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Lucas Price – Body Body

Lucas Price is currently exhibiting as part of the inaugural Bangkok Art Bienalle until Feb 2019, with the video work Body Body. 
We decided to catch up with him and discuss the emotive, and brutally honest work.
Lucas Price - Body Body

Lucas Price – Body Body

Can you please explain a little about what the video is about, and how you came to make it?
The video is a long series of screen tests of people who at the time of recording were immigrants in Thailand. I was recovering from a stay at a temple, where I had gone to detox from heroin. I felt that my body was under attack, from itself in a way, had been colonised by this thing. So I was thinking about that and the various ways people’s bodies are prone to pressure. I began by recording my drug dealer, then moved outward and began to record his friends, their peers, tourists, diplomats etc. I wanted to make something about my relationship to Bangkok, and it ended up being about being an outsider. So, it’s about that and moving through the world and how the body is coming and going in amongst all of this.
Body Body is obviously an incredibly personal project for you, how have you reconciled making the private public, and how did you decide what to include and what to omit?
I really feel that its a universal set of principles I’m trying to sort out. Like we all have to abide inside of our bodies. And we’re all trying to keep the show on the road. There are personal references, but I think it’s worth being honest if it means that somehow it allows for more of the same? That’s certainly my experience. Other people’s honesty makes room for my own. I don’t know if this works in the same way but it’s partly the intention.
Who are the people in the video, and how much has been explained to them about the project before filming?
The people in the film were…everyone was street cast. I made a studio in the back of a truck which I drove around Bangkok for a week. We went to slums on the outskirts, the hi so areas, the red light district, chinatown. Suburbs, tourist traps, immigration centres. Everyone was made aware that the film was a simple series of portraits, to be screened in a gallery. It was very ad-hoc but everyone was made aware of the nature of the project and I had consent throughout. The most interesting and eager to participate were the african sex workers, who at the time were under an enormous amount of pressure as the result of a crackdown by the Thai police called operation Black Eagle. They were rounded up every couple of nights and extorted or intimidated, squeezed for cash and then ultimately deported or sent to immigration centres on the way to being deported. I think they were the limit expression of that idea of being placed under extreme amounts of pressure.
There are a lot of mentions of the sea and drowning – both in a sinister, foreboding way, but also in a cleansing and regenerating way. What is the significance of water within this particular piece?
The sea…idk, it’s just a good place to be. A large body. It unified a lot of the experiences I have of travelling and being dislocated. It’s also…I was thinking about this idea of experience and awareness, of waves being parts of a whole thing..the wave is not the ocean, the ocean contains all the waves. Also shout out to The Waves by Virginia Woolf.
Do you see this work as being redemptive in any way, or is it a cathartic experience revealing such personal details?
I think the details aren’t so important as maybe trying to be honest and even earnest? I mean I’m cynical, and I don’t know whether the film is successful in any meaningful way…at least in the way I originally intended, but if I think about what is at stake, for me it’s certainly about being honest…like congruous or something.

It’s not about redemption, as much as making sense post meltdown. And whatever works in those conditions right? I’ve chastised myself for including my own stuff in my work in the past but…it’s like Nan Goldin or Brad Phillips. I like that honesty, it’s healing.

 

 

Check out his Instagram HERE

 

 

(Interview by Benjamin Murphy)

FOR MORE INTERVIEWS, CHECK OUT:

JORDY KERWICK

HAYDEN KAYS

KLAUS BUSCH RISVIG

 

Tracey Emin – A Fortnight Of Tears

Tracey Emin – A Fortnight Of Tears

Chronicling the most recent developments in Tracey Emin’s practice, ‘A Fortnight of Tears’ opens at White Cube Bermondsey in February 2019.

This major exhibition spans the entire gallery and brings together new painting, photography, large-scale sculpture, film and neon text, all stemming from the artist’s deeply personal memories and emotions ranging from loss, grief, longing and spiritual love.

Three monumental, bronze sculptural figures, the largest Emin has produced to date, are shown alongside her lyrical and expressive paintings. Developed through a process of drawing, the paintings are then intensely reworked and added to, layer upon layer.

