2  

The title Lead Sheeting came from Lead sheet in building: A guide to good practice by C. H Knight (1984,) this was produced by the Lead Development Association (1978) My dad is a building surveyor and I found this in his office last year. When Lead Sheeting started out as collaboration between Hamish McLain and myself, there were messy dialogues about painting, studio, space and endless theoretical ways of thinking about landscape. Specifically in the arts, collaboration has many definitions for example, working as a group to achieve some kind of social goal. The list of how to conduct collaborations is now endless in today’s creative organizations. This can be a spiritual venture, some kind of healing process, nomadic perhaps. Though collaborating has its links to participation and politics, where its challenge is to radicalize your practice and knowledge about research. There have always been major anxieties about architectural space. This seems more so in the arts by commoditization of studio, art school, and museum and now the evolution of gallery, artist-run spaces. We decided to act on this by putting ourselves somewhere else (an office space,) without isolating ourselves from these sometimes-militant structures and work through what we know already in our practices and lack thereof from critical discussion about paintings use. After a week we saw landscape as spectacles, artist run discussions, industrialisms, pigeon spikes and paintings plastics. The office at DBH, which felt exhausted after a week, was familiar to exhaustion of gallery, art school, artist run collectives and the studio. Perhaps these infrastructures are the new playgrounds of landscapes. The discussions are a core part of understanding a flux of art theories between each person we invited, the importance that practice plays in these landscapes. We wanted to describe this space as a cage and there are all different types of look and feel to cages. For me, this cage feels transparent, glass, but has all the capabilities of holding you in with bars. In Trouble In Utopia Robert Hughes (1984) describes the supreme utopia as sheet glass, the opposite to stone, concrete or brick – it meant lightness, transparency – ‘the’ modern city. I see our project Lead Sheeting as remains from Richard Serra on a fucking nuts tractor roller. Responding back to the itinerary for the week between the 17th and 21st of September – we set out to explore new contexts around our practices – specifically in painting and the concept of landscape. One of these was to bring relevance to landscape that has been the backdrop for painting over the last millennium. However, this also has leaded me to think how painting is used in office spaces, what is its social function today. This publication is only viewable online as a PDF and I wanted to treat it like producing an object or an idea. This is carrying on from the lead sheeting blog www.leadsheeting.blogspot.co.uk and general interests in publications and their uses, how to distribute painting in a ever growing social hub of art and its use with photography.

  3  

All graffiti is from locations around Wavertree in Liverpool and is the work of D.Amos, photographed by D.Amos. All other photography is part of the DBH offices project for Lead Sheeting. The mind maps are from the whole week of the project reflect an interest in the design and distribution of mind maps and brainstorms into posters, publications, flyers and displaying work from artists and projects such as: the Autonomy Projects Newspaper (and recently the Manual for Useful Art) The Situationists, Simon Patterson (see bellow,) Birmingham And The Magic City part of the City States at Liverpool Biennial 2012, set up through Eastside Projects Birmingham. Exhibitions mentioned are BAM BAM BAM at Wolstenholme Creative Space (http://www.wolstenholmecreativespace.com/) Liverpool (2011) and Dead Mint at Arena Gallery (2012) Liverpool. BAM BAM BAM was one of the most interesting exhibitions I had seen that year because it showed that you can have a crazy, really good independent artist curated show spanning over a couple of floors References & Links Lead Sheeting [online] available at: http://www.leadsheeting.blogspot.co.uk

Lead Sheet association [online] available at: http://www.leadsheet.co.uk/

Robert Hughes [online] The Shock Of The New, Episode 4: Trouble in Utopia available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnYUJyjTieU

Simon Patterson [online] Under Cartel at the Haunch of Venison, available at: http://vimeo.com/45964522    *Richard Whitby artists [online] available at: http://www.richardwhitby.net/

Eastside Projects [online] Birmingham and The Magic City available at: http://www.eastsideprojects.org/elsewhere/birmingham-the-magic-city/

Liverpool Biennial 2012 [online] The Mobile Art School: Use Value and Future of the Art School available at: http://liverpoolbiennial.co.uk/whatson/past/all/452/the-mobile-art-school-use-value-and-future-of-the-art-school/  The Autonomy project [online] available at: http://theautonomyproject.org/ Mobile Art School Athens [online] available at: http://www.mobileartschoolathens.org/

*Richard Whitby exhibited at The Royal Standard Plans Within Plans http://www.the-royal-standard.com/2012/04/04/exhibition-preview-plans-within-plans/ this was a really interesting show, which included Inspirations: Seven Interviews with Local Architects http://www.richardwhitby.net/seveninterviews.html

  4  

Travis Perkins Liverpool Landscaping Supplies 42 Sandhills Lane L5 9XN Photographed 2012

The company can trace its origins back to 1797, when the Benjamin Ingram Company of joiners and carpenters was founded at 33 Beech Street in the City of London. Benjamin Ingram subsequently merged with Perkins to become Ingram Perkins. A merger between Travis & Arnold and Sandell Perkins formed Travis Perkins in 1988.

  5  

  6  

These were the first of our discussions on Wednesday the 19th September with Australian artists Jamil Yamani [http://jamilyamani.com/] and Eric Bridgeman [http://ericbridgeman.wordpress.com/] and artist D.Amos. Jamil Yamani is partner of Louisa Dawson artist in residence at the royal standard and Eric Bridgeman was the previous artist in residence at The Royal Standard from June-August 2012. These first discussions are mainly about their experiences in Liverpool.

JY: So how did you get the space? H: It was a sequence of events. When we first came up with an idea of doing a collaborative project... rose was saying Hamish what are you doing? Have you got a exhibition in the pipe line and I was making a fair bit of work and I said not really but I'm trying to get something going and rose said lets doing something together. That initial conversation mentioned the word landscape… R: So we decided after a couple of weeks, look for a gallery space but then after a while we thought it wouldn’t really work JY: is that difficult to find a gallery, find a space here? H: Well… JY: You haven’t had a problem (directed at Eric) E: Well I'm charming… R: There’s a difficultly in terms of, there’s not that many artist-run spaces, apart from royal standard and Wolstenholme kind of... H: We’ve both in the city for a while and there’s the artist run spaces, red wire, Wolstenholme, royal standard, there’s a few other studios and things… JY: Static? H: its always on a bit of a higher level, different level... their rent is a lot more of you want a studio R: they have a really good programme there H: when I left university I set up with a few people at red wire. Red wire is DIY, grunge-esq building and Wolstenholme is in that mode and now it has a substantial studio group and programme, its quite strong. So we wanted to find a space to do something in and you go through different avenues to find a space and so we ended up here. We got word of fallout factory happening, where Eric is at the moment and approached them and had chats with them. They seemed up for it, but to go there you have to put some money down, their renting wall space… that’s them though. JY: Eric you made a good deal right? E: Yeah, they wanted to have something to kick of the biennial. They’re being quite generous. But what I wanted to ask was what’s the difference to being in this space than the

