the archaic and the new collide,
just to reference the pagan rituals being practiced within the virtual world
Second Life again, I am interested in how new technologies provides opportunity
for the retelling of ancient stories and myths. The video’s narrative looks at
the preservation of the myths that surround Hermes within the context of online
platform and virtual space. Also, Hermes was said to be a Psycho pomp, someone
who carries the deceased into the afterlife, he was someone who straddled these
two realities that felt fitting. I was thinking about the stage a lot when
making that work. I wanted the statue to become the protagonist, prop and stage
set at different points in the narrative.
What are your chosen tools for your craft?
I use
Cinema 4d, After Effects, Premiere Pro, various apps for scanning objects.
What are your favorite videos to watch on youtube?
Music
videos… but I spend most of the time watching youtube tutorials unfortunately.
On computer software?
Yes, it’s
very dull but has taught me everything really so an amazing resource.
Looking through all your works they mostly always involve the
human figure, this is something that you’re drawn to in your practice. Why do
you think that is?
It’s funny
because a couple of times now I have been determined for the protagonist to be
an inanimate object like a pot, and although I do use these, you’re right human
figures always feature and because of their nature they dominate. I am not sure
why and had never really thought about that before but I guess I am interested
in storytelling and recently more specifically the storyteller - a person.
How do you start a new project? Do you have a specific
routine to get inspired?
It varies;
it’s usually a really spiralling process of researching, writing and making, so
they all affect each other. I guess reading helps to formulate ideas, but its
more filtering through all the shit ideas that I find to be most difficult.
Can we see you in any shows soon?
Unless
something comes up in the meantime, the next thing is the Museum of London commission,
which goes up in July.
Last but not least. I want your words of wisdom Hazel; do you
have any survival tips on being a Contemporary artist at this time?
ha-ha! I would like some advice too, I’m still finding
my feet, it’s so hard getting a balance between making art, making money and
making love. Lol
My name is Luke Burton, I am an artist and
I mostly procrastinate with interludes of intense,
ill-considered, yet often rewarding and occasionally triumphant production.
Image: Ambivalent Man with Fountain, 2015, ink emulsion on paper, 210cm x 180cm
This is the dream and nightmare question! I
have the short and prosaic answer: everything! The long and real and contingent
answer is in the form a very incomplete list…
1) People I know who have the capacity to
love the whos and whats passionately, messily, precisely, and without totally
compromising the who for the what. I basically just mean managing to be a
compassionate and kind and generous person to those around you and still
sustain a fierce passion for your work.
2) James Baldwin’s novels Giovanni’s Room and Go Tell it on the Mountain - his artistry in being blindingly and
bewitchingly bright and expressive AT THE SAME TIME…it’s possible! I love his
care for minor characters too which, in just a few pages, can feel devastating.
I’ve just started reading Another
Country…
3) Lee Krasner’s Gothic Landscape. It’s got so many of the attributes I want in painting.
Image: Filigree Endings, Bosse and Baum, solo show 27th February-26th March Photographed by Oskar Proctor
4) Deliberate shallowness that suggests great
depth. Henri Matisse understood this. And one of his peers, Gertrude Stein, did
exactly this in The World is Round, a
children’s story that distils the ‘difficulty’ of her writing into something
totally approachable and playful. This idea of something
superficial, surface-laden intimating profundity is also one of the reasons I
am so interested in the inheritance of decorative and ornamental visual
languages.
“Once upon a
time the world was round and you could go on it around and around.
Everywhere
there was somewhere and everywhere there were men women children dogs cows wild
pigs little rabbits cats lizards and animals. That is the way it was. And
everybody dogs cats sheep rabbits and lizards and children all wanted to tell
everybody all about it and they wanted to tell all about themselves.
And
then there was Rose.
Rose
was her name and would she have been rose if her name had not been Rose. She
used to think and then she used to think again.”
The World is Round,
Gertrude Stein
5) Artists who quietly get on with making and
thinking and being hopeful, if not certain, that what they will contribute to
the world is worthy of it and that the world is worthy of their contribution
too. That these two dynamics are in cahoots and we must face this and make work
in the face of this. And of course that these things are done with the very
real prospect of on-your-own-terms failure…all of which produce a kind of
series of Beckett moments: ‘…you must go
on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on’.
Image: Hanging Basket, 2015, brass, acrylic, silk, studio dirt. Photographed by Oskar Proctor
6) Almost everyday for the last ten years I
have thought about Ken Jacob’sLittle Stabs at Happiness, a film so perfect and
perfectly full of youth and exuberance that I want to consume its spirit and
birth it and kill it and never think about it again whilst always having it
with me, like a little bird of paradise on my shoulder. It’s actually available
on YouTube and better than seeing the Lux’s (perhaps overused) print on 16mm -
though if you can see it on celluloid with a decent print, that would be ideal.
It has all the characteristics and productive contrasts I have affinity with.
It’s camerawork is loose and yet purposeful and painterly; it has a hyper
sensitive relationship between image and music and song and the human voice; it
has a cool temperament but represents what I would call muggy if not downright
stormy relationships utterly tenderly - Ken Jacob’s voiceover candidly but
cheekily declares he ‘doesn’t speak’ to anyone in the film anymore. Oh, and two
more words: Jack Smith. A performer so electric that he can merely tilt his
head up for a moment and it produce all manner of filmic and psychic
consequences!
7) Varda Caivano’s paintings that she made
when she was still a student at The Royal College of Art - perhaps the best
student work I have ever seen. It reaffirmed that abstract painting can still
feel vital and be small and palpably confidential; alternately subtle and yet
somehow brash. The paintings shake hands with the figurative world and then
take that same hand to slap itself round the face. They are beatific and yet
anxious paintings.