Tracey Emin - A Fortnight Of Tears

Tracey Emin – A Fortnight Of Tears

White Cube also debuts a new photographic series by Emin titled ‘Insomnia’. Selected from thousands of self-portraits taken by the artist on her iPhone over the last couple of years, these images spontaneously capture prolonged periods of restlessness and inner turmoil.

Filmmaking has been an integral part of Emin’s career for over 20 years. To mark this, the artist will show a new film as well as the key early work How It Feels (1996), a candid and moving account of her abortions that changed her whole approach to making art.

 

For more great art exhibitions on right now, see this review of Chris Burden at Gagosian by Benjamin Murphy HERE

For more about Tracey Emin, see the White Cube website HERE

Dormant Chaos – Chris Burden at Gagosian

Dormant Chaos – Chris Burden at Gagosian by Benjamin Murphy

(Originally published in AfterNyne Magazine)

 

Chris Burden - Gagosian

 

In their latest show, Gagosian gallery is isolating two works from Chris Burden’s retrospective at New Museum in New York in 2013, and presenting them together in their Brittania Street gallery. Entitled Measured, the show speaks of symmetry, bringing together two works that exist via the equality of weight between two opposing objects. In Porsche With Meteorite, a genuine nickel-iron meteorite counterbalances a restored Porsche 914.

This work is one which suggests immense, and yet dormant, power. The power of the sports-car is curtailed and it is left sitting idly, as if weightless, whilst the meteorite sits cold upon the opposing end of the fulcrums arm. These two objects have had past lives that were incredibly high-octane, for Burden’s restoration of a vintage car rather than the selection of a showroom floor model is not merely serendipitous. These objects have been imbued with an immense power, which through his transfiguration, have become impotent in their stillness. They seem to have lost their virility, and sit immobile, suspended in time.

 

The meteorite is only twenty percent of the weight of the car, and for this reason the beam that supports both is much longer on the meteorites end. It is a purpose-built structure that towers overhead, telescopic – although the lack of registration-marks on the uniform oxidisation suggests that this functionality is only for show; it has potential, but this potential will never be actualised. The vehicles have been painstakingly restored to their former perfection, whilst the oxidised steel components, display an artificial history that in the vehicles js genuine, but obscured.

 

The viewer is at once struck with the delicacy of the work, and yet feels insecure in the potential for danger. In many ways both works in Measuredare redolent of his 1996 work The Flying Steamroller, in which a twelve-tonne steamroller is attached to a pivoted arm, counterbalanced on the opposite side. In the middle of the arm, there is a rotating fulcrum that allows the steamroller to lift off the ground and float in the air once it has reached a high enough velocity for the counterweight to elevate it. In this work the potential for unmitigated disaster is very real, and it is impossible to not be struck by the delicacy with which this immensely dangerous event is taking place. The steamroller glides serenely through the air like a bird.

Chris Burden - Gagosian

The other work in the show, One-Ton Crane Truck is a refurbished Ford truck counterbalanced with a purpose-built single tonne cube, which contrasts with and exemplifies the exotic nature of the meteorite. In this work, the vehicle is a rudimentary machine used for laborious work, which is diametrically opposed to the extravagent sports-car in the other room. This juxtaposition of the functional and familiar robustness of the crane truck and cube, with the exoticsports car and meteorite, seems to highlight the intrinsic qualities of each by playing them off against one another. The sports car appears all the more luxurious and fast, whilst the truck speaks of rigidity and strength. This piece is slightly less successful than its counterpart however, and as was suggested to me by a friend, a bit ‘cartoony’. The one-tonne weight is a rather arbritrary measurement, as the trucks front wheels are planted firmly on the ground. Were they to be lifted ever-so-slightly off the floor, the work would have been immeasurably powerful, but alas, that is not the case. Having the counterweight a purpose-built cube, as opposed to a magical, extra-terrestrial chunk of metal, diminishes this work somewhat. It does however, suggest that this work means something different to its opposite, in that here the work suggests industry and industrialization, grounded in the real, laborious world. The other has a magical, almost fairytale quality, and is suggestive of some kind of freedom (or its lack thereof). It is not that either work critiques or diminishes the other, rather that they both speak of similar ideas, in opposing ways.