  7  

royal standard. I mean I know there’s a difference, but obviously you made a decision to be somewhere else to do this specific project? H: Yeah, there’s a difference. We are little bit weary, we are paying something to be here and we are only 20 minutes walk extra down the road from the royal standard. So what’s this going to give us? It gives us a neutral space, to analyze and re-contextualize our work away from our studio. It’s also in a working environment, not our working environment… JY: A 9-5 kind of vibe? Do you try to get here from 9-5? R: Well I don’t think there is any work ethic here. We are not coming in and working on paintings and its not a substitute for the painting, its almost, like Hamish said yesterday I am leaving them for left over’s. Trying to work out the next step… H: It’s more about moving objects around, documenting them… JY: Oh you mean moving images around the space, how do they work… that’s great, without that approach, your almost reframing the office… R: There is coldness to the office I found, that you don’t find in gallery spaces or studios and I think I wanted that to help with the discussions. And also Hamish has been here for a long time and he knows the art scene quite well, Liverpool quite well… and I’m starting to get use to that, its sometimes suffocating to be in all these places that you know here. JY: Yeah totally, it feels like you’re in a really small town… R: Well we were saying it feels like we are going on holiday. It’s weird because we are just down the road, and its quite refreshing H: It feels like a hotel room. We went for a walk down the dock roads area and went you’re on holiday it felt like “shall we head back to the room for a cup of tea!” – it had that vibe and it fits with it. That unfamiliarity… that’s one of the reasons we invited you both down here because you’ve come on residencies at different stages now… and with these walks we’ve been looking at industries down there, a ship turning up, that kind of vibe was important for us… JY: When I first got here we came from London and the first thing that struck me was that there seemed to be... please don’t take this the wrong way, there seemed to be a lot of white people but there was a lot who were socially or economically depressed. That was my first reaction. You know where the apartment is? It’s quite full on around there E: It gets more and more honest like that, outside of that area. L1 seems like a bubble that’s false but outside is the true… JY: I went up to Everton Park after that after the first couple of days. Full on there, what’s going on, policeman patrolling the street… I’m not use to seeing that, cops in vans. I felt a bit unnerved. It wasn’t until I did a bike ride through Sefton Park which takes you through Toxteth there must be a mosque around there and I thought ok cool…there’s something else going on. And Lou’s white… we were getting stared at a lot, and we weren’t use to that in London cause everyone’s well we don’t give a shit but here it felt like a lot of eyes on us all the time. And then having the biennial treat us like shit! The royal standard were the one and saving grace… and since that time I’ve only met really nice people here. It just got better and better.

  8  

To the point where yesterday I got my take away and went to the pub, and this has never happened to me before, well not that quickly. I had a quick pint whilst I was waiting for my food, and started chatting to two guys straight away – one runs a community center and the other one was just some guy… reasonable conversation. E: I started really enjoy that… the pub cultures quite strong. JY: You read about violence and glassing, so when you’re faced with heavy drinking and England’s quite well known for heavy drinking. You’re waiting for it to happen, but it doesn’t happen… but people down stairs at the Ship and Mitre are nice. H: What were your first experiences when you touched down in Liverpool? E: Well the first thing was London, I went to an old English pub there, I would ask people for lighters and they’d look at me. At the pub people are really bitter there. The pubs here, I met people straight away. London sucks, people are so rude there. Its even more friendly here than parts of Australia, the energy of people in pubs and social places… it took me about a month and half to be ok to think about work here in Liverpool. I felt dislocated here; the weather was bothering me the sun was setting at 10, 11 o clock… I wasn’t spending much time in the studio just yet. The first initial thing I do is meet people, found a common ground, share ideas. When I first met Rose, she said hey come out for a drink and we’ll show you around. And I met David through her. I thought it was really slow. I was at the dale street flat; I got relocated for a week and a half. Over near the grapes pub, near the Anglican cathedral. This place where the biennial people put visiting artists for the biennial – it was this guys old town house. JY: Its easier when your single, your more open to making friends. When you’re a family you close out a lot more… H: You talked about that period of a month and half to find your feet and it was when you started talking to people and that was more on a social level… because we are both painters and yourselves work in a different medium than a painting and a visual level as a painter strikes us first. How does the visual work with you? E: It works in the same way as well. I think I said this before to Rose as well – the first visual things I saw was divisions in class. All these guys are wearing addidas clothes. I’m always looking at uniforms, perform in public how they behave and that’s how the work started the visuals of the types of people – their tire was how they stand like this… that’s really fascinating, who does that? I do make photographs of their portraits, but I didn’t want to be ethnographic or explicit, I wanted something deeper. People are my muses. On my last residency I made those pictures with the gollywog with the bright colours. I was in a town in Canada; I was effected by the white and green. Houses were bland, grey, and white. Fuck I need some colour! No one wears colour. It was doing my head in. I needed to get the brightest pink. The colours have an effect. Its a bit similar here, neutral landscapes. I was looking for graffiti here, but there wasn’t really any… JY: Yeah there is none!

  9  

D. Amos 2012

  10  

H: And for you Jamil, there is the visual element of being in a new environment. We were walking around, taking the default romantic views… when Eric talks about tracksuits and social implications… JY: I’m not people orientated that way… it’s definitely the landscape of the place. Or it’s a community I’ve already identified through news outlets, asylum seekers… otherwise it tends to come from landscape. H: What do you mean just landscape based? JY: Well I thought what do I have? I’ve got a projector and bicycle… I was thinking crackpot theories on the end of the world. R: On your website there was films of projections of patters on the side of mosques? JY: It was a corner building. In New York I went around to mosques that don’t look like mosques. They were repurposed buildings. Which is what the Santé Sophia is in Istanbul. I think they must have added the spires on later! So I went around to these buildings, made a map first, photographed them all to create wall illustration and mapped video into the wall illustrations. I’ve only done one of them; it took me a long time to get one right. I really liked being there physically, looking it was coming in and out of the film into the drawing on the wall. It’s a physical drawing on the wall of that landscape and the film is mapped into that drawing. The film comes in and out and you’re left with that drawing. That balance between drawing element and film element is really nice. One you need light to see and one you don’t need light to see… R: We were potentially looking at the idea of how figures work in landscape. Eric is a good example of that in terms of representation but also the social quality of it, engaging with people. We were wondering yesterday how us walking around in the landscape would be any benefit. We are putting yourself in here as a cage and dealing with the issues as landscape, as painters and then going outside and doing exactly he same but your outside, so anyway, we got to this conclusion that there is no narrative anymore, its unavoidable its dealing with what you see, also the idea of everything around here being industrial, that building or that person of going into a building with the history of industrial environment has already dealt with it, what’s the point of bringing back that romantic environment? It’s done now… DW: Wherever you tackle the identity of a landscape and wherever your reproducing that, your going to be reproducing a tan gentle narrative and by making a reproduction of that… it’s the opposite where always narrative, accepting one creating a new one, highlighting one… R: Basically before we came here, we were talking about coming back to a hotel room. It was sad coming back personally, to do something new… we’re here to crack out something. Its not about creating a image in a painting its about how you go about researching it and discussing it. H: Sucking out the narrative of landscape and seeing what’s left, with your nighttime paintings… R: It wasn’t happy thing coming in here being an excited thing to put up work in an office space; it was just seeing what could happen… H: Well these are works in progress …

  11  

R: It’s actually nice not have that gel of it’s a work in progress but just something in here…

