Theo Ellison
Revisiting past floorr interviewees with latest news and artworks
Ellison recently exhibited at The Cello Factory as part of the Ingram Collection's Young Contemporary Talent Prize and took part in a programme of artist talks, group crits, and tutorials at the Zabludowicz Collection. Over the next few months he will be co-running the exhibition programme at PALFREY, an artist run space in London, and exhibiting with MOCA London and Landskrona Foto in Sweden.
Interview published: 10/07/2018
"The images hopefully work to seduce the viewer with what they may normally find objectionable; blurring the line between observation and voyeurism."
Interview by writer Stephen Feather
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
I live and work in London and completed my MA at the Royal College of Art in 2017. I took a meandering route through education, never settling on a single discipline, and making art seemed like the only way to explore combined interests of philosophy, writing, art and aesthetics.
These interests converged within my work, which looks to dig into the relationship between human behaviour and art-making; why we create images and how we consume them. I’m looking to peel back the layers of illusion that encase this relationship to reveal certain mechanics that are unavoidable in our engagement with images.
Naturalistic Fallacy 2 (2017) Install shot at Saatchi Gallery
There is a strange disquiet in your work which is simultaneously unsettling and alluring. To what extent do you find shock value and the uncanniness to be effective?
Shock value for its own sake isn’t interesting, if it’s even possible to conjure it post-Information Age. However, I do look to inject a certain level of visual immediacy within the work to engage the viewer in a dialogue around the nature of imaging making. This links back to the idea of the primal or carnal. Food, sex, and death are staple subjects within art history but are also categorised as our most primitive drives. In contrast, art itself is often viewed as almost synonymous with developed civilisation, as the antithesis of our primal nature. This separation of human behaviour strikes me as an illusion, so an uneasy relationship between art and nature runs through the work. I set out to use the language of image-making iconoclastically; to deconstruct itself.
The images hopefully work to seduce the viewer with what they may normally find objectionable; blurring the line between observation and voyeurism. Dead animals, morally ambiguous scenes of sex and gluttony; they are looking to trigger a morbid curiosity and a tension between desires and internalised ideals. This is where the environment, lighting, and installation of the work comes into play. The lighting, both within the image, and of the image itself (they are often spot lit in dark rooms), directs the viewer where to look, encouraging a peep-show-like spectacle of voyeurism.
The triggering of uncanniness within the work is used to shed some light on the illusory nature of our relationship with imagery. I’m drawn to digital mediums because they lend themselves well to dealing with ideas around illusion, artifice, and the re-presentation of nature within art; they serve as tools within the work to address our vulnerability to the power of images.
You’ve mentioned that your work references art history. Do you see this as a starting point or something that permeates through the work?
A bit of both. For example, one of the images, Naturalistic Fallacy 2, is stuffed full of art historical references; Courbet’s L’origine du Monde, Dali’s lobster symbolism, still life, and Baroque painting are all in there. The references serve as a dialogue around the nature of image-making and as recognisable points of contact for the viewer, encouraging participation in that dialogue.
Entombment, which is the image of the supine dead pigeon, is reminiscent of Holbein’s ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’. In using a pigeon, the archetypal anonymous city dweller as its subject, it draws upon Caravaggio’s practice of using ordinary looking people to portray religious figures. It’s embracing the trope of finding the beauty in the mundane, which is an idea that embodies a romanticism and kind of acceptance that I’m drawn to.
It’s those eternal themes of sex and death that much of art history is wrapped up in, and why I think so many people are drawn to places like the National Gallery. It gives you a huge amount of history and material to build upon but I think the flipside is that there’s a danger of falling into superficiality when dealing with those subjects; so there’s a responsibility there. It’s like with any well-mined area of art; sex, death, Freudian psychoanalysis; you’re looking to provide a tweaked insight, a new perspective, for which there’s always room. I enjoy that challenge.
The allusions to art history stem from my interest in the phenomenon of art-making, both from an art-history perspective and as an evolved human behaviour.
After Zurbaran (2018)
Untitled (Shotgun) (2018)
Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?
