Show notes
This conversation with artist Richard James Hall was recorded and broadcast for the Slack's Radio residency as part of Blazing New Worlds at the NewBridge Project in January 2022.
Discussion topics include:
• performance art, drawing, creativity, video, Instagram Live, curating
• disability, autism, bodies, being queer
• engagements with other artists such as Sally Madge and Victoria Gray
• the arts in Newcastle upon Tyne and North East England
• being a member of NewBridge
Image from Dick’s ‘Crossing the Summer River’ performance in 2016, photo by Arto Polus.
If you enjoy this chat, please give it a good rating and share it with a friend!
Auto-captioned videos on YouTube.
Recorded using Zencastr on 19 January 2022 and Audacity on 8 February 2022.
Edited by Paula Blair with Audacity.
Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.
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Transcript
hello and welcome to the audio facial cultures the podcast part eight year host Paul let Blair investigate different areas of film media at the arts and cultural production in this episode I am delighted to share with you a recording I am me it's with Newcastle based artist Richard jams hold for the Sox radio residency at the new bridge project a budget which you can find more information by following the links in the show notes wherever you're listening to this deck is a very dear friend of mine and a big supporter of this show and I've been wanting to do a recording with them for awhile so this was a really lovely way to go up by that and I'm really grateful to you you bridge and socks for the opportunity if you'll recall take featured on our special remembering Sally match episode last autumn and it's great night to talk said tech personally up by their own practice which is largely through process and performance arts and if you've been missing for a while you know that to bake and tracks if mine is live performance art so before I pass over to our past selves %HESITATION past pastels huge thanks to all our listeners and said are very generous benefactors over at Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures all of you thought make doing this and my very busy January with all of these recordings furry purse while if you love what I'm doing with the show and she can't manage to support the work financially I'd really appreciate it a positive review and rating for every access a podcast and a based on your socials which also be rainy rainy appreciated I'm so grateful when people say that it really means a lot but if you can manage even just a one off if you quit I'd be so grateful for that you can see that so radically on our lovely upgraded website funded by our patrons audio visual cultures dot com where you can also sign up to our mailing list to receive our free monthly newsletter Anthony episodes notifications streets to your inbox as well as access transcripts and generally get more information and thanks for everything to do with me on the show so %HESITATION finale before you run off and deal of science I want you to really enjoy this insightful talks with Dick James hall I know I really enjoyed all my talks Richard GM's hall thank you so much for joining me thank you so much for inviting me Pola it's great to catch up so my first question would you be happy T. describe your practice for everyone in the short term I would say I am a performance artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne the longer way about two days I'm a performance artist who also does I think kinds of whack on the side and has come from a tradition of improvised sectional performance but also realizing and having to think about now the factor of how much being on the autistic spectrum being clear being fast teams and affects myself and the world around me it's a very strange questioning them having to go for you and I'm constantly questioning myself which makes it very hard to think about projects and to be honest practice supplies some just like taking it day by day week by week yet I yes it's a really long time gentle point about that's about how I would describe my practice so follow me thanks I've had the privilege of being able to see your live performance and the before times when it is safe to gather but I also really enjoy aids over the lock time periods here experimental weapons say performances on Instagram life and I think those are where you really explored a lot of those kinds of same set you just flagged off their bite identity and taking up space and moving through space yes and playing with all Jackson just the life work but doing it to where it's calmer and I really enjoyed that a lot as well as those what else specifically would you say you've been working on recently and I think we can be very elastic about what we mean by Yuri sends a header what else would you say if the marking on because I know you do a lot of drawing as well I was doing a lot of touring and I kinda Hey this sort of roadblock because recently about a few months ago I was invited to do my fast performance the audience and %HESITATION via free is actually for no trace without resistance which was a memorial offend for the late great Sally mad shit and for that I was in a lab coat which I had to order in because I thought about wearing Sally's lab coat she was very very much smaller move me so %HESITATION Denton alab coach and that's not code seen some action button days before that offense including doing a trip from shields field on the bus where all the people that go in like keep away from me from the testing site %HESITATION I'm in the middle of town going through old charity shops because I was looking for China plates and China tea cups and all that %HESITATION center Johnston also a fantastic performance artist and I'm just like going through each charity shop going like no no and I'm ending up with this bunch of plates and all this trainer and I'm like going is this right it's cold cold trimming my S. but on foot up on the day itself I had a lint roller I had a few lane troll is some fine French chalk and I'm just proud of the day I was just rolling this Lynch rolled over the fan use cinema scenes because the venue itself is the star channel cinema and I'm just rolling away trying to cover up best hand the little bits of fabric you know about that slapped behind from use and it was interesting actually saying how much of the past is picked up by this this Dastis Moscow time which was very much a tradition that Sally match basically use within have practice which was to pick up on the mundane things and just celebrated so I did that for about five hours in terms of other things apart from being filled with some sort of mysterious bacterial and viral infection I saw a really interesting piece of performance work by another artist called Victoria gray no actually wrote it's very rare that I write in response to artworks but this one just struck me because she actually was addressing being on the autistic spectrum and actually being recently diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum which was really interesting to me and as I'm writing is an essential stuff and I re read it I'm going %HESITATION I'm picking up on stuff that I have experienced that's a few people who I have known have also experienced so in a way my practice is fairly elastic and recently I've also been waking up on the soldiers soft practice launch of a survey of seven matches where at parks docked was trying to install some heroic in waves stat isn't academically structures all institutionally structured but actually played about with SS you are the artists so I've been piling up cuddly toys into the corner of the room I've been trying to stand up cushions which demand select B. fold down benches constantly having this on off discussion about how certain things come alive with the artist's touch robin and perhaps the curatorial touch in Newton so I've been having a bit of discussion with a couple of other people about that about terminal the curators meant to care about classic and yet it's us the artists who actually seem to be showing the most cash and the most dynamic form of cash which is to actually bring to life those wax which was so enormous and also think about how it is the pro sets itself that brings those works to live it's not just like an institutional taxonomy saying process but that's a very this is also lead you can tell I've been doing an MA and hung around PhD student quite a long time because I have that critical for process that's really useful insight actually %HESITATION I really appreciate those ideas I think that's a lovely way of putting it as well as the idea of taking care of the arts not just putting it somewhere in San Mart like slicing no backseat carrying forests and the kitchen she's talking about it especially because they're fragments of fabric that Sally painstakingly closets together and they've been washed up on the shore so who knows where they came from and that speaks of clothes and things you know so they're very human I think her intention was to give some some sort of dynamism and slice and sterile different shapes and sizes just like humans are and there are no billion there by Katie and %HESITATION to silence some bets and just like humans are and they're coming apart sure there you there so soon together they're awful tough it's really wonderful to hear that you've been able to play with those and have thought life experience because I think that's where the passive performance already come site as when you play with things and you have the opportunity to play and sometimes that the material the G. and you facilitate rather than forcing it into something I think that's the key part of any sort to improvise ation %HESITATION performance practice it's all fine and well having the infection diet DHEA but sometimes you have to let yourself be led by the materials besides the people around you yes very much in a dynamic state it's very hard to actually stay static I had my is some artists who actually had to generational static way back but it's just so slow that the melts happens I've tried that once for an hour I couldn't do it I haven't got the practice or the patience for it I'm very much like a ten gentil practitioner eight eight something catches my interest %HESITATION I'm kind of old to okay that sounds really childish in a way that it's just my way of going about it I like the dynamism I like to be invigorated somehow but of course there's also moments where you have to take stock and you have to stand back and actually trying to go like this is no time to Lolo it's do you find that these are quite and cheered us processes C. just really listen to yourself and see what you need today or how much do you allow yourself to you to what extent the G. plan something before you go into S. or GHS have an idea and you see what happens I would say I have an idea it's very read that I has the overall vision of something it's much mall on the emotional scale for me there's no hard structures to really work with apart from perhaps the site itself there are some things you just can never fall so change you can't change your environment entirely without great pains to do so okay your materials there's a level of care with materials but there's also a level of understanding that once you do something destructive you basically kind of took away some fence original intent and you have to live with that and you have to clean up after that I flinch from experience that you have to take responsibility as a performance artist that in a way that you are having show cat to the site to the materials or understand that there is consequences once you destroy the materials people around you because people are unpredictable and there may be times where you may have to shift out a little bit from performance from one performance state to another state to react to another person who may be in the audience at the end of today yeah I also have to care for yourself because it's some nice and well when you have other people supporting you but sometimes when you're actually by yourself as I have been throughout some of the experimental Wednesdays and fraud some of the experiments of had done in public ground wax before you are basically having to take care of yourself and I understand what you need to do to recuperate all what you need to watch out full so there's a responsibility to the play as well and I feel like that's something I'm growing into because when you're young you're sort of slap dash thank god I actually was in a workshop ones and this kids basically interest was going off on one ninety actually was just like destroying everything around him and asked the end defense because we let them go through this let him do what he did and at the end of it I just basically said to him in a way that was so exciting I have been in that place I have been in that destructive area but you have to be away and now that your destruction has caused the fact around you so in a way I was kinda kicking is I'll spend an assaultive caring way and I was trying to show a level of cab actually kind of going like I'm kicking your house right now but only because I want you to let but it because some people don't do that turned and maybe one of the few people to actually step up to the plate to go and make active in the market for yeah so thank you Spain a member of mu Prich for awhile but she sent me that there might be anything you've learned from being part of the French or any experiences you've had particulars Newbridge or is there anything you can reflect on a plate to share experience of being a member I would say as of any studio situation it varies from studio to studio I've been in some tight knit studios where I'm sharing one room with may be for artists or maybe sharing this massive garage with eight to eleven artists with no boundary points and it's interesting to me how new bridge festival in Laos the boundary space so that Joe's studio is your studio and that's something that's in some ways I've really crave tunes because I'm quite a messy studio hold I'm not eighteen Messi I had one studio member years ago and it was that this was the last straw for me we had a shed fridge need basically the last wild mushrooms in the fridge for about a week and when I open the fridge it's like no no well I actually had to get everything out to die frage check out the mushrooms and tried to clean up drive entire fridge and it still smells of mushroom sold the bleaching of acted I concluded it just was like nope bad smells not going what I'm finding less new bridge is for the fact that even for you may have separate studios there's still a community which I really appreciate I'm talking to artists who have just graduated from university and I'm like trying to get them like the little things look like yet try to keep you practice separately studios so you can at least keep up the momentum because we're meant to people who do with Todd courses and then they don't continue to practice you kind of lose the momentum any other use the want to box if you don't keep the practice up but it's interesting as well having talked in whack with members of staff at new bridge as well there is a level okay and there is a level of wanting things to change both within the studio settings but also in the wider spectrum of the community over the last few years especially since I've only came into new bridge September twenty nineteen and there's been times when members of that community has actually supported me when I have been at my lowest lows actually had her back to give me a call of a lockdown ones Rebecca Huggins I rector of new bridge and she basically just wanted to check in on me that's something that I don't think a lot of institutions usually do and I think that shows the amount of cash that's Newbridge shows towards since member is but of course sometimes members also push the lack a little bit and new bridge won't be afraid to choose basically co sought to shed her %HESITATION don't leave your stuff ready for us in this to start fires well I feel like it's also like it's a mix of training ground for recent graduates but also it allows space for older artists to work in a studio setting amongst the community especially with hollow space is a premium now especially in cityscapes and heads of studios outside of the city but it's usually people who have a little bit more money well a little bit more know how about how the infrastructure work ethics and I'm not quite at that place now financially or know how to actually kind of have a space outside yes but I really appreciate new brands on that level it's just a nice space it's somewhere where I would recommend any recent graduates to apply for especially if the local based I was wondering if you have any thoughts about aids the arts in new castle quite generally and across the northeast region that you'd be happy to share I mean you mentioned for example you branch being in shale fields and that's quite a recent maze and premises in the city centre but do you have any thoughts about it but the art scene so I can see what it's like in the city and in the region I would say Newcastle as to not seem itself is a fairly tightly nets group so there are times where there are people who I see two artists who I recognize but I don't quite know of but there's always that sort of thing off when you're walking down the street and you see somebody in your chest notes from the scene and you just give them the slight tilt open knowledge just to kind of go like I see it and because I'm not entirely beneficial me because sometimes if I don't get to tell took the note back when I gave the tilt of the knowledge back and it's like just like for the audio that was two flips of the birds that I think it's well in terms of new castle it is a little bit of a struggle at times because the northeast as a region has always kind of struggled with the odds because we've always been seen as like the leftover region in England itself if anything there are some people in other regions of England who actually consent to Newcastle in northeast actually be heart of Scotland yes so this these questions of like winter we'd be better off if we were in adopted by the Scottish oh do we have to really fight hard to win full funding but it's also back case of new castle has some of the free weights actually experimental work in because economically rent here is not too bad it's actually fairly cheap compared to some of the regions where it's small popular to live and it is it has produced some really great artists of the is what I'm finding as well as some of the great artists that I know of unknown only locally in this the likes of Carol Luby and Sally match for example who they're artists who are locally known and that my it locally but outside of the region it's very much like a nobody quite knows and I find that quite shocking I actually went down to the life of development agency in London I tried to type performance artists from Newcastle upon Tyne there was very little info we have a very rich history of performance and experimental %HESITATION it's shocking but it's also not shocking at the same time and you have to take it as it is you kind of have to take the fact to roles you can have a practice here but you may have to explore outside of the region itself just to get back in touch I will say people from Newcastle have a very good sort of hockey communities well we love to celebrate our own when one of our own actually succeeds in something well like yes yes and when maybe against attrition or something let sit self down what kind of like going gods why and they coasted with any sort of tight knit community there's also like a bit of gossip and chatting behind people's backs and it's even done lovingly or it's done with a bit of exceeding it even today anything like contact him sure well I'd like to spend a little bit team now and again okay so the laugh I'm not afraid to basically say to some people I have said to some fairly successful mid career artists bullshit I'm not afraid because I'm now at the point I'm very five I know I'm not going to be like famous all have the money I'm just being honest to myself to the community around me and also just kind of go in like time is precious if you're not going to be honest it sometimes leads to bad situations where is the honesty itself can actually be quite transporters and can help take away some of the egotism the one thing I will say is we can probably do a little bit more criticality but in the sense of kind of going like what being critical but in a supportive manner and I have said some things which I probably put me in the back big swells fewer people %HESITATION I've had a few conversations with curators just kind of going like really but it's just life I love it here it's the one place I feel the most me acts as I tried doing it down in London and London does my head in London's a place I know I have to visit at least may be recall kind that make I knew I had to visit the least once a year because it's just the way of the Welton but if I could help it I wouldn't go down Sutherland as much but %HESITATION I trying to also bring news of new castle to go outside of the region and just kind of go like come yes hello my pipe and done that's medic to pay you just have to scratch the surface a little bit and not be afraid of because sometimes we'll hang about in some of the dingy pilot sometime as well and just be like it's not this bad doesn't let X. I had one taxi driver tried to pick me up once a bank at me just was like well it's Raphael lake and I was like have you been in battle your chest list anywhere like that like I just went it's not that rusty and free and come through Russia places before and I'm just like this is a very thank you so much for this where can people find out more about you and your work query to point them towards online you can look me up on Instagram at St James hold because people also call me desk I call myself sometimes mistake mistake made today one day I hope to be doctor did they also and website I has W. W. dots judge James whole duct weekly dot com you might just want to type in Richard James hall artist of it and just give it a go that's what you know you're on the right page when you see somebody who's just like quite fast with long head and the first images like trust me I'm a slow going like the electorate for folks thank you so much thank you son upset pleasure I always love our tasks and it's not brilliant to have this proper a more formal chat with each day and I really appreciate it and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day thank you so much I hope to get disposable tea with you say please it Hey right I just wanted to see extend my thanks to check again for thanks and I hope that they'll return so that we can go into a lot more detail on a lot of those issues three is there because I think there are things that we started to touch on that merit a lot more dapps but I was recording this for quite a tight time slots so it was a fairly concise conversation so I thought I'd just take the opportunity nine AM I'm recording this in February doing a bit of time traveling because that talk was probably set the thirty year it was originally recorded in January around mid January %HESITATION as early as February and yeah it's really nice opportunity actually there are some Bach over these and reflect on them a little bit and take out some ideas on how you to maybe develop some more of these themes and issues that are coming up across these episodes the next one is going to be the third of the recordings that I did for the S. with Bethany stats so that's a really lovely conversation as well so please stay keep subscribe and then check out our latest file yes so I just thought I'd take a minute because that has been a fairly short bonds is just perfect about more and some of the observations I think there's a lot of crossover here with the professional and the personal three some of the things that tech was referring to there I'd really like take knowledge that we seem a bit snappy up by arch curators and more formal and institutionalized approaches to presenting wrecking galleries and exhibitions I mean I try to be really open minded but you know sometimes is laptop and I stepped up in this one of bets and probably come across is but negative and part G. T. not to create practices we encounters are Ryan the commemorative events for Sally match that we mentioned and those events took place in November of twenty twenty one and I just wanna be radiate beauty care every single person who works in all of those events in the exhibition and everything we all contributed to our time for for a the curators particularly that so out quite great personal cost to themselves and it was hugely stressful under very challenging circumstances I'm very limiting circumstances as well but on the other side of that they also didn't listen to the wishes of those of us who actually worked directly with Sally's pieces and I felt that they made some presentation decisions that they thought looked nice looked as good as they kids and the space that they were given but I think there were others of us he felt that these particular presentations of specific things were missteps I am being deliberately vague here I'm not naming things directly I'm not going to name many people I just felt that you know there were quite a few of us who have a lot more knowledge and understanding of the contacts the rind a lot of the work and physically works with them as well I did a lot of finishing of Sally's unfinished pieces not just me other people that that sort of work as well so there is a lot of very invisible labor that went behind getting the pieces ready for exhibition and also for Sally's physical archives and I just felt that the missteps and hi some of these representatives and the gallery it probably should at a potentially negative lights if your roof year he came in cold and you really engaged actively with the pace and sought its rate I don't think you have come to a very positive conclusion so again I'm being really vague but if you witness center if you seen images of it you might be able to work out what I'm talking about yes but I'm not gonna talk about it directly and there is a little bit of my thinking on this because I I do I wrote a blog post thinking three