8) Nathaniel Dorsky’s life’s work - pretty
much everything he has made, the grace and grandeur of it; a body of work about
the possibility or question for beauty within cinema ‘as such’. His work often
feels more stately than Antonioni and always exposing and intimate as if it was
only ever to be made for one person. Yet his films must be seen in congregation
mode, with your eyes wide open, with the projector on ‘silent’ speed (18 frames
a second). He understood how to work with and through Brakhage and Bresson and
introduced me to the poetics of camera movement and that montage means more
than shot A next to shot B next to shot C. It means a polyphony of images, all
cascading and careening over time, and in his hands, a series of images that
arrest you in and of themselves, but find their truest calling embedded in the
montage.
9) The National Archaeological Museum in
Athens. Its collection of Attic pottery made me go gaga and its palatial yet
unfussy atmosphere made me realise how unnecessary the full-throttle bombast of
the British Museum is and how it often gets in the way of seeing the stuff
inside it.
10) The complexity of sport and in particular
football: it’s cultural, social, political and economic value in the world. The
elegance and aesthetic rewards of watching bodies move with a competitive drive;
its relationship with the need for people to be in the same space and commune
in devotion and loathing and hunger for narrative on a macro and micro level;
its ancient roots and its contemporary bloatedness; its understanding of
flashness and its hunkering down on nostalgia; its continued baseness.
11) For those lucky enough to see it, who
doesn’t love and admire the work of Rose Wylie?
Image: Ambivalent Man with Screen, 2015, 165cm x 110cm, walnut, birch ply, emulsion,
gouache and ink
Can
you talk us through your making process?
I tend to make in fits and starts. When
things start going well, I generally think this will be it, I have found my methodology for life, my set of concerns, and then just as this
(immature) notion descends, I invariably lose focus and track and tack and have
a kind of involuntary impasse. I used to think this impasse was appalling and
shameful, but now I recognise it as an internal timer conjoined with the
necessary energy to produce work.
At the moment I am making a lot of drawings
and paintings that take as their cue
visual tropes such as fountains, hanging baskets, exotic birds like peacocks,
and tennis rackets. The fountains have jet sprays of water that partly conceal
male figures, drawn in a semi-classical, semi-expressionistic way. I am
interested in the idea of concealment, obscurity and revelation as something
that can be shown through a kind of cramped, compressed pictorial space and
composition. Max Beckmann did this so well in many of his paintings like The
Gobblers, which can be seen in the Tate Modern.
I don’t tend to do that much preparatory
drawing, and as I’m using neat black ink much of the time, the work feels quite
performative, as I don’t really have a second go at each respective mark I’m
making. However, I make a lot of drawings and many of them have very similar
compositions and imagery, so there comes a point where I start to feel both
excited at the new kinds of images I’m producing, which have a ‘live’ element
to them, and yet also confident in managing the material’s fluidity and
therefore greater control of the imagery. There is a tipping point when I feel
a little too confident with what I’m doing in terms of the handling of the ink
in relation to an over-familiarity with the image, and at this point a certain
degree of energy is lost and things start looking ‘flabby’. There is a kind of
sweet spot where I’m neither inept nor too well-versed that seems, for my purposes,
productive, but time-sensitive.
Ambivalent Man with Peacock, 2015, ink, emulsion on paper, 210cm x 180cm
The male figures are supposed to be a
personification of ambivalence, with their somewhat confused expression on
their faces, their puzzled brows. Ambivalence is something that pervades the
work and its attitudes. It’s something that I feel is a base-line condition for
the work as so many of the things that I think are paramount to it, feel
irrefutably complicated and without straightforward answers or positions. For
example, I make paintings and drawings and objects that are ready-made for a
market and are (in part) perceived to be made for that market. Whilst I refuse
to reduce the medium of painting to ‘merely’ the world of luxury goods, I
cannot deny that we make work in the face of that and despite that condition.
But I continue to make these things because I see that they can and continually
do transcend that particular status, as well as realising that this may also be impossible. I want my work to speak to this
dynamic between its potential role as critical agent and its function as
complicit to the very thing that might undermine that criticality. I’m
interested in wearing this kind of problem on the works’ sleeve, but also
wearing it lightly, so that there are other thematics that can be legible over
a medium that has a lot of political baggage.
On a micro level, I also feel ambivalence in
terms of painterly expressiveness versus cool, distant and even classical mark
making. I don’t see these things as oppositional necessarily, but I do want
them to ricochet back and forth in the work. This is played out in my approach
to the grid. The grid, that great modernist monolith devoted to abstract
languages in painting. It is hugely pleasurable to draw a grid loosely, like
you really do and don’t give a damn. In my drawings, the grid often finds its
home as the strings on a tennis racket. Immediately, it’s not exclusively in
the realm of abstraction, but part of an object that signals sport (obviously),
leisure, play, objects designed to be handled, weaponry, objects that obscure
and frame what’s behind them…etc. I’m interested in these specific
associations but also hope these figurative, symbolic gestures might recede
back into a more formal and abstract language again. These male figures are
also ambivalent to their environment, their own reality, even themselves and
their own masculinity. They are usually depicted naked, with hairy chests, but
have boyish faces. They are vulnerable, but white men, so fundamentally
empowered, and are imbued with an inescapable historical legacy of privilege. They
are at once confident and abject, but we cannot and should not pity them.