My current studio is at The Bomb Factory art foundation in Archway. It’s in an old Victorian warehouse that was used as an actual bomb factory during the Second World War - a fact I had to calmly explain multiple times after I once dialled in the wrong phone number and asked for ‘the bomb factory’.
We do group crits there once a month too, which is great as it was one of the most valued aspects of my time at the RCA. Anyone is welcome to join the crit discussions and apply to have their work discussed so you always meet some interesting artists.
The days differ depending on what I’m working on and what stage of the process the work is at. The actual time spent making the work seems trivial compared to the time spent on the research, organisation, and logistics involved. Many an email is exchanged every day. Although all those aspects are part of the making process too.
Whether I’m photographing in the studio or outside, I’ll generally be obsessive with getting the right image. Working on the composition is a process in itself, and the more elements you add in, the more tinkering it requires. Even if initially I get the image I have in my head exposed onto the camera sensor, I’ll usually want to re-think, re-compose, and re-light. Then I’ll tinker with the minutiae – a leaf nudged to the right, a wing feather a little more ruffled. It can be an exhausting process; particularly when fabric folds and drapes are involved. Then I might fancy trying a different set-up and start it all over. I enjoy that process because new elements are discovered unintentionally. Otherwise it would feel a bit clinical.
Though I’ve mainly been concentrating on photography for the past three years, I’m now looking towards other mediums and processes too.
Caverns (with fly) (2018)
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
The installation at Tenderpixel for Petra Feriancova and Nicolas Lamas’s show was great. It was beautifully, starkly lit, and conjured an immersive look at mimesis and symbiosis within nature. It managed to evoke a kind-of horror movie, sinister, post-apocalyptic, almost vantis-esque scene while avoiding any trope-iness that it could easily have fallen into. It’s still swirling around in my mind.
I also saw some brilliant artwork at the Slade BA show. There was a lot of work there that caught my eye, particularly some funny, idiosyncratic paintings by Frederick Freebury Williams that looked like a mashup of Bosch, Bruegel and David Shrigley. I don’t know the artist personally and am not sure if that’s his real name, but it was great stuff.
How do you go about naming your work?
I guess it’s different for each work. Titles have the power to change the whole meaning of the work and there are far more wrong ones to pick than there are right ones, so if it doesn’t spring to mind immediately, I’ll take my time with it. Generally, I’m looking to either give an indication of some of the core ideas behind the work within the title, or to give the viewer a little more information to go on. For example, Entombment and After Zurbarán make direct references to their art-historical references, whereas Game Theory and Naturalistic Fallacy point towards the textual theory they are informed by.
"Baby" 2017 Install shot at Birmingham Museum
Untitled (Preservation) (2018)
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I’m currently artist-in-residence at Coughton Court, a National Trust managed Gothic mansion in Warwickshire associated with the Gunpowder Plot. Residences like this one, where you’re looking to respond to specific surroundings, are interesting conundrums to figure out. I think as a general rule, the best work is made in ‘the void’, but residencies give you the impetus to re-think and adjust your approach.
I’ll also be starting a studio residency in August at the Florence Trust, a neo-Gothic church in Highbury. That lasts for a year. More specifically in terms of the work itself, I’m looking to get started on some CGI and moving image projects that will delve further into the idea of art as an evolved human behaviour – where it comes from, and why it manifests itself in the way it does.
Published: 10/07/2018
All images courtesy of the artist
David Lock
Revisiting past floorr interviewees with latest news and artworks
Since Lock did the Floorr interview the Walker Art Gallery acquired his John Moores Painting Prize ‘El Muniria’ painting for its permanent collection, and was also a prizewinner in the Creekside Open 2019.
Recent shows:
’between parts undone'
Paintings by David Lock, Gavin Maughfling & J.A Nicholls
Studio1.1, London. 7th February - 1st March, 2020
'Painters Posting Paintings', curated by Joe O'Rourke
Brockley Gardens, London. 11th December - 20th December
'Creekside Open' 2018, curated by Sacha Craddock
ATP Gallery, London. 13th June - 7th July, 2019
Publish date: 02/10/2018
“I’m reflecting on the pressure for men to conform to a certain body type. It’s external to me, and comes from the outside, the big ‘Other’ if you like, and i’m navigating my feelings around that.”
