Chats with Artists in Lockdown

Olivia Bax and I chat about the weather, the weight of it and the frustration of it, like being the under slanted weather. We talk about her show "Off Grid" at Standpoint Gallery, and the delay caused by Lockdown in March and what this afforded and affected. Olivia talks about research as process and we discuss the pace and rhythms of the studio. Olivia talks about her steel armatures, her doodles and her drawing in space like it's a notepad. She speaks about breathing life into the linear, the excitement of making things solid and remaining in the process. We talk about colour, moving through the different tones of a mountain to cold chips. We explore Olivia's finding of colour, both from found often disregarded paint and through layering, as well as talking about hands and fingers, pulp and state changes. Olivia describes the making 'battle', the slapping and the weight and being a 'putter'. We ruminate on the idea of dialogues with the back of the work and think about what the inside is doing. Olivia touches on the short stories she writes, published in Yellowfields, and where some of those stories spark from. We consider objects that mean more than one thing and do more than one thing and such as filter and funnel. We consider theatrical pieces, starting with a tabletop resting place and sculptural relations. We think about restriction as a device to adapt and react to and reflect on how Olivia personally extends herself. We end on adjusting pace, prioritising and the joy of being introverted, but with friends and cake.

Image:

Hopper

2020

Steel, chicken wire, newspaper, glue, paint, plaster, wheels, varnish

112 x 96 x 96 cm

Photo: Tim Bowditch

Links:

https://www.oliviabax.co.uk

https://www.standpointlondon.co.uk

https://www.yellowfields.tk/

Hans Op de Beeck and I talk about being excited to be back at work. He describes the time away from the studio due to covid restrictions as numb and we talk about the joys of painting in the dark, the intimacy and the generosity of the night. Hans talks about wanting to paint in colour, telling a story of making a painting for the Royal Palace in Brussels, which in the end was in black and white. We talk a lot about grey, about shadows and about light. Hans talks about exploring the width of being a postmodern artist, which he thinks is about balancing form and content precisely. He talks about people over-estimating him and the idea of faking it til you make it. He talks about jumping into problems and getting out of your comfort zones as essential positions for making work. We talk about art as consolation and the idea of finding comfort in a visual proposal. We discuss his work, Stargazing, 2020, visually climbing the cliff through his description. He talks about being anachronistic with ironic winks, mingling bad and good taste and high and low culture. We talk about art historical eye openers, and how something can be artificial and authentic. We talk about departing from the simple and getting complicated and evoking rather than simulating. We talk about staging amusement and staging emotions and celebrate the beauty in the silliness of life.

Links:

https://hansopdebeeck.com

https://ronmandos.nl/viewing-room-overview/

Images:

Sea of Tranquility, 2010

Film still

16:9, 29:50 min

All visuals are copyright: courtesy of Studio Hans Op de Beeck

This special episode has been commissioned by Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, as an extension of their current show, Soft Bodies, which never opened physically due to the lockdown. Megan Snowe and I are both in that show and come together with the writer Raj Parameshwaran to discuss Soft Bodies and all that this theme evokes and its particular relevance at this strange time. As part of this episode we feature a track by Semi Precious, present in Jake Moore's video piece, from the show. The gallery are hoping to open In August.Following this episode there will be a short piece of writing in response to our discussion and it's themes, written by Raj, available at https://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/event/upcoming-soft-bodies/.

