Interview with Tim Barnes

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST TIM BARNES

Tim managed to find time to answer a few questions between various sound distractions

You would I believe describe yourself as a kinetic sculptor. Can you describe your practice to me?

I am a kinetic sculptor, or kinetic sound sculptor to be exact. I have spent the last year searching for a material that is both dynamic so as to be continually surprising and engaging but also critically robust and creatively fruitful. (A plane flies overhead) That material is sound.
A painter usually cannot paint without moving something and the role of movement in my kinetic work is just as necessary, only automated to continually produce a sound. My work is made to invite an attentive listener and is often very quiet and considerate of silence. (Door closes) I feel an artist who uses sound must not forget the silence and should not interrupt it unless they have something better to articulate.

Your work has a powerful emotional effect on the viewer; something is shared between the sculptor, sculpture and spectator. Is the emotional response intentional or a happy bi- product?

Some people might talk about the humour in a work or bring some kind of emotional significance to the situation but this is really just baggage. (Rattling in the wall cavities) I believe in some ways that artworks can be like terminals or depositories where thoughts and ideas can be left or collected, perhaps revisited.
But I think listening is an immensely personal act. Critical listening places the perceiver at the centre of the universe.

I believe that you sometimes pine to be a painter. Do painters have an easier time within the larger art world?

I suspect painters have an easier time in general, but it doesn’t bother me being someone who sculpts. I am however a little envious of the format of painting, (Telephone Rings) but the dynamic surface eventually closes down towards something finished. If it was impossible to finish a painting then I’d paint. It’s partly the idea that a painting can be finished that I find unsatisfactory about painting.

As a sculptor the environment in which your art is seen must be very important. How do you feel about your work being exhibited in a disused garage space? Do you think context is important?
I think as long as the art works aren’t parked in the garage space, we’ll be alright. I consider more than most the auditory environment, what sounds have the potential to interfere with or modify my work in some way. Usually this is not a problem.

Your sculptures are kinetic and by definition contain moving parts and also emit sounds. One might imagine that the computer screen would be a compatible medium. Is this so?

The medium of the computer screen is such that it does not allow my work to be engaged in the way I want it to be. My work is centered around the listening body and there is no opportunity for a bodily, reciprocal exchange through the screen.

Do you think there will come a day when there is no longer a place for ‘real’ art in the ‘flesh’?
(A pen rolls off the desk and falls on the floor) I don’t think so. Ideas involving the occasion, the body or the installation, these all require a live audience to appreciate it fully.

Finally; What does your screen smell like?
It smells like it’s over heating.

Interview with Josue Borgues

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST JOSUE BORGUES

Josue’s words came to us across the ether via satellite.

Could you briefly describe your work?

I model in wax, interpretations of the human body and I combine them with prosthesis as false teeth, glass eyes, etc. and also with industrially made objects as pipes, springs, and so on. The results are quite humoristic hybridized creatures.

How is sculpture different to painting? Was your move toward sculpture anything to do with enhancing the viewer’s encounter?

In my case sculpture expresses more eloquently ideas related to the human body, we are mater and as such we are three-dimensional, I find easier to talk about the body if I create one, if I touch and model with my hands.

Have you ever exhibited in a space like this before? Can you say how it might affect your work?

Not like this one really, I don't know how my pieces will read in the Garage Space, but I am looking forward seeing how this rather urban and alternative can change things.

Do you involve a computer in your work and if so how is it used?

Well, I often google anatomical images that helps me remember some details of the body I had forgotten. I also use my computer to listen to music while working.

We asked him what his screen smelt like and are still waiting a reply.

Interview with Sasha Bowles

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST SASHA BOWLES

In opposition to Sasha’s preference of all things in the flesh, we interviewed her by e-mail

A painting carries the suffix ing, denoting a verbal action that might propose a process of interpretation and understanding in the mind of the viewer. How then might this be compromised when documented on a computer screen? Does painting simply become paint?

I think it is worse than that. The paint doesn’t become anything. It loses all quality of being paint. You are just looking at an image. There is no scale, no medium and no presence of the artist. A barrier is formed between the viewer and the work.

What the computer and our digital age seems to produce is a constant changeability. Thousands of images can be stored, carried around and viewed on an ipad for example, but how can this be rivalled by the permanence of a single painting?

A single painting seen in the ‘flesh’, is much more powerful. It is real, you can feel the artist, you can see the marks they have made. A painting is not a flat back lit image; it is tactile and an object, it has its own entity. The idea that images can be seen anywhere at any time undermines the importance of a painting and dilutes its significance.