 

Burden’s early work was chaotic and reckless, but never haphazard. There was a raw energy and freedom to his performance works that now, because of his untimely death, will never be seen again. This show has a somber quietness to it, that when viewed after the artist’s premature death, screams of lost potential. The cars potential as a conduit to immense power and freedom is left suspended, and isolated from the very ground that gives it its meaning. In this however, it is imbued it with a newer, more abstract power. The meteorite appears as if lassoed out of the sky, hung upon a metal gallows and displayed in all its impotence, energy lost irretrievably.

 

In Burden’s earlier work, he put himself at great physical danger and exposed himself to actual bodily harm for his works.Towards the end of his career, he made works that placed the viewer in arenas of potential danger, with The Big Wheel and Steamroller, where there always seemed that chaos was ready to break free. In these works presented in Measured, the chaos and energy that could ensue has long passed, and now lays dormant within these objects, perfectly suspended to reflect that an equilibrium has been reached between chaos and calm. The gallery has a stillness that heightens the balance of the two works, both individually with the literal balance between objects, but also the way in which both works discourse with each other.

 

As Mark Rothko once said, “complete equilibrium is death”, and within these works, it is the perfect symmetry of both that each nullifies the power of its opposite. All ordered systems strive towards chaos, and these equal and opposing forces arrest this eagerness for disorder, creating a stunted equilibrium redolent of serenity. It is a stale serenity however, as each work calls to mind a lost potential, which when read in the post-Burden landscape, echoes of loss.

 

 

For more by Benjamin:

Santiago Sierra – The Strangeness of Reality

For more details about the show:

Gagosian Website

Art Aesthetics Review of Diary Of An Introvert

Art Aesthetics magazine have recently reviewed our solo show with Australian painter Jordy Kerwick. Read what they had to say below…

Kerwick’s still lifes are the perfect foil to the quixotic ideals of the artist. He only started painting in 2015, but has risen in truly meteoric fashion having already exhibited as far and wide as New York and San Francisco in the United States, and Paris, Cologne and Hamburg in Europe despite working from Melbourne, Australia. We finally caught up with Kerwick’s first solo UK show, Diary of an Introvert, in South London. I was accompanied, charitably, by Aistè, who generously made time for me having just released a new single, ‘My Only Friend’.

Our destination was Delphian Gallery: the itinerant art space founded by Nick Thompson and Benjamin Murphy. Their brisk existence requires that one show’s success entails the next show’s very premises. (They needn’t worry, Kerwick has done exceptionally well with only a couple of paintings remaining for sale.) So we went to Delphian Gallery’s temporary venue at the AMP Gallery’s space in uber-cool Peckham.

Art Aesthetics

Kerwick’s paintings seem to prevaricate on the ‘artist’ as a figment of our imaginations. (They’re usually stereotyped as philosophy-thinking, chain-smoking, wine-drinking, beret-wearing Frenchies—according to my school’s careers advisor at least.) Of course, they’re not. You’ll struggle to find persons more professional and committed than artists, but bad reputations die hard. Kerwick isn’t scared of utilising these tropes, but makes for some fine self-exposition amid his own painterly equivocation. For by engaging in these tropes, the artist reflexively reveals himself.

Kerwick’s Diary of an Introvert encompasses some thirteen paintings of which twelve are still lifes. You espy geraniums and flytraps, which are usually set atop stacks of books bearing the names of other, bolder artists, thinkers, or musicians. Their spines carry Susan Sontag and Marcel Proust alongside Nick Cave and Patti Smith. (Unfortunately, these musicians aren’t quite to Aistè’s taste.) As for the artists, the works of James Ensor, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Bob Thompson are a world away from Kerwick. Ensor (1860-1949) was a forerunner of Expressionism. His Tribulations of St Anthony (1887) is wildly colourful and surreal for an artist working in the 19th Century. The Fauves (a.k.a., the Wild Beasts) followed on from the Expressionists. They also influenced Bob Thompson’s vivid, but starkly flat compositions. It’s strange, then, to find these artists’ names scrawled against the dull-pastels and ochres of Kerwick, who, when interviewed by Maria Stoljar, blandly said, ‘I really like the muted earthy tones.’ But then quietly proposed that this is ‘probably not a good thing.’ Aistè thinks the same: ‘I just want more colours.’