DW: I might just being particularly awkward as you know how I like to do that. I don’t quite grasp the idea of removing the narrative, is this in presentation, production… R: We were talking about easy romantic habits in painting and I think the narrative is one and that can be simple thing like composition, producing a painting, where you are producing this. An ideology you can get stuck into… DW: So you do not want to tell the story through the narrative? There’s always a narrative or the person selecting the subject, the production of the subject the outcome, the building has the purpose, the aesthetic behind that…. Your not telling a biblical story, your not telling an autobiography, is that the removal of the narrative? R: I suppose so, that’s more the extension of painting, what people already know about painting... It’s a good question. There is still something in there now telling a narrative. But putting it in here and working through it in a week and take it away and get it out of here might raise something else that could be interesting. H: Yeah the starting point was the line of getting painting out of easy romantic habits and that’s something that’s on our mind and we were talking about reappraise the landscape link in painting and coming at it from a dynamic critical angle and now were taking away narrative as throwing around as a idea. JY: It’s very difficult to escape narrative in the west. Its your overarching theme of the west, is the narrative. Everything is promoted to us through narrative. I read this study of a group of people in the new scientist who when they talked about the future, it was up the hill and when they talked about the past they talked about it down the hill. They had an interesting take on being in space and time it was nothing we can fathom. I was sure it was in your area papa new guinea. It was a tribe of people. I can find the link because it was intriguing. DW: It’s interesting you brought up the western notions of narrative because it links in with your crackpot theories earlier. It’s only a Christian thing with apocalypse. The Buddhists say its rebirth. Philosophers have to find meaning to it, rather than just allowing it to be what it is, maybe its just human nature to look for a narrative? R: We were talking about structures in painting, horizontal and vertical. In some odd way you are conditioned to paint a narrative on top of another narrative. There is an unbelievable amount of imagery today for painting and against painting that is really complicated to get out of as a western artist. H: ...just to come back to future up the hill and the past down the hill… JY: Yeah I just remembered another thing about that article was that even when they are in their homes, you step down three steps. So inside their home the future was always up, the future became the front door… H: Talking about narrative, getting out of easy habits in painting. My default setting in painting in terms of landscape is horizon line, rolley hills and then a path.

  12  

 Hamish McLain and Jamil Yamani

  13  

JY: The rule of thirds isn’t it? Foreground, horizon, sky – isn’t that to do with photography as well…The thing is as well when you stick your paintings in here, I would come in and start connecting those up – even if you were a painter tried to remove a narrative, people will try to connect the dots. Who watches Jamie Oliver? H: I like Jamie Oliver! JY: Well in his food programme recently it’s all about the narrative of this dish… E: EWWW! JY: Well he’s empowering all this food… E: Last night at the sushi meal with Tether at The Royal Standard the Japanese girl who was one of the chefs said this type of dish is very avant-garde and I was like… is she serious? That’s a bit similar… giving it more credit than it actually is… its food stick it in your gob and eat it, shit it out. JY: That’s one of the few things we have in common! R: I was reading Manet and the object of painting, by a French writer called Michael Foucault – this book is very much about avoiding the western tradition of narrative and really going for what’s in the picture plan, the painting and a little bit about the history of it. There’s one painting of his that’s your desktop wallpaper… DW: Manets execution...of oh…er…the Mexican fella! R: Yeah…Foucault describes the shooting, but he’s looking at the vertical and horizontal and its purely horizontal – you’ve got the wall, and you’ve got a tiny bit of landscape and the figures watching the shooting –it’s a interesting perspective of radicalizing his work – its not just a image of a landscape and somebody getting shot in it. It’s looking at surveillance DW: And he puts the viewer into the painting by putting your shadow in it… its something your observing it as well. R: Its been forgotten that painting has that side to it, that’s something I’m trying to find… H: We are both different artists, from different approaches. When we were talking about roses paintings last night and trying to get her to open up about

MANET AND HIS USE OF

SURVEILLANCE IN THE

LANDSCAPE  

  14  

what happens in the studio? What happens when it gets made? How does it get made? Rose was talking about the theoretical side of the issues… and you said to me I don’t want to lie to you, at the moment I’m done with that side of materiality for now… but from my side of it, I’m still wrapped up in that materiality of buzz words, intuition, mark making… those are the different perspectives… R: Yeah and its not new this radicalization painting, the materiality… that’s been going on for the last century, maybe the start was the impressionists…then the Germans, especially in Cologne in the 1980’s. And they’ve got that research and materiality squished together quite well, it’s not a set hierarchy anymore. It’s a complimentary thing. JY: When you say materiality do you mean craft? Do you mean pigment… brush…canvas? H: Yeah the making. JY: There was a time where it was all about craft, and a time about idea. And there should be room for both. I was going to say as well. The work I’ve been doing later, when its socially driven I really like that, I’m not bothered how I am going to build something its researching into people, communities, operating into society, developing something out of that… instead of what I’m going to shot this on, what tripod am I going to use. H: In your practice Eric, do you feel they go hand in hand or one or the other? R: Yours is like a blow out! E: What does that mean!? R: A richness of a blow out when you go to a party or you wake up and say fucking hell what’s happened? E: Yeah I store a lot of imagery in my head. I was more interested in the first stage to… DW: As a observation of your practice I saw you immersing yourself in a environment and familiarizing yourself with it… E: I draw and I write, and take notes down the final product is an accumulation of all those things… because I am in a residency I have a time frame. It will determine how fast I work. If I have to go in with a plan, I do it. I can spend a month getting to know the place if I have three months. I wanted to portraits, but not in photography… I want to make film this year, not photography… in my head I wanted to have that element of portraiture. It was my way of escaping photography; move away from that but the compositions are using a set or an environment. R: Do you think there was a difference between the burning of one-direction effigies outside and then placing them in the new space as a follow up? E: I had more fun with them outside burning them. The landscape was perfect for it, large and vast. This is more of a shop front set up – I set it up for a people viewing it out on the street – the composition of the outside.

  15  

DW: I saw it as being a horror-film sequel… bringing one down into the basement, and then smashing them apart and then going up and grabbing another one dragging it downstairs and smashing that one apart… E: I really had big ideas. I could rely on you at hand but now I met these other boys since being back… it was about venture back into the part of town you are in. Have you had many other people come in? R: Apart from the cleaners and security guards… and earlier you were touching on how friendly people are. JY: Yeah that security guard was nice, ‘Hi I’m Patrick…I’m here to look after you’ H: Yeah I know! All night as well…24 hours… JY: Do you ever find it difficult, or do you think you might change landscape for something else, or change mediums to something else – come off the wall… or are you do you really feel like you’ve invested yourself in landscape… R: Well we’ve really latched onto the idea of an office space, and that’s not really landscape. And us doing this, where the outcome being the pieces of paper, the ideas – as something to show… and for me doing this a little bit of this and that curation or a publication, it all come back around to the idea of wanting to change from painting… and leaving it behind but being committed to it. E: I have that to. That’s when I stopped making photography… well I still make it, but I was doing other things. I hated it; I made it because I hated it. I said that at a photography festival this year...and they all were all what! I said I hate it, deal with it! And that’s why I make it and I hate what you make to! H: When you were talking about your work yesterday, the painting was the left over’s all the talking was about everything else than the painting. DW: I was about to ask about that actually because it wasn’t until we sat down and started discussing it and talking about it that I realized you wanted to remove that narrative from the painting… that’s the thing though, your taking the narrative out of the painting but your presenting it into the situation so it’s the person viewing it that applies the narrative… H: Your question about do you ever want to ditch painting? Yeah I have a love hate relationship with painting – and I often think why the hell… I’m a rubbish painter, why did I decide to do this? Painting I feel is the medium, the making is the intrinsically part of how the idea comes and the two are wrapped are together.