Interview by: Brooke Hailey Hoffert
Since Lock did the interview following the John Moores Painting Prize the Walker Art Gallery acquired his selected ‘El Muniria’ painting for its permanent collection, and also was the prizewinner in the Creekside Open 2019.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
I’ve always been interested in making art, but I didn’t originally anticipate an art career. I was a hairdresser, but I had a spinal injury when was 19, so I went back to college and did my A levels. Following them I did an Art foundation course at De-Montfort Uni in my hometown of Leicester. I then left Leicester to do my BA (hons) degree in Fine Art at the University of Reading graduating in 1999. There were lots of interesting people teaching there like Roger Cook who had been close friends with Patrick Procktor and Derek Jarman. Roger actually starred as Jesus in Jarman’s ‘The Garden’. Back in Leicester, I was a Jarman fan, so I loved listening to Roger talking about Derek, it made the person come alive to me. Then I went straight from Reading to Goldsmiths to do my MFA. I loved the structure of the course and the energy there.
After I left Goldsmiths in 2001, I had the opportunity to join Candoco Dance Company as a dancer. Candoco are the UK’s leading dance company of both disabled and non disabled dancers. It was such a great opportunity. I’d been doing several residencies and workshops with Candoco throughout the 90’s as a way to explore my physicality. In performing with Candoco, we formed such a strong bond working with choreographers such as Fin Walker and Stephen Petronio. We got to perform and do workshops in many interesting places such as Tallinn and Nairobi.
I did two seasons back to back and I really valued having that distance from my Fine Art degrees to figure out what I was doing with my art. I’d kept on my studio and was still going in and painting, so when I left Candoco I had a much clearer idea about what I was doing.
Tetu 2018
Torso (Xavier) 2018
What drew you to becoming a portrait artist?
I think i’m more interested in the male body politic than portraiture per se. If I think about the various strands in my practice, my ‘Misfit’ paintings are more concerned with a collagist approach to figuration.
The other paintings I make, which are portraits I first made to interact with the ‘Looted’ collage, which I produced for a show at MOCA to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of my uncle, the playwright Joe Orton. For that show, I wanted to make portraits inspired by Patrick Procktor whose nude portrait of Joe hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. The paintings alone were not conveying what I wanted, so I decided to make the ‘Looted’ collage as an homage to the wall collage that Joe and his partner Kenneth Halliwell made from stolen library books in their Noel Road, Islington flat in the early 1960’s.
For my collage, rather than reproductions of paintings which they'd used in their collage, I wanted to instead use images of the gay men that had inspired me, and celebrate that. Joe had died before I was born, but he was also the first gay person I was aware of. I could relate to him in terms of my emerging gay consciousness growing up in the 1980’s, and I wanted to acknowledge that by making a collage which showed that contemporary gay lives grow out of a shared gay history.
The paintings I then placed upon the collage, so that they would interact with the collage and throw the images into further question. I wanted the paintings to be of men in various states of undress, as for me they’re about how, for many gay men their body is their currency. The images I used I took from the internet or men’s lifestyle magazines. It was important to me that the images already circulated in popular culture and that they constituted an ‘ideal’ in terms of desire. I’m appropriating that imagery, and in that way the finding becomes about ownership. I refer to these as my 'Other' paintings.
Looted (with paintings), 2017 installation at New Walk Museum, Leicester
Looted collage 2017-18, install shot at studio 1.1
Looted (with paintings) detail, 2018
In what ways does your practice explore the process of becoming?
Primarily i’m interested in investigating masculinities in my paintings, by drawing from popular culture. I don’t tend to work from life as i’m really fascinated by how masculinities are presented in mass-media.
In that regard, I don’t see masculinity as this solid, immoveable construction and that’s reflected in my ‘Misfit’ paintings. I want something that is suggestive of the repeated process of identity formation. A fluid performative process with a multitude of subject positions, shifting identification from one fragment to another. It’s rhizomatic in that sense.
In assembling men from these different fragments, for me it’s also about the articulation of difference. I want the figures in the paintings to be destabilising and contested, keeping things in play. I’m more interested in asking questions than providing answers. The ‘Misfits’ are caught in a moment of flux, and the collagist element gives them a certain vulnerability. I’m asking what it means to be a man today.
Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?
My studio is an Acme one in Mile End. I have a big studio that overlooks Mile End stadium. As a wheelchair user the studios are a godsend really because the building is fully accessible. I go in with my partner Stephen who also has a studio there. Next month we’re moving in to a dual studio which will suit us both better going forward.
I prefer to work on one thing at once and get that done. I get a bit confused if I have several things going on at a time. To make my big paintings I have a standing wheelchair which is great as I get to have a good stand as well as doing some painting. Having a disability means I need to be flexible in my approach, sometimes i’m not able to make big paintings so i’m always mixing it up in terms of scale.
Do you consider your art to be Queer Art?
I do, but then it also doesn’t define the parameters of my art. It’s a political, and cultural term, a reappropriation of a slur. My art is in parts an articulation of the experience of being gay, and particularly with the ‘Looted’ collage identifying with gay men who shaped the 20th century such as Jean Genet, and drawing from that past history. The perspectives on that history are constantly changing, and in that sense there’s a contingency about it.
That displacement feeling of ‘otherness’ that gay people can experience, being a wheelchair user it compounds that feeling further, so being queer in that sense is very much a lived experience.
There is also a self-consciousness in that with the direct portraits which i’m making now. Whether the paintings are derived from male models in magazines, or from real gay men who use instagram to display their ‘perfect’ bodies.
I’m reflecting on the pressure for men to conform to a certain body type. It’s external to me, and comes from the outside, the big Other if you like, and i’m navigating my feelings around that. It’s like RuPaul says in the Drag Race “If you can't love yourself, then how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”’
It’s an interesting time to be gay. For the first time we are in an era where we are far more accepted, and we can make art of that experience that celebrates life rather than death. When I was growing up there was a whole generation of people that were lost to AIDS. Consequently that experience and the radical spirit they fostered has also largely disappeared from view. With these new found freedoms though, we should never take anything for granted. Just from looking at the current political climate, it’s obvious our fought for liberal values are already being eroded.
Misfit (Writer) 2017
Misfits (Eros) 2016
Misfit (with Penguin) 2016
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
I’m still thinking about the Soutine portraits show at The Courtauld that was on earlier this year. The paintings are so forceful, the way he paints. I liked how it just focused on his portraits. They were often not named as individual people but to their trades; a pastry cook, a waiter or a bellboy. I loved them all. I’d seen one of the bellboys in the collection downstairs in the l’Orangerie in Paris a couple of years ago, but here they had them all together. It was great. He was so brilliant with colour, and with paint handling. They have the most weird goofy expressions and contorted bodies.
I also loved Kaye Donachie’s show ‘Silent as Glass’ at Maureen Paley. The title painting in particular had this intense mystery about it. I love her subject matter, I always wonder who they are these poets she depicts from the 20th century. There were also these wonderful flower still lives and on the back wall a site-specific wall covering of moons in silhouette with a painting of a women's head looking downcast. Donachie’s so deft. I think she gets better and better.
How do you go about naming your work?
Usually I want to draw attention to the fact that the subjects are not known to me, so it becomes about a type. I’m objectifying in that sense. To underscore this I often use titles which refer to the underwear the subjects are wearing such as ‘Blue Boxers’, ‘Red Briefs (Garden)’ or for instance, ‘Tetu’ after the french gay magazine I found the image in.
It’s similar with the Misfit paintings. I usually build them up around an idea of something to do with desire such as ‘Misfits (Eros)’, or to the process of cutting and reassembly such as ‘Misfit (Slice)’.
With my ‘El Muniria’ painting which is currently in the John Moores Painting Prize, that was a specific place which had a certain notoriety about it. It was a haunt of the Beat Generation and William S Burroughs wrote ‘Naked Lunch’ there. I was interested in the still problematic history of queer Tangier and it’s associations of colonialist sex tourism.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I’ve been invited to contribute to ‘Centrefold 10’. It’s an artists scrapbook project initiated and run by Reza Aramesh. I’ve followed it for years, so I was really pleased when I was asked to contribute. It’s for the 10th anniversary special issue, and there’s always contributions from really interesting artists, and this one features contributions from amongst others Anne Ryan, Peter Davies and Nick Rea. My pages will feature the ‘Looted’ collage. I’d shown various incarnations of it over the past 18 months, so it felt like a great opportunity to include it. So many of my heroes were in the collage. It was perfect for them to go back into being centrefolds again. It launches later this month.