To exhibit in a garage space is a gesture that might suggest a desire to confront a sort of tangible, almost nonfictional reality. Might the art objects become absorbed into this realm as well?

I think where you exhibit does change how the work is interpreted. To exhibit in a garage without any of the usual white walls or pretences of a gallery space is very exciting and means that the work has to stand up for itself. You may find that the environment overwhelms or undermines the work, but it will also ground it of any pretensions.

What is the point in moving when one can travel so magnificently sitting in a chair? What would you like to say to all the sofa surfers out there?

Sofa surfers should find the time to get off their fat arses- come and smell the art.

I wonder if the painter’s desire for a live audience matches the sculptor’s. The screen presents a sculpture as a bite sized package, too small for a bodily exchange. The painting although condensed regardless of its size, is reproduced at the expense only of its object, not its image. Is painting’s exclusivity towards the surface an advantage in the mechanical age of reproduction?

Painting may have an advantage over sculpture in reproduction terms as usually only one view point is needed. However your term ‘bodily exchange’, is very poignant as I believe to be in the presence of the painting, to stand where the artist has stood is very important, if not essential. The images on a computer screen all begin to look the same, one after another flashing before our eyes, tweaked and edited for our ease.

It is almost better to have seen a reproduction printed in black and white than on a screen, because your expectation of the real painting is more obviously removed from the original.

What does your screen smell like?

I would have to say paracetamol as I feel a mild headache coming on.

www.sashabowlesart.blogspot.co.uk

The Speakers Profiles

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

THE SPEAKERS

JEFF DENNIS

Jeffrey Dennis was born in Colchester, England, 1958 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, 1976 - 80. He lives in London. His past paintings have embedded glimpses of contemporary urban life within landscapes, an organic matrix which seems to offer the potential for continual mutation and evolution.

He recently wrote about his paintings: My work is rooted in the daily experience of the city: how people move around, inhabit spaces and make sense of their daily routines. Of particular relevance to this and to the structure of my paintings are the ideas of proximity, contiguity and adjacency: these terms express the abrupt collisions of incident and thought, the habits nurtured by travellers and inhabitants to protect personal space and the interrupted narratives of encounters and conversations. The paintings themselves provide a fluid, mutable net to hold narrative fragments and connective elements in place; a landscape corresponding to the fragmentary mental maps which people construct in order to give their existence some measure of meaning.

He has been a tutor in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford (1991-7), and Chelsea College of Art and Design (1990-2012)


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THOMAS CUCKLE

Thomas Cuckle studied Curating at the Royal College of Art where he co-curated a major exhibition of film and video artist John Smith. He is Gallery Manager at IBID PROJECTS, a commercial gallery based in Hoxton Square.

In September 2012 Thomas will open Kunstraum, a project space with a focus on showing artists from Western Europe.

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ANNA BAKER

Anna Baker is a UK based artist. Her work examines the notion of the party. Amassing energy, collecting, grouping in order to improve, impress, alter, intimidate or overwhelm. Events devised by, with and for groups of people deal with the invitation as concept. The following rhetorical formula is tied up in the work: to achieve a celebration - to celebrate an achievement.

Anna graduated from Camberwell College of Art with an MA Fine Art degree in 2011. She previously studied at Goldsmiths and Cardiff School of art. Researching art education and the possibility of education as art, Anna has devised pedagogical events including the Joya participatory residency, led with Lois Farningham, The Breakfast Sessions at Camberwell College of Arts and The Sculptural Draw Off with Goldsmiths College and Havering Sixth Form College. Her work has recently been shown in Overview at Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium and in Back-Drop for Monica Jaeger, Sic! Raum fur Kunst, Switzerland. She is currently a Graduate Fellow at CCW and is a manager at The Woodmill Gallery and Studios.

Interview with Matt Gee

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST MATT GEE

We managed to catch Matt at a rare moment when he wasn’t lugging luminous plinths or great swathes of velvet across London on public transport.

Can you describe your practice please.

I’m interested in the dichotomy between nature and the man-made, synthetic materials juxtaposed with natural materials, and natural materials that look like fake materials. That transition between crafting something natural out of something natural or crafting something artificial out of something natural. Or just presenting something natural that looks artificial. My practice has something to do with capitalism – and I know that’s a big word – but in terms of desire and what society wants rather than what it actually needs, and taking natural resources but not really appreciating where it comes from, just seeing it in the shop window.