  16  

  17  

We asked Andrew to be part of the discussions on Thursday 20th September because he always seemed to pop up when we were having the discussions about the project before it started, much like a fox in a hen house. Not just that, he seemed to have some interesting points that helped us out with the itinerary for the week and he’s dead into painting. Andrew Foulds is part of the The Royal Standard studio and his website apparently is always under construction [http://www.andrewmarkfoulds.com/] and student Lucy Somers MA Fine Art John Moores Liverpool also joined us. As part of this week we put out a call for LJMU students to be part of the discussions, unlikely as it was the start of term and many piss ups had been had over summer, we gathered all our effects on a trek into the studios at the Art and Design academy – and found Brian Hackney, a wizard made of stone. Brian is in his third year at John Moores University Liverpool studying BA Fine Art and was the director of Turn Berlin [http://turn-berlin.de] AF: What I was thinking this morning, which was the only time I’ve been able to sit down in my studio, what am I going to do today… I’ll come at it from my point of view, if there are any themes that link into what you’ve talked about it. For now I’ll just speak about things I am particularly interested in.

I brought down the film of the onions; I did this about three or four years ago. A decent time away, I think it was my first exploration outside of painting. Kind of strange that you go straight to film really and not something that’s a little bit closer to painting.

R: Films quite close though isn’t it?

AF: Well your not dealing with the materiality, I mean with sculpture you can understand if a painting moves into sculpture. Filmmaking is a different process in that respect.

R: What about the imagery and use of images in filmmaking?

AF: And that feeling of time, both painting and film deal with these in very different ways. There has been a nugget in these two films I am showing you here that has grown over the past few years that has become central to dealing with my practice.

It’s a direct correlation between the films and the blocks that I have been doing, and these drawings as well. I was just thinking why they are interconnected, something

POWER OF

PAINTING

 

  18  

that has been popping up most recently is the titles of the works – it’s all related to perfect and imperfect forms.

The idea of perfection is something interesting in painting, particularly in religious painting, which is where I take a lot of my influence. Religious painting is by definition the one god is the epitome of perfection. The idea the art can supposedly reach to perfect, interesting. The paintings in the early renaissance were devotedly religious so by reaching towards perfection it’s almost like creating a blasphemy. The one true perfection is a complication.

R: Do you think that still applies to a painters practice today? This idea of imperfection, or that it seems blasphemous but in today’s perspective it almost seems pointless?

AF: Yeah, I agree. Its been falling apart a lot recently the practice... well almost the last fifty years.

R: Its always falling apart really.

AF: Yeah but it was blown apart, this… I’m not going to call it post-modernism or the end of modernism. Modernism was the epitome of that one that it was moving along this linear past. I’m sure the artists wouldn’t describe it like that. But it’s moving along a path to the end point, the end goal…. And that point was whether you consider it to be Malevich’s black square, the abstract expressionists…

H: Rothko wasn’t it…but the black square, the pinnacle of Rothko, there striving for perfection, or some end point… in a different way…

AF: An interest in perfection comes from the linearity of it and I guess this is to do with the artistic process as well, the artist that processes it, is doing something and then your not happy with it, you then take forward the elements that you are happy with and you take away those elements you aren’t happy with. It’s a continued, traveling along, one path, towards perfection or a form of perfection. And you could say with the corruption of that idea since the end of abstract expressionism, what is there to do? I like the idea that you can believe in something, you can believe in a painting that can reach a form, in itself an idea of perfection. I think people use to believe this was true in painting, now no one is sure. And a lot of painters deal with the idea that there is now no perfection.

H: And it’s the imperfections that make it interesting?

AF: Well there is a certain power from the belief that you can create something that is perfect. The conviction that that is able to ‘swell within the bosom of the artist’… flowery language… but that’s quite appealing. My work the last four years or so is asking can you fake that belief within yourself.

R: This is partly what we were talking about yesterday. Why I don’t want to create a narrative, you know a narrative also has a belief, they fictionalize a belief, and they fictionalize structures that are here now. I think that’s what painting is really. Painting is a person, it has a character to it that’s been built up over centuries and centuries and centuries and its not been challenged perhaps, enough. But what is next? AF: Is it necessary to believe in the possibilities and powers of painting in order to produce something? You see a lot of painting these days where you believe the artist doesn’t necessary believe in the transformative power of painting, yet their still

  19  

producing work and its still valid… H: Its valid on commentaries, side way viewers, personal ideas… what is the power of painting? Does an artist now… well I’m just looking at Jules De Balincourt and he some big French, international painter… R: I thought it wasn’t the power of painting, but what is the power of imagery, what is the power of an image? The word painting has its disability. I always thought there had to be breaks and stops in between painting where it wasn’t dead it was just lingering… AF: You can even term it slightly differently, not what is the power of the image, but what is the power of art, if art is centered to the image. Is there an authentic power in art, the broader term… to transform? H: To transform what? AF: By saying transform, your thinking about something on a spiritual level, transforms something chemically… to believe there is still an element of magic in the world. R: I thought you were going to say transform painting- that the term art would transform painting. When you said spiritually, or bring back the magic, it seems nice to hear that. It seems internal, but I like the idea of painting on the surface to jab at. AF: So are you saying the self-belief of something that is directly seen on the surface of the painting? How it’s made up on the surface – a belief within, so your saying you can mask a non-belief with a series of mechanical gestures… R: Well when you were talking about the history the last fifty or more years, especially British landscape painters, 1930’s-50’s Bomberg, Nash… they all had a genuine had a streak of that materiality, its almost like the genuine streak of politicians, it was still the norm to paint, like you mentioned with the norm of painting in history, it was what artists were employed to do. They are too much often on the surface, where you often look at the Bomberg and its there – it almost seems real, a real moment or a real event. That’s what feels lost today, getting to the point, even though German artists have done this, and American artists have done this – left something blank. It’s the idea of getting to the point of it’s a block on a wall. It’s a continuation of cave painting, so what’s the point really? AF: I quite like the movement back to cave painting. The problem when your just looking at the surface, the materiality of it – its got a limited vocabulary, ultimately its limited in its scope… R: It depends on the period of its time, on its evolution. Going back to the pre war and post war period, that idea of impressions relating back to the period of impressionism is crucially important to that period. The surface of it is genuine. It’s not a lie. There is a lot of lying still going on, on the surface. AF: So tell me what you were speaking about with Hamish yesterday with your paintings? R: He was basically challenging me on my work that I think was lacking in the project. I think weirdly I was focusing on his work, because I’ve lost that spirituality