and she's around part labor and not something I've talked I talked at length with Sally about eats there's also a particular thing that happens with something I mean it's that I posted on my end my personal Instagram page so if you want to go to a gang you're welcome to go and hunt for those but I'm not going to thanks to them directly as I say I don't want to name any names and I don't actually think it's first ready to piling on too much and this is probably I hope the last probably talk about it thanks bye everybody who was involved contributed to with the opposite passive intentions and this isn't hello I think it's worse dying on edge is what I will say I think it's more it sparks rather than the personal it sparked more of an intellectual curiosity about art the upper and the worst of work and those are two things again all things I talk to bite off miss Holly and I keep bringing up on this podcast nobody seems to be getting the message not enough people are listening to %HESITATION maybe maybe everybody less since this gets the message and I need more of these people to listen and get the message so what I would like to say is that I would like to see more respect and consideration for art laborers are two workers and recognition that an artist might have their name on something but they don't necessarily make the work on and Sally's case that was different because she died she was making the work herself and then she died and so a bunch of us finished at or did something less the things that were and transaction but it's something I was thinking out about it a lot anyway with Sam you know sort of more bigger Anne am CMS artists he got loads of money thrown at them or make use of money in the right Sally wasn't one of those people but even still even just out workers doing that Leah Byrne but you I give a lot of my summer last year to doing the work of putting these pieces together and finishing things and I don't care about recognition but what happened in my case was that something of mine was actually destroyed so it's not to stop it you know I don't care about being raised in carpet being visible but something I actually made it and dead with my bare hands was destroyed in the process of this is the way it brandy spun me on a train of thought of thinking about partly uppers and our keepers here at once the CM mass and distinct from artists so this is an issue that was presented front and center and so much of Sally's work to the point that she did performances for what she need pen badges that sads flux worker on them and that was specific to you when she was responding three performance to the flux this retrospective oil tank and two thousand nine and this was a performance that perished but tech was talking about right there an artist's caring for other artists work to really extremes quite funny extremes but also she was provocative of thought and I'll link to some of that work in the show notes and so %HESITATION and turn that's what a few of the state for Sally spark in the year following her death we cared for her work I felt for a person a Costa Sally when I was working with her pieces you know I would have her some of her cations sitting on me while I closed them up and stop is very meaningful because it felt like a kid how good this thing that was part of her and it was very personal but that's not the peace and I'm really talking about aids I think the thing that was really hurtful for me on a personal level was set at an embroidered dedication of very small embroidered dedication I had put on one of the really large pieces I had made artistic bets Sally never called tape was baptized with light me being notified without being asked I turned up to the opening night and I saw that it was gone and I thought I was going mad and on the I had taken a photograph of it at home before I gave it away I knew I wasn't going completely mass on it I had actually so nice then on it was just wrapped ice I was completely gone it wasn't even discovered over it was just gone and so I think there's quite a few here sis because obviously it was personally a bet on the front but then it also files a lot more generally like in the front seat the visibility of the art worker and merging from the artist's shadow and this was something solely did quite a lot and her art she laid bare the process of the worker Ryan to making art if you listen back to my episode with her one of her performances cold making a mass and cleaning it up her whole performance is a bite you know she doesn't aren't working as pages and then most of the performance is actually her cleaning up the mess that she's made for the performance so there's a collapse of the artwork in the art labor and then what is performance and what is just cleaning up the collapse into each other and a very very tiny way this was something I was referencing was just to making the work Abed visible and mine of AC isn't terribly powerful and I wouldn't call him anything like that but it's just in my own little way doing something that I think Sally may have approved often that I discussed with her quite a bit not any other layers thought is that embroidery and needlework are considered as Croft's rather than art again this is something that has come up in the podcast before if you go back to one of our earlier episodes while Coulthard crafts this is something that me and my gas and not absolute talk about it at length as well as what's processes what methods are even considered to be arch so my hand stitched embroidered writing wasn't considered art by these curators and I mean I don't know they're thinking about it because I haven't spoken to me and that's that's part of the problem is that they've never communicated with me I spoke to them on the opening night before I had to realize what had happened and it just even speaking to them for a few minutes it was really clear that the result law they didn't know up by the pieces that I and another person had finished and the pieces that I it by myself had me it's the richest so much detail they didn't have and they have my email address I am easy to reach him easy to find I picked myself all over the internet I'm not hiding anywhere folks again there's a lot going on there so I don't want to just when you bite it too much but yeah so it got me thinking about eight not just for me in a personal level but for just those larger questions I think about it he gets to be an artist walk gets to be an artwork what gets to be an art pro sass you know I think we're still not answering those questions adequately with Sally staff there is no I. another lock and he is asking those questions through the work itself three the process itself and so I suppose I just really wanted to hot spot on because the remains no consensus on high any of these things can really be property defines and he gets said to find not and I suppose a presented us with the fact that there is still very stringent can't keep bang of the bi injuries Orion's creative practice creative practices and so I thought I would just sit through those extra observation site there and just ask you to think about I thought for a bit so thanks if you've listened to my little extra rumbled huge thanks again C. deck I hope that that's gonna stop by to my system thank you for this
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this is audiovisual cultures the podcast that explores different areas of the arts and culture of production with me paula blair visit patreon.com forward slash av cultures to find out more and to join the pod okay well hello i hope you’re ready for another audio visual cultures we’re going a little bit dark and possibly gothy with this one with my very special guest the artist and shirt designer slayer one artwork who is otherwise sometimes known as chloe gibson a very warm welcome chloe how are you doing today i’m okay thank you thanks for having me on um i love the fact he said about the gothic part as well that gives me a little bit of an internal internal theme great yeah when i was snooping around on your instagram it struck a chord because a younger me sang out there so i think we’ll probably have a bit of common ground with some of your interests where bites do we find you at the moment then i live in leeds art is sort of like my passion project it’s like where is like my actual work i work as like an i.t engineer really oh wow yeah so uh when people ask me what i actually do for a living it’s always quite a drastic change yeah and plus i don’t obviously get all that gothed up before when i’m going into work so like when people at work see that i designed shirts like what well i mean we’re all more than one thing so that’s really great i think oh yeah that bright is a of life in my opinion i’ve done so much i have so many different hobbies and you know it’s important to not see them as like fans or you know like temporary things it’s like you should enjoy your hobbies and if you get really good at them you just should do them just to enjoy them like i’ve done so much stuff in terms of artwork in terms of like other sort of hobbies and i won’t say i’m amazing at any of them but you know it’s about doing it for enjoyment that’s just it isn’t it yeah it’s doing it for your own love of it and what you get out of it and then if other people get something out of that too that’s even better that’s a bonus yeah definitely so you do quite a range of different things and the one that’s probably most bringing to mind and you and you mentioned there that you do design shirts you know you design artwork for t-shirts and stuff so maybe we could start there and then we can sort of unpick all of the things that you do and do your creative life i suppose we can say it that way yeah that would be really cool also um i think to say earlier when you asked me like where i were from i was genuinely surprised that you’re like are you from yorkshire because like unfortunately i don’t have a really nice voice i’ve got such a strong yorkshire accent like it’s beautiful to me oh man it’s just i always get jealous of everyone else because i’m like gosh i sound like a nice girl who’s been punched in the throat a couple times oh don’t say that i get really annoyed when people say oh come from lee’s and i don’t like my accent it’s gorgeous to me i love it i love all reason i mean i’m a nordie from another island but you know i love all the northern english accents they’re gorgeous to me i love it on other people it’s just like when i hear myself over i’m like i’m going to hear myself from this podcast and be like
sorry so like back to the shirts i’ve been doing artwork for quite a while but i think we’ll go into that later but um shirt-wise i started just started deciding to design them in the first lockdown so about a year ago yeah that was when i was like right i’m gonna make shirts and i’m gonna do it properly it’s gonna be really cool i never really had good art software or anything and i think the first ever shirt i did it was based like i’ve not actually posted it anywhere it was based off of a canvas um like a sphinx cat canvas i did and it was like pink with clouds behind it and a white cat in the middle and i read through that design and i printed it onto some white shirts and tie-dyed them just to see what it would look like see how people would receive them and like i still have a few of them and you know a few of my friends like us from and stuff but that was the first sort of drive i had to do shirts and it was like it was only like a little while in that i really came into my own with the designs i sort of wanted to do because i knew that sort of tie-dye wasn’t really me it wasn’t my style or my passion but it was like it was a step forward and obviously from then i was doing so you know i think i started off doing like uh ram skulls and you know different stuff like that i like i like my designs to be quite minimalistic in a way but also like it the sort of like detailed in a minimalistic way like you know there’s a lot of stippling going on there’s a lot of sort of small hints and i’ve always been really into that i just thought i didn’t you know it’s not like a money project for me at all it’s definitely a passion one just the fact that people like my shirts enough to want to wear them the fact that there’s people out there just wearing my stuff is amazing because i’m like oh gosh like you must really like it you know you don’t have to like people who don’t know you don’t need to you know don’t want to impress you just like oh i think it’s really cool and i want to buy it yeah they are quite distinctive oh i spent many hours as a teenager going to quite gothy shops and metal shops and stuff and you know hooking through the t-shirt racks and everything and they can become a bit generic you know and your stuff is so bespoke and although you might say very broadly there might be quite gothic themes darkness death maybe something to do with possibly the occult or something you cats with three eyes and all sorts of stuff there’s something still a bit different there’s a distinction to them i think the drawing element as well like you say there are details there that you can notice where do the ideas come from for the types of content in the drawings that you do and the prints that you do it’s actually quite weird when i say they just come to me it’s not like i’m just like walking down the road and i get a sudden bow of inspiration it’s like you know there’s so many amazing artists that i’ve seen and it’s like it’s sort of you don’t realize but it catalogs in your head really and at that point like you don’t realize you’re taking it in and because it’s sort of like all around you and all that stuff for it’s like you know when it comes to i think art inspires art so you know you have music tv shows actually and all that comes together i could just be doing something completely like pointless or i could you know i could be cooking i could think oh like in my head oh you know it’d be really cool this on this shirt or having this design like this because i feel like especially since i started drawing i’ve always had a lot of ideas just sort of pop into my head or i’ll see like see like a kitten like oh i want to draw a cat oh i need to think about how i want to draw this cat and i’m like oh i want it to have a distinct style with the neon cat it’s not really as gothic i could have turned it into a really gothic design i chose to make it like neon pink and neon blue because i liked the contrast between that and the black it’s just stuff like that mood as well i’ve noticed i get really good ideas when i’m really sad and i don’t have a drive to draw them at the time but i sort of take those feelings and i write them down i project them into my artwork later on you know there’s all sorts of stuff and sometimes i just think i thought i’d look really cool or i think about maybe a tattoo that i’d run i have like quite a few tattoos but i think about a total that i’d want and then i end up making a design instead and i’m like oh no it’s perfect as a design i don’t need that yet there’s a few artists there’s someone called danny rudy on instagram i’ve been tattooed by her a few times and she’s really quite an inspiring artist as well i’d seen her stuff sort of like again like when especially in leigh’s like there’s a lot of eyes who talk to each other and share each other and i just saw some of her artwork and it was really heavily stylized and i thought it was really nice i looked at stuff and i bought you know like a turret card commission from her i got a bunch of different sort of commissions from her when it got to owed by her and just her style in general i thought oh it’d be really cool to do like sort of like a ghost i think it was just like being in a tattoo studio seeing all this artwork around me i was like oh it really caught it like a ghost design because i’ve got like a tattoo somewhat up my wrist and i was like oh i really want to do it with some like japanese writing underneath specifically it’s like a baker which is like um it’s basically a generic term for ghost there’s a lot of different references in japanese culture towards ghosts and specific names so i had to make sure that it was like the correct one and this it’s just sort of like a generalized one it’s just sort of like that in general ideas just sort of come to me sometimes i thought that was a really long-winded answer for it oh it’s all it’s a podcast
it’s great that you have that headspace and just space to be able to play around with those things well um i actually i went to high school with like one of my closest friends called marty he actually does art as well so basically when we used to live together we used to sit and well even before we lived together we used to sit and draw together and his artwork is something that’s inspired me as well if you’ve wanted to look at his instagram or anything it’s like matt is a cop or matt draws he’s got two different ones but basically i’ve seen his artwork develop over however many years we’ve been friends and it’s cool because watching him get better and watching him change his style inspires me i’ve always been quite i’ve seen a lot of my friends like i could name so many amazing artists i’ve seen progress but especially him because i’ve literally sat and drawn next to him there’s endless photos of us drawing together and you know we’d sort of play it we’d put on an album and we’d just sit there and draw them we’d both come up with really cool stuff and something that’s really cool about that is we actually bounced ideas off of each other there was a tie-dye idea the first [ __ ] idea i had i spoke to him about it it was his sort of idea to do like a tie-dye design with like you know something else we spoke about that and that was really cool because that was sort of like his encouragement anyway like even like not really consciously like definitely contributed to like what i’m doing now especially like when you’re friends with someone you think are you know like they’re only saying it to be nice but when you have a genuine creative drive it’s really good because the people around you if they have one as well it’s amazing because i can help you with it gosh i’m trying to think of other like there’s a guy called ben redfield he’s another amazing artist there’s so many i met him at conventions when i used to go like little comic conventions and stuff some of his prints were like these like minimalistic bioshock or pc prints and i remember buying one for my sister and we’re really close friends it’s amazing i ended up going to the same conventions as a seller that i met him at when i was a buyer which again is really cool and seeing his stuff has always been a massive source of inspiration for me he actually it’s his instagram picture as well again he’s just called like ben redfield art something like that he did me like a massive skull piece and it was on a giant canvas and then when i first moved it was like a moving present and he spent hours and hours on it and then it was like half black heart part pink in different places and it’s i’ve recently moved again and that’s like one of the best things that i get to hang it up on there from room wall now like this amazing like sort of abstract skull painting it’s brilliant yeah again like i went like a really long way around it but it just really helps having people around you who are creative and also honest and can help you push yourself in order to like really go forward like my friend ben actually helped me with my latest design and i spoke to him about it because sometimes i think it’s really important to like not be really self-involved and be like oh you know i wonder you know does this look right you know does this help stuff like that yeah that’s so important even if you’re not directly collaborating with each other but just that collective atmosphere because that’s how we all improve isn’t it by speaking candidly with each other oh definitely i’ve actually i’m actually like um sort of an art group with some of my friends um again i have so many art friends from so many different places all of them are amazing artists my friend rich mulholland he’s a really good artist as well and i knew him since i was quite a bit younger and we used to go over and we draw together and then you know start like play guitar with pink war on my stuff and again he’s someone else who like keeps progressing and progressing again i’ll send stuff to him we have like a little group chat that we call our family and we’re all like artists in there and again there was a guy who tired me called matt he’s really good huckleberry hank i think he’s still cold i can’t remember on the you know like when you’re talking like i can’t remember what everyone’s called it but yeah i’ve got so many amazing artists with people in my life to like really help me go forward my boyfriend’s really good as well he’s not like he does draw definitely and it’s cool because he’s like starting drawing on me quite a bit and he’s like oh i’m not that good but like he’s actively helped me with some of my designs i’ve done recently and it’s really cool to have people around you who are creative and encourage creativity rather than eat do adult stuff you need to do this all that yeah that’s it we get untrained quite quickly i think quite early on in life well that’s for kids drawing and coloring pencils that’s for kids now you have to be a proper grown-up and go to university and you can’t do those little doodles anymore and that sort of stuff i think it’s been great that there’s been a bit of a resurgence of adult coloring and people being encouraged to just sit and draw it doesn’t matter if you think you’re any good or not but just do it you know just get that creativity out of you because we all have it we just learn to ignore it i think absolutely definitely because when i started drawing like there’s always this misconception that drawing is natural talent it’s not because when i first started drawing i mean like in like not like a kid doing random drawings like i didn’t draw consciously for ages it wasn’t until the end of high school which like in terms of all my peers it was really lit and i remember being like i really love comics and i want to draw comic stuff i don’t care if i’m bad i want to practice and get better and better and that’s exactly what i did i’m not you know i won’t say i’m a perfect size by any stretch and i’ve got so much to learn and so much i could go into that’s the beauty of it because i never had this pre talent made it was all down to hard work and commitment and just really trying and i’ve done like loads of different progress pictures of stuff i’ve done when i was younger my grandma used to be amazing she used to be amazing for sort of encouraging me like i used to show her really like bad drawings like i look at them now and like they were straight up bad my grandma she didn’t even understand what most of them are because it was sort of like and she black oh it’s amazing it’s the most it’s so beautiful you’re so talented you’ll be a famous artist one day and like like she was probably one of the nicest people i’ve ever met and it’s a it was so cool to be able to have such a light as well supporting me when she could like even my shirt so i mean unfortunately she passed away recently but uh she had managed to see some of my shirts and stuff which were amazing she was saying how great at the war and it’s just it’s so cool like i’ve got you know such great support from people i mean and i have a twin sister and she’s not really into art work isn’t like drawing and stuff but she’s really into comics and she’s always been really really supportive especially when because like unfortunately not everyone is going to support your passions and not everyone’s going to be nice to you because unfortunately it’s not that nice of the world i’ll always make a point of trying to be great so anyone who wants to talk to me you know if anyone have wanted to message me about artwork or message me about anything like i’m pretty open to stuff like that i’ll help anyone but like my sister she’s amazing she’s always supporting me with my work and even then it’s like similar to my grammar it’s like i feel like i could have shown her something really bad and she’ll always look for the good in it and she’s like oh you know this is so good because of this you know she’s even like bought some of my shirts off me and it’s like oh god like you know you’re my sister i don’t want you to buy him and she’s like no i’m buying him but yeah she’s had loads of my art over the years and some of it i’m like oh god i can’t believe i did that no i love it just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean either but yeah i think having people around you who support you and people who really value you as a person and value your hobbies are really good i haven’t known to support you i think especially if you want to start drawing or you want to start you know stuff like that just watch some videos on youtube that’s exactly what i did i watched some videos of just a guy drawing captain america and wolverine i sat in front of the screen and i just sat there and did it myself and it looked i was like oh gosh this actually looks really good i look back at now and i’m like oh maybe not but at the time i was like so blown away that i was like oh maybe i can you know draw and i’d sort of like even now that my boyfriend said through the day i was just i came in and i want to do a design and i sat down in the space of like a few hours like after work i just done a design and posted it and it was like i can’t believe that you just like you did all that just then like you just came in you’re like this is what i’m gonna do and did it and it’s like unfortunately not every day is like that but that was a particularly good day that is so great to hear that you’ve got that support network that really heartens me actually to hear that i’ve spent some time in leeds and it strikes me as well that even just leads as a city is really supportive of art you know and you’ve got some really fantastic galleries you know independent ones you little ones as well as the big ones like the henry moore institute and everything you know it’s just such a vibrant place for art in general you know so it’s brilliant to hear somebody having that kind of atmosphere and really able to flourish and grow in