Have you shown your work in a space like this before? What other unconventional spaces have you shown work in before?

Yeah, in fact last month I was in this exhibition called On Fire in Vauxhall’s old fire station. That was kind of similar. It had been cleaned up, but it was an extremely vast space and on the private view there were quite a lot of people but it still felt quite empty because it was such a huge space. But the garage is kind of more grimy in a different way, and harder to work with, but that presents new opportunities I think.

How do you think your work fits into the wider cultural scene now, like from Youtube to television to… everything.

Well my work refers to this materialistic world, this kind of popular culture world, but it doesn’t come out in a visually explicit way in my work. If it was a spider diagram it would be two arrows rather than a direct arrow, you know… It’s very art object based, not really like ‘commercial-world-in-a-gallery-context’, it’s more like ‘commercial-world-to-art-object-to-gallery-space’.

Do you think your work looks better in photographs or real life?

It’s funny because a lot of people have said that, but most of them haven’t actually seen my work in a gallery context. I think it does, but I think a lot of sculptors are like that. I like work like Tim Head’s, cropping the viewer’s gaze into a photo format so they can’t be distracted by the things around them.

How much of your time is taken up by checking emails, facebook, twitter etc. compared to actually making work?

A lot, recently, because I’ve had quite a few shows on. I’d say about fifty percent of it is actually admin, fifty percent is procrastination. Like the fact that the internet is so vast, there’s so much on the internet, you can’t help but get distracted. I waste a lot of time online. It can give an artist the upper hand if they just submit themselves to the online sphere, using social networking and so on, but there’s so much it becomes a bit superficially spread out. But it’s important not to neglect. (Matt’s phone makes buzzes.) Because I mean even like fifteen years ago artists didn’t have that advantage.

But does that make it harder because you’re not the only one with that advantage? Everyone uses it, if you don’t you get left behind.

Yeah it’s true. It’s a shift in who the audience is because everyone’s a participant… (Distractedly looks at phone).

That’s fine, you can check your message.

Ha yeah, I’m actually texting about some images I’m getting printed. Yeah, if you don’t jump on the bandwagon you’re going to get left behind. I still think the most important way of promoting yourself is physically showing, as you can’t get the same message across digitally. Like this problem I’m having at the moment with DPI, getting the image big enough – the problem that I’m having today never really crossed my mind before. Digital hitches and glitches like that, where you’ve got this image online and you want to print it A0, but you can’t without losing the quality of image.

So what’s the future for art?

I don’t think it’s like online because I think that online exhibitions are not very substantial or meaty…

Or good either.

Yeah they’re not very good, but I think in the future there’s going to be a kind of flip side. Everyone’s a bit negative at the moment but I think in ten years time we’ll look back and see that we had something in 2012 that’s not there any more. A certain kind of freedom. Especially in an academic context, as tuition fees change and art education becomes more elitist, financially. I think there’s definitely something good going on at the moment. We just don’t know what it is because we’re so submerged in it.

And finally, what does your screen smell like?

I prefer to feel things rather than smell things. It’s a nice kind of velvet stone. I just want to stroke it.

I read that they are developing a touch screen that senses when your finger is on it and sends little impulses, like a little poke, so you can feel different textures.

Sounds great!

Yeah but as with all these things, it will probably just be used for practical jokes. Like: ‘here, have a go on my new app’ - spike through your thumb.

(Laughs loud) Yeah I liked the idea of smellovision, but touchovision would be great.

Interview with Phil Elbourne

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST PHIL ELBOURNE

As I interview Phil, he is wrapping torn strips of canvas around books.

I have heard you say when asked to describe yourself; that you reply, ‘I am a painter’, and then apologise. Is this true?
It is, because, I think that’s where painting is at the moment. It’s that a painting is always about painting. It is always a painting of a painting. So it always has that self awareness. I think to be a painter you have to have that same self awareness, a self depreciation – to say I know that this is out moded, it is irrelevant but I am still going to do it.

Is there a place for painting anymore?

Yeah. Well like I say....

We are interrupted by the loud ringing of someones mobile phone. Phil walks over to where the sound is coming from. A silence falls. He walks back. ‘ I smashed it’, he says.