  20  

Andrew Foulds sat behind desk

  21  

towards painting. We were talking about why I was using horizontal and vertical lines, this idea of abstraction very carefully. We mentioned blown up buildings, these are images of blown up buildings. Then we went into why I used photographs, and I liked the idea of having something that is propaganda before the painting, but when you paint, it changes the political idea of the medium. H: But its not just any old building you’ve chosen? R: No. They are modern or post-modern buildings… which is a huge thing that has defined the last I would say even the last seventy to eighty years of managing people, socially managing people and I like the idea of how it can infiltrate its way as a image into the way its designed, the way its seen, the way its spoken about. Which is the same with painting as an object. H: And you talked about paintings at night? R: Yeah I specifically decided that. I was doing paintings from day, and there are a lot of similarities between abstraction and light, light and abstraction. So I thought it be quite interesting to do something at night and there is a relation to impressions of Edwards hoppers nighthawks, which is something we were doing with Jensen in the interview about Jilted City and you know this pressure of atmosphere. H: It tapped into this idea of when we went on a walk on Tuesday around down to the docks… it taps back into this faith, this belief into the spiritual side. Because landscape was the theme, we didn’t want to be Sunday painters doing landscape, you cant help but walk around the landscape and being like that. So trying to look at the landscape from a slightly less romantic side. When you were talking about atmosphere in these works… R: Yeah that’s incredibly spiritual, atmosphere or it can be. I guess that’s the catch 22 of it, no matter how much you try to avoid I guess spirituality or an atmosphere, its still there but its how you display it and communicate that. For example a part of this project is bringing the paintings in here and have them hanging around as they are there, they are not on show, or specifically for a viewer, or specifically for a gallery. You were talking about the painting being a giant symbol in an office space and you liked the idea of playing around with that and that power relationship AF: It bought me back to listening to Hamish sat behind the desk and immediately there were these very simplistic symbols acting out a kitchen sink drama in my head. Hamish was sat behind the desk and we are sat here, we are listening to him and we were the people who have less power because of that chair behind that desk… H: When we were asking if there is still that transformative power in art – is there magic left… is there any medium today like a art medium where we wouldn’t be questioning that, that still has magic to it that people don’t question to death? AF: Film, I guess I’m thinking French new wave directors half a century ago played around with the medium, becoming more conscious of that, looking behind the camera – bringing about these layers of film making. Every creative form has looked at the notion of the magic… H: What about music? AF: Music’s a more popular medium… you can see with john cage and a lot of the contemporary classical music…

  22  

H: What’s his name again? AF: Keith Jarrett! Do you think he has? H: No I don’t, he’s reached something though! R: Well Mark Leckey did a lecture three or four months ago. His work is a intellectual look at music and his past looks like he’s spend a lot of time with bands and getting to know that system of music and he said something where it begged the question what do you do with music? He described in one of his performances The Long Tail about the establishment of music and art, describing these in a diagram of a head and tail. That the art scene is still regarded as a high status (the head) whereas music has show down from the head and shattered into the tail. He was saying its more accessible and mainstream and he was saying why isn’t art? What this all about? Why is it still guarded I guess.

  23  

D.Amos 2012

  24  

Part 2

BH: Are you a landscape painter? AF: Er… I don’t know, am I? BH: I figured out I wasn’t… and I haven’t got any further than that. AF: I’ve wrote down before I came here a title of a show a joint retrospective of Matthew barney and Joseph Beuys and the title of the show is all in the present must be transformed – it was chosen for this retrospective as a rasion d’être of both their practices and I think it’s a sedation of what I feel art must accomplish, it must aim to be transformative it must seek to change what is present into something else. We were starting to approach alchemy into the conversation – I was moving onto the importance of Joseph Beuys in that, I was trying to understand why alchemy is an important cross over – the scientific, spiritual, and artistic. BH: It seems that centers around the journey rather than the arrival… you’ve got to set out. I went to a talk Charline von Heyl when her show first opened. She was saying that her studio was in a desert in Texas. Her practice was basically to get drunk, she mentioned drinking a lot of whiskey…go for walks, try and chill out and do loads of stupid drawings… strange stuff shed never put in a exhibition but it was that process of looking at particular painters that would interest to her at the same. She said nearly everything she painted came from weeks of digesting what was around her and often might just be the landscape or sitting down with more whiskey and getting plastered. She didn’t set out to make an abstract painting. She had this thing about drawing cartoon rabbits –showed us a slide of some of them. They were doodles almost. All in the imagination. R: See when you were saying talking about painting or appealing painting to people-this is what might hopefully come out of this week is that we move past this discussion about layers, religious connotations with paintings and just move beyond that and find something autonomous why we are all doing it and not for what purpose but what that purpose politically or socially or painterly can do. I feel like there are thousands of people watching us and we’re still focusing on that aspect of the metaphor… AF: Your saying you want to move it into the personal, why are you doing it individually… R: Yeah, when I was finishing third year, we were talking about Art & Language. You were reading through some of what I was writing about for the end degree show, the publication and you said something like well there just taking the piss!

ARE YOU A LANDSCAPE PAINTER?

  25  

  26  

is made a point of reading artists writings, not philosophers, not academics but people like Carl André… I’ve not really been a big fan of him over the years and all of a sudden I’m a massive fan because I read what he was putting forward. And fantastic! I went to it by Hollis Frampton who was roommates with him for a while and chums at college. Frank Stella would sit in the corner painting while these two were arguing. There is a book out there in the library of their discussions… from something like 1962. They get together every week and have a session of ripping one another apart. It was absolutely brilliant! I was getting this first hand, not filtered through the prism of academia. A lot of theoretical writings get so lost in it; you know they are writing for such a small audience. At this period everything had to go in a new direction. The thing Gerhard Richter goes on about so much is hating ‘isms’ he detested ‘isms’ and the 1960’s and 1970’s were all about isms! The one thing that came across clearly to me with Gerhard Richter is that he accepts the facts that he makes a lot of contradictory statements with his work. I think from his point of view from his philosophy of art where he stated near the end of the book the only thing he believes in – its not a religious view, its not a political view is hope. Nothing else. All the isms, all the other stuff can come and go and change. Whatever he does should be worthwhile… R: So going back to your drawings… AF: I don’t really do drawings to prepare for painting. The studio played a part in this; I was working on some paintings, throwing paint around but when I was doing these drawings there was a restriction to them that I found to be a release. There was almost more satisfaction in having very strict boundaries – I create my own draft paper and then from that act I started to think about which other restrictions I could put in place. I was very conscious of them being very mathematical paintings, drawings. Everything I do relates back to a act of creating the illusion of light on something, whether that’s spiritualities purposes or just painting a light bulb painting the reality of light. These drawings aren’t any different in that respect. H: Its interesting the different viewpoints, maybe the slightly more romantic subject view of peering in and losing yourself in something and your diagrammatic over head view that removes that personal perspective. AF: It’s the notion of the window, its still fixated with that idea that painting is a window into the world… but you just paint different versions of that. R: We were talking about that last night, that reproductive side of it which is more mechanical than spiritual really. That’s something I found through the three years at the art school that its actually kind of nice not to do that, not to paint the same thing over and over again – to have something fresh and new to paint. R: What did the guys at Chelsea say to you about your practice and your work? H: They said oh I like this one, this one seems to be doing something, all the others look like you know your making art, but this one looks like you forgot your making art, its doing something different…something like that. Talking about design again, I like design and the inroad came into painting I’ve never done proper design before. My foundation in Trowbridge it was suddenly formal decisions, the inroad where I went

