One of your more recent projects, ‘The Future of Medicine’ was constructed using retro medical manuals. Do you view materails like this as limiting you from an envisaged goal or liberating you from making unnecessary decisions?
It was in fact a conscious decision to use the 70’s and 80’s imagery i found. I did have plenty of images from magazines like New Scientist and The National Geographic, but i tend not to like the photo quality print you find in modern magazines and the paper is always thin and glossy. News print is too fragile for the way i work too. 60’s, 70’s and 80’s books seem to use much nicer paper stock, and i really like the quality of the print. Black and white images have better contrast and colour images are always a little fuzzy and tend to be either washed out of over saturated. This makes it easier to get more abstract forms in the work. With the Medicine series in particular, i think the old imagery gives the collages an old sci-fi feel which i dig. Retro future vibe
In relation to the above, do you find a particular theme emerging within your work or do the resources you use dictate how you work and what you work towards?
I’m constantly looking for new source material, and the way it usually happens is that i will have used the same book or a few books for a while and i’ll decide i need some new books to cut up, so i’ll trawl through every charity shop i can think of until i find a book/s that inspires me and that will take me down another road. Its why i tend towards doing a series of collages. So yes the books do dictate to a certain degree what i’ll produce with them, but not really how i’ll do it. I’m really only just starting out, so i don’t think there are any particular reoccurring themes, but method wise i can see patterns emerging, but like i said i’m just starting out and still learning.
Your supply of resources seems endless, where’re you picking up all these images? Is your collection purely for work or is it just an interest regardless of the end product?
Like i said i’m constantly looking for new raw material from all over the place. At the moment its predominantly charity shops, but in the summer i’ll go to car boot sales too. I’m a bit of a hoarder/collector so sometimes i do get a little precious when i find a good book and it can take me a long time before i can build up the courage to cut it up. I’ve destroyed some beautiful books. The most recent being this amazing Russian CCCP picture book from the late 60’s i think. The images in the book are incredible and it was lying around for months before i used any images from it, and i’ve only used two pictures from it. I also have a pile of old Zoom magazines from the 80’s that have some mindblowing pics in, but i haven’t touched them yet
You’ve done some fabulous flyers and posters for club nights and gigs around the UK. Of particular note are those that you’ve done for ‘13 Monsters’. How did you land upon the idea of ripping images from films?
I used to do way more gig posters, mosty hand drawn, but i don’t really put on shows myself anymore cos i hate doing them and i don’t really draw anymore. As for the 13M flyers, i started taking photos of what i was watching on the TV simply cos i wanted a picture of what was on the screen, but i didn’t know what for at the time. I was watching Anthony & Cleopatra and its an old Technocolor film and because its also obviously back lit the colours were so vivid and strange, and the blurry sense of movement you get from them is kind of disorientating and abstract. Its definitely something i’m going to experiment with and persue further.
There seems to be a battle within your work between that which retains a representational aspect and that which is more abstract. What is it that you find appealing about the process of dismantling and rebuilding images and is this process based on a plan or prescribed outcome?
I like to try and hide certain elements or camouflage them, so that you don’t immediately see where one image ends and another begins, or even notice that another image is even there. Its that space between representational and abstract that i find interesting. I never really plan or have a picture in my mind that i want to recreate. Its actually the images that pic themselves. An image will grab my eye and its a case of finding the one or two images that are meant to be used with it. 90% of the time is spent looking for the right image
Your use of images sometimes has a relatively clear narrative, or at least something that an audience could individually digest, however there’s defiantly an element of the surreal and absurd within your work, with this in mind how do you view the need for a narrative?
i try to aviod using too heavily loaded images (like famous people or logos etc), so that the viewer can impart there own connections between the imagry used. Its amazing the links that people can come up with between a WWII tank and fighters in a boxing ring without intending them at all. I focus on getting the marriage between the images to really work, and leave the narrative to the viewer. Although i have been working in series’, none of them are designed to be looked at in a sequential or story telling way. Its definitely something i think i need to start considering more though.
Over the past year the DIY garage-punk scene has really seemed to kick into gear and broken the shell of the mainstream. With your own label ‘Sex is Disgusting’ and band ‘Teen Sheikhs’ you’ve been involved in a lot of the stuff that’s been going on including doing record sleeves, posters and logos for bands such as Wavves, Cold Pumas and . For starters how do you feel about the scene becoming more renowned? As it’s becoming bigger are you worried the scene’s going to lose its roots in good friends, plenty of beer and someone’s back room?
I think its great that non-careerist, quality, bands/people doing what they are doing for the right reasons are getting some attention. By the right reasons i mean that they are in these bands or putting on these shows for the fun of it and have been doing so for a long time and will still be doing when the press are bored of it. Fame and fortune aren’t really a high priority and wouldn’t be even if it was possible. For that reason i can’t really see it loosing its roots it will only lose the people who weren’t really into it in the first place. Having said that i hope people see that what we’re (SID) and lots of other people are doing is welcoming and unpretentious and if people want to jump on the bandwagon for a bit then that’s fine as long as you are down for a party and aren’t just gonna mope around trying to look cool or whatever. I also strongly object to the term “scene”. Its just a bunch of bands emerging at the same time, independently of each other for the most part.
How do you feel this scene has influenced your work? Have you seen its emergence in more mainstream culture change kids approach to either music or art?
Er sorry what “scene” is that? ho ho. I don’t think music really influences my work directly, but aesthetically i think the work that has been used for 7”s and lp”s work really well together. Don’t ask my how or why. I’ve never been commissioned, the images always get picked after i’ve done them, so i haven’t had the opportunity to work in that way.
I don’t know if the current music is changing kids perception of art or music, but my 15 yr old brother likes Times New Viking, Sonic Youth and stuff and i’m pretty sure that had i known who the hell Sonic Youth were when i was 15 i would have thought they were bollocks, and had TNV been about then i would have thought the same. I think kids can see that these bands have heart and are genuine, and that must be refreshing to a kid that has grown up with Pop Idol and X Factor or whatever bullshit band/scene the mainstream media is shoving in their faces.