Also in October, i’ve been invited by Rosalind Davis to exhibit work in a group show ‘Rules of Freedom’ at Collyer Bristow Gallery. For this, i’m showing new paintings and a site-specific vinyl collage. When I’d shown the ‘Looted’ collage before, each time I made it, I created it afresh with new images, so that it always evolved and mutated. With this in mind, i’ve turned my focus to the heads in Rodin’s ‘Burghers of Calais’. Where before they provided a surrealist and decorative element in the ‘Looted’ collage, here they have multiplied and taken over. It’s a political show and the burghers here represent (for me) the idea of freedom from oppression. It runs from October until February, 2019.
Publish date: 02/10/2018
All Images are courtesy of the artist
Gordon Cheung
Revisiting past floorr interviewees with latest news and artworks
Talk:
19 Feb 2020 - Gordon Cheung in conversation with Mark Rappolt, Editor-in-Chief of ArtReview - all welcome RSVP essential for free but limited places eve@edelassanti.com
Acquisitions:
British Council, UK
University of Salford Art Collection, UK
11 Jan 2020 FT Weekend Critic's Choice
31 Jan 2020 Time Out London Top 3 Must see shows
Feb 2020 Artforum Critic’s Picks
Tears of Paradise, Edel Assanti, London UK
Interview publish date: 15/02/2018
"The rise of the internet and availability of mobile phones were signs of an increasingly technologised era where perceptions of time and space are in a state of perpetual flux."
Interviewed by artist Keanu Arcadio, you can visit Keanu's website here: artist's website
Let's open up this interview by telling us your morning routine and if you use any technology to plan any works beforehand?
Wake, coffee, food, emails, studio. Every new work starts on the computer where research takes place before working out the composition of an idea in usually Photoshop. Colours and image are worked through before committing to printing, collaging and painting in the studio.
Have you seen any paintings or films that have drawn your nose in a new direction?
There have been many films but notable ones that I seem to keep going back to are the Director’s cut of Bladerunner, Bladerunner 2049, Stanley Kubirck’s 2001 and Apocalypse Now. There are so many paintings that I would be hard pressed to name but the National Gallery and Tate Museums are always inspiring places.
The paintings you have executed share similar compositions and elements from 16th century medieval paintings, when executing your paintings do you have any images up when working in the studio?
I think you must be referring to the glitch works that I have made that are high resolution photos of paintings from the Rijksmusem. An algorithm is used to re-order the pixels without destruction or duplication that result in what I think of as a digital sands of time effect. These are then either converted into animations, prints or giclees on canvas. In the studio I have images of the work I have planned out on the computer for reference. At home I have a mix of my own images and others on my wall in front of the computer.
"Eelke Jelles Eelkema mres"
"Still Life Abraham Hendricksz van Beyeren c.1640-1680"
Would you say you have taken the syntax of how the screen moves into the language of painting and would do you foresee yourself executing your paintings into the digital format?
I already work with digital formats if that means using computers and printing them onto surfaces and collaging them onto canvasses or printing directly onto canvasses. Moreover I make animations now and then. When I was at central Saint Martins from 1994-98 I wanted to paint without paint to question the medium itself but also to side-step the dominant discourse of ‘The Death of Western Painting’ by adopting the language of abstraction and substitute paint for collage. Why? Because I wanted to reflect the digital and communications revolution in my art. The newspaper represented the globalised space of Capitalism and was a good starting point that has remained in my work for over 20 years.