So other than the plants and the books, what else? You sometimes look at white spots on the canvas and what appear to be unfinished cigarettes; ‘pills and cocaine,’ suggests Aistè, though she’s not really sure if Kerwick is really that kind of guy. You can see what we’re referring to in Diary of an Introvert 7 (2018). You’ve got cigarettes sitting beside the ambiguous white spots and lines on the table. Ian Curtis supports Bob Thompson who supports Basquiat upon whom rests some pink germaniums. We’ve no difficulty imagining Curtis, Thompson and Basquiat taking full advantage of the table’s wares, but not Kerwick. For they’re proper ‘tortured artists’ whose creativity was breath-taking, but quickly burnt out. You sense that Kerwick is ‘looking in’ on these artists, but too self-consciously aware that he’s not them. ‘I don’t smoke,’ he told Stoljar, ‘but you don’t want something to be too pretty and cigarettes aren’t pretty. I still look at people smoking and think it’s cool. I’m not endorsing it for one second.’

We’re accustomed to thinking of painters as cool: rebellious, penniless, alcoholic, perhaps sensitive, but always creative. It’s supposed to come at some cost: they die too soon, are melancholic if not downright mad. (Of course, the truth is rather more boring. But we’re dealing with the popular ‘image’ of the artist.)  Kerwick plays up to this by daubing ‘la paix et la tranquillité et le pressentiment’ on the side of Diary of an Introvert 4 (2018). 

Kerwick’s interview with Stoljar is enlightening. He puts much of his work down to the fear of growing old: ‘not that I was ever cool, but I just feel less cool that I was before.’ We want out artists to be misunderstood and ahead of their time like Ensor; or, tragically cut short like Basquiat; or as expressive and bold as Thompson. Yet Kerwick is none of these things. (He’s happily married with children in Melbourne, Australia.) He’s previously said that ‘home doesn’t possess wonderment for me, not like LA or Paris.’

Nowhere is Kerwick’s self-deprecating character more visibly at work than in Diary of an Introvert 2 (2018) where the works of Voltaire and Trotsky and Gertrude Stein are crowned by ‘Miniature Schnauzers’ (very cool) and supported by the simple admission, ‘I can’t paint’. Aistè reckons he means, ‘I can’t paint…like Basquiat, like Thompson, or like Ensor.’ And yet, sometimes he does. You’ll often come across a Basquiat-like mark, cypher or glyph.

Art Aesthetics

I finally think I’ve got an analogy for Kerwick: He’s more Sancho Panza than Don Quixote. In Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece (1605 & 1615) the eponymous character simply reads too many books about chivalrous heroes. So many, in fact, that he loses his mind. He takes these stories so literally that he endeavours to become a grand knight-errant in search of adventure. He’s followed by his ‘squire’ Sancho Panza who serves as the level-headed foil to the wild idealism of Don Quixote.

Kerwick’s paintings proffer Ensor, Thompson and Basquiat as so many Don Quixotes. (How many artists aspire to Basquiat?) But for Kerwick, as for Sancho, these are fictions, so many books, upon which he places his flowers and, with a forthright naïvety, simply paints. ‘It’s kind of sad,’ says Aistè. ‘I think he’d like to be just like those Expressionists and Fauves.’ I disagree, there is such derring-do in these paintings, just obliquely, perfectly referenced. For that, it’s 4/5 stars from me and 3/5 from Aistè (although she admits that maybe that’s just because she doesn’t like Nick Cave and Patti Smith).

Thanks ART AESTHETICS!

See the Art Aesthetics website HERE

And learn more about Jordy HERE, and buy his prints HERE

Transition – How to prosper in the art world

Join us on the 12th December for the panel discussion Transition – how to prosper in the art world. The panel will be chaired by Benjamin Murphy and Nick JS Thompson from Delphian Gallery together with guest speakers Rosalind Davis and Stuart Waplington.

Rosalind Davis is an artist exhibiting globally, as well as being the permanent curator at Collyer Bristow gallery. She is the co-author of the book “What they didn’t teach you at art school”.

Stuart Waplington is the founder of theprintspace, London’s premier fine art printing company. Creativehub, an online software platform, is the go to place for artists to archive images, print, enter competitions, share files and source artworks for sale in online galleries.

The talk will cover topics such as marketing and exhibiting your work, sales and pricing and transitioning from univerity to starting your art career.