there that’s fantastic definitely it’s i mean i can’t say you know it’s it’s sort of like been easy but um definitely being able to have people who do because i’ve had you know the opposite end of the spectrum where people sort of knock you down it’s awful and you know when i started selling at comic conventions that was a really difficult time because you get like really harsh critics at that point um and it’s like oh you know like i’m just here to sell like my artwork i’m not here for you know for i mean i’m always open to critique anyway it’s just some people are just unfortunately not very nice i think you know especially when you’re around other people you should always want to encourage people because that’s i’ve always believed in like positive reinforcement or positive positive like pushing people you know like i’m always happy to criticize someone in a positive way if someone says tell me everything that’s wrong with this i was like well i will but as long as you let me tell you what’s right with it as well but yeah it’s great and also in leeds as well one of the amazing conventions i mean it’s moved to harrogate now but thought ball festival that was like an art festival and that was one of the first proper conventions i went to i used to go like religiously my best friend and my twin sister and my friend amy as well and we’d all go and just look at all the amazing artwork and it’s something we’d planned for like all year oh gosh there’s all these amazing comic artists and writers coming oh we need to do this we need you know we need to plan this and then we’d go there and just have such an amazing time to see such amazing artwork i actually met such a lovely woman called valentina and she ended up i think i met her at thought bubble and again she was her work was so inspiring that was another artist who’s been amazing to me she ended up designing my first ever tattoo she designed it for me and gosh she was so lovely and she’s helped me with my artwork as well and she’s bought one like she moved back to italy i like i miss her all the time but she moved back to italy and she still bought one of my shirts she was like i need one of your shirts you’re like i need one so i sent one over to her and oh gosh you’re amazing yeah support advisor i think i think it’s really important and personally i try to make sure that i’ll support anyone and everyone i mean i might self-deprecate but i don’t allow my friends or anyone else to create advice to self-deprecate that’s how it works in my arts but yeah i think especially if you’re wanting to start out just don’t be so critical of yourself that’s probably the advice that i’ve given to myself even now i need to follow that advice because people think that they have to be perfect straightaway we’re in a society where we feel like we have to do everything right the first time it’s not like that at all i’m sure if i’d given opponent i’ve done any shirts and shows a lot of people probably thought they were missing out and it’s quite warming to know that people really like my artwork even if sometimes i don’t like it as much like there’s so many people out there think oh gosh you know you’re really really good i’m like ah you know it’s not like um imposter syndrome a little be like oh yeah i recognize it well and it comes up quite a lot on the podcast actually is people trying to get over that hurdle of the self criticism you know and it can be almost to the point of self losing because you’re so anxious about oh i’m not good enough i’m not ready and it’s something even me myself i have to overcome you know you have to just there gets to a point where you have to just stop preparing and planning and you have to just try it and be brave and put it out there and stop thinking about it just do it anyway exactly as you say it can pay off because even if i think that’s a really great way of putting it is even if you don’t like it yourself someone out there is going to love it oh definitely i was always uh what’s the word i was quite apprehensive even now like i only recently started etsy because i thought you know if i started it see i just don’t want to do it and then if i don’t get any sales i’m going to be beating myself up but it’s like right okay you think about this logically like i’ve had loads of sales for a bunch of different people all i’m doing is making it more accessible to more people and so i thought right about again my boyfriend did a little bit of pushing and we got some really cool photos and we’d put it all up and i was like oh actually like i’m quite happy with that and i’ve actually ordered some prints recently if a couple of my designs just to put them on etsy and sell them just see what happens it’s like if i don’t sell them it doesn’t mean the body just means that i’m not getting them out there enough and i just have to keep pushing and keep doing designs and keep going yeah that’s where you have to get into the world of the seos and how to make your stuff findable because there’s so much stuff out there that getting it findable is the issue because the audience is there for it it’s just getting to them is the obstacle but i’ve had a look around your etsy shop and i mean it’s a really well constructed shop and your photographs or fantastic even just down to details like your lighting’s really great and your posing is really great you know and um the shirts look really well on you and stuff the designs just come up you know really clearly you know so it’s a really great looking shop as well so you know you’re putting the work in oh yeah definitely uh my best friend’s mum she’s like super gothy as well and i stayed with her for a while and she was really supportive of all my shirts as well like she’s always been quite um she’s just such a force of nature as well and it’s just amazing to like her support as well like i remember i first sent her like the first sort of photo shoot with my shirt so i didn’t she was like oh you look so beautiful you look so amazing it looks so good again the rehearsal part is absolutely amazing as well with the etsy shop i was quite nervous but with the support of my boyfriend and stuff i got it i was like you know what even if i don’t get any sales at all i’ve had one sale actually recently like i’ve only like recently recently started it but um yeah i got sale through that which were absolutely amazing and i think i’ve got a good review on it but either way it’s just it’s really cool how although i technically like physically did a lot of it myself it’s like just by other people being so supportive and nice and helpful it’s amazing there was a friend of mine called james and i met who saw like roommates and then one of them is called uh mike and he’s i remember he saw my artwork um he just like sort of added around to house he saw my artwork he’s like oh i’m actually working on a on a comic i ended up thinking some comic work for him which was such a big job for me it was amazing yeah because he’s another amazing artist and it was so cool to be able to collaborate with my friends like when people see you can’t work with your friends yes you can like you as always are the right friends yes you can it’s really cool to have had opportunities just this through people that i just know and i’m always about promoting my friends or bringing them up i’ve got i’m really lucky to have a lot of people in my life who are really supportive obviously there’s so many to list but a lot of them like my friend james amy who i used to go to thought bubble with like not all them that they’re all so they’re all really i think i’m just gonna say support i feel that’s the only word i can say that it’s just weird how like incredibly supportive they all are and it’s without taking like they’ll just give support just because they can i think that’s really important and i think a lot more people should try to be like that in terms of motivating the people around you because i you know i don’t have a lot of motivation for myself sometimes but i’ll always try to motivate the people around me because i think it’s amazing like it’s sort of infectious that’s what i found creativity and positive it’s all infectious around people and if you can try and be that sort of force when you can’t it really makes a difference yeah i think that’s a really another really important point socially i think as well as being taught to move away from the kid’s stuff in verdicom is we’re also trained to compete with each other and i think what you’ve said is just so important about actually you need to ignore that because that’s really awful advice and helping each other out and taking joy from each other’s little successes you know and to be a successful artist you don’t have to be damien hirst heights and you know be able to employ thousands of people to make your work for you and be a multi-millionaire you know successful artist can mean you’re getting by people love your work and you love your work or at least you love it enough to want to keep going and that is just so special you know i think you’ve just hit a vein of something so special and it’s so great to hear about it oh man like i’ve seen it in other places as well and then that inspires me like i said about when i was getting a tail by um danny the other other day i’ve met another one of the artists there before called tasha sasha welch is another really amazing tattooist amazing artist everyone there is there’s about four people in this studio called uh craw tahu and it’s like another leads one but i’ve never been to a tattoo studio and seen people so supportive of each other because it was like tasha danny steve lauren and like literally you’re getting tired by one person and then you know other people come over and say oh you’re smashing it you’re doing really good or the last for positive feedback and i’ve just i’ve not seen such a supportive atmosphere like so strongly as well it’s not like all they’re just walking past and looking over and like oh it’s all right so they actively come over and encourage people after doing it saying oh you’re smashing that out you’re doing this really well you know to me i find that really inspiring especially like because it makes me think oh gosh like you know i want to go home and draw like you know these people are all so good like you know i’d really love to you know do something like that myself that sort of thing yeah is that something you’d ever consider because i mean some of your artworks i think if you were into doing finer lines or something i don’t i don’t know i don’t have any tattoos i’m a bit ignorant about how it works but you know is that something that probably i imagine it takes quite a lot of training but do you think that’s something that you’d want to try to do or at least design tattoos at some point as well there was a point in time where i thought you know what i really want to do and i was looking into like apprenticeships and i was making like a portfolio of different stuff and then it was sort of like a thought i can’t really i need to like give absolutely everything like i can’t just because i mean there’s not a lot of funding in terms of talking and i have you know i sort of had bills prepared and i just thought gosh like what’s gonna really make me happy like because if i do this if i do this career i’m gonna have to give it everything like i have so much respect for people who tattoo and not only that with people who are such incredible artists like some of the ones i’m lucky enough to know and god the glitch had to put everything into it they’ve had to try really hard to get where they are and it’s like is that the path that i want to take i’m like i don’t as much as i’d love the idea of it i don’t think i’d be able to do it and i’m not saying that like artistically wise i couldn’t train myself or you know i’m sure that anyone can do anything if they put the mindset but it’s like i feel like for me i feel like it might not be the right path for me i actually want to do concept art for game design oh wow and when i first applied to uni i got into one of them but the other one i didn’t it’s i failed the portfolio stage so i showed him my artwork and they said you know what you’re not good enough to come in i remember that being like such a knock to my confidence i was like oh god this was a few years ago now i was like oh god you know i’ll never be good enough to do anything and end up just getting like an apprenticeship then it turned into a full-time job and just in the it industry because you know i’m sort of like happy in that industry and i thought i can do game design on the side or i can do artwork on the side i just remember i got like a new job in the last year or so last six months and i just thought oh mum it’s so weird how different my life would have been if i’d stuck to art as a full-time career because i don’t i feel like i need lots of different purposes i feel like doing art solely although it’d be amazing i’d love to do that i don’t know if it’d be the best way for me because i feel like i get a lot of creative bursts and i do them because i’m doing other things like they sort of come into my mind as i’m doing other things but plus i’ve always been a fan of like branching out into different stuff i did a little bit of 3d modeling at one point there was a friend of mine called callum calzar he did a really amazing like 3d model of a hammer that i saw recently and gosh like it was like oh man maybe if i put a bit more time into it i could you know get close to that good button i’ve done like a little bit of 3d modelling i did some um clear sculpting gosh i’ve done like paintings on canvases i’ve done acrylic i’ve done acrylic power painting what else i’ve done like quite a bit of digital stuff i’ve done like pixel art i’ve done actually i do a lot of baking and stuff like that and i try and be quite artistic in my baking as well like i did a pokeball shaped like hot chocolate bombs and stuff like that yeah the next step is trying to make a pokemon shaped marshmallows which i did try and it didn’t go very well but you know i mean that was really cool so yeah in terms of stuff like baking or cooking and then um there’s lots of different stuff i could do a bit of spray paint i’ll make stencils i’ve made pokeball terrariums which is like little pokeball with like a pokemon inside it and like the top of it’s clear so you can see it and it’s got like loads of terrain around it and i’ve recently i’ve started doing like little designs for floppy disks and like making them into magnets which is cool my boyfriend got me some of these like floppy disk things for my birthday and i had the sticker on them for like the witcher so i thought i wonder if i could do that and then basically what i did like i got some floppy disks and then i’ve been doing like little designs for stickers and then i’ve ordered some of them in and then i’ve glued magnets to the back of them so you can have them as a magnet on your fridge i just feel like that’s like quite different and i feel like it’s quite cool as well it’s just cool you can get inspired by stuff like that that sounds classy i’m old enough to have used floppy disks back in the old days the whole retro thing i think that taps inside so nicely that’s the sort of thing that probably people would buy as well to be honest people my age it’s really cool branching out i mean i got a friday the 13th vhs like it was like a vhs set of like painted over with like friday the 13th like jason’s mask on it which i found really cool and it had like led lights in it and i’ve always been a fan of like repurposing stuff yeah i make a lot of like lamps out of glass bottles so i’ll clean out a glass bottle i’ll put like a black vinyl sticker on the front and a light in the top and it’s really cool how you can like repurpose old stuff like i’m always thinking about new stuff that i can do or new stuff i can make because i’ve suffered quite badly with depression and it’s been something i’ve had to do for quite a while and i feel like a lot of my motivation comes from doing things for other people what i found is creating things for the people makes me really happy and that’s what tends to get me out of a slump if i’m having a really rough time or like if i’m having a bit of an episode a lot of the ways i come out of it is doing something nice for someone else and motivating myself to get out of bed and do something for someone else like the other day i made a my friend were moving out so i’ve made like a cloud lamp it’s like a lamp it looks like a cloud and you turn it on it’s really cool i just i think it’s really important to like be really creative not everyone wants to be creative and that’s fine but if you want to be and you say no to yourself because you don’t think it’ll be good like that’s the completely wrong thing to do because there’s something really like humbling and some that commit you really proud of trying something new and it working out i was going to go to a pottery class before the last lockdown and all my friends said why would you want to do that i was like i don’t know i want to know how to make a mug like leave me alone you know like blacksmithing as well there’s such cool stuff that’s accessible to people now it’d be amazing to be able to just try new ways to you know how cool is it like because you know i’m used to like doing designs you know i did some designs which i put on mugs although i have shirts on my etsy a lot of times people are oh i really like this design i’d really want it on a keyring or i’d really want it you know on a mug and i’m like that can be done just ask me i’ll do it like i’m more than happy to accommodate anyone there was a lovely woman who ordered a print from me and she actually wanted one of my designs as a tattoo and asked if i if she could show it to a tattoo artist and i was like gosh as long as i’m credited i’ll you know anyone can do anything and that’s amazing the fact that someone wanted some artwork not just as a shirt but as something permanent on the body was just like absolutely amazing like and it was just sort of like a design which i thought was really cool i did it it was like the first coffin design i did like a tree and like a graveyard you know the stereotypical like just it just screams gothic and um gosh that was super amazing to have someone ask me that that was quite recent it’s really cool to be able to be creative and i think people limiting themselves just because i think they can’t do it they’re just missing out massively and it’s like when i say oh you can do anything if you try like obviously that’s within reason but like you literally like i never thought i’d be careful what i’m doing now i’m sure that in however many years time i’ll be like oh gosh i didn’t realize i was capable of doing that or i didn’t realize i’m capable of doing this and it’s just it’s a matter of just like giving it a go if you fail so what it don’t matter you’re allowed to fail it’s part of being human that’s it and if you enjoy it actually that’s the main thing because even if it turns out maybe not quite how you would imagine something might turn out if you enjoy the process of it that’s the thing that matters oh definitely like it doesn’t matter if you’re good or not it matters if you’re having a good time you could spend hours and hours you know making you know you could be sculpting something new and clean it might not look perfect but you know what you’ve put a lot of time and effort into it you should be proud of yourself for committing to something flat amount of time and putting everything into it and i’ve always found the idea of homemade gifts amazing yeah i learned how to make drama and i make sure pulling out make candles loads of stuff like that again like just sort of like a little bit of a creative pull and it’s like oh gosh i’m going to make a massive soap that looks like a skull i’m going to do that and it’s just like which i actually have done i’ve made candles that look like schools and all sorts but it’s like nice it’s that sort of creative stuff where it’s like it didn’t take a lot of talent all it takes is time and effort and obviously sometimes depending on what you wanna do a little bit of money but usually like you don’t need money to have pen and paper and draw like or anything like that and if you’re limiting yourself just because you think you can’t do it man missing out i’m telling you if someone’s listening to this and i don’t think they can do it please do it for me you don’t know me but i want you to do it excellent excellent i need to remember to take that out for the teaser that’s excellent
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as well as your own original drawings you mentioned you you’ve done a lot of comic conventions and things and i’ve seen on your instagram that you’ve done a bit i suppose we could call it fan art or card inspired by other things there’s a lot of pokemon in there but what really speaks to me is futurama and the 1990s x-men and stuff that’s my x-men you know so um i was wondering if you wanted to tell us a bit about that as well that’s got like a special place in my heart there’s like sort of traditional stuff like that there’s comics i started reading were like the classic x-men stuff the first tattoo i ever got was an x-men title yeah i’ve got an x-men title on my right thigh and i’ll wear it with priorities the cosplayers rogue at conventions as well she’s my favorite oh man yeah cosplayed is like the 90s animated version of rock that was super cool yeah it’s like i remember that because that’s what i started doing it was traditional stuff and i never really ventured a lot with colour at first but i remember what i used to do is i need to live it almost draw every night i did it like every day for a year and i was committing to it and all the time i’d get inspired by just looking at other people’s interpretations of artwork i read in a comic and i thought oh i want to redraw that or oh this is really cool and it was really important for me as well when i was learning how to draw by looking at what other people are doing and because essentially the best way to learn is by copying and i mean that in the sense of you look at someone’s muscle you copy it to draw it and that’s how you learn anatomy stuff like that you know you look at how things work together but in terms of artwork in general a great way to find your own style is to copy a load of other people’s and use it you know see how they do things see how you know the way they use the brush strokes see the way they create a drawing how they’re created and stuff is like that’s why today it’s amazing there’s like loads of stuff on youtube you can just get up i’m sure there’s lots of people doing little tick tocks for acrylic paints and stuff like that and it’s amazing how accessible you know a lot of like the stepping stones to like drawing is and like for me is sit there get my sketchbook out like right i’m gonna draw something really cool and obviously not always i drew something really cool but sometimes i do like big comic pieces and i always felt incredibly satisfied because i was like oh man i spent hours and i was on this like piece but it’s like it’s turned out so well like i did a big hellboy one and i did a kick-ass one and it’s like to me i know they’re not perfect i did them like quite early on but like gosh even now i’m like i can’t believe i drew that i drew i got a blank comic like a comic with a blank cover and i drew rug and gambit on it it’s i think it’s still on my instagram it was like referenced off of i think x-men 177 because it was like one of my favorite covers and i redrew it on a different variant of a rug and gambit and even to this day i think it’s one of the best pieces i’ve ever done it’s like hold such a close place in my heart it doesn’t matter however many years have passed it’s like oh man that’s really cool and that’s from like an internal nerdy standpoint rather than like yourself rather than bigging myself up it’s like like personally i just love it just because like i know exactly what went into it how much time and effort went into it and recently i’ve only recently started doing traditional stuff again a lot of it was a way to sort of like try and give gifts or try and get commissions and stuff had some commissions or like you know i did my boyfriend a drawing for like a christmas and stuff you know stuff like that and it was like i knew he really liked pokemon i was like you know what i bet i could draw a bunch of different pokemon unlike my sister me and my sister both of futurama and her for her birthday i got like a voice message from billy west and that was super amazing i thought how cool would it be if i drew i like bender as well and you know then she had you know like she had a bunch of different future armor stuff so that was really cool being able to like flex those traditional muscles again and get a bit of color on because i’ve not colored in ages and there’s something really satisfying about having a physical thing in front here like a physical piece of paper and like drawing on it and don’t get me wrong i love digital art digital art is amazing like you can do so much i don’t want to say so much more but you can do so much different stuff on digital art than you can you know like on traditional like if you you know make a mistake inking on traditional that’s it game over like if you make a big mistake whereas you make one on clip studio pin which is what i use it’s just control z like undo okay i can keep going yeah there’s something really satisfying about having a physical copy and having it framed i’m actually planning on doing some drawings on my skateboard decks at some point and or like wooden chopping boards stuff like that i mean i’m still sort of thinking about exactly which way i’m going to go but i’ve got like so much creative stuff like going on i made it at the minute it’s like oh man i can’t wait to share it with everyone and sure you know hopefully inspire some other people that’d be really cool um i was wondering as well coulee especially with putting your work on clothes and on all the other sorts of things you’re mentioning there is there anything in particular that you’ve learned or are in the process of learning that you think might be useful to share you know what’s that journey been like you know because you’ve you’ve mentioned that you know you’ve the improvement to the development