  27  

into fine art rather than design. Those ideas of designing something, making it look good or something… BH: That’s corporate design… H: That’s satisfying composition… R: Paintings always had that hasn’t it? That element of design, its something that is a key theory for aesthetics, is design… BH: I’m not sure if we threw a lot of that away in the 70’s… maybe we are coming back to it through different roots and the aesthetics of modernism is something I’ve been fighting with for sometime, its too heavy, I don’t want that reasonability… I don’t want to make things beautiful or truthful, I just want to do it… H: I’d be trying to make them beautiful and truthful… When I start to think of design and creativity I think you can almost be more creative when your given a problem to solve on one level, it’ll freeze the creative juices when you’ve got a goal your aiming for as an artist the challenge is to set that goal and stick to it… half the time I don’t think I’m being very creative but I can imagine designers sitting in there day in and day out… R: Its similar to painting, if you chose that day in day out, that kind of design… its still within a confine of geometry… geometric space. We were talking about windows, windows, and windows… when I see your studio it’s a wall as window, the canvas that is a window, your mind that is a window… it’s too linear. BH: Your work is the opposite though isn’t it? Your work grows out… but an expansion out of the painting that makes it more interesting as an object, and not just a window. R: For the BAM show, you were moving away from painting on the wall? AF: Yeah I was obsessing over the window, the painting as the window… can it not ever be a window? Taking it away from the wall putting it on a three-dimensional framing devise, you could call it a sculpture but it wasn’t. Or whether it’s playing around with what image you using… and not using it as an illusion. R: Yeah when I looked back to the degree show and using the bricks symbolically with the painting… it was more organic to use the stretcher frame and wood blocks, this relates to placing work on blocks before you hang it or a frame within a frame but actually its just a stretcher and there’s a painting in it. When I look back on it now, it’s so far away from what I am trying to do now… H: How is it so far away from what you’re trying to do now? R: That part of the imagery, structure I was trying to build around it, some of the theory is alien at the moment. Which might be a good thing, but it’s not that long ago… A lot of the painters I was looking at before were taking the painting out of the window, I guess out of the window and placing it on wooden objects, placing it in that three dimensional sculptural frame… still seems like a weirdo follow up to an illusion…

  28  

Andrew Foulds, Hamish McLain and Brian Hackney in deep discussion about pigeon spikes

  29  

AF: I abandoned that after BAM BAM BAM because it didn’t work… it still seems symbolic. BH: I went through a phase last year…that I was playing around with the peripheral and everything had to get outside of the frame. And I came completely back round to the opposite; the illusion is actually so much more open as a place to work. R: So coming back to the VOID… H: Yeah we identified the office space as a void. So landscape, does people want to say what they think of when we say landscape painting? AF: This is like an AA meeting…I’ve been clean from landscape for five days… H: I’m trying to connect the landscape to all the directions we have been talking about for the afternoon… R: Maybe there is just no…. H: Can I just have a go! I would say landscape is always my default setting. That structure, the way of looking at landscape, where people are conditioned to looking at art works, if they are painted in a certain way. That way reading paintings and scenes and I feel is ingrained in me. I don’t think I am anarchist. You asked me ages ago what side of the fence I am on I’m in that traditionalist sense… instead of screwing it all up. LS: That’s one difficulty with abstract painting, as soon as you have something that divides it horizontally you see a landscape, as soon as you have a heavier colour below than above it’s a landscape, slightly bluer and greener it’s a landscape painting. BH: I actually love that game. Its what makes it interesting. BH; Does that matter? Because that’s only one persons perception R: It seems like Scary formulas – abstract lines and colours it was about simplifying, an image or structure. They are scary formulas to places that never end, or things that never stop. BH: Does that matter? As its only one persons perspective. R: I think of Some interesting abstract painters that I'm interested in, Sarah Morris, Peter Halley –these American artists who do very divided, horizontal and vertical, geometric squares and particular colours… they always reference capital or the internet. Its almost again like the cage, but their referencing things very specifically, its not abstraction it’s the Internet or capitalization, substructures of banks. It’s almost like binary but for crazy nutters. Then you’ve got Hoyland… with substructures to landscapes but they have Englishness to them that make you want to throw up but then again they are quite beautiful, colour, shape, and form… H: does anyone else have ideas when we talk about landscape in art?

  30  

AF: I was wondering what Rose was talking about and this pre-programmed nature that was exist within, and maybe there is only a few structures that we identify with. Pre-programmed to read a Rothko and John Hoyland. I’m wondering about children growing up within the computer age. And I’m wondering if they have a completely different set of images. Your talking about Halley and these guys… maybe there is going to be a completely different visual language coming out of this… BH: That’s already happening. It interactive qualities of modern communication are different. It changes perceptions. R: Peter Halley is interesting as he worked around a group of artists in the 80‘s who began to experiment with the Internet. Its similar to Thomas Hirschhorn which we were talking about yesterday, he wasn’t a artist to begin with, he was a graphic designer and before that the Swiss army and its all these other experiences that makes it fascinating why you’d come to that conclusion, not just as a painter, but as a graphic designer or installation artist.

  31  

  32  

Hamish and I went to Metal on Friday 21st september [http://www.metalculture.com] as part of their monthly lunches in September as part of the Liverpool biennial. We went to the lunch with Jai Redman [http://www.jairedman.co.uk] on the 19th in the middle of our project, which was some good time out from the project. As usual metal hosts really good social events and it reminded me of what we are trying to engage with. Jenny Porter is Metals project manager at Metal and Ian Brownhill is Metals director. Louisa Dawson [http://www.louisadawson.com/] is the Australian artist in residency at The Royal Standard from August-November 2012 [http://www.the-royal-standard.com] H: So, did we tell you much about what we were doing here in the pub? LD: Well Jamil and I were chatting, and I asked how was it. And I am reinterpretation when he was reinterpretation what this space is about is looking at spaces, commercial spaces, work spaces and how art can fit in with that… and how you make art within a different space. Does it have to be a studio space? If someone is running a business in here, cant art be made in that space too… And you’ve left that foyer art up that’s with the space like this. Your using the one work identity, or an identity of work, I don’t know… to bring you own business and work and practice in. whether it’s the lights or batons, or beige walls… H: It’s just down the road from the royal standard, and when we were talking to them about what we were going to do. They asked said why don’t you just stay at your studio? IB: It’s totally different. Its really confusing coming in here to be honest. I’ve been thinking why haven’t they taken that down (the art in the room) and of course you haven’t taken it down, that’s the point. LD: And the other people you know, I came in at 5pm when other people were clocking out Friday afternoon… and with my work I look at notions of time and the as the saying goes the crow flies… but this notion of time within work – someone who works in manufacturing, who does something on a conveyor belt and time might be really quick because that’s the amount of time I fit a component. I’ve always equated time with labour. I’m just throwing this in as well! R: Yeah, its good that you guys picked up on that. It’s supposed to be an office space and not a gallery, a new gallery or new space to show in. I think these are by products (the art in the office) of what we are trying to discuss. So we were discussing today about how we have some many conventions now – the studio, artist-run collectives, art school, gallery spaces, and we are almost saying it kind of gets exhausting and its nice to come into a office space and breath. H: It's been a neutral space where we can take stock of it.