***The talk is free to attend but numbers are limited. Please RSVP using the ticket link, which can be found in the Facebook event HERE.***

 

This talk will be hosted at our upcoming show Diary Of An Introvert with the amazing Jordy Kerwick

We asked 45 artists how they found their inspiration, here are their answers…

Paul Weiner (@POWeiner) – I watch what’s happening around me in life. Inspiration is largely tied to intuition for me, and a lot of painterly intuition is formed by what we see in our environment. I want my work to be an artifact of its time.

Charley Peters (@CharleyPeters) – I find it hard to say. I don’t think I can locate inspiration in the real world, I just have a strong desire to make things. Where those things originate from I don’t really know…a mixture of intuitive doing and logical thought, and also maybe referents I’ve absorbed without even realising.

Remi Rough (@RemiRough) – Once a week I make sure I have a ME day and go to see a show or something visual. I also read a lot of art books.

Jonny Green (@JonnyGreenArt) – Inspiration is for amateurs.

Richard Stone (@Artist_Stone) – It’s very cut and paste, mood, often words, lyrics or lines in books but a block of clay or a new canvas are the best windows to other worlds, they traverse.

Kevin Perkins (@Kevin_Perkins_) – I look at a a lot of images and artworks: contemporary, stuff from history, old illustrations/design. And I make a real effort to pay attention to what is going on around me.

Sally Bourke (@Justondark) – I’m inspired by people.

Lee Johnson (@LeeJohnson.eu) – Everywhere

Jenny Brosinski (@Jenny_Brosisnski) – Looking @davidkordanskygallery while I hang out on my studio sofa.

Andy Dixon (@Andy.Dxn) – I can’t turn the part of my brain off that mines for inspiration, to be honest. Be it the colour of someone’s shoes, the curved line of a tunnel, a pattern on a rug, or a leaf of a plant, I can’t help but be constantly indexing sensory information into “good” or “bad” piles – both are equally inspiring.

Klone Yourself (@KloneYourself) – The inspiration is out there, sometimes you get stuck but nobody ever said that you need to be doing this one thing. Switch it up and see that it’s endless.

Daisy Parris (@DaisyParris) – By quietly observing what is happening around me

Jake Chapman (@JakeChapmaniac) – It finds me

Benjamin Murphy (@BenjaminMurphy_) – From literature mainly, and by going to as many exhibitions as I can, even ones I know I’ll hate.

Tom Anholt (@TomAnholt) – Not sure I believe in inspiration but travel definitely refreshes me and fills me with new images.

Spencer Shakespeare (@SpencerShakespeare) – By relaxing.

Rowan Newton (@Rowan_Newton) – My inspiration comes from people, the relationships we have with each other, the relationships we want to have, the people we want to be. The many emotions we go through daily, and how we process that, look at it and deal with it.

Hayden Kays (@HaydenKays) – Everything already exists, it’s just a case of moving it about a little. Move it your own way, and call yourself an artist.

Matthew Allen (@Matthew__Allen) – I ascribe to Richard Serra’s statement that “work comes from work”, meaning that the impulse to continue and explore emerges from what has come before. My practice is an evolving feedback loop of material potentials and process based responses.

Rae Hicks (@Rae_Hicks_On_Gangs) – Coffee and a decent length train journey

Jonni Cheatwood (@Jonni_Cheatwood) – I have my dream job and I’ll have it as long as I can stay out of my own head – That’s inspiring enough to me.

Andrew Salgado (@Andrew.Salgado.Art) – travel. music. read novels.

Soumya Netrabile (@Netrabile) – I just keep myself open to everything I see, encounter, and discover. Sometimes the most mundane things in life are filled with revelations.

Luke Hannam (@LukeHannamPaintings) – Drawing anything and everything as often as possible.

Hedley Roberts (@HedleyRoberts) – I used to have to look for inspiration. Now I’m older I’m more open and it comes to me from everywhere. We live in a world that’s overwhelmed with visual imagery. It’s like trying to get a drink of water from Niagara Falls. But anything can be a start point.

Nick JS Thompson (@nickjsthompson) – Exhibitions, music and history documentaries.

Neva Hosking (@NevaHosking) – I am constantly collecting things that speak to me so I have an archive to peep at when I need ideas .

Justin Long (@_JustinLong) – #fuckbuttons

Erin Lawlor (@TheErinLawlor) – By working – I follow the paint.

