Floorr Artist Interviews Floorr Magazine

 


"the cross section gives the inside an edge. It is a cut and slice to learn and reveal."























 








Could you tell us a bit about yourself? How long have you been a practicing artist and where did you study?

I studied my BA at the Slade School of Art in London, then lived in Newcastle after graduating. More recently I completed my MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember but considering the possibility of being a practicing artist came while studying, so I would say that I’ve been a practicing artist since then.
Your sculptures give the appearance of the body/flesh being constricted or cut/sliced through, could you tell us about these works and the inspiration for them?

The thinking and making for these works revolves around edges - architectural edges, body edges, the meeting of edges, the puncture of edges. Edges also relate to the inside and outside of things, skins, messiness and tidiness and when and people’s edges can be interchangeable or porous. In this way, the idea of the edge, to me, defines or outlines where something is – so they’re really about absences and presences through borders. I’m interested in our own edges and this literal or imagined membrane that surrounds us, and other things when these contours shift and morph, or turn inside of themselves.



























In my sculptures, such as the Gut Feelings works, the cross section gives the inside an edge. It is a cut and slice to learn and reveal. A lot of the time I use architectural drawings or plans to technically work out the larger sculptures, and I have used motifs from these drawings, and the architectural drawings of my Dad, in some past works. I have also recently been looking at a lot of my partner’s medical books where diagrams show our internal workings or methods of fixing to keep us alive longer. Both the architectural drawings and anatomical cross sections are examples of a segment of a thing. They are turning a 3d object into a 2d image, in the same way ancient remains in a museum may be sliced in half and displayed for us to learn from, and to prove its authenticity.
For my recent work Wrot (shown at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art) the slice was significant within the entire installation. The work on the whole acknowledges this idea of surfaces and peripheries but I used the cut in a literal sense to slice through the architecture. The cross-sectional layers also referenced archaeology and burial, so all of the objects contained within the layers existed on the flat plane of the cross section - as if they were held within the flatness of the surface. The making is very tied to this, as the works are formed by pouring materials into moulds, so this invisible surface is a trace of this process too, a previous supporting skin that has been removed.








































































































Wrot,2017 at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (c) Mark Pinder






























































































Nasothek, 2017 (c) Alastair Philip Wiper

Floorr Magazine, an online art publication.
Interviews/Directory/Opportunities/Shows.

 


"I’m in the studio almost every day, and usually begin the day with two to three hours of thinking, almost as if I’m finding or retracing my way back into a painting.."























 








You were recently in a group show called "Part II: The Turning World" Curated by Zavier Ellis at CHARLIE SMITH LONDON. Could you tell us about that show?
The show was a three-person show about contemporary landscape painting and included Barry Thompson, Sam Douglas and myself obviously. Zavier Ellis, the Director of Charlie Smith Gallery, came to my studio a while back, just for a nose I think, and I have a vague idea that, although landscape is just one genre I use, (constitutes about a quarter of what I make), the show may have evolved as a result of a conversation we had about a group of landscapes that I had made or that were on the go, something about a tension between a fiction and a realism dichotomy - finding ‘a realism’ through ‘a fiction’. I think Zavier expanded and layered this idea and curated the whole thing, and presented three painters that occupy three very different and distinct positions with regard to landscape painting, and for me, the show did aim to constitute something of a tension between fiction and realism.



























Could you tell us a bit about yourself? How long have you been a practising artist and where did you study?
I studied at Kingston University in the mid eighties and have been painting since then. I’ve also worked as a curator, mainly for independent project spaces, and I have written about painting. I founded Turps Banana with Marcus Harvey in 2005 (although I left three years ago), and I also founded the painting gallery The Lion and Lamb (which closed three years ago).








































































































"Part II: The Turning World", CHARLIE SMITH LONDON 2017






























































































The Hand Glider, 2017






























































































The Passage, 2012






























































































'milo's muzzle' 2011

















Tell us a bit about how you spend your day/studio routine? What is your studio like?
I’m in the studio almost every day, and usually begin the day with two to three hours of thinking, almost as if I’m f

 


"My work is very auto-biographical. I’m a loud, exuberant, emotional and probably exhausting character, and my work will always reflect this."























 








Could you tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been a practising artist and where did you study?
I left high school and quite quickly the band I was playing with took off, allowing us to play music together for quite a few years. As all of that came to an end I was left with a bit of a hole in my life. Painting and being creative has always been an intrinsic part of growing up in my family household so applying to study painting at a higher level seemed like a good route to go down. I studied Fine Art Painting, BA at Wimbledon College of Art, graduating in 2015. It was a great school, filled with some brilliant tutors and funny people. The fact that I started when I was twenty-four worked in my benefit, I had already spent some time away from home and had already had my social awakening, meaning I was in the studio most of the time. I was also very aware of how great it was to have a studio and resources readily available, and didn’t want to waste any of that time (or money). 
After completing my degree Stevie (my wife) and I moved to Antwerp for greener and cheaper pastures, painting there for a year after which we then came to be in Suffolk. I’m now soon to be thirty and would say that I’ve been thinking about art as a focus for fifteen years now! 



