  33  

Hamish McLain, Louisa Dawson, Ian Brownhill and orange juice carton

  34  

LD: Do you feel more organized in this space because you have draws and cupboards, you have an in-ray and an out-tray, has that idea come into things? H: When we first came in here, it felt like a weird hotel room and it felt all spatial and organized and I was sat at this desk and rose was sat at the other desk and we thought oh we could do everything! But as the days have gone on, objects, discussions have cropped up it was the honeymoon period… R: it’s also been about finding out how to define landscape and how we come at it from painters. The space is important but so was the word landscape H: The landscape theme was here before the office theme, then this suddenly opened up a new ideas. But it’s a bit of a void in the landscape H: I like that line where do I start the mark… for me recently; the three oils on paper is mine, the one on the window. I’ve always worked in abstraction, you can get wrapped up in the forms its not a cold process but its about what goes into the painting. I’ve been looking at how other content can come into experiences of traveling, particularly drawing on my time spent in India. And then I put the first mark down… and I’m still trying to think about that moment, then three minutes later it’s just taken over. LD: And it becomes irrelevant? H: Yeah I’m a bit on the fence on my standpoint to that. I feel like my smaller works are still in that moment, trying to communicate an alleyway. Where if I work on bigger scale, it becomes more complicated its distracted by, this shape comes into this… The starting point is something external, and then it gets morphed into a painting. The works that we’ve brought in here are the problem pieces and that ones a real zinger in that department. IB: your not sure if you like it? H: because I’ve been talking about experiences and how it can feed the painting I was going to work from a photograph, and lots of painters work from photographs and its really satisfying but for me it didn’t work. LD: I see the landscape so much in the traditional landscape, that the pioneers that would have seen. And is it because your wanting to move away from the typical landscape that you brought this into this space? H: I’m not a radical painter, I enjoy some kind of root of traditional in roots, forms, marks – and Jamil mentioned the golden three rules middle ground etc. there is an underlying structure in painting. I’ve been talking about experiences to give it a sense of character – not to tell you to visit the place. It’s the classic you’ve got a significant moment – do you draw that moment? I’ve made some cheesy drawings where you’re in that moment of “here we are!” H: I’ve got to ask Ian here, we were talking about music I was scribbling down some notes – I listen to jazz music and the idea of improvisation – I'm always intrigued by the way jazz musicians – the modern miles Davis, john Coltrane - where do they get their titles for their works? When you learn a bit more about individual peaces you

  35  

suddenly see … like watermelon man, Herbie Hancock said it came from the sound that the watermelon man makes when he rolls his car across pebbles. ... Then the last one was John Coltrane with his love supreme deeply religious expunction. He’s got this conviction. So when I'm talking about capturing this feeling or character. It’s the other side. It’s from conviction. That’s what gives it the life. IB: Who wrote the Hebrides (overture) that was a journey at sea? LD: Oh yeah, it’s always in the little mermaid… IB: It was Mendelssohn! There’s another piece by a Russian composer, he wrote this piece called train ride, it was Tran Siberian steam train going over the bridges, it was amazing. He wrote it for a film score. It’s a great Russian steam train plowing through the snow, with some amazing music you can feel that intensity… its more contemporary music. Its their take on it isn’t it? It’s your take on it. H: what I feel in that one was that I was underselling my take on it. I was trying to work on it from a photograph, so it was my take on the photograph but not my take on the actual moment. When we went traveling, someone was saying did you take a sound recorder with you; it’s capturing something beyond a photograph… IB: Food is great as well. I went to Athens last year, just to get away and we took our youngest boy. The biennial was on. We were walking around Athens it was right at the start of the riots in Novemember. Suddenly we walked around this corner and the next thing there was this guy and all these people around him and there was blood pouring out his leg and I could see he’d been stabbed in his leg. At first I thought all these people were trying to help him but they weren’t they were trying to steal from him. And I realized all these people were probably off their heads on drugs and stuff like that, and all off a sudden we walked into this dodgy part of the town, I can’t remember what it was called but it was near a station… Anyway the next day I went to the biennial, I always like to try food, I could see this south Asian little take away… and this guy said to me, “you don’t want to come in here and eat here, ill take you to this little restaurant” and normally my natural instinct is to go with the flow but I felt like this was a bit odd. But anyway I went and of course this guy was lovely, and it was a best Indian meals id ever had. But because of what happened the day before I had this mistrust. But the food was really amazing. I don’t know how I got into this story… H: Well it was the experiences of food, smells… H: So you’re going through London, Liverpool… LD: Well we started in New York… H: Ok so started in New York… just this trail to the Baltic German winter month next… LD: Have a child as well, that’s also coming back with more than you left…

  36  

When I left the maternity hospital I felt this is the only building in the world where more people come out than came in. that was a cooky space, I was in this birthing center, they had a big bath tub but they also had this big disco ball… and your taking in all this gas and For some reason we’d come in a ambulance. Jamil had called a taxi and ambulance. So we get there and the gas you know… you’re in a lot of pain, it takes the edge of but you’re talking a lot of nonsense. The ambulance drivers asked why I was here and I talked about my whole project… and what I wanted to do… “I wanted to put the pool back in Liverpool.” Oh my god, anyway. And it becomes like Monty python, they dropped us off and I just said thanks like they are my taxi service and so they came with us. So we make it into the birth room, and yeah the disco ball. There was a photograph on the wall, one of those black and white of a black man holding a black baby… I was thinking that’s so weird, the baby couldn’t be white. He’d have to be caramel, you know with Jamil I’d have to look at my own kids, our little mixed race babies – you’re our little lattés. It really stuck in my mind this white baby – I was about to tell the midwife that I had issues with this photograph … the gas took over. R: What was with the disco ball? LD: I don’t know… maybe that’s when you’re not in labour and on the gas.

  37  

D.Amos 2012

  38  

LD: You came in with this feeling you had an expectation from who are working around you, you had to prove some business? R: Not really, we had met Nikki who manages the offices and it was just meeting her and going through that line of have a meeting in a meeting room. We didn’t really expect to come in with a business plan. But we came in with an itinerary that is similar, coming into a meeting, day 1, day 2… there was that mixture that appealed. I guess I wanted some structure from painting, putting it in this space. H: Yeah, putting our practices in an intense box, cage like environment. LD: You were looking for provoke right? Perhaps those anxieties that you’ve mentioned – what happens if I come away with nothing? H: That’s what my mum was asking! What are your outcomes…. and I’d say like oh shit, yeah what’ve we got… R: Its brave coming out and not knowing what’s next… H: Rose brought up a lot more about the documentation of it, and I was asking myself what does she mean documentation of painting and archiving and things, re-presentation. R: I know you’re a painter as well, you have your own website? J: Yeah R: That’s quite important for a lot of artists, having a website, artists CV’s…images, having different categories, it all seems really structured in a way, I thought how can you re-distribute that photographically, or on the internet sometimes everyone seems to have the same way of photographing a painting, it must be this… why cant It be the office space, or the painting, some kind of business… AF: Have you looked at Eddie Peaks website? Or Celia Hempton? She was a painter in a couple of shows at the Royal Standard and BAM BAM BAM at Wolstenholme – she might have even been in the same one you were in (directed at Jenny.) the best painting I’ve seen of hers, is of a proud stag on a hill – she’s done this in solid areas of paint, and a strong coloured ground. But Eddie Peake, his website for the past four years has been… ‘This is website is under construction’ and I think mine by accident is like that… [NOW: Peake’s website, meanwhile, consists of nothing but a fuchsia-tinted close-up of two hands clutching an erect penis. There’s something both playful and pointed about this use of explicit imagery as it references the seedy underside of the Internet while parodying the stereotypical pretensions of the male artist http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/eddie-peake/] H: I can go round in circles in trying to categories my paintings… LS: I tend to just end up... I’ve been trying to make a website where I’ve gone through so many different ways of categorizing but I’ve started comes up with my favorite pictures, ones that are in my mind, ones that I’m still really intrigued by and making a folder with that as a cover and having all the ones that look a little bit like it – its almost like “you like this picture! Here’s a load of others ones that look like it!”