Tony Riff (@TonyRiff) – Sometimes ideas just grow from a random thought that’s probably been sitting on the corner of my brain for months. Could be from a song, people I meet, anything really.

Justin Lee Williams (@ArtJLW) – I find it mostly in being on my own building cabins in the woods or talking with odd and strange people , hardly ever do I find it in art it’s self, that part is more just a channel for the craft

Wingshan Smith (@wingshansmith) – The people around me and the stories they come with.

Fiona Grady (@Fiona_Grady) – Everywhere, my work is site responsive so I’m always looking around me. The urban landscape is particularly important – I’ll often stop in the street to take a photo of an architectural detail that captures my attention or shadows cast through a set of railings.

Jordy Kerwick (@JordyKerwick) – Reading and looking. History provides amazing inspo

Obit (@LazyObit) – I read some philosophy, check out the old masters and all sorts. Inspiration is everywhere though my favourite work comes from my own experiences. Honesty always translates.

Anthony Cudahy (@AnthonyCudahy) – Endlessly scrolling, going through physical and digital archives. Looking, looking, looking.

Johnny Thornton (@_JohnnyThornton) – I have surrounded myself with a wonderful community of friends and artists here in this amazing city (NYC). I am inspired everyday.

Magnus Gjoen (@MagnusGjoen) – I travel a lot and find inspiration in nooks and crannies in old churches and museums.

Jesse Draxler (@JesseDraxler) – By not looking for it.

Richie Culver (@RichieCulver) – The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Martin Lukac (@Martin.Lukac) – I dunno inspiration finds me.

Mevlana Lipp (@Mevlana_Lipp) – In art, nature, books and science.

Danny Romeril (@D_Romeril) – Every day life, art books, talking to people, things that happen, anything and everything. nothing is safe. not even tables.

Florence Hutchings (@FlorenceBH) I draw from everyday objects, interiors and scenarios which influence my paintings. But looking at other artists also massively inspires me, going to shows and talking to people around me.

Catherine Haggarty (@Catherine_Haggarty) – I pay close attention to the world around me! I never wait for inspiration. I simply begin working and drawing!

 

For more of these, check out the same artists answering:

What is the one thing about the art world that they wish would disappear forever

and

What is the one bit of advice they would give to young artists at the start of their careers

Jordy Kerwick Interview

We are very excited to be hosting the debut UK solo show of Australian painter Jordy Kerwick.
Diary Of An Introvert opens in London on December 6th. Find the full details for the show and rsvp for the private view HERE.
Your career has really taken off, to what do you attribute your success?
Good question Benny boy… I don’t know if it has taken off so to speak, but I could probably say that it’s off and running, which I’m extremely grateful for. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some outstanding people around me that have been kind enough to lend me some great advice and provide me with guidance along the way. I also have a bit of an obsessive personality, so painting everyday is an absolute must, amongst reading about some of the greats (and looking up close when given the opportunity to – trying to dissect how they did what they did). Not to mention the galleries that have taken a chance with me (I owe a lot to Anna Zorina Gallery for this. Anna gave me the confidence to have a serious crack at a career in painting). So I think its a combination of application, guidance, and opportunity that have gotten me to where I am, albeit at the very beginning.
View this post on Instagram

New studio? big thanks to @moulin_de_carre for teeing it up. Also a new piece (almost) finished.

A post shared by Jordy (@jordykerwick) on

What is your working ritual like?
Coffee and music play integral parts of my working ritual (and the occasional audiobook). Almost every day I don’t know where to start, so I procrastinate and move canvas around, put music on and eventually run out of excuses/things to and get into it. I do a lot of staring and considering and it feels like I spend far more time considering my next move than I do making my next move. This gives me the shits to be honest, but I guess its just who I am. I also wish I smoked, but I don’t and honestly can’t stand it, but have this romantic image of me sitting in the studio, puffing away on a dart. That is more so a ritual that i’ll never have 🙁

#coffeeforeight @ @pt.2gallery A few durry’s and flowers, no problems.

