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Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
I’m not sure I can identify just one specific artwork that has had that effect, so much as several over a period of time that have all given me something different. I read comics when I was young, so, perhaps unsurprisingly, the first artists who had an impact on me were Surrealists like Dali or Magritte. I’ve always been blessed (or possibly cursed) with a need to learn more, to find out more, so discovering these artists led me to others. Discovering Bacon, Klee and Miro was important for me as it showed me a different pictorial language was available that was not necessarily ‘realistic’. Discovering the work of Pollock and Tapies was also important too, in that they used abstract language and the works were incredibly powerful to me, whereas before that I had been more focused on works that utilized the human figure, be it distorted or reduced to a sign. My next major revelations probably came at university, in discovering conceptual art, and the work of Duchamp and Basquiat, and even somebody like Hirst. Not the most obvious combination of inspirations perhaps, but they all showed me, in one way or another, that art could be a very broad field, that it didn't have to rely on any one specific approach or technique and that made my own ideas feel more valid. Discovering rock art and tribal art in South Africa was also very important for me (and still influences my work today, although in a ‘quieter’ way than when I was younger - the dots in “Origin” relate directly to forms of ancient art). I have a wide range of interests - music, literature, philosophy and history all factor into my thinking - so they would also feature in my list of formative influences. The first time I read “The Wasteland” and “The Hollow Men” was hugely important for me, as was listening to, say, Nirvana, or the Manic Street Preachers, or Mogwai for the first time, as was being exposed to a lot of post-modernist thinkers (like Deleuze, Kristeva and Foucault), while I was at university, as well as the existentialist writers I encountered when I was in my early teens. Experiencing other countries and cultures has also massively impacted on my practice, either through visual stimulus in the art or landscape of those places, or through learning something about the history of the places and my imagination being captured by it. As I say, I can't pin anything down to just one artwork, artist or moment - all of these varied things, and many more, have coalesced into how I think about and practice art.
Your art explores “the impact and processes of human thinking, either as an abstract conceptual space or through the lens of history, politics, philosophy, literature and so on as represented by marks on textured surfaces designed to evoke landscape, either natural or constructed”. We are particularly interested if you try to achieve any kind of translation of your experiences of living in many places with such different cultural and social environment.
Very much so, yes, particularly over the last few years, where I’ve made a more conscious decision to interpret and respond to the different places I’ve been living in. It’s become a bit of a cliché, but still nevertheless true, that time and place influence art and I can see that easily in my own practice. It can be something as simple as the light, colours and landscape of a place bleeding through into the work (as when I was living in Oman), or even the politics and general atmosphere, as when I was living in South Africa and creating a lot of very angry, frantically politicized work. The Desert Paintings were a direct response to the landscape and architecture of Oman. “Desert Painting: Gateway”, for example, was inspired by the traditional Omani doors, as well as the ever-present sand and rock of the desert. As I suggested earlier, my encounter with rock art in Africa still comes through in my work, sometimes consciously as in “Origin” and other times in ways I don’t necessarily see myself at the time. People have read the spiral in “Labyrinths” as African-inspired, particularly if they have spent time there, while others have seen them as more European in origin. While living in Bangkok my work was, I think, quite influenced by the urban environment, but less angry than my South African stuff and possibly less directly inspired by the country and my experience of living there.
So far China’s influence has been in working with some different (for me) techniques, like calligraphic-style brushstrokes for example, and also in the images and ideas behind the works. I have my standard obsessions and interests, both formally and conceptually, which lend themselves well to exploring places through my own ‘filters’, be they artistic, political, or philosophical, as well as from my conception of myself as the ‘embedded outsider’ as I mentioned earlier.. As you have mentioned, through my work I explore the impact and processes of human thinking, through the lens of history, politics, philosophy, literature, and so on, as represented by marks on textured surfaces, and I am finding that the lens of China is very appropriate to exploring these ideas. Part of this is because the immense scale of the country and its history, where the whole cycle of the rise and fall of civilization has been playing out for thousands of years, but also because I find so many things here visually striking – it could be the quality of the air (not so great for the lungs, but I find the milky, distorted quality interesting and used it in “Early Autumn Mist”), the architecture, the rate of change, or the textures and histories of the different places and the way these things link to the human story.
Each person who looks at "Middle School Cliques" will have a different reaction to it, a personal story or experience that describes the painting for them. I don't want to define it for them, but instead, have each of us share our ideas with the other.
ht one. Once I have the pose that strikes me (YES!) I take it from there, drawing up a rough sketch adding patterns and geometrical shapes which contrast the lines of the main silhouette.
From there I sketch my plan on to a blank canvas (always making changes and additions to the new layout). Once I am happy with that I start to add colour. My fine lines are all executed without masking; using a small brush, even hand, and steadfast concentration. Then I apply layer upon layer of colour until I achieve beautiful unyielding saturation and impeccable print-like quality.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
The emotional and intellectual relationship of my work always begin as two very seperate things. At first glance, my art may seem frivolously aesthetic .The colours are vibrant, and deliciously arresting. But then you look a little closer, even through the simplicity of the block colour and basic lines of geometry and pattern, there is always a story within… and that is when the emotional and intellectual perception of my art merge and the true beauty is discovered.
olted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?
I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.