Video: High Line (2013)
For the video work, I often become compelled
by a particular patch of the city or even a particular architectural detail or
ornamental flourish. This occurs after a period of time moving through this
space on a daily basis. I become very familiar with it, and sooner or later a
particular physical gesture or series of gestures will suggest themselves based
on the specificity of the site. In the case of High
Line (2013), for example, there were rivets lining Chelsea Bridge which elicited
a series of gestures that might be described as both intimate and estranged,
where I treat the rivets as objects to caress, stroke, gently slap, and run my
hands through. Then, a particular song by Donnie and Joe Emerson would play
over and over in my head as I walked across the bridge on my way to college -
it has a very silky - almost liquid - sound, the melody floats through what
feels like a fusion of ambience and soul. The song felt essential to
translating the everyday experience into moving image, but it was also a form
of superimposition, a kind of decoration ‘on top’. I like the way music in
moving image relates to ambience and atmosphere and then in turn how decoration
is a form of ambience - it is enveloping, but also about integration. I
imagined the video being shot at dusk and we did several takes without getting
anything satisfactory. Then as it grew dark, the lights on Chelsea Bridge
suddenly switched on. The rain-slick surfaces became illuminated and
resplendent - it became much more cinematic, much more the language of
celluloid film and like a fragment from a larger piece. This element of
contingency is very important to my practice because it requires trust in
something outside of my control, something that will enliven the moment of
production and embolden me in front of camera. I also wanted the film to have
an emotional charge but simultaneously ask questions about sentimentality and
its relationship to film, Romanticism and the representation of the
male-protagonist.
(Video: Com)passionate Croissant 2013
What
are you working on next?
I’m currently living in Baku, Azerbaijan for
three months for a residency and solo show with Yarat Contemporary Art
Organisation. It’s an exciting city to work in and has an incredibly chequered
and complex urban and social fabric: ancient Islamic heritage and culture, one
which has moved through Russian Imperialism and then Soviet rule and now
embraces hyper-capitalism in a flamboyant manner. It’s interesting being in a
country that takes pride in representing itself as a kind of pendulum swing
between ‘East’ and ‘West’ and how that might affect the use value of these
terms in turn. The simplest things also amaze me here – so much of the pavement
seems to be privatised, so many of the new buildings (and there is a heck of a
lot of building being done here) have their own patch of pavement with their own
idiosyncratic style to integrate (or not) with the style of the building
itself. Consequently, you might walk over marble slabs, ceramic tiles,
patterned bricks, wet concrete, uneven mud and stones as well as absolutely no
pavement at all in a simple 15-metre stretch.
Is
there anything specific you would like to talk about?
Heritage
for example?
As you can tell by my lengthy and diffuse
answer to who or what inspires me, the idea of heritage, or to put it another
way, the things which we are told are
shared gifts or burdens, and the things we feel
are shared gifts or burdens play an integral part in my work and thinking. I am
very interested in the private and public dynamics of history - the weight and
necessity of influence and how this influence manifests itself over a vast
amount of time, specifically, but not exclusively, from a visual arts history
perspective.
Ambivalent Man amongst the footballs, oil on birch panel, 150cm x150cm, 2016
I’m Stephanie Mann and I live and work in Edinburgh, Scotland. I do things involving things in my studio at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.
“Tea Run” (2013) Still from video
Describe you practice in 5 words.
(Oh this is tricky…) Handsy objects arranged, sometimes performatively.
“In Possibility” (2015)
Who or what inspires you?
I’m inspired by lots of things. Generally, I’m most inspired when I’m running late for something and most certainly shouldn’t be stopping to take photos of a really amazing leaf or flaky piece of paint on a railing… I think there’s something about the adrenaline of being under pressure that makes my eyes more perceptive to the things around me.
“Still Life on Face” (2012)
Can you talk us through your making process?
At the moment, I tend to collect things which I find interesting on an aesthetic or conceptual level, and store them either physically or internally, where they sit and linger amongst each other. Then I get them out, so to speak, and play with them, creating compositions for stills or moving image. Sometimes the objects are manipulated or juxtaposed against others. Currently I’m exploring sculptural principles of balance and weight with these objects and fixing them in non-hierarchical arrangements.
“Double Double” (2014)
Do you approach performance and writing in the same way than you approach your lens based media work?
I suppose I do. All the things I make and do come from the same place, from what I think is the new unconscious, so are brothers and sisters birthed from the same environment. For me, performance and writing are a means to examine the less physical things that live in that place.
“Keratin” (2015)
There is a very strong element of playfulness in your work. How important is it for you?
So
important! Without play I’d only be doing the same things as I’ve done
before. Play is fluid, and explores new pathways and untrodden land.
Without play, I’d only be working inside the logical, reasoning part of
my mind. That bit is much more critical and the editing voice there is
very loud- so loud, in fact, that it stops me getting anything new done.
For me, any work worth doing needs to be born from deep in the gut to
allow it time to grow muscles before the big noisy editing voice
destroys it. Some work makes it through that voice, the gatekeeper to
the world, but most of it doesn’t. So play, in a way, prepares new work
to fight that voice.
“Still Life on Safari” (2014)
What are you working on next?
I’m showing some videos in Retramp Gallery in Berlin this month, organised by two lovely ladies, Beckmann and Gaspard. The first time we met over Skype we were coincidentally wearing the exact same striped t-shirts. I’m also making some new work for a show at Glasgow Sculpture Studios in January alongside Eva Berendes, Rallou Panagiotou, Vanessa Safavi and Samara Scott.
Which question would you have like to be asked?
Right now? Steph, would you like to eat some of these delicious pastries that I just made?
You have a countdown on your website. What are you counting down to?
Once, the entirety of my practice manifested as a series of Elegies. There were
eighteen Elegies in the Elegy Series. Each Elegy revolved around an individual and
specific set of ideas and concerns that branched from a single sad inverted genesis.
This period constituted something like an ‘Eternal September’. Back then, it felt useful to
think of the series as a kind of mystic iron lung. Having awoken into an unforeseen
October (or a November or, perhaps, a January) I am less sure.