A post shared by Jordy (@jordykerwick) on

What is it like having an artist for a wife, and do you ever collaborate or bounce ideas off each other?
Its bloody good. That being said, Ive never had a wife that isn’t an artist, having been married once, so I guess its all I know. But in all seriousness, she is a far more talented artist (and person in general) than me, and whilst we both are extremely passionate about art, we have other things to talk about too. So as much as you think we’d discuss art, discussion re: works isn’t as prevalent as you might think it would be. We offer support and the occasional opinion about a problem one of us might be having, but thats about it. I would absolutely love to do a two person show with Rach. I actually think the contrast in styles in larger scale would play off each other quite well.
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#diaryofanintrovert @delphiangallery ?

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If you could change one thing about the artworld what would it be?
Thats a tough one. I still feel very privileged to be considered a part of the art world, but like anything in life, there is always room for improvement. I think discussions about female participation and opportunities is certainly being had now, which is the way it should be. I think more than half of my favourite painters are female, so seeing more of an equilibrium in shows would be outstanding for the art world.
Do you think social media is a force for good in the art world?
Coming from someone who owes a great deal to social media for assisting me to get where I am, I dont want to bite the hand that has fed me, so yes I do think it is a force for good. Of course you get the occasional fuckwit that likes to give you “feedback”, but that comes with the territory when putting your work out there. The only downer is constantly being reminded how many amazing artists there are out there and how incredible the standard of art is today.
Who are your favourite artists at the moment? 
Well Mr. Benjamin Murphy goes without saying, but I am blown away by artists like:
There are heaps more, so sorry if Ive offended anyone not included. But the above people jump out at me as people that continually produce brilliant work.
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The Ruckus

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If you would like the catalogue of available works please email info@delphiangallery.com

 

Interview by Benjamin Murphy

Arrested Motion Interview

We were  recently interviewed by art historian Hector Campbell for Arrested Motion, who recently sat down with our co-founder Benjamin Murphy, to discuss the history of the gallery, our own unique approach to curation, our inaugural Open Call exhibition, and the upcoming exhibition with Florence Hutchings, Seating Arrangement.

Hector Campbell (HC): Delphian Gallery has existed in one manifestation or another since 2013’s ‘Group Collective are Kunsts’ exhibition, could you explain how the gallery first came about? And how it has subsequently evolved into its current model?

Benjamin Murphy (BM): My co-director (photographer Nick JS Thompson) and I have been working together for a number of years after we met when he wrote an article about me in a magazine he used to manage. I went on to write for the magazine, and we both started co-curating one another’s shows. We both developed a deep love of, and interest in, the art of curation, and so decided to curate our first show in my old studio. It has been a real labour of love for us, which has built gradually into what Delphian is now – a peripatetic style gallery that takes the championing of exciting, emerging art as its key aim.

HC: Delphian, meaning ‘Obscurely Prophetic,’ derives from the Greek mythological oracle at Delphi. What was the rationale behind choosing ‘Delphian’, and how does it’s meaning underpin the gallery’s vision?

BM: Well firstly, we wanted something that was Googleable, as well as something less vapid than just both of our surnames. We decided upon Delphian because it is vague enough to not be too constrictive in what we can show, as well as being something with its own character. “Obscurely Prophetic” is, in a concise two-word phrase, one which we believe all the best art accomplishes. We believe that the most successful and thought-provoking work is informative, but in a non-didactic way.

arrested motion interview

Delphian Team – Directors Benjamin Murphy & Nick JS Thompson, and Curator Wingshan Smith

HC: As an artist-run gallery, what advantages or insights does this offer you, as opposed to more traditional gallerist or art dealers?

BM: I think we understand the position of the artist more than a lot of gallerists or curators do, as we are both artists in our own right. This gives us a unique insight into both sides of the coin in terms of how a show is put together and run, from the artwork production point, up until the curation of a show and the sale of an artwork.

As well as this, we try to curate cohesive shows that could be read as a single artwork in their own right. The way we curate is quite experimental, as we believe there is nothing less interesting (or damaging to the artworks themselves), as a show in which all of the artworks are hung at eye-level around the gallery. These types of shows often encourage people to stand in the middle of the room and just rotate themselves 360 degrees, they leave feeling like they have seen all of the artworks – when of course they often haven’t. We want to curate shows that are essentially immersive artworks in themselves, that are ethereal and only exist in the moment, until the heterogeneous works are divided up again and are either sold or sent back to the artists. We believe that curation is an art form in itself, and it is this philosophy which guides how we curate.