of your time i was just wondering you know if you have anything that might be good for listeners if this ever gets to somebody who is maybe in that starting point or before that even so for me sometimes the most expensive isn’t the best quality i learned that the hard way and i remember i thought when i first started doing shirts i had to get them from this really you know and it wasn’t that it was bad quality at all it was just incredibly expensive and it was completely counterproductive because i mean you don’t do everything for money but you don’t want to be like completely indebted because of it and i remember at first i said i need to go to the best place and get the best stuff you know as long as it’s a high quality print like the place i get and printed from has a guarantee that if it fades or if it you know if anything happens you can get it reprinted and get it sent out which is what you know i’d offer to any of my customers or anyone wants to buy something and that to me is more important than spending loads and lots of money because i didn’t i wanted it to be accessible for people when i say i don’t make a lot of profit i really don’t it’s literally like it’s just enough to sort of like clean it over and for me it’s just don’t think you have to put all your money into it to make it work do your research and don’t be afraid to change you might do a design that you think could look good on a shirt and you could put it on a shirt and think oh it doesn’t look that good now but it might look good on a print it might look good on a keychain or you know i mean there’s there’s so much stuff you don’t have to limit yourself to one thing and try different color schemes i found so each time i do a design a lot of the times i’ll do more than one version of it just to see what it looks like like don’t be afraid to chop and change and change different things and if you’re a traditional artist just copy like as in get a physical copy like you know got a printer copier print off a couple extra copies and color those in or you know do inking on those ones so you can get you know your final design you’ll have multiple versions then and it sounds kind of cliche but don’t give up on things take breaks but don’t give up on him knows me a lot of times i thought oh gosh you know i’m not i’m not any good you know i spent quite a while being like you know i’m not good at i can’t do this i can’t do that and i just i regret it because i was like i was so busy putting all the start of myself i probably missed a lot of creative opportunities and there’s a lot of art that people aren’t going to see because of a result of me saw it self-loathing whereas like now it’s like you know what i sort of accept like i’m going to take a break i don’t need to drive overnight i don’t need to do this it’s like why do people do things like drawing in general they do it because it’s fun to do it because they enjoy it that’s why you should do things and then when it becomes a massive source of stress you need to think right okay i need to take a little break from that and then go back into it with a fresh head and that’s exactly what i did you know i ended up blasting like three designs out really quickly but i did sort of three minimalistic designs in one day and that was really cool because i’ve not drawn in ages i say yeah just for me it was safety so probably in a few days but um just don’t be afraid to give yourself breaks don’t be ashamed to give yourself breaks don’t beat yourself up because those breaks are exactly what you need sometimes like i found it where i could be drawing something and it could just not be going right and sometimes i just start again from scratch i’m like this is what i need to do um it happened with the growlithe drawing i did it and it looked the wrong shape and i couldn’t figure out exactly what it was i was like oh man so i had a brick went away from it came back to it and i was like okay now i’ve redone it i’ve redrawn it it was so destroying there to redraw it but i did it and it looked amazing it looked it was amazing to me it looked exactly like what i wanted which is quite rare for me to see something exactly how i wanted it so that was really cool and obviously like i got a lot of good feedback from other people like you know you draw stuff like pokemon and people get so excited about it it’s great i love seeing people like because that’s something else like it’s not even about people buying my stuff it’s people who message me saying i like my stuff i’ve got friends who tell me they’re like and it’s like that’s amazing to me because it gives me such a boost it makes me feel so good about my work and what i do it’s like oh man you know someone’s seen that and i thought it’s really good and you know it took me so much time or you know put a lot of effort into it and it’s amazing to see that people appreciate what goes into it yeah brilliant that’s really helpful can we thank you so much for that do you want to point people towards where we can see your work so we mentioned your etsy shop so you’re under slayer one artwork is that right so on etsy i’m just slaying artwork basically it’s hard because like some places don’t like certain you know like certain types of digits you know what’s the words i don’t use the word digit but it’s like characters yeah characters that’s exactly it honestly i’m just slayer one artwork no spaces slayer is in the band slayer fun facts behind the name yeah go for it so i mean i’m a massive metal fan anyway yeah i mean more sort of like death metal but that’s that’s not the point you know like player one i saw something to do like scott pilgrim which is one of my favorite comics it was like player one and they changed the name to slayer one i thought oh man that’s so like so funny especially when i was younger i was like oh it’s so cool so i was like okay that’s my name and it’s just sort of stuck but yeah so when it’s it’s slayer on artwork on um instagram it’s slayer underscore one artwork and i also happen to have a facebook page which is just like slayer dash one artwork which again it’s all it’s annoying because some of them are different but some of them don’t have certain characters but yeah that’s that’s where you can find me my instagram and my one instagram is the main place that i posted because sometimes i’ll post working progresses on my story or you’ll get to see some of my cool goth stuff on my story or i do share a lot of other art pages on there and i think it’s really important and some advice for people if you’re feeling uninspired watch a really cool film as in like watch like an animated film like you know into the spider-verse or watch some studio ghibli stuff if you’re not into that like read some comics or read books or watch a tv show there’s so many things where you could get ideas or play a game or listen to music you know there’s some of my designs which are directly based off of music that i’ve heard or you know there’s one there’s a design i’ve been thinking about for ages and i tend to think about my designs a lot before i do them and then one day i’m just like i’m doing it and then there’s a song called um possession by white chaplain that’s something where i want to do like a really cool piece of sort like a girl saw it cloning her face and it’s like again a really sort of like dark dark and but yeah i’ve got loads of stuff that i’m sort of planning on doing i just think if you’re feeling really uninspired you don’t have to draw just watch things it’ll inspire you write it down there’s no pressure the world’s not going to end if you don’t draw that night just if you want to be inspired you want to feel creative just do it just do it everything you can because if you’re going to sit and stop love it’s just you’re just limiting yourself then yeah i think you said something earlier as well about it’s quite easy to have a pen or a pencil and a bit of paper and you don’t even need to think about it just have them in your hands and just see what comes out exactly start messing about i find a lot of artists have the same problems where it’s like you sit there in front of a blank sheet of paper three ages and you’re like gosh i just want to draw i just wanted and you’re like oh man i’ve been sitting in front of this blank piece of paper for hours or you know i’ve rubbed out so many different stuff and if it gets that point my best advice is to take a break take a break make a brew that’s what i try to do or go talk to someone even though i don’t live with one of my best friends anymore my a lot of the time when we’re drawing together it’s like i’d always say to him and we say to each other take a break just take a break and then we’d come back and we’d do some artwork it’d be exactly what we wanted or be even better than what we wanted and if you don’t want to take a break if you’re lucky enough to have an artist you know friends who are out it’s like i am sending a photo of it and say does this look right because it’s not you know it’s not about like fishing for compliments or you know what anything like that it’s like something looks wrong with this and i can’t see it can you you have a better one just like you know my friend ben or he’s got a much better understanding of anatomy than me and i could draw a face and like ben there’s something wrong with this face and i can’t figure it out and it’s like oh yeah it’s this it’s like it’s not about criticizing in a negative way it’s a really positive word they want you to do well which is why they’re telling you how to fix it yeah and there’s just fresh eyes on something isn’t it yeah i mean if anyone voted to message my art page for help at all i’m really open to like helping anyone who messages me you know if anyone wants to talk about art comics i’m always i’m quite an open ear for stuff like that and if anyone’s like oh you know they want advice and i want to talk to her directly just give me a message pretty cool about stuff like that i like to really support people because i think you get the best results that’s really generous of you it’s been such a joyful hour i’ve really enjoyed this so much chloe to be honest he i’ve had a pretty tough week just personally it’s been uh you know i’ve had a few knockbacks and confidence has been quite low and stuff and i just feel so positive and so energized just from talking to you for an hour and thank you so very much for this it’s been really enjoyable for me i hope it has been for you as well oh it’s been amazing thank you i’m really glad to hear that that’s really cool and again you’re more than welcome to message me anytime as well if you’re in but super lovely i’m really glad i’ve had such a good time as well i’ve been so excited i’ve never been in a podcast before so i’m like great well for your very first one you’ve done incredibly well yeah i hope this helps get you out there a little bit more yeah it’s just so nice it’s been a lovely thing to do to meet people like you through this i’d feel like you’re another one of my little gang that i’m compiling for the coolest gang that’s what it is it’s been really lovely speak to you thank you very much for having me on i can’t wait to hear it
this has been a cozy pea pod production with me paula blair the music is common grind by airton used under a 3.0 non-commercial creative commons license and is available at ccmixter.org to find out more listen to episodes sign up for our free monthly newsletter and to get in touch visit audiovisualcultures.wordpress.com for extras and previews see patreon.com forward slash av cultures and to support us go to supporter.acast.com forward slash audiovisual hyphen cultures hyphen podcast thank you so much for listening sharing subscribing and reading take care and i’ll catch you next time
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this is audiovisual cultures the podcast that explores different areas of the arts and culture of production with me paula blair visit patreon.com forward slash av cultures to find out more and to join the pod hello thank you for tuning in to another audio visual cultures podcast my guest today has been mentioned before if you recall episode 77 with joanna leach talking about the amabe project today’s guest is one of the contributing artists and i am really very pleased to speak with clinton kirkpatrick very warm welcome clinton how are you today i’m very well thank you how are you i’m not too bad you’re joining us from belfast is that right i am yes i live over in east belfast um so i’m at home today yeah lovely yeah i’m from east belfast and i’m a bit homesick for it at the minute clinton could i ask you to be so kind as to give us a bit of an overview of your work because you work in a lot of different ways and with different media and lots of things so could you just give us a bit of an overview of how you would describe your practice yeah sure so i’ve always kind of like said that i i’m first and foremost like a painter and whilst that still comes into my mind every time i’m asked this question i know i do a lot of other things within my practice as well so there’s a lot of printmaking a lot of drawing and then more recently lots of collage in my work really since like last summer and then this year i’m hoping to kind of take my work into a slightly different direction again and introduce animation and moving image into my practice so i’m next week actually just beginning to learn around animation because i’ve always been able to kind of see my work uh moving in my mind like you know i create lots of characters so i kind of can always see them moving in my minds i kind of want to you know actually see what that might look like so yeah so my work is um it’s quite broad my interests are quite broad you know fundamentally really interested in the human i’m really interested in how we function both individually but also collectively within society so if you kind of look through my work there is a lot of character that come into that there’s a lot of strange situations or lots of play lots of absurd notions and i know i kind of have on my chest i almost kind of like soak in everything around me and then chew it all up and then sort of like spit it back out and that’s kind of what you see with my work yeah and lots of color i love color very bold color i think is a good way of describing it i think it’s fair to say that your work is distinctive it’s really quite um i want to use the word weird but i’m meaning in a really positive sense and i i love weird it takes the body and fragments it but yet you know so you’ll take feet or legs or eyes and you’ll put them in different positions i mean there’s something harking back to surrealism but it’s not quite that and it’s not reproducing that it’s there’s a hint of it but it’s doing something different and what do you think about those sorts of ideas i’m an advocate of the sort of weird and wonderful and yeah certainly i would agree there is a touch of like surrealism in my work but i kind of i almost like look at myself as an artist in a contemporary climate where i know it’s like i think we live today in a space where you can kind of pick and choose and take whatever you want and you know you don’t have to fit within one genre or the other i think that’s what my work is i mean if you look through some of my work you’ll see that i do quite detail portraits or drawings of people and then on the flip side my work would be quite cartoonish and i don’t want i don’t need myself as an artist to be recognized as any one thing you know and i think within me all of this exists so you know that’s kind of what i want to kind of put back out to the viewer i think also you know as an artist you’re always kind of like grappling with what it is you want to talk about what it is you should be talking about or how you your work should look and certainly you know i think that things identify you as an artist but i don’t think it should be definitive if that makes sense i don’t think it should be something that you know is uh so written in stone that you don’t have room to move so yeah so i really love to play with the work you know you said there but kind of taking pieces i mean it’s literally kind of like stripped the body apart rip the body apart eyes are a massive thing in my work i think years ago i first really started noticing the introduction of eyes and my work and it wasn’t really until other people started to comment like oh why are all of these eyes in your work and i was like oh you know there’s lots of eyes in my work it was sort of like done on a more subconscious level and then i started to really notice that i was always going to the eyes and i guess i kind of see the eyes as like an entrance you know it’s almost like a you know it’s a window into whatever is going on and the rest of the image it gives a connection to something human and even you know when you look through my work characters can appear alien-like or they’re so strange but there’s always the nod to the human it sort of gets back to like i like the weird i like the absurd i use i use the word absurd and my work all the time and it can be as absurd as it needs to be so i’m okay with that yeah you seem to have a lot of beings shall we say that our maybe legs join together and then they’re just covered in eyes there is something a bit i suppose it’s almost like maybe a child’s drawing of an alien or something you know when we would imagine creatures from outer space and things that’s quite fun it could be me and my research background but when i see lots of eyes i think of surveillance and i think of watching and the paintings looking back at me and things i mean what would you say about that yeah i mean i think it’s an interesting comment i mean i am a watcher i am somebody who looks at people you know i look at the world i look at the different spaces that we kind of all cohabit um i watch and perhaps it is a little bit of a nod to you know that sort of idea that within my practice like i’m looking at all things all the time that sort of gets back in my mind at the minute to kind of the ideas of identity and stuff and whilst we can define ourselves as one thing of the other i sometimes find that very problematic because we live in a world with so many different types of people what i mean by that is like i like looking at all of those different types of people i don’t need to be in one space or the other it can be right down to kind of like the most hateful people i also enjoy watching that because i feel like i learn a lot from that and i feel like i can take into my work and it’s the power of the artist i guess you have the ability to talk about challenging things or strange things or you know whatever you have the power within you to put back out whatever you want and have a real conversation with society and with people you know the world you mentioned as well i had a good day around on your website and you do mention that about you’re looking at the individual but you’re also trying to look at broader society in that work would you maybe have any examples from your work that demonstrate that kind of idea that do both at the same time you mean looking at like an individual and looking at a scenario i guess yeah yeah what are you getting at when you point out that you’re looking at society and as you say there’s so many different kinds of people and you’ve got so many different shapes of being in your work i look at them a lot on instagram and i think well oh that’s a funny looking creature oh but it’s looking at me and maybe it’s thinking oh what a funny looking creature yeah maybe they are live somewhere i don’t know yeah i guess you know the a lot of kind of my work will come from a lot of it does come from my own experience and i guess i’m thinking now back to 10 years ago i first went overseas and i started talking about this a lot and i’m moving away from talking about it now because it was a period of my life where it happened and i had a remarkable kind of like introduction and learning around my work but you know that very kind of explicit white man role within a black society really became a prevalent conversation in my work because i went to kenya originally as a volunteer but throughout that experience i became entirely connected i mean i looked at what i think originally i didn’t understand the i was naive i guess because i was just like oh i’m in a new part of the world i’m meeting amazing people and you know i’m seeing an amazing space without really understanding the intricacy to do with black white culture and you know white man or you know uh whatever privilege means you know but indirectly a lot of that started to come into my work so it’s a huge conversation for eight years of my life was this massive learning around you know me as a white man in a black society and what that might meant and white privilege and then of course today we’re seeing huge you know it’s always been there but like that really huge black lives matter movement which is so important and you know this so kind of my work would comment and has commented on sort of things like that you know and also you know i’m gay so like my work kind of quite often you know looks at homosexuality or identity you know for uh for of a better kind of term there and like right now um it’s the february 2021 it’s our february each year is lgbt history month so i’ve decided this month i am actually going to explore avenues around what it is because i don’t know if i necessarily think about it all the time because i’m i don’t care to think about you know the fact that i’m gay it’s just not a for me it’s like not something that is an issue but it’s like for me i’m like i want to learn i want to kind of put in so like yeah so i’m creating kind of i’m also kind of like doing a bit of research at the minute and then i’m imagining that lots of characters and situations might come out of that but we’ll see but yeah so i kind of dip in another as sort of as and when or whatever’s presented i mean i think that’s kind of a great thing about the world today is you know you’re reminded quite often of what’s going on because of social media or if there’s a specific time you know that is being celebrated or commented on i will link into things like that as well sorry i kind of maybe went off in a bit of a full up that’s fine that’s what this is all about take a walk with your ideas so just to try then to tie that in with the different approaches to practice that you make so if you’re dealing with those kinds of ideas quite big ideas about human and identity and seeing and and looking and watching and then you’re working across painting drawing collage print making and you say you’re going to move into animation which will be amazing because if you can give life and kineticism to those images because some of them do feel like they’re in mid-stride or something you know so it’d be amazing to see that come to life i mean do you have any ideas on how the different media that you work in how that informs maybe the sorts of things and topics that you’re getting into in your work yes i mean i think early in my career early in my thinking i was like i’m a painter i’m a painter i’m a painter and early on i mean i’m still in love i’m actually probably more in love with painting now than what i’ve ever been i think part of that is to do with now that i’m really starting to understand the material really understanding what i need to do on a canvas and i’m also reaching much better results much more quickly so like there’s just this fundamental love of paint that kind of exists within me and i knew that early on i mean going through school i gravitated towards painting and drawing i love drawing as well um and then i left and of course through college and through foundation it was painting and my my own shoes were always painting and i was like right i have to go for a painting and drawing degree because i didn’t want to go back into like find applied art degree because i don’t want i don’t need to waste another year so i went into a painting my degree was actually in painting and drawing it was one of two left in the uk at the time so i went to england for that part of me always kind of put that label on myself at the beginning so i don’t know if i was as open or as receptive to other avenues within my practice continued with that you know painter painter painter and then it wasn’t literally until i went i was over overseas i was in kenya and sort of been in kenya and i think was the second time i was in kenya i literally went to an organization to introduce myself called kuna trust and the next day i got an email through offering out this printmaking course to the public which was like in woodcut print and i was like i’ve been really wanting to introduce a print technique into my work and therein lay my introduction to print and it was uh and it was good cut and i just absolutely fell in love with that process which made me then go and investigate other types of printmaking so now within my practice i you know also i have i still use woodcut funny it hadn’t been one in a while i was literally said on myself yesterday that i really want to do a new woodcut so i would sit and downstairs i’m kind of thinking around that night but i still do the word cut monotype because it is very painterly you know so gain gets back to that kind of notion of painting you know and then things like a little bit of etching or a dry point and that would be kind of what i focus on i’ve learned other things as well but i’m just not as interested in things like screen print or litho or things like that so that was my introduction into print and then as my practices started to grow i just naturally started to become so much more interested in other things last year collage became this massive part of my practice where i was just like this is really cool just like ripping stuff up and sticking it down and building layers i’m sorry cyanotype printmaking was another process where i really became attached to that but i was using cyanotype in a very very painterly way so i was actually making the solution and painting with the solution and exposing my drawings or my paintings to the sun and then that’s what kind of creates the center type and then i would work over the top and that’s kind of how the collage came in i would work over the top of that in drawings and then i was like starting to rip stuff up and then i made this massive