The Elegy series, never truly ended, has entered a twilight stage as new inelegant and
un-elegiac investigations bulge forth - content from the shadows. And so: I am forever
unsure of how pertinent it would be for me to talk about what i think my art means or of
the particularities of the geneses of this new art that I produce in the daytime & so, to answer your question in a more direct manner: the count-down is, in fact, a
count-up. The simplest answer would be that I’m counting up from the moment I
became an artist/the elegy series began. The specific reason regarding the ‘why’ of the
beginning, that which is occluded by design, I will not share with you.
Thinking now: a count-down is a funny thing in that it, shuttered from context, inspires a
sort of entropic dread in people - of time wasting away, etc. I am thinking now, years
after the initial decision, that I might be more interested in the potential for a count-up to
serve as a far bleaker symbol.
line trying to describe itself into a hand & Berlin Ticket Text Welded steel stand for two Samsung 40” televisions, front screen: a line trying to describe itself into a hand (based off of that bit in Selvon’s Lonely Londoners where Galahad curses his hands for not being red, blue or green), looped, .mp4, rear screen: Francis and Mathias on the underground as Mathias performs Berlin Ticket Text to camera, looped, .mp4. Novelty USB drives: one 9mm handgun (in two pieces), one prosthetic finger, 2014
You have an impressive CV and have shown works across the US as well as the UK.
You are also a Curator, what do you look for when choosing Artworks to exhibit?
The simplest answer is that I choose work that excites me. That, perhaps, sounds non-
committal but I like to think of whatever my meagre curatorial practice amounts to as,
first and foremost, a personal commitment to the format of the exhibition which, in and
of itself, is fun to think of as a sort of love letter to artworks in the first place.
I really, very much, believe in the format of the exhibition. I am endlessly intrigued by
the ethics of curation. I enjoy, thoroughly, the practical and facilitative aspects of how to
get thing A to point B and back again almost as much as I enjoy the opportunity to warp
space and to push and pull people around spaces without their express knowledge.
I am, within my personal practice, fascinated by the mechanics of power as manifested
by the various disciplines - through Sculpture & Statue, Architecture, Film, Graphic
Design and it’s cold twin: Advertising. I’d like to think, in my more generous moments,
that my desire to curate is borne of a subconscious attempt for me to understand this
vast history of manipulation in order to try and find the potential within it for use towards
my own artistic ends and against itself.
Whilst I know that curating makes me a better viewer of art (in that i must regularly care,
very dearly, about artwork and artistic decisions that are not my own) I hope also that
my being an artist, in turn, might make me a better curator ;)
‘ELEGY NINE’ custom made scleral contact lenses, (sixth incarnation) 2014
Who or what inspires you?
I tend to consider many things at once and, of late, I have been considering:
-Orcs (& Tolkien’s queasy contextual racism - his impact on the infrastructure of the
genre of Fantasy).
-Neanderthals (& the genocidal extinguishing that constitutes the first global act of our
own species).
-Pigs (including & beyond their obvious pun - & the practices surrounding their keeping).
These 'things’ currently serve as 'mascots’ and, simultaneously, as skewed and
oddened ciphers for me to think through:
-Frameworks for the distribution of credit (director/cast&crew, gallerist/artist, master/
slave).
-The dissonance of values (between contemporaneity & the past (& contemporaneity &
the future)).
-The peristalsis of capitalism (& our own contemporary supra-national capitalist-
feudalism).
-All manifestations of power wherein people are made to be less than people (& thusly
rendered into objects…) and fuck it, y’know, if someone’s been turned into an object,
who’s to say they’re not also a sculpture?
I am drawn, as if hooked by chains, towards an illustration of a banal yet mind bendingly
eldritch horror (slaveships & gas chambers, anyone?). These are my concerns.
Although I am unsure of the importance of their immediate legibility in my work. I find
myself asking something to the effect of: “Is all of the practice that an athlete conducts
in order to eventually run as fast as she might really worthy of the same scrutiny as her
final performance on the track?” This, I suppose, is my justification for having my
research and ‘interests’ be not immediately apparent in the things that I produce but, in
another, more real way it is a manifestation of my fascination with the idea that our interests, our considerations, our conceptual engines might be mobilised in a
'hypodermic’ manner and that symbols, usually so wild and unwieldy, might be brought
to heel under a mechanic of 'ventriloquisation’. Which is to say: perhaps i can make a
flute or a sandwich or an alien say that which an audience might not otherwise be willing
to hear i.e. perhaps, by approaching white fragility at oblique angles, I can make my
primarily white, upper/middle class audience legitimately engage with the mechanics
that continue to make marginalised communities of us all.
‘ELEGY SEVEN’ pair of earrings: inserted into walls, worn in ears, (sixth incarnation) 2015
You seem to have a strong relationship with words in your practice in particular
‘Perverts Lament’. Do you write in your spare time?
Once, many thousands of years ago, I was a writer - specifically: a poet. It constituted
my ‘practice’ before I became an artist (and before the above mentioned count-up
began).
For many years after the end of my writing-only practice, words fled, and became
narrow and traitorous compared to the potential pan-cultural, utopian light I projected
onto symbols, colors, and gestures.
I learnt the hard way (in critiques and in arguments) that symbols, colors, and gestures
constitute a fickle and traitorous language of their own. That they ran in an inverted
manner to words, sloppily gathering meaning up into themselves & rendering
themselves inchoately inconsistent (consider the swastika, from ancient india to today)
as opposed to the way that words constantly shed meaning and nuance in order to
become shelves for new things (consider the word ‘woman’, from old english to today).
Now, as I finally learn to write again, and as if in vengeance, all writing is folded into the
practice. When I write I no longer write as a writer or as a poet. I write as an artist. The
distinction might mean nothing to you or to any reader but, ultimately, it is as the
difference between a Ichthyosaur and a Dolphin.
Also, as an artist, I have no spare time (hahahaha).
You studied at Leeds College of Art and then Goldsmiths. How did you end up in the
US?
