Known for his colourful text based paintings of popular culture and his optimistic Hackney Gazette posters distributed in and around the borough, 'retired' joker and artist Leigh Clarke invites Ann into his studio to talk about his work, Hackney, sharing a studio and an unsolved crime in Norway...
Do you have any central ideas within your practice?
I was inspired by something Anselm Kiefer spoke about in a lecture I saw a few years ago; that he doesn’t make work until he is shocked by something. I look for images and subjects that shock me and activate my imagination to make work.
So talk us through the works you have up in your studio at the moment.
Throughout the 20th century artists have broken down the portrait in reaction to warfare. We are one of the first generation of people who aren’t in direct contact with war, to the point where war is virtual. It is at such a distance now that we almost have no point of reference for it. I am interested in that distance and trying to find a language for it. These new works derive from squashing latex fancy dress masks on a photocopier. I am interested in sourcing more controversial characters like, for example Osama Bin Laden, Princess Diana and Saddam Hussein.
I have always been inspired by print, and recently I was concerned about why. I filter my ideas through a range of different mediums, for example performance and painting. With print I’ve realised I find it attractive because I enjoy squashing things. This coincided with collecting the latex masks and I decided to start making portraits by squashing each mask under the photocopier 100 times and allowing it to randomly spit portraits out.
Comedy has always been an inherent asset in my work and I wanted to make the work performative (Leigh worked for ten years as a stand up comedian). I have appropriated something that is normally used for comedy (the masks) but have taken the comedy out of the work. By taking it through this process I am extracting the laughter and instead exposing the darkness behind it. It also exposes the tyranny and legacy of these characters. It’s the idea of the arse on the photocopier at an office Christmas party where the joke has gone wrong.
Tell us about the stack of Batman Forever videos in your studio.
I have always been fascinated with repetition and the fact that I see this particular video in charity shops all the time. I started collecting them about a year ago and I document where and when I bought each one. I am interested in the word ‘Forever’ in the title. It’s this idea of it being junk that will never biodegrade and is more likely to survive than tigers for example. It’s really a reference to waste and the environment and when I get enough of them I will use them for an installation, although it’s quite a long term project though as I am hoping to get around 500.
Where did the idea for the positive Hackney Gazette posters come from?
I was always shocked by the posters because they use this idea of keeping the community scared in order to keep them consuming; which is a very sinister media trick. You very rarely see a positive message delivered by the Hackney Gazette and I find it very disturbing as most people are just trying to get on with their lives life and enjoy living here. There is a crime rate of course but for me, the posters extract all the positivity that people are trying to build in the community and I think that it is irresponsible of the Hackney Gazette for doing that.
I eventually got so annoyed by their slogans that I decided to do something about it. Over the period of a year I collected the worst posters I could find that said the most negative things. I made a font of all the weathered letters to make up an alphabet. Using that font I created good news out of bad news, so the good news you see is instantaneously uplifting but has actually come from a really dark place. ‘Happy Couple Cuddle in Pub’ for example comes from H=Horror A=Arson P=Paedo etc.
There are the paintings but there are also the posters that I put back into the grills occasionally. It’s not something which I do regularly as I don’t want to be defined by the hackney gazette posters but the response has been amazing.
So the public presentation and social engagement aspects of it are important to you?
Yes they are, and that comes back to my experience as a performer and being interested in having that directness with an audience.
What’s your opinion on graffiti or street art – do you think is should be an imprisonable offence or a valid form of expression?
When I was 14 I was one of the first generations of kids who used the hip-hop style of graffiti. It was new and fresh and in a way it was our punk. It was an exciting time and the whole thing about hip-hop and street culture was about bettering yourself. I learnt how to use colour and form in a way that was more exciting than in school and we used to practice break-dancing, rapping and beat-boxing (which has now evolved into his performance work). I think now, 21 years a lot of it is derivative, completely pointless and with no potency. I question what is being communicated by graffiti now and find a lot of it quite lazy. Too many graffiti artists are backslapping each other and I find that boring as it does nothing other than impress people within a small sub-culture. When a familiar style is taken out of its sub-culture and operates somewhere else, that’s when things get interesting. At least have the intelligence to do something visually engaging with it – if you’re going to put something on the street, it should activate people’s imaginations and inspire change.