this time last year i began making this like 28 foot piece of work it’s rolled up in a room there but uh yeah so it’s kind of like it’s led me on and then yeah and then also with the animation now i’ve always been able to visualize my characters moving and i’ve almost wanted to be able to look around them i’m making them from the side of the front but i’m kind of like what do they look like from behind i don’t know my mind’s eyes like what way is this going to go i don’t know but in my mindset it’s kind of you know i’m going to see them from all ankles or spaces you know which would be interesting yeah that sounds really exciting exploration to do you seem to have been really prolific in the past year certainly i mean following you on instagram you’re always putting up new things that you’re working on and exploring and stuff and it’s so great to hear that you’re still energized and you’re moving into these different areas with it i mean i was wondering because it’s come up a lot of course it has with people i’ve been speaking to recently how anybody’s had to adapt their work in the past year and i know that you’ve done a lot of community work in the past would you like to talk a bit about that you know because your own practice seems to be really ticking off lately but the other part of your artist life how are things going there with that sort of work yeah it’s i mean i think the whole chronovirus experience for all of us has been so remarkably individual and different for everybody and i know for me it’s been a very interesting time but you know i like the rest of like dipped in my mood i had an extraordinarily difficult year last year in many ways but what i realized was one of my main difficulties is when you’re an artist and you’re making the other side of my work thankfully is community arts and i get to be able to pay my bills usually through community arts and then i get to spend the rest of my time in the prep so my whole life is consumed with art and i love the community arts having that kind of stripped away last year so abruptly was a kind of shocking and i was like wow you find yourself in this space that is just so unusual and i realized that for me you know when you don’t earn heaps of money and you’re kind of like keeping things going along on a very thin line than wire as it is and then you have that stripped away it was extraordinarily difficult to come to terms with like how am i going to be able to cope through this period of time because i literally find myself with no income and not getting any reduction in rent or anything it’s just like so like the bills need paid your grant needs paid you know you need electricity or food so for me i was like right well how are we going to kind of like how am i going to do this thankfully the arts council came out with their support and i appealed of their first round of funding and i literally wrote a project that was to be delivered online so it was exploring these new ways of working and looking at hard work as an artist and i am glad to say that i delivered over the space kind of three four months a remarkable project i mean i’d introduced into my own practice previously the idea of what i call sky drawings that are kind of like i’ve been making cutouts basically and they’re little pieces that you would find in my paintings of characters or eyes or whatever but i had been photographing those so they are cut outs i color them black or spray paint them or i have used kind of like an oil stick and then i drop those i hold out at arm’s length and i drop those but i photograph it at the moment where the sky is literally kind of framing the drawing and they turn out to kind of be like they look just so impactful and so interesting and i was this is great so i could maybe try and do this as a community project so i wrote a community project and thankfully you know eastside arts helped me to advertise that and i managed to get about 15 people onto the program and over the space of the few months i delivered this really class like i mean really class project where they all made quite large drawings and then one so what what i did was i got them to all create i did the sessions like this at home on zoom and then when they finished their drawing i either collected or got them to post me their drawing i took their drawing and i made the cutout from it and then i went around places right they spell fast and photograph them it was just lovely look like i mean i’m still in love with lots of the imagery that kind of come out of that and i would like in the in the future when things have been up to you put on a little bit of an exhibition around it or things like that so for me it was like looking for ways to kind of do stuff and then start it up with a little bit of work again towards december but then that’ll cancel with new lockdowns around christmas and well that came in a boxing day so i find myself still with like work now although february is looking like we’re going to try and do some more online stuff with the likes of c chord down in bangor to talk about kind of my work as an artist through that and kind of my um i’ve always been somebody who is making so i have tried remain busy this year i’ve had my moments of like you know there’s been times where i’m not but i find for me that you know my studio like i think as an artist you have to make the work if you are if you’re a mecca if you’re a creator i mean you have to do the work you know if you’re calling yourself an artist but you’re not making the work i don’t really get it it’s okay look i know i know we all work at different speeds i don’t mean to kind of like i’m not trampling over people there but for me i know that my approach to my thinking around being an artist is that if i don’t make this work the work is not going to exist you know or what’s in me is not going to be out where it needs to be so i kind of try to keep myself active am i trying to be there but also i have been very fortunate to have my studio space which is private so i’ve been able to go there i’ve been able to work and not see anybody i come back to the house and not see anybody just being this kind of like exchange where it’s isolation but i had my space to work because i would not have been able to work in this house so i’m quite you know i’m somebody’s always making and i draw every day and you know i i kind of think i like to keep myself busy because there’s a lot going on in this brain you know so i have to try and do it somewhere gosh that’s brilliant it’d be great to then hear if those new projects work out okay for you i really hope they do it was a real joy seeing a lot of the images again on instagram of the sky drawings and i really recommend people go and check those out because they’re really lovely thing to sit and look at i think would you like to talk a bit about some of the exhibitions that you’ve had in the past in the before times because you mentioned being in kenya and you have had some collaborative exhibitions is that right in nairobi and then you’ve exhibited quite a lot in northern ireland as well in different places so would you like to talk us through some of those and i’ve written down borrowed tales and life and other fictions and i ask you do you believe in miracles just even the titles of your exhibitions are quite intriguing i love titling my exhibitions i really do it’s like do you know i literally just the other day i have decided that i’m gonna i’ve started compiling the list of every title of my exhibitions because i wanted to have a look at what i i went back to the very first exhibition i put on which is through university and it was called unprotected and then i came home when i had a first exhibition in belfast in 2009 and i can’t really remember the title of it but the next one was called yesterday’s news and then that one i asked you do you believe america so that it’s nice to kind of like look i love titling my exhibitions but the title is always in reference to the work that i’m making or what’s going on in the work or my mind at that time it’s not always kind of like the title of a painting or whatever it’s just sort of almost like generally summing things up i love putting my work on in exhibitions i always organize two events with openings because uh well the first one is the opening which is kind of like that you know that you have to do that and then the second i always organize now um i organize a talk with my exhibitions and i love to talk because you get a group of people there that actually want to hear about the work and they want to ask you questions and i just i love that experience i don’t really enjoy openings and i don’t even really enjoy openings of other artists work you know i would prefer everyone spend time with the work later on but don’t get me wrong i do go you know and support my friends and support people but i think just that you know the preference in me is to go and really enjoy the work or enjoy hearing about the work i’ve showed ever since leaving university i threw myself into my practice whenever i came home so i actually lived away for like six years and then finally came back and i’ve been here ever since i’ve been home like 11 years now and decided to move home and get roots and get a space here where i was grinding myself a little bit but i right from the year after arriving home i had my first exhibition and a gallery it’s like clues called safe house gallery which was on donegal street in uh in belfast there and wonderful eccentric man called donnie burke was the guy that kind of uh offered me the first space then i did live the help of that gallery but that was kind of a nice thing it was nice right i’m going to put on work my work was really terrible you know like it was really bad painting hands up you know we all go through these kind of process but the ideas were great paintings were bad the ideas were great i had that show and then i had a second show in that scene gallery in the next year and then it was the year after that 2011 that i first went i had just this mad year of just people dying jobs ending i had a car crash you know i’ll not go through everything that happened was just like this year’s stuff and i kind of cleared off then i was like right i just want to go and do something for somebody else so i kind of went and did some volunteering in another country which happened to be kenya but what that did was it ignited in me everything about what i loved in the world and everything about what i loved in people and ignited this kind of like real investigation into who i am and where i am so ever since then i was back and then i had my first big exhibition in belfast which is in the waterfront hall and that was in march 2012 so 10 years next year and i filled that whole upstairs space with work and i was making like five and six foot paintings i still met large paintings now but it was just so lovely to be making the size of work that i wanted to make and it was all about kenya it’s all about my experience there a real mix of work and i did portraiture and i did you know abstract pieces in that and then lots of figurative stuff too that began in this real interaction and play with me in and out of kenya and it was like i went back as an artist and then i came home and i made another exhibition which went on display in lisbon in the island art center and that was 2013. and i applied to the museum in kenya so there’s the national museums of kenya to display the work that i had made over the previous number of years that was accepted and then i found myself back in kenya in 2014 for my first exhibition in the national museum there which was a really wonderful experience just wonderful every time i was there it was very very different but taking the work that i’d needed and you know i always remember like lydia galavu who is the curator there she still works the most wonderful woman she came up to me after had hung the work in the show and she said you know looking at your work it’s like you wouldn’t necessarily think that you were a white artist that always kind of stay with me because like i’m always interested in this idea of what identity is and you know i think it’s like there is color in my work and boldness and character and whatever and i was like i find it such a compliment and it was just such a it’s such a lovely time and i had a lovely you know lovely feedback from that show and it was just it was nice it’s validating for me like this is the type of artist that i am and this is what i need to be doing so yes i continued with shows then both at home here looking sort of more local sort of spaces and then john patrick and then arts art center and lots of spaces like that then i went back to kenya i ended up organizing an exhibition at home here with my woodcut teacher who uh was kenyan so john kamani and off the back of that lydia at the museum had wrote this very brief message under some posts on facebook saying kenya 2.0 question mark or something like that and i was like so there’s the seed that’s all i needed for to plant that seed which grew into another wonderful flower for me so then i went back and found myself back conducting more research so i went back the year uh what year was that 2016. i went back to kenya again and this time i removed myself from the investigation so it was nothing to do with me so i took a camera i went for a month two well i think two months but a month i spent a month and a half i spent kind of collecting imagery or not imagery imagery and oral voice recordings and i recorded stories so i went around people i knew loads of people that i didn’t and i asked them to tell me a story there’s no prescribed theme it’s interesting kind of watching how people struggle with kind of some people like i’m going to tell you the longest biggest story and then someone like what do you want me to tell you you know it’s like it was interesting kind of like watching that but it was so open but what i wanted to do was on purpose remove me from i wanted this to be entirely yes it was going to be a white man’s kind of visual remaking of stories but i just wanted to listen to stories and that made me realize my interest and love for storytelling and storytelling through my work so yeah so i went back then had joined exhibition in kenya in 2018 which was that show a game of john comany but i put on that show with all of that work with the oral kind of stories and then i came back and i had a show here called borrowed tales which you mentioned and that was all those wood cuts so i actually made 88 i recorded idiot stories and i made 88 pieces of work one piece of work for every single story that i recorded and i put them all on display so it was lovely it’s a lovely exhibition that’s such a lovely thing to hear about really i think i saw on your website you’ve described your painting process as a process of storytelling as well so it’s really lovely to hear about how you reach that do you think that’s something that comes through right across your work that their stories contained in your images yes i think more so now than ever because you can look back at my work from 10 years ago and see everything that’s going on night i’ve started to create this world and everything that i make is contained within that world you know i’m recalling certain images of yours i’m thinking it’s like you’re getting a fragment of a whole landscape and a whole thing that’s going on in this how would you respond to that you know how would you flash out some of those ideas i’ve realized now that storytelling is much more integral than what i maybe even really understood it to be i view my work as this world that i’m creating and that everything that i make and put into that is adding to that or a discovery of a new piece of that world i mentioned earlier on but it’s a very broad world you know so it’s almost like i’ll make things and then all of a sudden there might be crossover years later or i’ll revisit so i kind of make lots of characters in my work that signify certain things and then they’ll come back into my mind or they’ll crop up later on i mean there’s been a couple of characters so that there’s one that i call rainbow wife he’s this kind of blind character i don’t even he’s blind in the original one but he’s been blind later on but the original character was just this very kind of solemn not beautiful character you know he’s just kind of very dull in a sense but inside his mouth was this rainbow space and then he sort of existed at a show that i put on in the offer a show i put on in the ulster museum not the austin museum sorry the ulster hall years ago and that was his introduction but he’s always kind of cropped back in so i then couple years later took him on a journey and actually explored who his character was so still today you know i i’ll revisit him at times he’ll kind of like come in there’s another character called all eyes i mean i did this um other drawings recently that were incorporating this character and just covered in eyes and that kind of character wasn’t born out of this idea of being able to see all things at all times and i’m not saying these characters are all me but they certainly can be sometimes a reflection of me um or of elements of my psyche or the way i see things so i’m somebody who i feel i’m able to look at many things and hold many things even i don’t have to agree with them all but i’m able to see them if that makes sense um quite a perceptive person so a lot of my work is kind of i’ve realized that there’s this overarching kind of story behind a lot of it and i don’t need it to be some i don’t need to be a story book where it is like this is what the story is i want the viewer and i need the viewer to see and deal with things how they need to deal with them i in the last six months have i used to title i thought i’m just this morning like editing images for a new book and i realized that last halfway through last year a mentor i had a couple of years ago was like you’re titling all of your work and you’re giving the viewer everything the viewer needs you know he was like what about untitling your work presenting your work in an untitled kind of way so that sat with me for a while and then i began to introduce that into in my work halfway through last year where i was like but i’m just not putting a title with this so what it did was kind of like take away you know my meaning and just allow the characters of the situation to stand on their own so it was an important kind of moment but i’m also ready to be titling the work again but also to kind of like start to not be as direct with the title or to give a nod something where it’s not as specific or it is not as definitive as kind of giving everything that you need does that make sense to sort of yeah so it’s kind of like for me you know there is a lot of i’ve realized a lot of power in storytelling and even what i’m doing now in my research and in my own investigation as i’ve gone right back to what mythology is and then within mythology what creation myths are and i’m actually in the process of investigating various creation myths that have existed throughout human history in all different cultures and what i’m doing is i’m taking pieces of that you know whether it is modern day creation myths or egyptian creation myths or whatever the creation myth is i mean these slug characters keep coming into my work and i read this creation myth recently where you know these slugs fall from the sky and they create this foggy marshy area and then from this the first humans came to be and i’m just like this is thrilling you know it is the part of storytime is the power of art for me that is what my work is people will look at my work and they’re like what is that or you’re mad or i’ve had i’ve listened to it all over the years i don’t really care either but it’s like i’ve listened to it all but i always think if you take the time with any artist you have to be interested obviously in what they’re doing to want to invest it up but certainly for me when you start to investigate what my work is and what my practice is there is a whole lot there you know there’s a whole lot of world and you know a whole lot of world to see and there’s a whole lot more still to come out of me you know but we’ll see hopefully i do love your slug and space images i think they’re really cool and i read the other day bugs have four noses um or four kind of like things to smell from so i just like loving that it’s like i started the painting last week you know with a slug with like and i’ve taken a human nose but obviously yes that does not have a human node but in my painting so it’s like that’s what i do i hear things or i see things or i read things and i just if it resonates within me in some way i kind of like to kind of spit back out in a fun way i take the piss i think a little bit you know a lot of you know i do jest but i think with that humor it’s a way for me to navigate this world that we’re in and i like to laugh and i like you know i want i guess a little bit of that to kind of come through in my practice as well yeah i think you definitely need the bit of joy in there and i think to embrace the strangeness the absurdity and let it make you smile and put those blockers to that stuff away i think it’s really important so you mentioned there that you’re working on a new book project what big projects have you done before and can you tell us a bit about what’s coming in the future absolutely so um partially kind of through this lockdown thing i was like right i don’t have access to you know our normal kind of way my normal way of doing things where sort of putting exhibitions on or traveling with my work or whatever obviously that’s all on hold and it’s very difficult to sort of plan so i was kind of starting to think in my mind just like well what other things can i do through this time that’s a keeping me busy keeping me active so i have been drawing every day now since the beginning of 2017 so i’m actually into my fifth year of drawing every single day i have not missed a day maybe one day but i have not really missed any you know many days and actually now i kind of i do a couple of drawings a day and that is kind of a lot of what you’re seeing through that kind of feed on facebook or on it on instagram you’ve got this sort of like it’s almost like a digital gallery for me and it’s a space to kind of do sketches and put ideas so the book project this will be my second book so my first book it’s called world view from a white picket fence and that first book was drawings from my first year of drawing with digital media because i moved into using an ipad to draw with never used digital media before always was pretty anti-it and then i was like we’re living in such a digital age why am i not beginning to introduce that into my practice you know it just seemed silly but then i realized that i was making all this work and it was getting lost so there’s something really ephemeral or transient about things get lost in instagram or forgotten about or they become some sort of like old dusty relic in the bottom of the basement for me that i find that i started to find that very problematic so i did this first year of drawings like i really want to make a book and put some of these different drawings in the book so the first book was all black and white images and then the second year from 2018 i started to introduce with black and white images and color images into that digital drawing so i’ve realized it’s been three years since i made that book and i was like can i make another book so it’s trying to get the money those these things kind of cost money and things are kind of always they’re quite tight at the moment but i’m looking for ways to kind of bring this into life and i’ve literally just gone from 2 000 images 2000 images to 88 images maybe slightly more about 90 images and i am like i was like how do i out of this time because then what i did was i went through back through that history that catalogue and i laughed and i thought these are great drawings but nobody gets to see them and i don’t get to hold them so i kind of really wanted you know i want to be able to hold the work you know i resonate with books my books everywhere in this house i love art books i love reference books i love being able to kind of like delve into different artists in different days so that’s for me you know i kind of want my work in that sort of format as well so they’re self-published i’m self-publishing a self-published uh the first one i’ll be doing the same with this one but yeah so i’m kind of just cracking on so doing a written piece for it myself i’ve invited inviting another artist to kind of do around the piece as well you’ll get a bit of text and thinking behind the work of the drawing but yeah so hopefully later on this year i might have a digital launch party for a new book but we’ll see how exciting i love that idea of holding the work that’s so nice such a lovely way of thinking about it keep us informed if you do have a digital launch that’ll be so fun when you’re talking earlier about gallery openings and things it just made me realize that i missed that you always need to go back and look at the exhibition again but it’s about being with the people isn’t it and i i do miss a good belfast opening oh it’s such strange times yeah and i just miss being able to go and do those things anything cultural you know like we know that kind of the culture is like just one of the things always the hardest hit but it’s hopefully something for the future for all of us yeah definitely we’ve got through a lot and you’ve been so so generous about talking about the personal aspects of your work and your practice and everything is there anything that we haven’t touched on yet today that you would like to mention maybe kind of thinking around advice or you know what it is for younger people i certainly think for young people even going through university at the moment what a very difficult difficult difficult time it is it’s difficult for everybody but you know i know i have friends went and doing masters at the minute and you know we’re in the mainland uk and i mean it’s this storm you know of uncertainty maybe do a little bit discussing around kind of like what it is to advise artists or you know or advise people i always kind of think make your work which is a big advocate of really encouraging people to kind of like