I re-ask the question: Is there a place for painting anymore?
I think it is really interesting that when you look at the history of human civilization, there’s like painting. Painting is one of the oldest things that sort of like, when we became humans we started painting and it’s really interesting that at the same time we became humans when we discovered fire. I think there is a really interesting analogy to be made, because we still use fire and you know, but we use it in a more controlled way. So for example your gas fire, hob; to light it you turn on a switch. When you light it, it becomes fire, but it is controlled. And I think painting is something similar. Then there is this thing of sitting around the camp fire and it’s really beautiful to just watch the fire as fire. I think there is something about that in painting. It is so old; it is something that has been with us since we were aware of our situation as humans and it will never stop being relevant.

So you feel painting is much more controlled now. Are you a control freak?

Phil laughs, ‘Yeah’, laughs, ‘No’. It is about how much you control isn’t it? And it’s about how much you appear to be in control.

So do you switch it on and off like the hob?
Yeah? Yeah!

Is that how you feel when you are painting- that you are switching it on?

No, it is more like you know when you light a bonfire and you are in control of it, but it is raw and it’s like there, but you have put rocks around it to keep it in. It’s that sort of thing. But the real thing about painting or it can be; is it is all about control. Isn’t it?

For you it is.
It is about how much you give. But for me also –when you have made a painting, you don’t control it anymore. As soon as you step away from it you are no longer in control. It is the viewer who is in control.

I nod in agreement.
It’s like I was reading about icons, Catholic, Orthodox icons. The painter when they finish the painting, they’ve spend ages on it, months on it. It is beautiful, like gold leaf, all the pigments, everything is perfect. And then as soon as they finish it they put it on the wall and make sure they are the first person to worship it.

And it is that kind of thing as an artist, that you make a painting and then you are the first viewer of that painting.

It is really exciting I think.

Your practice also involves video and 3D work.....

Here the recording is accidently switched off, although our conversation carries on unrecorded...until finally I ask.

‘So what does your screen smell like?’

Phil takes his phone out of his trousers and gives a small sniff.

‘Pocket’, he says.

Interview with Ralph Anderson

WHAT DOES YOUR SCREEN SMELL LIKE?

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST RALPH ANDERSON

 

We spoke to Ralph Anderson at his studio in Wimbledon. He was standing on a chair, attending to the top of a large painting while we spoke to him.

Can you describe your practice in a few words please.

Painting. Kind of abstract realism.

Have you shown your work in a space like this before? What other unconventional spaces have you shown work in before?

A bit like this, yeah, I’ve shown my work in lots of rough and ready spaces. The most unconventional space was probably an old cricket-training-run-shed on top of a school, that was quite odd.

Wow, did your work relate to cricket in any way at the time?

No.

How do you think your work fits into the wider cultural scene of today, the 21^st century, 2012?

There’s a lot in my work about painting that’s been and gone and painting that’s around now.

What about the wider sort of cultural thing that involves everything from X Factor to Youtube…?

In a wider sense, there’s a lot of science that influences my work, and the advancement of knowledge. Like the discovery of outer space, the Hubble telescope… I think that’s where my work fits into the wider contemporary culture. That’s kind of an inspiration for my work.

Are you talking about those sort of ‘popular science’ books, you know, the sort of novel-size paperback, and TV programmes with that bloke out of that band?

Brian Cox.

Yeah him. And I notice you were reading Dawkins…

Yeah, a bit of Richard Dawkins, magazines, current affairs. Not really any in depth journals… I don’t have time for that.

Do you think your work looks better in photographs or real life?

Half and half, that’s what interests me about the show’s title. For example this painting here (he points at Future Space Plains, 2012) comes across better online I think. There’s no reason for me to make this painting that way, specifically for online viewing, but your attention span online is very short, so getting something very bold and snappy is quite important. But that wasn’t really my reasoning. Black and white seems to come across a lot better than my coloured work online, I don’t know why. But I’m quite happy with that.

Staying on the internet for the next question: how much of your time is taken up by checking emails, Facebook, Twitter etc. compared to actually making work?

Not much compared to making work. If I’m in the studio I do at least 8 or 9 hours painting in a day, while I’ll only go online for about an hour, tops.

You’re not on Facebook are you?

No.

Twitter?

No.

Do you even have a computer?

I have got a computer. Which I do writing on, and emails, but that’s about it. I’m not an online socialite.

What’s the future for art?

You want me to predict the future?

Well why not, predict the future for us. Go on, have a go.

Well England are going to lose tonight. [It was England vs. Ukraine, and actually England won 1-0.] And what’s the future for art? Don’t know. Same as. More painting, more sculpture, more of the same. (Chuckles.)

And finally, what does your screen smell like?

Liquorice.