The simplest answer is that I wanted, quite eagerly, to not be in England. I can’t speak
any other language (which leaves me with the Anglophone world). I wasn’t about to go
to Australia. Canada is too cold. I can’t drive (which knocks out Los Angeles), and after
a couple of years of London I wasn’t keen to throw myself into a brand new snarling
metropolis where I didn’t know how the trains worked.
Yale offered a very handsome scholarship and I couldn’t have afforded an MFA
anywhere so the scholarship made it very worth it for me. I only applied there that year,
as I didn’t really want to go anywhere else and, thankfully, I got in.
‘BENCH’ institutional stools, red gaffer tape, 2015
What is the Art scene like the US in comparison to the UK?
The money presses on all things much heavier here.
Every artist run space feels like a commercial gallery waiting to be born.
I see artists make decisions, in the production of their work, as if they are haunted by
the very real possibility of selling & i feel the haunting too.
Indeed, people here seem far more willing to trade work. It is very easy to grow quite a
large collection of contemporary artwork just by being friends with other artists -
everybody seems keen to swap and to, in their own way, collect. I mean no
disparagement, I mention this to speak to how heavily the money presses on all things
here.
I remember once going to a Leeds University MA show where they hired an eagle for
the day to stand in for the collectors they knew weren’t going to come. I mention this not
to disparage that particular year’s class of Leeds Uni MA graduates but rather to point
out how mythical the idea of selling art was, as i understood and experienced it, in the
uk.
I understood/understand that it happens of course but only really in an academic way
and have never felt that it had anything to do with me/was ever soon likely to happen.
London’s big claim that it is ‘the financial centre of the art world’ is based primarily on
the warping effects of the big auction houses which, of course, want little to do with
living artists… much less actual young artists.
To summate: Were i a painter here i would feel very comfortable and all of my painter
friends here have a relationship to selling. the art market is a reality here that it never
felt to be in London. But, again, I say all this coming out of an MFA with an older circle
of peers than i ran with in London. Perhaps I would be saying the same thing about the
UK had i graduated from the RA.
No, actually, I don’t think i would. the money is definitely palpable here. But it also
warps and corrupts - as it does in all places - the insider trading is real and the price
fixing is real and the money laundering is real and the gallerists scamming artists are
real. There are good galleries and good collectors and good dealers but there are also
many, many rotten ones and I know people that have been cut. And so, whilst I am
fascinated by the nature of the commercial system (and of the museological system,
which has in many respects annexed itself to the galleries’ interests), and do think of it
often, I try not to think how I might fit into it.
still from ‘AT THE AUCTION OF THE LAST WHITE GIRL IN THE WORLD’ feature film, .mp4 looped, 1 hour 19 minutes, 2015
I know Contemporary Artists can struggle to sell work. How do you survive?
I hold a technical position at Cooper Union in the Film & Video Department and I work
freelance as an artist assistant and art handler when the opportunity presents itself.
NYC is an expensive city, of course, but - and I say this fully cognizant of my privileged
Ivy League graduate status (vom) - NYC is a city where it feels easier to balance rent-
work and art-work and a semblance of a social life than it ever did in London.
Too many artist friends back home are struggling to make ends meet, and that’s not to
say that I’m not struggling too, but rather, as it appears to currently stand, if one craves
the metropoles, I think it is easier to be a young artist here - esp. if you don’t have
Mummy & Daddy sending rent money from Kent (as too many motherfuckers in London
do) - than it is in London.
‘Orcish forms, used foundry wax, three black shirts and three pairs Levi’s 511s, black Gorillatape grid, traces of plaster, traces of clay, 40” Samsung LED screen displayed low down and on a 10° tilt to the right, illustrated interpretations of Milo Manara’s illustrated history of the world over panels of the Parthenon’s frieze from with all sculptural detail photoshopped out and with the sound of a kickdrum to mark their change, 2014.’
We have recently connected through the internet and discussed about being Mixed
raced and in the Contemporary Art world. I felt lonely were as you talked about finding
those connections. Tell me about that.
When an immigrant, i suppose it is inevitable that one will compare their culture of origin
with the culture in which they end up.
In america I found that the gestures, languages, and modes of behavior, which at first
seemed alien, had cognates in my own cultural education and I began to understand
some of the general differences between Britishness and Americanness. Being in
America one must try very hard indeed (and deaden their heart very much) to not
consider the profound racism that performs itself every day in front of everyones eyes. It
made sense to me that, as American racism, the product of proximity to violence,
expresses itself as a blinding rage, British racism, the product of the distances involved
in Empire, should express itself as a cold and detached infantilising contempt.
And so, In experiencing American racism I began to also think of my experiences of
racism in the United Kingdom. In doing so, and equipped with these new knowledges, I
ended up inadvertently reverse engineering my readings of past experiences and
situations and saw all the racism fall out of my memories like dried flowers from old
books.
So yeah, Goldsmiths was lonely. For all of it’s brilliances, and despite it’s thoroughly
solid and enjoyable seemingly-empty-zen-education, it was also a comprehensive
education in microaggression. I was constantly reminded of my difference and yet
expected to play it down. Alongside a host of one-off instances of racism, I was
consistently and casually informed that: I only got to be in shows, that I had only gotten
into Goldsmiths, that I had only gotten into Yale (etc etc etc and on and on) because of
my minority status. These are not grievances for which i expect apologies, but rather,
they are the only data I have been able to gather and I read them, perhaps generously,
as fascinating symptoms of ‘unconsciously generated’ contempt spun from a culture of
cold aggression and entitlement.
Looking back 2011 was an important time. people, as i experienced at goldsmiths, like
to talk loudly about what issues are in vogue. i distinctly remember a vicious and
omnipresent buzz of contempt for Mark Duggan and the ‘thugs ruining the country’. i
remember the casual remarks regarding forced repatriation and the mobilization of the
military in response to teenage rioters and i recall it all against the context of the almost
omnipresent facebook posts bemoaning the endless violence against black bodies in
the united states.