make and do the work that they need to be doing so you can if you’re in somebody like you’re in university whatever just make the work i think you can become so consumed by what’s happening and how that’s affecting you that you forget that you’re an artist you forget that you’re making so make the work you don’t find your way in your pathway through that maybe i’m walking no i think that’s really so helpful that’s a really excellent point to make is just do something every day just try to do something even if it’s just a little sketch or cutting up bits of paper whatever it is just do something that proactivity i think’s really really important and i think even just in terms of your mental well-being yeah absolutely yeah i think for anybody even not just anybody at school or college you know it’s engaging in the arts and engaging in that kind of activity is extremely beneficial and it really is a form of therapy you know when you kind of engage in something for 15 minutes half an hour a day and it really really helps so yes i mean there’s a real power behind the arts and unfortunately we’re all too aware that uh the arts get are the first to get shafted but anyway it’s an interesting time for sure but just keep making i think everybody should be making or find a space to make that’s a really excellent point so clinton do you have websites and socials that you’d like to point people towards yeah so i um i actually have two websites tonight i realized so i’ve got my main website which is clinton clintonkirkpatrick.com it’s almost like that sort of showcase of a little bit of history of my work and then i started a new website this year called orange paint books and it’s going to operate as a background to a selling platform for me so it’s a space night where i’m putting up all my work for seal because i realized through this time as well you’re relying quite often on galleries or other spaces to be doing a lot of the work for you and i was just like do you know what why is my work why am i not in charge of my work being for sale so i created orangepaintbooks.com and that is going to be where you can find everything i do from courses to the paintings to the drawings whatever and then pretty much the main one that i use is instagram so my social handle is clinton underscore kirkpatrick underscore artist but just type in my name there and you’ll find me that’s the main ones oh that’s brilliant thank you clinton kirkpatrick thank you so very much for your time i have really enjoyed our conversation it’s been so lovely to speak with you properly and to meet you like this and to hear all about your work because i’ve so enjoyed following you on instagram for the past a lot of months thank you thank you thank you it’s been brilliant thank you very much i got introduced to your podcast um from joanna’s one whenever she was doing the movie project so it’s been lovely to kind of follow when i’ve linked in so thank you for having me and uh all the best for the year ahead okay yeah same to you thanks we’ll keep in touch this has been a cozy peapod production with me paula blair the music is common ground by airton used under a creative commons 3.0 non-commercial license and is downloadable from ccmixter.org episodes release every other wednesday subscribe on apple podcasts spotify amazon music or wherever you find your podcasts see the show notes for a video link if you need auto captions be part of the conversation with av cultures on facebook and twitter or iv cultures pod on instagram as well as patreon membership 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hello and welcome to audiovisual cultures with me paula blair i’m really super excited to be joined this time by artist johanna leech who is going to talk about the amabie project that she’s been working on and curating throughout the lock time period in 2020 and it’s hopefully going to culminate in an exhibition but it’s all online and you can see it on instagram so i’m going to let her explain more about it because she’ll explain that a lot more articulately than i can um huge huge thanks to our members over at patreon.com forward slash av cultures for all your really valued supports if you are interested in joining and there are three tiers of membership at the moment there’s to pay what you can which is one pound one dollar one year or whatever um and that’s that’s going to get you access a bit early to the new episodes that come out you’ll get to hear it a day before everybody else and then there are a couple of other memberships there’s a behind-the-scenes membership and a star supporter which will get your producer credit on any future stuff so do take a look through those if you’re able to help out and for other ways to support uh and just help out the podcast do listen right to the end and i’ll give you some other ways that don’t involve a membership um but do make sure you subscribe you hit that button just so that you never miss a new episode and i’ll help us out as well so this one was a lot of fun to record uh joanna is a it’s a very very good friend of mine and i’m really proud of all of her work it’s a really visual episode as well so if you’re listening to the audio only i have put the link to the video in the show notes and do make sure you go and see that um because um uh joanna actually shows us through quite a lot of the work that all of the artists involved have been creating and shows us through the instagram so if you’re able to see that i’d really highly recommend it so enjoy very much and i will see you on the other side
so i am super excited to be joined by my longest serving friend and artist joanna leach hello joanna hello how are we finding you today not too bad thanks just in limbo like the rest of us i think so trying to continue on at least try and do something productive excellent yes we’re gonna talk a bit about your productivity and what you’re keeping busy with and if it’s okay can i just ask you to explain to everybody a bit about your background i mean um i mean we first bonded over our mutual love of dinosaurs and i think that’s something that’s held us very close together all of these many very long years yes definitely and it’s in my artwork you know fascinating sinclair uh dinosaurs from the world’s fair absolutely um so would you kindly just talk us through a little bit of your own arts practice and then we’re going to talk about the really big project that you’ve been working on more recently sure so i’m a visual artist based in belfast and i also work as a program manager for a local cinema and arts center so sometimes a lot of those influences working quite um across lots of different art practices and arts fields and work can bleed into my practice a little bit um so instead of kind of having a sketchbook or kind of doing lots of drawings like every day like most artists would or quite frequently my thing was to collect objects collect stories and um making notes and taking photographs so you know like if you look at my iphone now there’s like 20 000 photographs that i’m kind of constantly referring back to so that that’s my sketchbook so it kind of gives you an idea of what kind of way i sort things in my head i’m also dyslexic so it just means that a lot of the time maybe written format isn’t as easy for me and the visual stands out really clearly because of that so it just means then i can have this amalgamation kind of like my work is almost like a little museum of its own you know you could have a look at my exhibition and there could be stuff that could be historical that i find something interesting there could be local lore and legend um or there could be just an experience or a place that i’ve been to so the working kind of become things where it’s maybe like more social practice where i’m maybe using the objects in a way to perform to an audience where like the object is shown in a way where it tells a story or it itself is quite humorous and you kind of look at it and it gives you a chuckle you know like i always like the work to be familiar to the audience and very much um kind of open for everyone to interpret um so my recent exhibition would have had things like a neon sign that said guns and gold and kind of like a really um particular lovely um neon golden color and that was a replica of one that i’d seen in america and just that ideas of those two words together um is it’s quite interesting and then i had wall drawings including wonderful dinosaur um and then i had stories about the dinosaurs that i’ve done work with and collected from all around the world so i had kind of display tables which had objects as well as stories all displayed together so it’s kind of it takes you on a journey and that’s kind of always say to people like i’m explore um showing you my discoveries essentially and then there was other things like photographs from kind of um attractions or places from around america so that that work kind of stands alone quite well just as a photography as a photograph um but um and then i’ll do sometimes just really kind of scale back drawings so it just it just really depends brilliant yeah and this has a really close connection with the current project that you’re working on so you’re curating this group of work of all kinds it’s it’s cross media and it’s artists working in all different modes and from different backgrounds and all sorts of things so um can you tell us a bit about the amma bay project please yeah so amabe is a japanese yukai and ukai is kind of like a mythical kind of magical creature within japanese mythology and this particular character would come out whenever there was sign of a pandemic or else maybe something to do with um crops and um different times where you know people would have worries about things they could look towards the emma bay for um some comfort so you know she’s a mermaid character and she kind of comes out of the sea and is very kind of mystical and i was just kind of really interested in that with the internet kind of in the era that we’re in now this character made a resurgence kind of through the start of the lockdown and it just meant that there was a lot of people kind of posting pictures of her or a lot of japanese people like taking a bit of solace you know to actually do a little drawing over or stick a little picture up of her in a window and with everything that was elsa it was happening throughout the internet and in the uk we kind of had all the kind of things so like help the nhs and the rainbow kind of became this icon of camaraderie and hope for a lot of people and that came from kids in america he just did it one time and you know then people started to kind of replicate that and it kind of spread like a virus but uh a very positive one and amabe was kind of doing a bit of that it was um kind of trading on kind of um if you kind of had like hashtag a mabe challenge and when i saw that i kind of thought oh you know but what i’m really interested in is i had been to japan last year and um i have connections through flex art studios where i’m based with a really cool art space called arts ongoing which is in tokyo and i kind of met those guys and i kind of always kind of thought oh you know what like what would i do if i went over and did a japanese residency so at this time where you know there’s pandemic i can’t go to japan as much as i would love to and looking at those connections and just i think the event manager in my head of kind of going what can i do you know i can’t go into the studio and you know it’s a really hard time to feel inspired how can i reach out and make that connection between that kind of sense of this viral connection but also bringing it back to artists practices but then looking at the connection between japan and belfast and especially because of flax art studio so they’ve been running for a number of years in exchange and one of the main artists who’s a really good friend of mine um shiro masayama um he is the only northern ireland artist based in japan and i was like me and him were like sharing each other like pictures of a mabe and being like oh you know we should get everyone in flax to make an imabe and then we’re like but why should i be kind of making that quite narrow so we owned it out because we wanted to share it with three artists arts ongoing and various other things like shearer would have a lot of connections um just you know to see if artists in general who are based in japan and uh the isle of ireland um or someone you know who’s still kind of connected to ireland are still connected to japan um what would they do and to kind of make it initially like an instagram that could become an exhibition so it was just to see like what would happen so i think it was something that kind of came up between me and sharon were like hey wouldn’t this be fun to do that and they kind of grew from there
and so um with the irish connection is there was there another mythical form from from irish mythology that you were looking at as well or was it just the mlp
well originally um i was talking to um close friend um martin boyle um and martin was kind of my sounding board and very thankfully and just about the right up and like how i was going to do the call-out and what he was interested in and what i kind of thought was it’d be nice to give people that option if they don’t want to do a mabe so whenever we did the call-out we kind of had it that it was if you could create a mythical creature to protect you what would it be and surprisingly a lot of people just did do your marble and that that’s cool too i mean she’s so beautiful and of course i did one of her but um i did like that idea of looking at art mythology and it just meant then if there was japanese artists who were like you know mommy’s quite a normal thing for them they could choose to do something different or an irish artist who feels very strongly with that now we didn’t get as many kind of ones that are quite irish-based we did also get one that was a beaver which i thought was really cool because um that person was just kind of had their own reason of thinking why he could be a quite an iconic character so it is it is mainly a mob but i think whenever we’re displaying that in the gallery you know it can maybe have a couple of different zones it was originally inspired by the irish connections of saint brigid and it was like the first of february and it was kind of the start of spring and how people would kind of um make woven um crosses that you would hang up on your door and there’s these kind of ceremonies called biddy boys and it was basically like you made like an effigy like this female character who sometimes was dressed in your grandmother’s clothes and again it’s this idea of bringing forth a good harvest and and hoping for the best which a mabe does as well and and i was just like when you look at the documentation of you’re like what’s so bizarre and then it brings in connections with mummers and the idea of going door-to-door connecting with your community and making these kind of woven hats and things they’d have on so there’s one of the pieces is me wearing a mummer’s hat and you know i think that could maybe be a bit of a project on its own and i think mabi kind of took over because i think a lot of artists were making work from home and it was probably a bit easier to do that so i definitely think that that could grow in a different way but there’s only maybe a few that are kind of included within that okay great it’s really fascinating and stuff so um so shall we should we take a look at some specific examples of this and the the really wide range of approaches that all of the artists took because you’ve got animators you’ve got people working in sculpture in different ways you’ve got people here illustrators and comic creators and all sorts of people so um shall we have a quick look at some of the examples sure we definitely had a you know a wide range of people but i think i’ll maybe just start off with the original image that is mainly known about a map so this is one that would have been like kind of in the local um news and kind of documented before so i’ll just share my screen here so you can see
um so you can see this here um which is just a really beautiful image and you can see kind of the three legs coming from the sea a beautiful man of hair and um i just thought this is a really good starting point because it’s it’s also that flexibility that people can can change her into anything that she wants to be so i’ve got the instagram here which is kind of the format of showing it visually online so we have um submission from different artists to despite 25 artists including two young people that have been included and i like that because you know it’s the fact that you’re in lockdown and your children are there so i really kind of like that one of the artists is like oh you know can i include my child’s one or you know someone was actually collaborating with her niece which was really nice so um as you can see this is just a really quick thing and this is just you know like uh shiro playing around with a new app that he’s brought together but it just it just worked so well and it’s that kind of again embracing the kind of online kind of quality of that so just for the audio can we just describe what was happening there sorry um
okay so with shiro’s um video he’s using this app and um can i turn the music on or would that i think yeah you should let’s try
so um he’s just made a little drawing of an amabe which kind of pops up in this app and then it kind of comes and scuttles around the floor so it kind of like moves around on the table which is just really sweet and then um we had some more stuff that was a bit more obscure so this one here i really like because there’s kind of a description here this is by chris watt and he kind of just looks at this idea of um stories of contorted human forms or similar kind of rock faces and the natural forces and the ancient humans and bones and you know um that one there i just thought was just really nice and quite unique um some quite a skeletal image that we’re seeing and um so it says he came up with a concept for the painting after visiting melon head on the very north coast of ireland so um yeah so there’s just this skeletal form that’s it’s almost like it’s embedded in the rocks it’s against the rock faces in a bit of a kind of fetal position yeah there’s a triangle protrading from an eye that kind of an obscure kind of um things in the foreground and kind of makes it quite dream like um really kind of bright neon colors and along with this really kind of strong blue blue and white for the skeleton’s body itself which is really nice um i will just see i could go on and talk about every single one let’s just have we scroll so you can see just like some of them against each other so um this is another japanese artist um which is absolutely gorgeous um sitting on buildings on fire almost yeah so emily um she’s actually just studying um at the moment and she’s studying in london but she’s japanese and she had a couple of versions there’s a couple of versions of this one um this is a collaboration with grace mcmurray and her uh five-year-old niece oh the embroidery little embroidery which kind of has a mermaid she’s got wings um and just like a couple of sequences i like as well it’s like just you know like weak cuts of purple and and blue so paula thought you’d enjoy a bit of embroidery so just really simple one um clinton patrick and again his one is more that kind of unseen unknown character because when you talk about the japanese uk sometimes they’re literally an inanimate object sometimes they can look almost human and sometimes it can be quite bizarre so i like that his was much more free in the way that was represented here we have an artist who bid on ebay for um something that was supposed to be made from a mabby’s hair right it was a brush on the internet so his kind of piece is um and he ordered it here it is in his home and he had done a residency in flax recently so he was over in belfast so it was just really nice to kind of have people’s work so um that was that one in particular was cool like you said about graphic artists yeah i have some graphic artists in here so we’ve got vanilla doran and we have um grace farley and then i think there was and molly henry in particular this kind of one too hmm as you can see you know there’s a real mixture of things um tomohiro tomahiro to also been to flax on a residency t and it’s weird because now that i’ve been in japan i’ve seen these kind of you know this is just outside a shop somewhere but i just love as well that it’s got it’s got the mask on so this is kind of like an everyday image someone who could have stumbled across this kind of um amazing kind of sculpture and then it being put with like there’s a kind of scroll to my bed it almost looks spry painted but obviously done on photoshop or something beside it so it just supposed in the tools i think is is really interesting definitely love these little guys with their masks so it is a real mixture of things so sometimes people made things in their homes some of them have done ink drawings or used like found objects like davies here um using hair um this is the image that i had mentioned before myself the kind of bummer hat on um so there’s kind of two in the series and i had actually taken these quite a while ago back in the america or back in the folk park i think it’s the one in belfast yeah so um is that the ulster folk and john smart museum yeah no one’s else’s [ __ ] transport museum so you can go there and there are often weavers i’ll kind of show you that and then if you want to look up mummers there is um different mummers groups from around think the main ones are in antrim and they still perform wedding ceremonies and do different things when i worked for um belfast photo festival a few years ago as a director we actually had an exhibition um by jim mcginn he actually went around and documented mummers over the years and looked at folklore but also looked at the traditional music he was very interested in traditional music so he has a lot of work that’s to do with those so i think that probably had placed it in my head originally um just looking at that um and then one little miniature performance um
this is just done over zoom oh actually we do have sign for this one let’s let’s try it again
so this and another worker kind of a gif so um what you have here is um she need brennan casuals doing a live performance on zoom to me and she has put in the background um like there’s a big kind of um mummified fish in the ulster museum so it’s in the background and you’ve got the ulster museum itself so she’s put on kind of like a sequined top um a nice long wig and has like a duck bake so she’s kind of wiggling around kind of as if she’s looking at herself you know um which i think is really sweet it’s kind of like just reminds me of the internet it’s like a weird kind of tick tock but an artistic tick tock or something um just really simple um which is nice so um and then we have some ceramic pieces like chris’s um here and then the more irish one um jim rick’s was one of the first ones but this was the kind of ones i was hoping for this kind of amalgamation of irishness as well and so he’s kind of muggy mutant various um kind of characters um and jim ricks is a he’s an irish um oh forgotten the name
he lives in america but he’s an irish i wrote this down didn’t i yeah he’s an irish conceptual artist so um yeah so that’s kind of examples i haven’t got all of the work up and the last one i’ll show you is my piece apart from so i have the irish piece which is the two photographs together and then this one is a drawing that i made and it was just that kind of like cathartic drawing and because i i like tracing things and drawing them over and over again and getting them really simplified but then whenever it’s locked down and you have to like stick it to your window it’s like coming through you know trying to draw it i kind of like that lockdown process i had because then you’ll have people here who yeah maybe you can’t go out and and make things i was surprised we did get as many ceramic things as possible so some of the artists might have changed to video pieces and we also have fantastic one um by amy mcgee and she has and i’m going to use it as the opening piece for when you go into the exhibition and it’s a video piece and she’s made puppets and she tells you dma by story and it’s just absolutely stunning wow really nice so i’ll hope by the date where we do hopefully show it i will have all of them online at the moment that’s just most of them and we also have um this have a video of how to make your own amabe by a japanese artist azuri um and that it’s about 15 minutes long so we have to just kind of uh link over to that and so he makes a little paper and a where the little bake is kind of in the paper and you can make her talk say whatever you like okay so you can see like it’s already such a wide range of work and there’s still more to come yes so you mentioned um a hopeful exhibition as do you have any more detail on that at the moment or um what do you know what can you tell us sure so um pollen studios uh based in belfast um had offered to do the exhibition with us so and um quite a few of the pollen artists all submitted as well so um they’ve been really tight knit with us on the project and with current lockdown methods there are some galleries are currently open at the moment but maybe some of the larger um organizations like the mac and the golden thread gallery and for pollen then um people will probably do it by appointment we’ll have an opening hopefully november 5th which is usually like a late night art where people come out um and we have we’ll have all the safety measures in place and you can basically book like an appointment to come along so i’ll probably put you know some weekend dates in and an evening each week that people can come along throughout november fingers crossed and um if it does get put back because naturally that’s what’s happening at the moment you know it’s kind of part of the project yeah in a way because the project was made during lockdown and it means that if you have to book in for an appointment see it it’s almost becoming a performance you know you’re becoming part of the exhibition by able by being able to come along and of course then with people who especially aren’t able to uh for health and safety purposes and things come out i will have the instagram up and i’ll maybe kind of do a bit more of like um an exhibition online and kind of look at that just for kind of access to make sure and especially for the japanese artists as well that they can kind of see all the work together and for my previous shows i always kind of shoot a video where i can talk through things and just means then that people who can come can still feel connected to it and um do you think you’ll have a lot of the physical works there or will it be you know because there’s quite a lot of sculpture for example um so would it be photographs of those or will the actual workspace and do you think to show so i’ve contacted each of the artists and kind of just had a chat with them and as well like i’m kind of self-funding this and i don’t have any funding for it but obviously i’ve been supported by the arts council for years so i don’t mind you know contributing some especially my own time but also some resources so i have a small budget for kind of contempo temporary prints um for some things and then a lot of the local artists i’m able to kind of go and collect the work but i just kind of ask the artist you know what way they want it shown because some of the video works obviously will go on screens and which particular one the beaver that i mentioned um which is lovely um it’s a gif and i think it would look really nice on on a tablet or on a phone so it’s kind of displayed in the way it was meant to be viewed but yes especially as japanese artists obviously i give them the opportunity if they want to post it they can post it over and i’ll return it but you know we don’t have unfortunately enough budget to kind of get that over um but we’ll be able to reprint some of those so especially like a zoo um which isn’t a zoo and the work that had the um amabe hair object don’t want to lose that on getting it posted over so um i think a print of the two beside each other so like the internet um image of it being sold and then the image of it in the house i think together would look really nice so um actually we will have quite a lot of the artists um are up for having the drawings or the ceramics physically there and then the rest of the stuff then we’ll kind of print um maybe in like a temporary manner or i thought about have mine displayed on the window because i’ve i do often have window drawings so i think it would work really well as a window drawing as well so you know the work will change a bit in the space too