You were recently in a group show called "Dumb" Curated by Kristian Day. Could you tell us about that show?
It was a great show, filled with heavy hitters. Some painters which I have been looking at and up to for a while so it was an honour to be hanging in there. It happened at Mercer Chance which is a brilliant non-profit in Hoxton, run by artists for artists. 
The show was called “Dumb” which is a word that one of the the other exhibitors, Paul Housley has been playing with in different connotations in relation to painting. In certain examples the word “dumb” is used to describe base materials such as paint and canvas which need to be activated by the intelligence of the artist. I can get on with this. He’s a good painter who I can identify with in terms of his obvious love of Picasso and Guston. 
Shit, that Robert Rush painting in the show was a knock-out too! Probably quite an obvious choice for me though. 








































































































Repo Man, 2017






























































































Bright White Electric Feel, 2016






























































































Pollen, 2017

















Your paintings often feature strange/comical figures, could you

 


"Geometry allows me the freedom to channel a myriad of different material. It removes the potential chaos of having too many subject options, yet remains open to sensory or poetic influence."























 








Could you tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been a practising artist and where did you study?
I live and work in London and have been a practising artist since 1981 when I completed my MA in Painting at Chelsea School of Art. Prior to that I’d been a BA student at Cardiff College of Art from 1974 to 1978. I knew I wanted to be an artist from an early age… I never had any doubts about going to art school and was quickly drawn towards painting and non-figurative art.
Could you tell us about these repeating geometric forms you create, would you say you are quite obsessed with certain shapes?
Geometry allows me the freedom to channel a myriad of different material. It removes the potential chaos of having too many subject options, yet remains open to sensory or poetic influence. I work with a variety of different geometric formations but it’s true to say I find the circle to be the purest, the most universal of all geometric shapes.  I never tire of its associations with art and architecture, with ritual and religion and with the cosmos. I’ve been making circle paintings since the late 1980s and feel sure I will continue to do so for the rest of my life.



























Tell us a bit about how you spend your day/studio routine? What is your studio like?
I always walk to my studio, which takes about half an hour. The walking part is important …it clears my head and leaves me fresh for working. I’m lucky that my route takes me mostly off-road, through London Fields and then along the Regents Canal. My studio is in a beautiful 1930s building, owned and managed by ACME, an artist’s studio and housing association, and I’ve worked there for over 20 years. It has a cohort of about 30 artists and my partner Trevor Sutton works there too. He and I have a close dialogue; we visit one another’s studio every day.
I keep the studio tidy and organised… too much disorder interferes with my thought process. I normally work in series, on several paintings at any one time. I start intuitively, by pouring layer upon layer of unstructured liquefied oil paint over the canvas. Adding the meticulous over-painted geometric detail comes later. These combined processes satisfy my need for both chance and order. I try to achieve an atmospheric spatial quality in the grounds so as to create the equivalent of an environmental space in which the geometry can exist. Once the grounds are done, next comes the drawing and then finally the careful over-painting. The colour changes a lot. It’s never achieved in one go, so there’s a discreet physicality in the history of the surface.








































































































Pointstar, installation shot, Flowers Gallery






























































































Pointstar, installation shot, Flowers Gallery
 

















What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

 


"Having been surrounded by industrial objects from a young age, this has influenced my practice, approach to any practical obstacles and experimentation with ‘heavy’ materials."























 








Could you tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been a practising artist and where did you study?
I studied Fine Art Sculpture at Carmarthen School of Art, Wales; specialising in casting, construction and fabrication. There was an emphasis on traditional sculpture techniques and processes which has continued to feed into my practice as a contemporary artist. After graduating in 2014 I was keen to continue developing my practice and took up the artist in residence position in the sculpture department at the school. Over the last few years I’ve exhibited work on an international and national level including most recently at the Venice Art House Gallery; besides this I’ve experienced in depth Iron Casting at Conferences, travelling to Ireland, Latvia and most recently to Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama.
Last year I completed my MFA after receiving a scholarship to study at Cardiff School of Art & Design; achieving a Distinction.  However the year was a challenging experience and I found that my work shifted from previous heavily focused material experimentation and was limited at times due to space and facilities. There’s an organic approach to my practice, I try not to limit or tie myself to a specific discipline; my work currently sits at the intersection between sculpture, installation and performance.



























Could you tell us about your recent performance piece “Women at Work”? What was the inspiration behind it?
The idea behind Women at Work came from previous research into women and industry, and how my own personal experiences of working in a foundry was predominately male dominated. The National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art & Practices became a starting point of contact for female artists who are interested in working collaboratively to explore object (domestic) and action using molten cast iron as the primal material. The focus behind this body of work was to explore material, object and gender; highlighting and questioning the consciousness of stereotypical roles as my research has begun to consider the role of women in sculpture and how female sculptors have formed relationships with material.
The performance comprised of a production run pour with a female only crew. We worked specifically with domestic objects such as cake tins, dusters, sieves that were placed on long wooden tables and larger objects, the washing machine and tumble dryer became a focal point. Molten iron was poured in or over the objects becoming exposed and destroyed. The aim of Women at Work was to highlight the intense nature of foundry work, specifically iron casting; emphasising the role of women and questioning the consciousness of stereotypical roles. My experience at Sloss Furnaces evolved into an innovative approach and understanding of iron casting and how I can further engage with performance to explore an international and collaborative dialogue.








































































































Gwaith RAMUSEVANS COLLABORATIVE, 2016