Megan Snowe, Raj Parameswaran and I talk about confusion and low humidity, about being miserable but otherwise fine and about nuptual flying ants. Megan and Raj are in the US, still restricted under Covid 19, and we mention the adjustment to the realisation that this situation is long term, a marathon. Megan gets into her sensuous self portraits questioning how we inhabit non-physical spaces and whether, with the increase in online presence, there can be a sensual element of ourselves online. She talks about her drawings, that feature in the Castlefield exhibition, which are made directly and without planning or intention and created through meditative blending and form finding. We describe these forms, sometimes piercing or entering one another and connect this to undefended human spaces, vulnerable to invisible germs, the virus, and recently police violence. We talk about arousal and disgust and look into megan's 'A Wipe', a sensual celebration of bodily detritus. We delve into some of Raj's short stories, and consider what can safely be removed from the body and what does it become then? We talk about societal body trash and the physical implications of our zoom image, shed all over the web. We talk about phantom limb treatment, healing things from images and Megan's 'ticklish' drawings. We talk about thinking with your mouth, chewing as a trigger and language as sensual. We talk about skinlessness and skin as a haptic canvas. We talk about intimacy and invasion and how to bridge the gaps. We talk about skin shedding and the expansive self. We talk about dirty laughing at your own drawings, picking your nose as a sensory experience, processing zones and the different ways the body can be penetrated. We talk about the limits of signification and the body as a hard limit and celebrate our love and use of language. We talk about the importance of communtity, the spirit of activism and feeling connected and intimate with strangers through protest.

With thanks to Gass Pendergast and Helen Wewiora at Castlefield Gallery. And thanks to Jake Moore and Semi Precious for the closing track.

Image:

Small Body 03

2019

8.5”x5.5”

Graphite on paper

Links:

https://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/event/upcoming-soft-bodies/

https://www.megansnowe.com/

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/130147/rajesh-parameswaran

Raj's Twitter @elephantbot

Music Credits:

Produced, composed, mixed & sung by Semi Precious

Additional synths & piano by Aviram Barath

Mastered by Nick Powell

© squareglass

Markus Vater and I talk about feeling slightly sad and slightly content and about more things going then coming. We talk about being interested in where we are not. We talk about how the end of the world might look as a place and the illusion of control over the world, which the virus has made visible. We talk about localisation and social media as a connection with how to communicate and how to sell work directly, not just to extend knowledge. We talk about spending time with time. We talk about the collective Hobbypop, born out of of looking for your own infrastructure with a peer group. We talk about making with a lot of Joy and energy and we get into to the exhibition Drive In that the group organised in 1995. We talk about art not being subject bound and much more about a spirit and the difficulty in the idea of trying to be a tutor of it all. We talk about Markus’ multimedia approach, which he describes simply as looking at where the most interesting process is happening and responding to it. We discuss Markus' short video, "Mary sees the sun" about the idea of looking at the sunset until it hurts your eyes. We discuss Markus' paintings for animals. We talk about his fascination with water and some of the ways it features in his work, like the tear and a sea. We talk about Markus’ idea that we are the Ocean on vacation on land. We talk about storytelling, language and the relationship between text and image or title and work. We talk through his process, often happening on one piece of paper and coming to him like an eruption and appearing like fruit. We talk about his mobile pieces moving like the wind and making the viewer move. We talk about faking flying and the connection between magic and art. We talk about changing perspective, constructed reality and lying entertainingly. We think about artists lying much less than money. We talk about the painter as pharmacist and consider if a painter can heal anything. We think about the words holy and heal and hole and whole. We consider social media as a platform to show yourself and not being afraid of anything which is very scary.

Image: “The interview” Acrylic on canvas, 170x 300cm, 2012

Links:

http://www.markusvater.com/index.html

Unstilled Life will open on 6th August at Ron Mandos Gallery,Amsterdam and Tintype Gallery, London and the exhibition continues until 3rd September.