and then i suppose you it must be a factor now you have to figure out how many people you can have in a space and how far apart your things you know that sort of stuff has to maybe be considered now as well in poland’s not a huge space so that’s quite complicated yeah i think it’s kind of um well then again in the millennium court art center that i went to recently it was like one bubble per half an hour so and then it would be frequent cleaning and things like that but because i’m coming from a venue i’m already used to doing that currently for my job and work so i’m very aware of all the exciting terms and conditions and health and safety policies um all over that so i can make it as safe as possible okay well fingers crossed that can go ahead but as you say even if it’s delayed it just adds more time and possibly more overlooking from the email base to help us out hopefully i know come on guys
um that’s brilliant joanna thank you so much for that um do you is um
before i ask anything else um shall we because we had those links of scream but just for the audio and do you want to point people just towards where to see these sure at the moment no worries so to find out more about the exhibition so it’s joannaleach.com and that’s spelt
j-o-h-a-n-n-a-l-e-e-c-h and then um you can do forward slice forward slash amabe so a m a b i e and on instagram it’s a mabe underscore project and that shows you all of the stuff that we’ve came in so between the two of those we’ll kind of have all the details we hope that we’ll create a facebook invitation page soon enough so otherwise um if you follow pollen art studios on facebook and they will then have that online i also have a facebook artist like page so if you just search for my name that i spelt earlier on um you’d be able to just kind of like my page and then those updates for things like the events and stuff will come up as well um i suppose just on this i mean how do you feel about exhibitions going online more and more because i’m personally loving it because it means i can see stuff in belfast and i’m stuck here in newcastle so um but how are you personally finding that and feeling about that as an artist i think it’s good and my previous um solo exhibition that i mentioned before um it was in millennium court arts center and it’s only you know about 40 minutes from belfast i think 40 minutes to half an hour away from belfast city center but there’s so many people who can’t drive um you’re artists mainly um i you know i didn’t learn how to drive until i was 30. so there’s just kind of there’s a lot of people here although it’s not that far away and on our transport system isn’t great that actually i realized even when i was doing an exhibition that was just outside of belfast um i did a recorded walk around of my exhibition which was called wanderlust and fantastic oddities so if anyone wants to look up you know what the work that i kind of described that showed a lot of my work was kind of like a little survey of everything i’ve done so far they can look it up online and there is like i have like a ton of photographs really good documentation and then just a little walk around with me with video and then that’s great because i can share that to people and i have artists that i work with in the states and you know even then all the people who are in belfast that just couldn’t get so there are you know three other reasons can have access to it and i think you know i discovered that before lockdown how important that was and i think it continues to be very important because there’s also even times where i maybe go to an art exhibition opening and you’re too busy kind of chanting whoever’s with you having a glass of wine and it’s quite busy and then you’re kind of like oh you know i’ll go back and then i’ll sit with the work or i’ll look at it for longer and sometimes you just don’t get that opportunity so i think the more that arts and things can go online i think it’s great but it doesn’t take away from that actual experience because a few weeks ago i mean i’ve been self isolating um quite a lot and working from home and um i just decided that when the mac reopened i went to see the exhibition at the mac and again you booked into a certain slot and it’s a huge space so you know it’s it’s a bit safer than maybe going to a small kind of gallery space and i also went to the golden thread to see their show um on the same trip and it just is like there’s no way like that buzz and feeling of going to a gallery you know it’s not as if you know all virtual stuff is going to make it worse or people won’t go out to galleries if they can look at it online that you never nothing can change that idea of just the silence of the space the concentration on an artwork the experience of the artwork being out of your house just you know you can’t you can’t it was just such an amazing experience it almost felt like i was going to a church and it was my religious experience like that’s that’s what it felt like for me was getting back into gallery and just gave my heart that little extra beat that i needed that’s you know like i think seeing art um in person will never be diminished essentially what i think yeah now that’s good to hear or is that very romantic romanticized yeah no it’s no it sounds good i totally understand you mean i imagine i’ll feel the same when i feel able to go to a gallery again um but for now it’s just not really for me and um but yes i i know the space as well that you’re talking about so i can just imagine it and it would be a bit i can imagine it would be a bit safer because they are really big rooms that you’re in um but also it must be nice to have peace in them because they’re only letting so many people in at the one time so that must be quite a nice element of it as well you feel like you have maybe a more intimate experience possibly yeah and i hope that’s what maybe the mabae project would be like because then if there’s people like you both of us are saying you know we don’t want to be you know gallivanting around with um everything that’s happening in the world right now whereas if i knew that it was just myself and my bubble going to a place for a specific time we know people have claimed it and you go in see the art and go away and like you said and have that piece to experience and for as long as you want um i think it’s really nice and um if it’s okay and you did mentioned about working at the strand art cinema as well so you’re used to that is it okay if i just ask you quickly about how that’s going and sure you know the cinema experience because that’s quite similar it’s another sacred art space that we need to protect and um how is that experience are you finding of working at a cinema but also people coming to that cinema again
like i think from i kind of had to make it kind of you know oh welcome back to the strand covert video um just to put out on social media just so people knew the experience and i mean like as far as any kind of covered procedures and things like we have every every box ticked and more you know we’ve changed our screen in times where it is and people coming in and out of the building and there’s um like special cleaning that we have like a fogger machine that antibacterializes the seats and everything never mind then you know just having cleaning stations and cleaning more so we we have that all kind of ticked so i actually have been to a few screenings while two screenings since lockdown because i know the strand is as clean as it can be and also we’re a small cinema and we’re in a rural space we’re not the city center so we’re never super busy anyway and then with we’re not particularly busy but it just means that you can book exactly where you’re sitting you’re socially distanced and so i was able to i went and saw tannen and um the other event i went to was a global film screening um which we’re doing at the moment and it was with green book and then we kind of had a discussion on kind of black lives matters and um different things like that so if yeah just give me that buzz because you know we’re kind of you know a vintage cinema um designed in 1935 so that kind of encompassing kind of red curtain feel and you’re sitting in half back seats and the experience is just so lovely and just being immersed in the film because i just thought no matter how many times i’ve watched inception um boogers for nolan i’ve forgotten half the time what happens in it and it’s because i just kept on watching it at home a few times or maybe had a glass of wine can’t remember the ending very well so it meant that with tenant i had that full attention span i went in no one not it it’s christopher nolan and you know there’s gonna be questionable things about it too but it’s gonna be an amazing cinematic experience so i did feel like i kind of said there maybe it’s because of my previously religious background but that kind of i’m that ultimate buzz of being like in your synagogue you know it’s like you know the room itself and the space and and just being spread out and and the feeling of being feeling safe because um people around you are further enough away and you just get to switch off and fully enjoy a film and i notice so many more things in green book than i did watching it at home because i missed it and the first kind of cinema release there was a few times with things i was like oh oh that’s not and i was like doing the talk afterwards like i was like i was noticing things more and i’m supposed to know more about the film so yeah i disagree if you’d like you know the experience of being innocent is never going to take away from watching those you know films on on netflix and whatever yes it is great that those um platforms are there so in the global film screenings i’ve made it that you can go on to the strands website and you can read like a resource about your green book so it has the recording of us doing the talk it also tells you that you can watch green book on amazon prime so i’ve kind of make packages afterwards and make it accessible to people who can’t go so they can still feel like they’re part of it so they can watch green book from the link and then um obviously they would need to you know pay for that or have amazon prime but then i would recommend and give links to the films that we mentioned in the talks because you always forget when you’re listening to something like that brilliant so i have resources of different films that are good to watch like moonlight um and then i have a connection with belfast which talks about frederick douglass who um you know would have been one of kind of the main people to kind of abolish slavery and he had been the belfast and that connection i had read an article about it in 2012 so i was able to like place that too so we’re in the strand we go beyond film sometimes and with special events then i can still bring in an online audience or i just give people that chance to go what was that film she was watching and then i can tell them about the original grain book and how it really was for americans um and you know recommended documentaries and stuff so um i think you should get get out there and support your local spaces if we can all stay open you know they’re closed in the south at the moment so um it’s good to support those spaces but uh not you’ll never get over that kind of cinema experience or um my partner was telling me oh we were talking about vr and he said you know you can get vr which makes you be in a cinema and then it projects your netflix film oh yeah but you have to wear a really heavy headset and you can’t it’s the smell of it too it’s other sensory things it’s the way the light is it’s the way the sound kind of almost hugs you because it’s um soundproofed and it’s all of those things you know it’s when the lights go down it’s like oh you know give a ticket you know he had all those things like um like i think uh there’s uh i was gonna say um mark cousins always talks about the romanticism the cinema but in the way he kind of describes it you know um like on how he he likes it i think he’d say like sitting in the front seat is it in a front row i like sitting in the front i like just ignoring if there’s other people i like feeling like i’m there by myself and it’s just for me with the big screen exactly well if people go to this round you might be um very small amount of people there and it will fill it likes your own screen if i could get your feedback probably exactly but the feedback you know from customers when i did that covered video and i got a couple of voxpos was one of them was like a guy who was a film student and um he was just desperately back he’s like i’ve been three times this week it’s like oh it’s so lovely and then you know it’s weird because the family audiences haven’t really came back so i think families have got so used to being in lockdown and getting to schedules i think you know i’m hoping there’ll be a time where those guys are able to come back and enjoy themselves and that bit of you know your parent as well okay you might be watching a kid’s film but you know your kids are going to be quiet hopefully beside you for an hour and a half enjoy it you know take the time for yourself to watch a movie and and enjoy it yeah it’s just worrying with so many outbreaks and skills at the moment so it’s very worrying to take children anywhere i think at the moment that’s one of the things but yeah we just have to find a way to help cinemas survive i think if we can yeah um and i think well the strand is spoiled because we’re supported because we are a charitable organization we’re supported by the arts council so loyalty burned
well just compared to maybe some of the other independents um who you know like my wage is funded by the arts council because i’m doing all this outreach and whenever it was locked down i was doing online videos and events and supporting artists and pain artists so we can kind of do that and we’re a bit luckier than some of the other spaces that might just be going on on solely the income they got in the door
right um is there anything else you would like to say put out there or anything before we go well no i think we’ve already talked about it so i had mentioned my website so if people want to see my work because they can save the exhibition at millennium court which kind of encompasses all of that and yeah keep an eye out for the amabe stuff you can get um most of a sneak break you get on the instagram at the moment there is most of the work there and so yeah so um just thanks so much paula for having me on the chat it’s been really good brilliant yeah no thank you for doing it it’s brilliant i’ve been following the project with interest and it’s such a lovely idea because it is just that idea of care and something looking after you but also a collection of people who are all spread out they’re all dispersed coming together to work on something like this it’s a really beautiful things it’s a lovely thing to be able to highlight and put out there really so thank you very much for showing us so much of the work it’s wonderful no problem
this has been a cosy pea pod production with me paula blair and my very special guest johanna leech the music is common grounds by airton license under a 3.0 non-commercial attribution and is available from ccmixter.org episodes release every other wednesday and you can get those anywhere that you find podcasts but also you can subscribe to my own personal youtube channel if you find pea blare you can see the full recordings now that we’ve been doing the video versions as well do please share and subscribe to help other people find the show be part of the conversation with av cultures pod on instagram and iv cultures on twitter and facebook we’re always happy to hear from potential guests so if you’ve got an idea for a show or something that you’re working on that you’d really love the world my tiny bit of the world to hear about then please do get in touch i’d really love to hear from you and if i’ve invited you and i haven’t heard back from yet i’ve got an open door policy so there’s it’s never too late and um everybody’s really busy and stressed so don’t worry about it um i’m always also happy to have suggestions from listeners about topics that you something that you think you’d like to hear us try to cover i do try to make those and i do keep a list um there are loads of suggestions that have been in the past i haven’t got to yet just because i haven’t been able to access this stuff and that is partly where your support comes in so even if you want to send us a dvd or access to something that you’d like us to see that would be really helpful so i do wear all the hats in the making of this program and um so if you could support my work and you there are the memberships and patreon as described earlier on but you can also drop me a fiver at buy me a coffee dot com forward slash p e a blair or you can give any amount so like a pound or something if that’s all you want to give at paypal dot me forward slash p e a blair and just anything at all really really helps so huge thanks for joining us i hope you really enjoyed this i loved making this episode keep well stay safe and as ever be excellent to each other and i will catch you next time
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hello and welcome to the audio visual cultures the podcast exploring arts and cultural production I'm Paula Blair and I'm really happy to be joined this time by Ian McKenna he talks to us by his moving image practice many thanks to membership Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures for your continued and much appreciated support the podcast is free to access but not to make and distribute they say this into the end to find out more ways to be part of audio visual cultures for now I enjoy the discussion my and I'm gonna so my slash mark great for circa aren't quite as I had the pleasure of Lincoln street quite a lot of your work because you've been putting it on he changed a lot of the work that you had and installations and and film festivals that's really exciting so you've been mostly making short form films so far is that right yeah at the moment I would like to push on to more long form projects not been writing a couple things that are beyond anything I've done so far one of the reasons as a financial our financial because you can only afford so much short forms good for audience attention things like that when you're in the autumn exceptional or if it's online you know people tend to not watch too much for too long especially in the sort of the phones that I like I'm a big fan of slow cinema and that's what and that sort of culture that's a bit more difficult I think then it might be useful to try and get an idea if it seems and she said come through in your work by talking first of all may be a bite when your most recent film set you up loaded so last week he uploaded I read a short animation called screen I find that one really striking visually as well as the audio it's really fascinating we found some debate twenty five seconds it's all right I really love the way you focus on small details and you've got this recurring image of a hydraulic hospital bed space areas and so %HESITATION there's a sense coming three of it you use the shapes of things in their car abstracted but it's so clear what they are you know it's very minimal very pared back but I find it really packs a punch yeah it really conveyed a lot of isolation and it was quite intense but there's also this idea of busy ness and there's a lot of other stuff going on in the signed happy to talk about what it is you're exploring and not screening I sort of hit us like a and then between film from a terms of work lan's love my work I had a film at a while back %HESITATION enactors the bad racism but I'm also I I've written a short film that I sort of had in mind %HESITATION hasn't been made yet but it's close to other sort of static look good screen %HESITATION ready part Bach images I kind of want to choose have a teaser almost have something in mind or were introduced the next short film well I plan to shoot down short film estimated and block light so for me I was kind of just test out different ideas I like to focus on the one detail some some I'm a big fan of Theodor Dreyer's optional Joan of arc in the not so there's a lot of just it's like a bad against double cross got stalled so that sort of thing but was again excellent as well not only on screen but in previous work focusing on the details and %HESITATION singer objects I guess running and to me or what people take away from the previous when needed was it the rectory where specifics in a hospital is that it will migrate G. use of faulty camera for part of it and some of the tech is that right sure is that a different one I used to smoke the camera for the previous one and so in the beginning yeah yeah %HESITATION are you saying comment but I I bought a a number one for right tree vocabulary I used faulty camera soul download Sony small comment it fitted perfectly with the seams of mortality and the LX you know something Dan real I try and find a lot of my work but then withdrew right tray %HESITATION I bought the same coming because I love the last four that's a fact was brilliant and I I'm you know just a local blues like nineties nerds because Arnold films that came out this summer kind of silly but still like them you know like the Blair witch project yeah but I thought maybe aren't on it when I'm on the phone that works fine %HESITATION short amount for a tree news two films that way if you if you're from third thinking about grace the I. losing somebody and he's left behind and how it affects them themes range remembrance and directions you go through when you visit a gray area for around a week %HESITATION I was researching a lot in the last few years then to you know old Irish culture and the culture of this card for an interlock nowadays or if it's just sort of surviving as well %HESITATION interest in high changes over time and that sort of thing about the form the cane and work at it you know can instead of the mouth of the cease so archaic ritual work usually %HESITATION woman will perform it but it kind of died down there's a number of reasons why it doesn't work cups of church work too big of a fond of women home and sort of power quality G. number take place over to say stuff away usually they don't really like the I think there is an association are works for pagan rituals goes back a long way so it was nothing but I had met the in the lead up to a cause try to find someone to perform but eventually turned out to be just coincidence virtual someone speak Irish as well as waters I am not the Armagh Reimers and a member the log treatments Dara he was talking to me about it you know hi it's just a human response really sort of took the dog not study what I was getting out I was trying to there was no like sort of I guess like national sentiment it was just I was really talking about your expression of grief but I will talk to the man well sort of right now from a couple different perspectives sort of controlling but my own history but people you know the possible entrance with a little bit of research about eight point nine years ago and is described as a cry baby on the crying it was this signed it just came from my friend it did not say how a particular there aren't any necessary words to you or if it's just something that emerges the fading that could emerge the sign from the body yeah that's right most of my life I suppose it was like a sort of poem yes but I I did you know one man Francis Quinn what we're working to get her on the shoulder if you're getting into those sort of moments where the words are really coming up yeah you know just kind of like roll with it %HESITATION welcome those kind of conduct as you