The rise of the internet and availability of mobile phones were signs of an increasingly technologised era where perceptions of time and space are in a state of perpetual flux. To me the landscapes of zeroes and ones were flowing through us and the metaphor I chose to use was the Financial Times newspaper and especially the lists of the stock market. So what does the screen mean? I grew up with the first home computers and when I first played games on the TV I was blown away by how you could control something on the screen that felt like as though it was in an alternate reality beyond the screen which was and is a world constructed by zeroes and ones. It makes sense to me to try to visualise the languages of our times and to use them in our chosen mediums to capture something about our human condition. Future works will involve 3d printing and hopefully some work made for VR.
"Here be Dragons" Video installation
Following from the last question, how much influence would you say you allow from the screen? Are there times where you take ideas from the T.V or browsing the web?
I’m uncertain of what is meant by the ‘influence’ of the screen as if it somehow innately has quantitive coercive power. I definitely take ideas from TV or browsing the web. I try to keep mind open in a place where inspiration can be found and the internet is for me a massive library. So whatever form or shape that takes whether its looking at art from around the world, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones, Masterchef, a youtuber analysing a film script or David Attenborough’s recent Planet Earth there is always something incredible to learn and be inspired from.
The Minotaur series is very much different from your other compositions of flowers, fruit and static objects. What was your incentive for creating this series?
The Minotaur series came from searching for a mythical sign of our global times. The stock market is called the bull and the bear market apparently due to the way how they attack. A bear strikes down and a bull thrusts up to describe the movements of the stock market. I found it fascinating that one of the most important spaces of our modern lives should use attack metaphors and animals for what is one of the most artificial spaces we as a humanity have created.
So the Minotaur came into my mind as a symbol within a labyrinthine matrix of numbers. A cursed creature of man and beast and also a symbol of our relationship to nature. The still life compositions are based on the Dutch Golden Age Still Life which was a period considered to be the birth of Modern Capitalism with the first recorded economic bubble over the surreal speculation of tulip bulbs and the rise of the first global company with militarised trade routes, colonisation and slavery. The still life paintings were a way of looking at what is now considered to be a benign genre and reframing it to question the histories that are written by victors and therefore those that are hidden. It was a response to the 2008 Financial crisis that led me to finding out about the first bubble in history.
"Great Wall of Sand" Unknown Knowns at Edel Assanti 2017
Unknown Knowns at Edel Assanti 2017
"Here be Dragons" Installation
Do you see yourself revisiting depicting animals or moving objects in your work?
I am frequently making work depicting animals but I haven’t yet made a work with moving objects yet. I certainly make moving image based works.
Finally, what can we expect to see from you this 2018?
I currently have a group show at Alan Cristea with 3 Turner Prize artists and also have an ongoing solo show at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens in West Palm Beach. Forthcoming is a group exhibition at Galerie Huit in March and a solo show toward the end of the year at the same gallery in Hong Kong. In between will be other group shows in London and a chance to see my work at Art Basel Hong Kong.
All images courtesy of the artist and Edel Assanti
Interview publish date: 15/02/2018
Ragnar Kjartansson
Interview publish date: 15/02/2018
"I was lucky to be raised in the darkness of the theatre."
Our interview with Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Your parents are both actors, right? Where did you study art?
Yes, they're both actors, I was lucky to be raised in the darkness of the theatre. And to be around chain-smoking people in costumes and makeup, its a pretty cool memory. I studied art at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, which is a school here in Reykjavík. I graduated in 2001.
You have an exciting new performance at the National Museum in Cardiff, with a series of revolving organists performing the 1959 hit song, "The Sky in a Room". Can you tell us a bit about this piece? And why you chose that song?
It's basically a song I've really, really loved for years. It's a beautiful Italian song by Gino Paoli, It's a love song and it's about how space transforms when you're in love. Visual art has always been about transformation of space and this is the only song I know that addresses this concept directly.
He wrote it in 1959, in bed with a prostitute, feeling the love in this weird space, in a brothel. And he starts thinking, you are here with me, the walls, the endless woods, the violet ceiling becomes a starry sky. And the harmonica, I hear, sounds like an organ. Reality changes and space transforms. There's this beautiful version of the song which he recorded, where it's just an organ. And when I was doing Artes Mundi in Cardiff a few years ago, I thought, how cool it would be to do a performance in that space with just that song and being performed on repeat. I think the idea for this piece just came from always having this song in my subconsciousness and listening to it a lot. And then just coming into this space in Cardiff with its– light blue, velvety– damask wallpaper, with light's coming in from the ceiling with this 18th-century gorgeous organ in the middle of the floor. I've always said– The space just asked for this performance to happen. And now weirdly it's happening, and I'm crazy excited about that.