  39  

J: I’d like to see more artists treat their web space as a gallery space because that’s what it is really. I’m not saying I’ve achieved that, its far from it really but people like bubblebyte who have taken over the royal standard website are excellent example of the closest experience I’ve ever had of walking into a gallery online. And I just think if artists treated their documentation as that, then it would be a much better experience. LD: I was trying to get the address to send a email, and I was going “wait wait wait!” trying to follow it… then oh its backwards now. It was really funked up; it was really boogie time... but to get information. J: But that’s hacked space – their actual website is room 1… you walk into a room, you don’t have to do it in the order say if you walked into a gallery. That’s how they structure their exhibitions online. The way they’ve treated the royal standard- I love it! AF: It’s the most important promotional time for anything in Liverpool and everyone goes promotional overdrive, and this is the one point where we go, “well you know what we’re not going to do that!” with bubblebyte. I quite like any event, which takes that and plays around with it. J: Its funny you point out that picture (in the room), I presume it came with the room… R: We noticed when we went up to the second floor, and you know when you come in you see the Mondriaan… well there’s exactly the same one on the second floor. J: Buy one get one free! LD: These spaces have their desks and chairs, but they also have these works. What is its function, and where therefore is arts function in these spaces? This foyer art, canvas printed out… R: This kind of art, office space, late 70’s infiltrated a lot of these buildings. They are kind of specifically chosen for this space – I think that’s why I put my work in here to counter attack that. Place it in a place where prints, paintings, flyers, are a huge distribution here.

  40  

Hamish McLain, Louisa Dawson, Andrew Foulds, Jenny Porter, Lucy Somers and a packet of biscuits

  41  

H: Rothko did the Seagram murals. But did you see Mikes show, with Sam in arena? Dead mint. We both work at FACT. There was an exhibition a year ago by an artist called Z and this room Z was about four times as big as the office, it was a low lying room built within the FACT gallery and it was full of mist… and strobe lighting in a pattern and induced a state. Much like your disco ball! And you went into this space it reacted with your mind, the normal perspective of space was taken away. The mist was all moisture, oily stuff and it left a residue on these 8x4 hardboard sheets. And I someone actually fainted and knocked a chunk out of

their head. AF: So there is a big splatter of blood over some of the boards and mike just took one of those and framed it. That was one of my favorite pieces I’d seen for a while in Liverpool. H: He’d framed it – and we were talking about all these different spaces in Liverpool, the lovely textures of the walls, and he just put it right opposite the lift. It was quite a funny space in arena studios. And it had that feel of a imposing modernist, Rothko feel… and all the marks, the textures and things… but it was just something people had been stamping on. It had that lift, foyer art feel to it. J: We should tell him to sell it to the Hilton…There is that world of difference that what they do is different to what we do. Is that very pompous of you to feel that way? R: Is your painting an integral part of working at metal, and doing the community. That’s something I'm grappling with, the research and then the painting. I thought that it could be a good link, if you make it a good link. J: Yeah, if you achieve it… but I struggle with it. Why I am interested in what your doing is because its very much about process, and that’s my bridge to the work I do at Metal highly informs my work. I’m always learning about process and working with artists and breaking that down, being inspired by that essentially. That’s why I do it. I don’t just concentrate on my work. The actual work I make is rarely about that position I’ve got in metal working directly with community and I’ve never been tempted to stop painting and do mass participatory with local communities. There must be for those artists there must be a desire to make something tangible and maybe there is a bit of selfishness with me, my work is a conversation with myself and reflecting on my experiences and personality, I’m not making a living out of it – its not necessarily important for me to consider the audience out there for me. If there was a way to engage a community in that sort of process and we don’t end up killing one another at the end of it…. I’d very happily work that way.

TREAT YOUR WEBSITE LIKE A GALLERY

  42  

Process for me is very solitary. I feel like that’s a confession, but that’s ok I think. AF: Phew, I was getting worried then! R: That’s something that came up when we got together, me being very disillusioned by that maybe because I just left art school, and that practice had been there constantly for three years. J: Open and exposed? I wanted someone to come around and support me. But I actually enjoyed it. That drawings crap, doesn’t matter! When you’re just working for yourself, I haven’t got over that yet… R: We were exposed to a huge break in our practices at John Moores but also willing to go on that journey to break it. I was saying to Hamish I lost that solitude, probably for a good reason, and its something I was trying to pull back. It’s nice to hear. There’s a huge question that underlies painting and artist… this anxiety of going to the solitude place of ‘possibly romanticness, but not really, but yes it is…’ It seems like its one of the biggest questions that faces theory as well still – sometimes it seems that’s why everyone’s anxious and we must create a programme together and do this - I think that’s the same with painting, its just not come around, its got that power to be isolated in itself. AF: There are some practices, where its beautiful where it can just be you tangling and wrestling with what you’ve decided to put in front of yourself. This is why I am changing studio spaces – to get more by myself… I’m moving into a new house and ill use one of the three bedrooms for a new space… so next times you see me I’ll probably be twitching and stuff! H: I remember when I left university, my tutor said, you have options now… you can get a job or go away into the middle of nowhere and just make art. Maybe I was in the middle there with those. AF: There is a strange dichotomy where the fundamental part of the artist being successful, is the ability to network, move through different societies that surround art, and move comfortably so you can get to know them… but then there is that full circle, the practice can be a very lonely practice. I did that when I left university. I ended up moving into a house with just a mate of mine. There was a cellar there. The cellar had the toys of the landlord from the kids that they had. There was only one wall that was available. The rest of the walls had the shelves with these toys. There was only one light that hung about two feet away from the only available wall to paint on so I use to have the paintings on the wall, and had to step back and look at the painting through t good, this is bad, this could change – well your like what do I do? So I ended up with this little mirror, doing the proper ‘the artist’ painting self portraits for ages, they were just getting weirder and weirder… and I didn’t know anything about Phillip Akkerman paintings, I saw some of his paintings and I was like ‘shit he’s done with I’ve done! And I hate them!’ so I stopped immediately. I went through that situation where I lost contact with everyone in Leeds, all my close friends left and went to London, or gone back to their homes… so you lose track of that society that feeds you but at the same time you’ve got that other success of work in progress, it’s a mix between the two – you’ve got to be a bit of a changeling to be a artist.

  43  

D.Amos 2012

  44  

Contributors Eric Bridgeman Jamil Yamani Hamish McLain Rose Parish Louisa Dawson Jenny Porter Ian Brownhill Andrew Foulds D.Amos Lucy Somers