That a march that shut down Oxford Street, expressing solidarity with Michael Brown
and the people of Ferguson, was favourably covered by the BBC (the same BBC that
did everything to demean and belittle intelligent conversation surrounding the London
Riots - watch please, if you haven’t, Darcus Howe’s BBC news interview from the time),
strikes me as one of the bleakest of ironies. how tragic is it, that solidarity, as i have
seen it elucidated, could itself be deployed within an appropriative matrix of
gentrification?
To be an individual of african extraction on planet earth is to be, very literally, either
borne from the industrialization of cruelty or it is to be currently witness to it.
I went to the caribbean for the first time in the Autumn of 2014. It was a very important
experience - in hindsight is no coincidence that the birds there sounded like car alarms.
I left the United Kingdom because I didn’t feel welcome. I left at a moment when the
legitimacy of our nationality was (and forgive me for daring to speak on behalf of every
not white person in the UK), in a horrifying manner, all of a sudden, up for discussion.
Better to be a foreigner in a foreign land than a foreigner at home, I thought.
‘Cabinet of Victory’ digitally printed vinyl, curator’s heads, 2015
What is next for you?
I am currently writing for a project titled ‘THE DEMON OF REGRET’, by mentioning it
here today, I bring it fully into being as more than just ‘an idea in a studio’. Now it is a
promise and my ability to actualize it might be metonymically understood in the context
of my ongoing life project to be considered not-a-total-failure. I’m thinking about
Abyssinia. I’m trying to read more. I still need a jigsaw.
Other than that? couple shows, couple exhibitions… The struggle is real but I’m glad to
be alive.
p.s. shout outs to Crazy-Horse Ben Slinger, shoutouts to my favorite Frenchman Harlan
Whittingham, shoutouts to the Frightful Francis Lloyd Jones… shoutouts to the Evil
Wizards of the Panj, shoutouts to all the fucking well dodgy Leeds gang, shoutouts to
Wes & Martin & Luis (& the rest of the Space Cadets), shoutouts to Dylan Hewson,
shoutouts to LYA, shoutouts to the entrenched survivalists still alive in London,
shoutouts to Ella in Japan & to the wild men of Nottingham, shoutouts to Liv and all the
other Wombles, shoutouts to all the Danes (but not Martin), shoutouts to those people
who did bad things but weren’t bad people ;) , shoutouts to O.G. Buckley for keeping it
too real & keeping out the game so i can have a shot, shoutouts to Happy Fruit, and
shoutouts to Simeon Barclay for providing a strain of conversation without which I think I
Solta ou Prende by Silvan Kälin was published in 2014 in Brasil by Editora Aplicação
44 p., 8
color risoprint, 14 x 15.5 cm, thread-stitching, 1. edition, print run 500.
“Solta ou
Prende” is a fruit
and vegetable guide based on popular science, often discussed in Brazil,
especially in the Northeast. All the fruits and vegetables illustrated in the
book can be encountered at the market in Recife.
“Solta ou
Prende” is about the specific characteristic of fruits and vegetables.
“Solta” means “to release” while “Prende” means “to hold”.
Silvan Kälin loves the
fruits and the market and took their impact on digestion as a chance to
illustrate them. The publication has been concepted as much as a colorful and beautiful object than as an informative tool.
Here is a video made by Editora—Aplicação about the market in Recife:
Editora Aplicação (Silvan Kälin & Priscila Gonzaga) approach publishing as an art practice. They publish independent publications, such as „Solta ou Prende“ (a fruit guide) or
„Ao Morador da Casa Como Convém“ (intimate city guide).
Based in Recife, off the metropolitan centers of Brazil, they take their environment, its limits and its possibilities as a chance, an inspiration and always aim at a broad public.
Their artist book projects are realised in intimate collaboration with the artists
– such as „Museo do Homem do Nordeste“, „2 em 1“, „Nego Bom“ (Jonathas de
Andrade), „A Dobra do Raciocínio Geométrico“ (Cristiano Lenhardt), „Zoológico“
(Fernando Peres), „Manual dos Manuais“ (Marcelo Silveira) and others.
DUPE is pleased to invite you to the launch of its fourth publication: “THE WILD ISSUE”
Launch party will be held on the TOP floor of The Camberwell Arms.
6pm til you drop.
Come join us, grab a copy of DUPE’s Wildest issue, get drunk and tell us your wildest stories.
Featuring Artists:
Georgia Lucas - Going Zervou-Kerruish Alfie Strong Jenn Liv Tim Lash Coc Oen Joe Cruz Simon Bridgland Julie Hascoet Ingo Giezendanner Anne-Laure Franchette Ashby McGowan Boudicca Collins Molly Soda Lia Rochas-Paris Dmitry Borshch
Friday 10th July, Camberwell Church Street, London
Every month, we showcase an independent publication out of the growing VOLUMES’s collection.
This month we focus on a reissue by Edition Taube: Confessions of a poor collector by Eugene M. Schwartz
How to build a worthwhile art collection with the least possible money
“…the only important thing about this art, as any art, is the art
itself. Not its monetary value, not its social prestige, not its public
relations leverage, not the artists themselves, and not the fact that
you collected them first. The only thing that counts – the only prize in
the game – is who ends up with the paintings.“ – Eugene M. Schwartz
New edition of the out of print facsimile of 1970.
Schwartz was a copywriter and a the author of several succesful books about advertising.
In “Confessions of a poor collector”, he explains his philosophy and the steps to take to build a succesful art collection. With his wife Barbara, he composed one of the most important collection of contemporary American Art of its time. He donated hundreds of works from his collection to various organisations in the United States.