"The Sky in a Room", National Museum Cardiff 2018 (c) Hugo Glendinning
1774 Sir Watkin Williams Wynn chamber organ at National Museum Cardiff (c) National Museum Wales
"The Sky in a Room" National Museum Cardiff 2018 (c) Polly Thomas
The gallery is full of 18th-century British paintings but all the works will be removed, leaving the room empty. Could you tell us what's behind that decision?
When you take the paintings out of the room, it just becomes a space with that song in it. If you have the paintings there, then the song will be accompanying you watching the paintings. I think it's also great for people who love these paintings and love this place. It's like when the paintings go away for a bit, you start missing them and you become really happy when they come back. But the main reason is if you have the paintings in there then the piece would not work.
Your ongoing piece called "Me and My Mother", is a video of your mum spitting on you for several minutes. You both do this every five years. Can you tell us a bit about this work, and has it affected your relationship with your mother at all?
Its become a really nice kind of gory family thing to do. It tells a mysterious story about our bond and about parent-child relationships too. And yes, I think it is actually good for our relationship, to do this every five years. I mean, it's a piece that my mother has become really proud of, and that makes me very happy. It's crafted out of an art school thing and it's just grown with time, and by repeating it, it becomes more and more important for us. It kind of gains weight as a work of art, I think.
Me and My Mother (2015)
There's a lot of repetition in your work. Do you feel by repeating something enough times it can change its meaning and also, with repetition it can be quite comforting as well?
Yes, I think it can be singularly, weirdly comforting. That's why we like habits, traditions, and comforting repetitions. Also by repeating something enough times can change its meaning. This idea of repetition makes a narrative or performative thing something that you can really look at, and I really like that. I like this idea of a song like Il Cielo In Una Stanza becoming a portrait of the song. Suddenly, it's "look at that song. Is that song as an art piece. A sculpture" But then it's a song also that can just come and go. I find that fascinating. I've worked a lot with repetition, I look at it as a tool of artistic expression, like yellow. It is like drawing something and when you draw it again and again and again, this kind of repetition of the drawing somehow gives it some weight and becomes interesting to look at.
Has there been any artwork you've seen recently that has resonated with you?
Yes, I'm always seeing something that I really like. All the time. One of my favorite pieces I've seen recently was in a show here in Reykjavík by this artist called Huginn Þór Arason. It was a great piece. It was called "Current". It's just a video of him and a really beautiful young man Posing like Brooke Shields in that famous Calvin Klein ad. They were reading Icelandic mid 20th-century poetry. This piece sort of blew my mind. The most recent one to blow my mind anyway.
"The Visitors" (still) 2012
"God" (still) 2007
Ragnar Kjartansson by Elisabet Davids
Could you tell us a bit about how you spend your day? Like studio routine? What's your studio like?
My studio is a concrete bunker by the sea where they used to store fishing nets and equipment. I work here with my studio manager Lilja and my wife Ingibjörg. We collaborate a lot. As for studio routine, I'm not one of those artists who just go to the studio at o'clock, has a cigarette and watches the empty canvas. It's more just like the life and art mix into each other constantly. So like today I did not go to the studio, I went to the swimming pool and was just chatting with people. The swimming pools in Iceland are sort of like a pub in England. You just meet people and chat. But chatting and socoalizing is really important for my practice.
Apart from the Cardiff show, is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
In the fall there will be a performance in San Francisco called "Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy" which I'm quite excited about. And then I'm doing a sad awful epic opera here in Reykjavík called "War" with the composer Kjartan Sveinsson.
Ragnar's "The Sky in a Room" will be on show from 3 February–11 March 2018 at the National Museum Cardiff.
Banner image: "The Sky in a Room" by Ragnar Kjartansson (c) Polly Thomas
All images courtesy of the artist, National Museum Cardiff and Artes Mundi
Interview publish date: 15/02/2018