Tell us about the show you curated at Nettie Horn.
Well it was a bit back to front as the book came about first and then the show. I really wanted to put all the artists from the book in an exhibition so I presented the book to Nettie Horn and we put a show together. The themes in the show go back to everything I have talked about in terms of scaremongering and gossip through the media and news-casting. I chose a body of artists who use reportage as an influence to generate work. It was a busy time as there was the book, then the show, and then I went off to Norway for a month on a residency and solved a crime.
You solved a crime?
I became a bit obsessed by crime during that time. I went from being in Hackney, to a small island in Norway with a population of 1000 people with no crime. The concept that there was no crime really alarmed me and I had trouble sleeping at night.
One of the first things I saw on the island was the Lakstudio, which is a massive tank of salmon and the biggest tourist attraction there. It had a big sign outside it with a huge picture of a salmon in a tank and a woman looking at it, but someone had painted her face out with boat paint. It turns out it had been like that for four years and no one had ever done anything about it, so I decided to find out who defaced it.
One of the possible suspects was a previous editor of the local newspaper who was a photographer. Apparently his wife had gone out for the day with a biologist from the town that worked for the council and was an amateur photographer. They took photos of each other and the tourist office ended up using one of them. The story goes that the news editor knew about photographic rights, and he was quite possessive about his wife so he went out and defaced it. Or that the woman was so embarrassed about this image that she did it herself. I tracked these people down and they had moved to Bergen. They found out that I was trying to crack the crime but I refused to speak to them, as I wanted to leave it open.
What are your ambitions for your art practice in the future?
As an outcome from the Norwegian residency I am making a film called ‘Danser Med Laks’. I was one of a selection of international artists on this programme and the outcome to our residencies contributes to a publication. I have written a 2000 word story based on the witness reports I collected on the trip. Mine is a comment on the lack of crime in Norway. The text accompanies a film of me re-painting the suspects face back into the sign.
Aside from that the next main body of work will be very large group portraits / photocopies of the latex masks. I want the viewer to become more involved with the process so I am aiming to exhibit them on a glass- fronted gallery. It’s like being in the photocopier looking up at the glass.
In terms of websites, how important do you think it is for artists to have their own?
I think it can be a kiss of death or a really good thing. My advice to any artist – unless you have any knowledge or training of any kind - do not attempt to do it yourself. An artist’s website should be very simple and without frills. It should be about the work and have no distractions. I must say, I was apprehensive at first but it has generated interest and opportunities.
How is the working environment in your studio?
There’s a real range of people here and the comings and goings on this floor is the stuff of legend. The opportunities that have arisen from the open door policy that we have here (in terms of bringing curators, collectors and galleries around the studios) are some of the main reasons why we our careers have moved forward.
Do you tend to socialise with each other?
Yes. We are all very supportive of each other’s practices and enjoy discussing the work outside of the studio. Mark Harris, Bob Matthews (who Leigh shares a studio with) and I did MA Printmaking together at the RCA, so have worked together since 1996 and are able to work and not get in each other’s pockets.
Do you appraise each others work, seek advice or opinions? Or do you leave each other to get on with it?
Both. When we first left college, we were trying to find our feet. At the RCA we were used to group critiques and people analysing our work all the time and we missed that. When you are at college you are in a kind of goldfish bowl and when you leave the way you look at work and making work is different. So when we first left we kept having group critiques. These days I know when I am doing something wrong by the way in which these guys talk about the work, but I also know when I am doing something good. But we don’t force it on each other – it just appears very naturally. We are very respectful of each-others privacy when working.
Leigh’s works 'Ex-girlfriend' and 'Body Double’ are currently on display outside East Oxford Community Centre (between Princes St. & Cowley Road in Oxford) until 31st August 2008.
http://www.leighclarkeworks.com/
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