When we first met at Leeds College of Art 7 years ago your work was very much inspired by the past. Old books, old clothes, old music etc. Yet today your work seems very influenced by the today and Contemporary life. Why do you think this has changed?
Ideas, interests and works change all the time so you can imagine the difference in the style and process of works 7 years apart. I think great art employs the time in which it is made. I try to make work that is aware of when and why it’s made. 7 years ago when I first started college I made work about a time that interested me and not about the time in which it was being made. I guess it was a kind of mis-placed nostalgia and I don’t think that approach is particularly interesting or helpful, just confusing, but what isn’t confusing when you’re 18?
Describe your work now in 4 words.
Dark-witted conjectural commentary.
You’ve exhibited worldwide and last year graduated from ‘The School of the Dammed’. Tell us about the school and your time there.
School of the Damned acts as a positive protest against the increase of tuition fees and the marginalisation of the poor in education. It is essentially a free ‘school’ that is administrated by the students that use it. Rather than a practice based programme it serves as a rigorous, critical and theoretical torrent for your work to push against. It made me dismantle my work and completely re-build it from the ground up… an incredibly difficult but useful thing to do.
We went to your most latest solo show at GRRG in Kennington and read that your recent work has being inspired by Mexican culture, in particular wrestling and even hints of African tribal masks. Have you had this interpretation before?
The Mexican wrestler likeness came up in a review of that show. I’d be lying if I said Mexican wrestling masks in particular were of importance or of interest. Broadly speaking I make felt mask-type hoods because I’m interested in the ceremonial quality of masks and the visual impact masks can carry, across all cultures. My work often plays with a balance between formal, object sculpture and goofy figurative works. Masks come from the kind of abhorrent cartoon drawing that I do in response to my research efforts and often act as the figurative element.
What is Pluto Gang?
Its a fictional gang that are mentioned as an almost unimportant footnote in a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
Is there anything in your work that references other cultures than your own?
I do use and borrow from other cultures… both present and ancient cultures. I don’t use it as a statement but more to inject a little of what I might find fascinating in to the work that I make. Maybe it’s just to make what I produce a bit more bearable for me to look around after I’ve made it. I’ve always been pretty interested in mythology, religion and folk lore, my work sometimes compares inane parts of modern life to more grander parts of of those areas of interest. I enjoy the ridiculousness of the two coexisting in a work, a sentence or a show.
We remember having a discussion with you and the Head of Fine Art at Leeds School of Art (Shelia Gaffney) about the fact that work should never be titled ‘Untitled’. Do all your works have titles?
All my works are titled. The names I give are actually an important part of the work, the language is as important as the materials I’ve used. A lot of the time my titles are made before the work or changed after the work has already been shown with one title. If they weren’t an important part of the make-up of my work then I wouldn’t bother titling them for the sake if it… So I kind of like works that are ‘untitled’ because it makes me think that the artist has cut back any arbitrary and unnecessary baggage the work was carrying.
How important to you is the space in which you exhibit your work?
There are obviously spaces that lend themselves to showing work better than others and their are spaces where I feel my work stands a better chance of being seen correctly. But I think a good space can be down to who runs/directs/curates it.
We are not sure we have ever seen you do collaboration. Is this something that interests you? If so, who would you like to join forces with on an artwork?
I’ve done a few collaborative shows and projects in the past few years. I enjoy them a lot, I learn loads from working with other people. I’m currently part of an collaborative group that is based in Sheffield called (it’s all) Tropical. We curate a lot of large group shows of artists that we really love and want to work and show along side with.
Which are your favourite galleries to visit?
I like Limoncello and I’m in to a lot of their artists. I think David Dale in Glasgow do some really great things and similarly S1 in Sheffield and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun back in Leeds.
Who or what inspires you?
Henri Gaudier Brzeska
Our next issue of DUPE is the WILD issue. So tell us the wildest thing you’ve done?
I can’t tell you that, I’m sorry.
We’ve seen a huge rise of Contemporary using social media to share their work. Is social media important to you or your work?
I try to keep my work and my FB, Twitter and Instagram apart from each other. I think it’s a real good tool to meet other people making work and see what everyones on with. I’ve ended up being in some great shows and made friends with some brilliant artists through social media, but I think using it to just show off your work can be a bit strange if I’m honest.
Would you ever do performance art?
I think performance art (I’m thinking about live performance art here) is incredibly difficult to do. When its done well its magnificent but most of the time it’s not, it’s normally done really badly. I think people think that because you don’t necessarily have to ‘make’ anything they can just get up whimsically and just do it, but their wrong… by doing that they make something insufferably cringe worthy and I feel that’s really insulting to the people who dedicate their life, work and time to it.
What is the best criticism you’ve ever received about you work and who was it from?
“The more I understand your work, the less I understand you” That was a text off my dad after he went to see a show of mine at Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh.
What’s next for Alfie Strong?
I’ve a few small plans, nothing to write home about… because they all think what I do is weird.
In collaboration with DUPE, we showcase every month an independent publication out of our growing collection.
This month we focus on a zine from Paris, France called OUT OF THE BLUE
OUT
OF THE BLUE translates on paper various visual which reflect the
creative process of an artist. The zine is a medium with no particular
order, no caption, no coherence, it’s a jumble of screenshots.
Screenshots
of artworks, details, souvenirs, notes, email threads, text messages,
chat threads, screenshots of film stills, skype, maps, streetview,
google, inspiring images - all sorts of elements which are taken out of
the context but which reflect the artist’s inherent work.This issue focuses on Lia Rochas-Pàris’ work: www.liarochasparis.com
OUT OF THE BLUE is brought byParties Prises, a curatorial and printed project whose focus is based on
collecting information which surround and invade our minds, stay
imprinted and get deleted.