https://ronmandos.nl/

https://www.tintypegallery.com/

Holly Graham and I talk about getting back on a bike, this risky changing time, maintaining a sense of urgency, productive fear and cautious anxiety, and working to a deadline and floundering. We talk about work that has been delayed or paused such as Holly's public commission in Coulsdon, a sundial, which Holly is reconnecting with in her mind and worrying if all the calculations will still work! We talk about her residency in Southwark Park and the possibilities of corresponding events shifting under distancing measures. We talk about Holly's writing, and she reads a passage from her piece for an anthology On Care commissioned by Sharon Kievland and Rebecca Jagoe. We talk about sugar, migration and movement of objects touching on Holly's Sweet and Swollen series and Christina Sharpe's metaphors of the wake and the hold. We talk about the sugar bowls at the V&A that became the focus on Sweet and Swollen, which depict enslaved labour and the product of that labour at the same time. We talk about using photographs, found and personal. Holly talks about attending to images and the potential reanimation of the in-betweens. We talk about the word shuddering. We talk about the side hustle, and her podcast episode of this name commissioned by TACO, and her band Don't Freak Out. We talk about house mates, weekly aims, and formalising time for care. We end on surprise at the toll that separation has taken and the need for people and touch.

Image:

Cane Hill sundial design. 2020.

Links:

Website: hollygraham.co.uk

Instagram: @hollycagraham

To Us It Just Looks Like A Lemon, residency at Southwark Park Galleries: https://southwarkparkgalleries.org/to-us-it-just-looks-like-a-lemon-research-online/

On Care anthology to be published in July: https://mabibliotheque.cargo.site/ANTHOLOGIES-COLLECTIONS-THE-CONCEIT-OF-THE-CONCEPTUAL-copy

TACO podcast: https://rtm.fm/shows/twang-achoo-clang-oooff/holly-graham/

Music:

Don’t Freak Out.Jealous Guy featuring Natasha Heliotis on lead vocals.

Lana Locke and I talk about precariously poised positivity and working on borrowed time. We talk about the reopening of the (male) football season, the drive for fitness and camaraderie in street-level sports, and responding to external stimulus by making videos under lockdown. We talk about living with butterflies and Lana’s video 'Virus Butterfly', 2020. We talk about Lana’s continuous project highlighting the hostile, wild and contradictory in the domestic environment. Lana describes making shape within a space, bringing in the audience and retaliating against voices of authority. We talk about Lana’s piece ‘Painting the Roses Red’, 2017, about it’s sources, Labour and Grenfell Tower, and the call to remain angry. We talk about the beauties of video, and relationships between installation and painting in Lana’s practice. We talk about the performance 'x days ante, y days post, and the partum in between’, 2017, and the significance of the presence of her child. We talk about bits of the body, mounds, functions, and intrusions. We talk about the placenta. We talk about her exhibition 'Making Babies' at Lungley Gallery which closed early due to lockdown. We talk about writing about your own practice, about stories between objects, about a diaristic approach and about sculpture speaking or not speaking its meaning. We end on teaching as a way to collaborate, open water swimming and dependency on supportive structures in the time of lockdown.

Links:

http://www.lanalocke.com/

http://lungleygallery.com/lana-locke/

https://vimeo.com/user57877946

Image:

Lana Locke, Painting the Roses Red. 2017.

Tom James and I talk about being exhausted, kids, childcare, carving out 10 minute art time, chores, wiping and beard growing. Tom tells us about his forthcoming project, Absolute Beginners, a proposal to create a new factory where young people can learn to make basic goods in an off-grid, future-proof way. We talk about planning for when the economy collapses, about being half sad and half funny and getting the tone right. We talk about having alternative ideas of how to live from within the world of clingfilm. We talk about the Future Manual, being hopeful and hopeless, infiltrating the art world and creating a vehicle for writing. We talk about starting fires and catching rabbits. We discuss the future, how far away it is and what it might feel like, and the need to learn something physical, opening up a real space to talk about how it feels to make things. We talk about the joy of eating with loved ones, together, and learning how beautiful London could be.

Image:

A NATIONAL RABBIT CATCHING AND FIRE STARTING TOUR OF THE SOON-TO-BE-FORMER UK, 2016. Rabbit-catching workshop in a field near Llwyngwril, Wales.