described in like manner not even just mumbles or you know cries all because Shiro it's electrical work but for the most part it is water going back to work the sort of history of I think there's like a lot of links to the Jewish and our cultures as well so in trucks fascinating what's the point of origin yes %HESITATION yeah yeah it came up actually and %HESITATION previous recording I did with an artist who's also based in Belfast she was born in Iran she was talking about practices that were really quite similar from her parents culture feels something just quite natural about it in a way it's a natural response to something I think visually that one because that's one where I thought the night vision use where it's quite a grain and then you've got these distortions are it's breaking up a lot of my work as well it's kind of just circumstance again with the calmer it was that's faulty common interest students good luck %HESITATION it suited the mood the night vision really the only light up what county that so if you just put a figure against a wall on the extra cost light across her uncle night vision that's great stuff but we can I can be very effective to go alongside the words so and was there might be some like pouches works but if they cannot just recording close we had recorded an accidental theatre that's right Shastri score %HESITATION cars go by so I was still a lot of the coast just to eliminate those so instead of the tween what Francis was Sam it came back around and worked in my favor because it sits commerce talent %HESITATION what she says will expose these things keep reemerging and other pieces so the rag trade one that has the bad images again but you've also got it seems like a young man visiting some sort of memorial and tying a rack on a trade going down the rabbit hole again there were old traditions and cultures for a lot of people still have probably more so than the actors gaining less someone from wells drilled visitor well technically well kept their rights or part of something the baby belongs to a person tie it to the right track selected hope I guess maybe it cools into by a pro or send a message something to someone I guess or something special %HESITATION so I'm so I'm not too sure that's true but there's plenty of holy wells and Arland specially hello source close just because something does on some some of them are just been lost over time as well so myself but this is just nice like simple act of documents on Oct but maybe this time yeah because there's a lot of focus on removing the grant and stay close up action of the hand stepping into water repeatedly it's almost like a cleansing part of the ritual I wonder if it's a failing %HESITATION if we separate from any religious connotation for a moment if it's an active trying to feel like you're doing something when you feel powerless in a situation of somebody isn't while or maybe in the process of dying and you're fading quite helpless about that so you it's there maybe doing something is what helps yeah I think you're right Justin something like simple lock blacked out whatever it may be it doesn't have to be connected to religious or you know it doesn't have to belong to the old Irish culture or anything like that in your state it's just a simple act of going to get someone's some sweets store and bring them to the person who's on world just visit and some of them talking to them structural work here this time you get more directly into the following a young person dating with grace and your fiction film removal that was a longer pay say is that right that you had a quite a few film festivals because again the Irish things are coming up and then to do with one part of it the aftermath lawyer %HESITATION decided some of that and so lot of Irish folk gospel so got it in Dublin that knows what and %HESITATION the contest you here I thank people who were maybe decide not here were able to connect to you know a bit more than what was brought so it's following a young man he seems to have a job as a roommate filled person maybe needs religious icons which manages to accidently damage some of them so there's quite a point it's thank you bye in faith and they act swiftly and stuff so he finds out about his father being taken now and he seems to just know that yeah I'm gonna miss her yeah but yes I see what you mean it by really appreciating so cinema and not it's a very quiet %HESITATION minutes very stale and so when there is action you really notice sets yes it's very considered and that's very internal type of foam nothing that's what I was really traffic across all like I think the average shot length and removal is quite long some shots that go on programs and kind of wild I guess for a short song yeah I was looking at a lot of collects in them %HESITATION I'd watch a lot of care star means work right now all right excellent I was also a hem that makes sense because there's quite a lot of journeying on roads and %HESITATION then remain so yeah that yeah yes run scheme where but said she found that one Armonk with a twist on that it was good from the Americans just not many people except in the roads and stuff yes Iran's held nearby that mom so that's a big part of the film yeah there's a woodland it's very K. E. N. N. he received something suddenly happens because he sort of just runs away from it the main character and then later on after time as possible after the way the main character is played by transaction he %HESITATION return slots for %HESITATION I guess it's like a appreciation for what it means and it went away you know you get like when places hold such meaning to sometimes fall for me at least I don't really hold any resentment or bitterness towards them I just kind of look at them and that's what the main character does so there is a better route right I wrote as well as a sort of big wave at the burgers when he returns he sees a communication tower and I was kind of Lincoln and %HESITATION earlier in the film or some %HESITATION so I was trying to pick up some from there I wasn't too sure what exactly transaction isn't comparable isn't because see it or feel it so it does feel like a lot of your films are trying to work through things do you feel that that's how your filmmaking is is just trying to work through things here especially the short films as well and part of the cane and someone to find the right in the car I guess they're just releases of you know what I want for in hospital I've been talking about the steps she frowns on stocks as well bush will make and it's a bit more difficult for me to find a release and settlement because it's not really about being creative when you're all set you have to get the job done film and %HESITATION and parts of that again for me are I don't really find a creative release the more maybe I'd like to write that sort of thing you know I think for the farmers they can go on stage and get that instant release boardwalk tractors or people are like expressing cells but also making nothing it's only when you're maybe writing or doing some smoke from a I find a release not since the tools to get it done yeah yeah I think there's no room for emotional so you kind of just need to get the job done at least if you're still short films I produce all of them as well I wish I didn't have to books maze runner online get a job it'll probably really important practical experience though because hopefully that sets you up if you want to expand and not sort of career because you are so very young you've got options and for what area you want to do because you're ready multi skilling at the moment with I have to remind myself up thank you you know when you're taking on the rails for a lot of the toxicity obviously learned a lot about that's good experience and I try and removal was a it was a tough shit I felt at the time I hadn't done a good enough job directing the things about but I guess just kind of part you know I suppose if you're if you're have a death spiral the house at the same time then realistically you know and you're very young film maker and it is a very difficult job today so to have me at at seventeen minute film doing about much of the work by yourself at your age that's pretty impressive in itself I mean unless they have seen worse I'm not damning it with faint praise it's a good phone but you know I've seen a lot worse buying more professional people so don't put yourself behind don't be hard on yourself I think all of us or at our whole lives are always constantly learn and it's good to be there to get things to go well I can do better I will do better next time because you know happened any mistakes but not that you made mistakes it's a really tight found fascist more just accept that you're young and you're gaining experience and you're doing it really well so there's a heart to take from what you're doing and it's very brave to do a lot of the same since well because you're looking at things that are quite mature for your age I think your generation are quite an interesting correct because he might have some more maturity because of things going on in your life so that people just a few years old and you might not have so I'm quite interested to learn about what's going on is people your age at the moment in there for a year at a time I what's going on I'm in my own little world whatever yeah like a lot of people my age are color to your name and stuff and I just kind of trying to figure it out I thank the detail a lot of people obviously comes with a lot of pressure on banks adding different people figured out I don't think any of this really truly figure it out just to survive he just couldn't hurry I think anybody ever says a good little sauce diet thing that probably lion to be honest you're asking me about a film education having been a content provider and thirty comments for some education and having had a background of film education he told me before that your son medication the center up to this because of health issues right you're going three year periods it seems to me from the right side of self educating and just staring at me in learning by doing it as far to say before I worked for al Qaeda back I went to Manchester for yeah twenty six and twenty seven ten studies from working there but before that I was making phone Burke I didn't even amidst a skill and I made films outside about and then %HESITATION yeah I came back and was in hospital for but I don't know I guess I just pop my color blinded by it you started filming and I sort of had these images from my house so I started to look back on capital C. phone services will soon I guess I've got experience from me I've definitely learnt the most just a muscle do you wonder hi the experiences compare it was clear heart broken in a way when I was teaching and I taught briefly at the university of Salford probably at the same time that you remind Chester yeah and I was a theory person attached to a a new film production degree you know we had so many excited radiant Tasiast sick young people the old one and three directors producers cinematographers so last and tell them they're probably at the end of your degree you'd have to go in as a runner anyway because it's not your discounts tracking yeah you know I always wondered about just the aspects of that that your film production education that's formalized an institutionalized because I worry that a lot of young people are going into it thinking that they're going to come right straight away B. in Tarantino or whatever ironically because he's not allowed to give those old phone apart from going to cinema and I feel like that's what's lacking is they're not going to the cinema they're just watch and stuff your TD which is fine but then thinking they're going to move to Hollywood or something when they're finished %HESITATION it's not very realistic so just wondering if what you're experiencing you're still in the middle of it so we're finding ice but yeah if you know your different experiences just gotten in there and just stay in it anyway I have good experience of my course managing what I go back in the I remember %HESITATION of course later said at the start of the collection phones good summer that was my mobile you know because I go to settle I watch a lot of that is I watch a lot of phones that's a big ass character you mention card you know he he worked in the TV rental store for years but I just watched like carrentals numbers or talks with watching films but part of it for me I guess some people go into unity I'm not gonna make excellent courses because they don't really know exactly what they want to be a generalist maybe some people are going to not work but A. S. film industry is a bit of a tricky one because again as you're saying it's like you graduate from a soul mate control but you're still going to have to take up an entry level and the film industry unless you called the connection to the ground I don't think people read enough about what the course entails they usually set up the course detailed enough before after it so you'll know what you're sort of getting into but I think people don't pay much attention and there's a lot of pressure school you need generally not just whistle that can you know look you gotta get out on your life and then further down the road that can cause a lot of problems it was that it is free for one moment we were in office he wants to direct this is when I was at Manchester I was surprised how many people didn't put their hands up you know I just take as a given the people up at the moment and course and direct short souls but a lot of people I guess maybe didn't know yet or maybe their trusted server settings what we're there to make films and stuff but there's a lot of farmers just yeah there's a huge amount today I think life experiences probably in a way more useful or been educated in other areas can be more useful as but I'm hearing on this and other podcasts that have a lot of people he fell foul kinds of production roles and it's just so fascinating the amount of different things the point of different expertise that goes into making one program or one found sharks I worked in our department for over so many different departments and crazy and journal folks a lot of moving parts so yeah there's a lot going on you'd be surprised special music productions check out the E. at the moment do you have to hustle for work is it a combination of your own projects and working for other people there how does that work for you at the moment so my heart was working in the art department in the summer well so my eyes and I like that little bit of the Jewish nocturnal wish the how to a more steady job or I wish that I called paid for what I want to do so much I don't really make too much money off my own phones are covered contact it's like production designer so that work for him usually you'll swing up sparkles I'm sorry I kind of just want to focus on my own thing but then I got side tracked I need a bit of money as well I'm hoping maybe script almost study job I guess but I'd like to do something in around what I'm interested in the is it okay to ask if I if this whole time he's gonna Seuss's the short documentary he's done with the artists Sharon Kelly he's got I think it's today they were recording at her expressions opening and the golden tried to gallery because it is an investor moments while the reason for the phone and her work is pretty stunning as well yeah it is she's done a great job they're not talking about you just came out of nowhere I came back from I had a residency in Hong Kong I came back from there talk with my mom about her show and stuff and I just sort of the idea and vision make some for southern %HESITATION started piecing together the show looks great my own such a going beyond our so she's such a big influence on the slim %HESITATION so it's nice to just make some four nine it was a free what's not because what she's doing is she's drawing in charcoal on translation papers so you get the sense of a delicatessen and circles just sitting on the paper it could slide off at any moment so sense of hate to have to go to it is to work with these very delicate materials and so thank you very any picked up and the camera work you've got a lot of different focal ranges going on around me for it you just recapture that precarity through the proximity the close ups and everything else going on three different lancers I have a fifteen on third and six and then I sort of rain just to work with so my mom still some really interesting things with Celtics all the work you know in terms of the medium she's working on connects to the subject matter of memory and you know I fraudulent so much of the work is I've been stolen right out of sorry right yeah and then bump stocks in there every five minutes as well so its rating of a subject matter because that's really into her own childhood is not what happens after this old place but there's something very tenuous by thought for memory that she seems to have been there's photographs made in a play I guess what a lot of my mom's records contemplate of offense I think she's going to leave however bucked and usual major bustled through these images to she found her child so she doesn't want to talk with articulate and events serious amounts of school or work as well with respect to the cut it should be treated as she speaks related to grief and silence of the truck made a specific source of inspiration doctors well you know she did your cheatin automation these are things I look to as well as references and grown up or under my daughter's focus on Nordic stirs I think it just kind of rubs off on June I'll look at things but if you're going about a project or visually Allah I'll I think there's a lot of lost an entrance from them on holiday compose events on paper or on the complex do you want to sending about the residency then in Hong Kong something very exciting S. R. four months months ago I applied because I was on the go away somewhere on my phone well I might as well do something with the rest and so on to look at and what's going to start a year pretty much for us Tomlin residents in Hong Kong and then %HESITATION over somewhere things just kind of started with capital murder so it's kind of interesting going into the you know because I wasn't I I wasn't aware of what was going to happen in Hong Kong and I wasn't really too public I guess at the time when I applied yeah I'm not alone to the phone call so it wasn't too bad to be honest but it was just sent trucks to be there at that time this is the time when there's major protests happening yeah I was there for the month of October and %HESITATION straits clan on the flight over I had just finished up by one round I'm not sold by the individual gets the collective a lot of them arrived into this place where people are fighting for their individual rights the same thing but you can so sort of big box it was very Allah cart make together what is your residency entail fun I wrote a script for bisexual myself right now and then I made some installation work about how to show that they're studying cold flu projects so I had to show that are accepted my video work you know what I just thought Hyundai controlled everything to a different expression titled that was just made up of these plaster cost plastic cups that collected while I was in hospital nurses with public schools thanks to them your tech tomorrow over the course of cost us to start collecting the I. cost those and made a split bad I'm just laid out on the floor I kind of disconnected from although I was like a spectator took what was going on in Hong Kong I didn't really want that so I wasn't interested enough so I I didn't really lucked out interfere with what I was doing to be honest with the video work and the installation again it kind of falls along to where I am creatively I can really well maybe outside forces made their way and and I didn't realize what the instruction book from A. I. this was to do with myself there was no room for me in Florence from what's happened in the old call because you you know a young person he's been through quite an ordeal that's a lot to work three and itself yeah yeah I find myself in my head a little yeah and there's an overwhelming amount of stuff going on in the world in general at the minute so it's really difficult to start getting ready and entrances and I agree and caring about one thing a lot of but all the other millions of things going on so it that's not a bad thing to be introspective Eric's sister overwhelming to them as well so I don't really know what's going on in the world I guess it's always been our best but when you go free I guess something traumatic and then you come out the other side you're not going to run you almost think the world will be peaceful but that doesn't just keep scrolling do you think you trying to find some sort of peace and yourself maybe it's not as active as possible yeah I guess I would like to thank thank most car helped me last year almost like a delay strengths are and what happened when I was in the hospital and I think things really struck me last year and I almost became a worked out towards the end when I came back to Hong Kong in Hong Kong where we can reach you that's great until residents need seem to have been doing quite well that getting your working savages and Belfast another but beyond this file is fortunate because I Peter Butler's Michael sabar trump he runs the %HESITATION password yes or a no time I got out of hospital and these videos to kind of want to do something with them right shoot for a few days and it scored one of his on court street none I thought to be honest I was kind of down the thought you know it was just it was a nice way of wrapping it up but then I don't remember too much of what happened but I I was able to get the crescent only a few months after on I did like a complete new body of work pretty much within two months and that was the homework in the king and %HESITATION I was running a cold front that after a committee it should come scratch you know I really like your work so that's frustrating because I'm trying to push things on them it's been difficult to get shown criticism thank installations with a lot of hard graft and patience keep at it and see how it goes we've done quite a lot and quite a short space of time Stampy pace with fast do you feel like you're exploring a sense of a connection to the Irish nicer Irish I tend to say because it feels like this is a question that's come up in a broader sense with people I think mostly because of what's going on lasts for accents after the referendum a few years ago and I feel like a lot of people from the north from north in Ireland from Ulster are reassessing their identity because I know I certainly have in the past few years I was just wondering if in a very personal sense because there is so much that we we've talked about it but CPOs practices that could be considered as traditional Irish practices but what a friend does that mean and %HESITATION what kind of direction you know there's a lot of question marks that come up from that but I just wondered if he had any thoughts on that or if that was part of what you were working through as well it is a great way to get it kind of brings back to what we're talking about earlier and that idea of human response to grief and relation to the king and I work under my Irish title and there's a lot of fiber strains from it are just human responses %HESITATION she came and things and I think that's what they should pay to be on a motor history works Gaelic culture these are just things that people go deal thanks I think to make it to you I'm not speaking about you I'm speaking generally to make a political is the wrong thing to the yeah that's fine I don't really think politics and identity in terms of my work ethic I don't really think about it too much at the moment I'm just kind of worked in truth my sort of demons %HESITATION trial almost get food %HESITATION there are locked there was just one of my friends after all but both techs society and %HESITATION I say it does make its way into your work one way or another I guess I'm speaking about hospital environment maybe something can be said about the lock of baths or things like that too and I chose them I think they always find their way in some parts but I don't really see doctor at political message I'm trying to send them through its an idea in a way maybe you have to renegotiate things with your own body because socks at the last count of what you were surprised when second impact said started because that was the first to be offensive what's yesterday this screen and it just struck me some action images of a and the signs of a shaky have status made just five cents of that isolation in a very busy environment I thought about that but I guess there's a contrast from Stalin do you have anything you want to plug is there anywhere on the internet you would like to direct people if they want to see your work the website and I maintain dot com but I think I'm going to be changed not sent yet somebody you should probably if you're older yeah to search for your name and it's crazy to find great SCO it's been really brilliant here for me to hear more about your work I run the query to say and how you work progresses thanks for optimal thank you very good luck with everything and get a her exhibition you've been listening to audio visual cultures it's me Paula Blair and my very special guest in the McKenna this episode was recorded edited and produced by polar bear the music is common ground by our tune licensed under creative Commons noncommercial three point zero license and is available for dine note on C. C. mixer dot org if you like what we do please help us make production and distribution costs with a regular payment to never pay dot com forward slash P. EA Blair or make one off donations to pay pal dot me forward slash PDA prior episodes are released every other Wednesday subscribe in your chosen app so you never miss a new release and do you remember that our backlog of episodes is all available on each tape visit audio visual culture shock wordpress dot com our fellow AT cultures politics on Instagram and eighty cultures on Twitter and Facebook for more information and useful links thanks so much for us then and catch you next time
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