For its very first publication: ADD
(Attention Deficit Disorder), Parties Prises asked about forty artists
to “perform” screenshots intended for paper print. Freezing the computer
screen like a memo often doomed to disappear in virtuel reality. The
theme of ADD stresses out the “hurly burly” aspect of the thoughts and
actions emerging from these new means of communication, rendering new
methods of attention… New windows opened by excess and shortcuts. The
issue number zero is presented on a A2 sheet, folded into a A3 format,
nonstapled and prone to transformation. Ready to be pinned up on a wall,
literally speaking. A galaxy of screenshots juxtaposed on (desktop)
wallpapers. An exhibition printed out on paper. Watch the video below to
get an insight: http://www.partiesprises.com
DUPE (London, UK) is partnering with VOLUMES (Zürich, CH) in the monthly spotlight! Every month, a different independent publication will be highlighted ;) And so it starts:
At VOLUMES’s HQ, we have a collection of
independent
publications which we showcase during our fairs and workshops. In order
to share the love on a broader scale (aka the internet), we
decided to showcase every month a personal favorite.
SPATA (Greek: Σπάτα), is a town 20 kilometres (12mi) east of
Athens, Greece. Spata is situated in the middle of the Mesogaia plain,
east of mount Hymettus and west of the Aegean Sea coast. Athens
International Airport (“Eleftherios Venizelos”) covers the eastern
portion of Spata. The town proper is made up of residential
neighborhoods. Farmland, mostly vineyards and olive groves, lie around.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spata).
With this photo zine These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things
wanted to document the juxtaposition between
the last years’ changes in the area (the construction of the
International Airport “El. Venizelos” and the privately owned toll
motorway “Attiki Odos”) with the everyday life of Spata’s town. Edition
of 50 numbered & digital printed copies. A5, 40 pages, colored.
These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things
is
a duo based in Athens, Greece and composed of Panayiota Theofilatou
(Architect) and Tassos
Papaioannou (Graphic Designer). Panayiota and Tassos like zines, crafts
and sewing.
Not to mention that they also curate the awesome “Athens Zine Bibliotheque”, collecting zines
from around the world, focusing mainly on the field of architecture,
design, photography and art. Everyone interested in zines is welcome to
come and read the collection, send them/bring them their zine and
participate in “Athens Zine Biblioteque”’s activities (workshops,
lectures, presentations, monthly zine of the Gallery of Merchants, and
more).
Tell us about yourself. How did you become an illustrator?
I think I’ve become an illustrator because I’ve never stopped drawing. I’ve always had an overwhelming desire to draw and when I don’t I start to feel terrible. There’s never been a point where I really considered anything else.
I feel like The Simpsons had a profound impact on my desire to draw from a young age; being a cartoonist seemed like an actual achievable, amazing job and I’d draw cartoons endlessly. I grew up near Stroud in the south west and I went to Leeds College of Art to study Visual Communication.
How do you feel about your education at Art School? Do you think they prepped you enough for what it would be like after graduating?
I loved going to a smaller, dedicated art institution and at Leeds I had some amazing tutors.
I do think though, that art school makes you define yourself so early on, and that can be quite damaging and limiting. I studied Visual Communication, and even though it was a very broad course, I was always being asked what kind of illustrator I was and until the end of my third year I couldn’t figure out where I fitted in. I didn’t want to be defined as someone who makes images on paper. It’s only since graduating that I’ve realised it’s ok to want to make screen prints, design patterns, paintings and objects. You’re employing all the same principles you’ve learnt and skills you’ve attained that make it yours to communicate.
I was fully prepared for the fact that I wasn’t going to leave Uni and start earning a living as an illustrator; however, I was definitely unprepared for how lonely that first year out can be when all your friends disperse back to the places they came from.
What do you prefer working on paper or working on wood?
I love working on wood because I feel it instantly gives something context, it feels like A THING. I also really enjoy the hands on, tactile nature of painting on to wood. But everything I do begins on paper and stems from a love of drawing.
Who or what are your biggest inspirations?
Keith Haring has had a huge effect on my ethos towards creating things. His view that, the role of the artist is to make accessible, public artworks is something that’s really inspired me. Margaret Kilgallen and Steve Powers are two artists whose work has had a big impact on me. Recently I found a great book on the German artist Otto Piene, who wrote about the need for more collaboration between artists and architects to transform spaces. I’d felt in a bit of a rut but reading his works made me feel really excited about making things.
I’ve noticed your love for colour in your work. Do you ever work in black & white or neutral tones?
When I’m planning an image colour is one of the first things I consider. I like to dissect an image into layers of colours; like how you’d create a screen print. Apart from coloured paint my favourite medium to work in is just black ink and a brush. Most of those drawings don’t see the light of day though.
Who would you love to collaborate with?
I’d love to work alongside Morag Myerscough. I love how she uses typography to transform public spaces into these intense patterned colourful environments. Her work’s incredible and I think I just want to be her.
Do you purely live off the sales of your artwork?
I work part time at a little stationery shop in Brighton. It forces me to plan my days off to get the most amount of work done and I love being in Brighton.
What are you working on at the moment? Where can readers see your work?
I’ve been working on some prints to sell at craft fairs and some personal work, which you can often see popping up on my blog. I’d really like to do some more murals so I’m trying to do some bigger pieces.
Who would your dream client be?
I’d love to work collaboratively to transform a community space into something exciting and immersive! I’d love to paint a huge mural and then collaborate with some of the super talented makers I know to create some awesome things to play with.
How has your style evolved from university up to now?
It’s only been since graduating that I’ve really began to feel like I’ve developed my own style that I’m comfortable with. At Uni I experimented with a lot of different things, but I felt more focused on questioning what sort of work I wanted to make rather than having a style.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
HOPEFULLY having seen a lot more of the world. Working in a lovely studio space would be nice, with a dog and making big things!
christiannewby