Links:

http://www.tom-james.info

Harold and I talk about not knowing what to say when someone asks you how you are feeling and the horror, tragedy and subsequent activism and protest of this week. We wonder on if the scale of the reaction makes this different from previously normalised aggressions. Harold talks about Maxine Walters, the democratic party politician in the US and talks about the need for systemic change. We talk about how to be creative at this moment, and Harold describes taking time to upload and speculate. We talk about anxieties of the relevance of works and ideas now and how to apply things that may have been incubated now for months. We talk about the postponed show at the Welcome Collection, which looks at happiness as a social construct. We touch on 'Joy inside our tears', Stevie Wonder and dance in relation to trauma. We talk about Harold's personal archive of references, drawing from important milestones in culture and key icons such as Grace Jones. Harold talks about being drawn to feminism's particular strategies and challenges to given ideas of representation. We talk about the plurality of the positions of teaching and education as a process of exchange, as a relationship to structures of knowledge and as a mode of dissemination. We talk about being given the opportunity to do a PHD. We talk about Harold's nascent discovery of Brecht and how it informed the materialisation of the audience. We talk about being a latchkey kid and living in your imagination. Harold talks about realising he did not have a materials based practice and using the specificity of a given location as a way to tackle anxiety around this. We talk about the social usefulness of art and the rookie as a position of agency. Harold goes into his description of the 'black universal' and musical examples as a toolkit. We end on connectivity, grazing through reading and playlists and wandering through online space and reinforcing working methodologies to atomise things.

Image:

Covers, After Grace Jones. Island Life. Photo, 2015

Links:

http://www.haroldoffeh.com

http://boldtendencies.com/open-call-from-harold-offeh/

http://turf-projects.com

https://eastsideprojects.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnxHnkpmyhI (Short Maxine Walters Interview)

Milly Peck and I talk about being back in the studio after what felt to her like an interminable long weekend. We talk about crazy paving and marking time by making paths with rubble. We talk about graphic gaps and borders around things and hating soil and ski gloves. We talk about drawing and Milly gets into the drawings she's been making as an opportunity to explore things she wouldn't in sculpture. We talk about playing with shadows and not still life. We talk about how Milly works site specifically and how she relies on using the memory as stand in for looking too much. We talk about her process of cutting things away, off cuts and graphic shapes and touch on how she uses paint, which came in handy when her mum spilled wine on her work! We talk about fake food, going through the motions and beveled edges. We think about the objects and motifs that appear often in her work - things with volumes that can contract and expand. We mention function, the genius of Alan Ayckborn and stage sets. We talk about the visual mind map on Milly's studio wall joining the dots between Edward Hopper, Mantegna and comics. We end on dogs keeping you normal and being good on your own.

Image:

Untitled. Drawing made in lockdown. a3 size 29 x 42cm. Coloured pencil on paper

Links:

Www.millypeck.com

@millypeck

http://www.vitrinegallery.com/

http://www.eastbristolcontemporary.com/exhibitions/023/

Matt Ager and I talk about plodding along and where he should have been - in Aspen, and Mexico and Maine. Matt talks about being a fidgety person and being thankful for his studio, which he can still go to. We try to talk about Skowhegan, the Residency Programme, what it is and why it is so marvellous. We talk about being given permission to make the work we are making from the artists that have gone before us, and the ideas of content vs intent. Matt describes making feelings based works, relying on found objects and collecting textures. Matt talks us through his large box of stock materials that he is working through, thinking about simple gestures, waltz rhythms (1,2,3) and ideas of display. We talk about comfort and teetering between function and non-function. Matt talks about treating his work like a relationship and decided that he should date his work more often. We chat about the dowel, setting up problems to solve and disingenuous Tromp L’oeil. We end on cooking as a release and coffee rituals.

Images:

Easy Rack (2019) - Plastic, Ceramic, steel and dowel.

Links:

https://www.sun-dy.com/exhibitions/matt-ager-oh-i-know-why.html

http://lungleygallery.com/matt-ager/

http://galleryhigh.com/maaffiliates

www.mattager.com

@matt.ager