HC: Previous exhibitions have included photographers Aaron McElroy and Carson Lancaster, and more recently contemporary painters such as Bertrand Fournier and Kevin Perkins. Does this range of artists and mediums reflect your personal interests? And how do you select which artists to exhibit?

BM: We try to show a diverse range of works that are entirely unique, whilst highlighting possible underlying connections or similarities, as well as playing with ways in which differing styles contrast. We spend a lot of time going to shows, as well as countless hours on social media, scrolling through things like Instagram looking for new talent. We also run a separate Instagram account called @Daily_Contemporary_Art, which is great for discovering new artists. Every week a new artist has control of the account and shares their favourite living artists, and we find that it is often the student artists that share the most exciting work.

arrested motion kevin perkins

Kevin Perkins

HC: You also had your most recent solo exhibition, Lavish Entropy, at the gallery earlier this year. How did this experience compare to your previous shows, acting as not only the artist but also the gallerist/curator?

BM: It was great, I often take a quite hands-on approach to the curation of my own shows anyway (often aided by Nick), so in that sense, this was no different. I’d recommend every artist do this at least once in your career, as when you have full creative control over something you can be as wild and as experimental as you like without anyone trying to curtail your vision. Don’t get me wrong – the curatorial teams at galleries are often incredibly helpful and teach me things about my own work that I wouldn’t have realised otherwise, but it can be incredibly freeing having absolutely no constraints sometimes. This kind of thing is great, and you are able to take bigger risks than usual, and this teaches you what does and doesn’t work in a way that you wouldn’t have been able to see without this freedom.

HC: This year the gallery ran your inaugural Open Call submission exhibition, why did you want to undertake this competition? And what did you learn from this first iteration?

BM: It was so great, and through it we discovered so much great art we wouldn’t have done if it weren’t for the open call. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to submit, so as to get the most submissions possible. We didn’t charge for entry, and our good friends at theprintspace printed and mounted it all for us, so there was no cost to the artists. This also meant that, as the artists only had to send us a jpeg, artists from all over the world could submit and not have to worry about shipping or insuring their work. We received over 8000 submissions in total and were awestruck by the diversity of it. There are many artists who we would have loved to have included but couldn’t because of size and space constraints. As well as Florence Hutchings, another of our favourite artists Bertrand Fournier entered, whom we hope to present a solo show with next year.

HC: For your latest exhibition, Florence Hutchings, who won the aforementioned Open Call competition, presents her debut solo show, Seating Arrangements. How important is it for you to champion young artists such as Florence?

BM: Florence is great, she has done so incredibly well at such a young age and yet still doesn’t really seem phased by it all. She is very down-to-earth, which is nice to see from someone who is already reaching levels of success that most artists can only dream of.

We aim to discover and support young, emerging artists because we feel this is where the most exciting and unique work is coming from. We are in a position to be able to help out the careers of these young artists like people did for us when we first started showing, so it is incredibly rewarding in that respect.

We get to nurture this often raw and unbridled talent early on in an artist’s career, and look forward to the time when artists like Florence outgrow us and sign with Gagosian – for it will happen, especially in her case.

 

To read this over on Arrested Motion, click THIS LINK

Masterclass with Benjamin Murphy at West London Art Factory

Masterclass with Benjamin Murphy at West London Art Factory. Supported by Jewel Goodby Contemporary and Cre8 Tapes.

Masterclass with Benjamin Murphy

Masterclass with Benjamin Murphy

West London Art Factory invites you to spend an evening with accredited artist Benjamin Murphy, learning to create your own artwork using electrical tape alone. This unique medium is one that makes Benjamin’s work instantly recognisable, as well as its monochromatic themes and figurative subjects. The masterclass offers you an opportunity to watch Benjamin’s process of creating his work and learn these techniques first hand, working with Ben to create your own unique piece. The class will begin with a welcome, followed by a demonstration by Benjamin then an opportunity for you to create your own work, guided by Benjamin, using a number of colours and tapes available, on an A3 perspex sheet. The result will be an original piece of art for you to take home.

No prior experience is needed, all levels are welcome and all material is provided. Drinks and refreshments will be available.

Please note, this class has limited spaces so be sure to secure your place!!

 

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About Us

Delphian Gallery exists to champion originality and expression through contemporary mixed media visual art.



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