Category: Residencies

Thamesmead Texas spent some time catching up with Miyuki. Welcome Miyuki! It’s great to work with you again for a third consecutive year in Texas. This residency is driven by a critical enquiry into the health and well being of plants, specifically vegetables. You started gardening on your balcony during the first lockdown with little knowledge and experience, cultivating vegetables that you were growing to eat. This very primal action led you to a fundamental question related to permaculture. One which you recall as ‘horrific’. Could you begin by telling us what this discovery was and how it led to your latest body of research?

MK: When I started gardening I thought, what is soil made from and how do I feed plants ecologically? Instructions on plant labels say you need to feed them N. P. K chemicals, what are they? I started to read “The Hidden Half of Nature” (David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle, 2016) and “The One–straw Revolution” (Masanobu Fukuoka, 1975). It was horrific when I looked into the details. The idea of N. P. K came from “Law of the minimum” by German chemist, Justus von Liebig published in 1840. It is a simple idea that the nutrient in shortest supply relative to the plants needs limits plant growth. He identified five key things essential for plants to grow – water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K), then concluded that organic matter played no important role in creating and maintaining soil fertility! It seems we still accept this idea. I learnt that soil is full of invisible life – microorganisms/ microbes. More bacteria live in a handful of rich fertile soil than the number of people who live in all of Africa, China, and India combined. Microbes are also residents of us, living on and inside our bodies (called the human microbiome) like the soil of plants. Microbe population is particularly high and diverse in our gut and in plants rhizosphere (inside and around plant roots), surprisingly they have very similar functions. We (people and plants) both offer nutrients to recruit microbes, trade nutritional wares and form alliances with us. Those microbe communities are essential to our health – to our immune system and to the defence system of plants.

TT: The theme of war and weaponry appears as an ongoing theme throughout your work. This is evident in ‘The 24,110 year view’, a sci-fi work which you showed in our series of ‘Speed exhibitions’ in 2018. You magnify traces of what is left behind as a result of war, forcing us to re-examine the history of Woolwich Arsenal or the legacy of Sellafield, as a hazardous non-habitable nuclear site. To great effect you use the emotive analogy of ‘children playing’ to talk about the legacy of these sites. For your ‘5 x 5 sq ft’ Allotment Residency you plan to magnify traces in the soil. Could you talk about how your research on soil continues to relate to modern warfare?

MK: As you say my work has considered the long-term affects on the environment of nuclear power and conflict. It was shocking to find out how close the relationship is between the agriculture industries and war industries. Nitrate is not only used for fertiliser it is also the active ingredient of bombs and bullets, essential components in modern warfare. I realised that a major part of World War One was fighting for natural nitrate resources in Latin America. Losing Chile’s nitrates market, Germany aggressively pursued synthetic nitrate production. Chemist Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch successfully commercialized the Haber- Bosch process. By 1918, all of Germany’s synthetic nitrogen went to munitions, not to fertiliser. British Defence Regulations compelled farmers to apply chemicals to their crops during World War Two. The government paid a portion of the costs to subsidise the fertiliser industry since a fertiliser company could be easily converted to munitions manufacturing. The UK was not an isolated case for subsidising the fertiliser industry. After WWII, industrialists around the world pivoted factory production of tanks to tractors, munitions to fertilisers, and poison gas to pesticides and herbicides. We have tried to replace biology with chemical nutrients and poison, so it is like a perpetual war. Resurgent agricultural pests, historical declining of soil fertility, crisis-level antibiotic resistance, and lifesapping chronic and autoimmune disease all relate to what we have done to the microbial ecology.

TT: You say that you are a beginner gardener, but your (late) father was a landscape architect by profession. Can you talk about the relationship you have to his profession and your practice as an artist?

MK: That’s a good point. I didn’t learn any gardening skill from him, I’m afraid. Although he used to say that he tried to employ someone who has got an artistic taste. The first thing he asked a candidate was “Do you like a drawing?” Later in his life, he suffered from Dementia with Lewy Bodies. At that point when he lost the ability to write, he was still able to draw properly.

TT: You generally work from a studio. For your Allotment Residency in Thamesmead Texas, you will be working outdoors, with access to a ‘5 x 5 sqft’ plot, shed and gardening tools. How do you think these changes will influence your work?

MK: I’m excited! When I was a child I used to be out and about all day just painting outside, whilst listening to the sounds of birds and insects, smelling the grass and leaves. The works I produce outside in the allotment could be site specific or drawings and fragments of final works. Some of the work and experiments will still be done at the studio such as using a DIY Tullgren funnel to extract living organisms from the soil collected and then observing them thorough a microscope.

TT: During lockdown people have begun to learn new skills, from gardening to making bread. With the shift to more localised ways of being, there is a sense of people wanting to reconnect to their bodies and natural environments. We are seeing this reflected in demand for properties outside of city centres. Do you think living in Thamesmead has had an impact on your artistic practice and general wellbeing?

MK: Definitely. I feel myself lucky to be in Thamesmead, so much nature is surrounding us including water birds breeding at Southmere lake, rare birds visiting Crossness marshes and fossil hunters gathering in an ancient wood, Lesnes Abbey Wood where carpets of bluebells are found in Spring. I also moved my studio from Hackney to Woolwich just after the first lockdown, so I can cycle there through the Green Chain Walk and Thames Path avoiding the main roads. We also have a community of artists here, living in the Bow Arts accommodation; we can catch for a walk, meeting outside, by the lake and talk – social distanced of course. So you don’t feel isolated, this is a huge benefit for general wellbeing.

TT: What are your big hopes for the health and wellbeing of plants, animals and humans?

MK: Since the first lockdown, many people have had more time to spend in nature. You may have noticed how blue and clear the sky was without airplanes, how birds sing differently without noise and how flowers smell differently without air pollution. I hope these experiences change the choices we make affecting nature.

Thamesmead Texas spent some time catching up with Liam. Welcome Liam! It’s great to spotlight your drawing practice, particularly during this period of global upheaval, as we ‘stay at home’ and do our best to contain the Covid 19 virus from further spread. Whilst staying at home we are all glued to our multitude of devices – tv’s, radios, laptops and phones – awaiting the latest media broadcast on the status of the Virus and consequent Vaccination which promises to bring us back to a new normal. As such, the place of the Media has arguably never been as important than this moment. Your notorious ‘TV Drawings’ demonstrate your commitment to ‘wasting hours’ in front of a TV screen. Could you begin by telling us what a TV drawing is?

LS: The TV drawings started in 2000 whilst studying for a BA in fine art in Birmingham, it was a thing my two flat mates Edward Wakefield, Adam Baker and I did whilst watching television or watching movies. We’d get a piece of board, an A2 sheet of copy paper, a ball point pen, and we basically drew as a live commentary whilst watching. They were angry pictures, offensively ranting at the television, complete with spat out tea, coffee or other beverages. After continuing my journey as an artist beyond my studies I have continued to make these pictures, observing television, historical moments, and cinema for the past 20 years. Little has changed in how they are executed; John Luc Godard said “change nothing so that everything will be different”, these are a constant in my art practice.

TT: You also have a relatively new drawing series ‘Instagram, Twitter and the Like’, which is in line with Television being digitised and superseded by the internet. Has the shift in self-publishing technology dramatically affected what, how and when you draw?

LS: I was probably one of the last artists to lose the television, it happened when we moved to Thamesmead three years ago; you just couldn’t get a signal with the arial we’ve got. I am always moved by what is close to me, whether that is television or social media. In 2015 I completed ‘A Digital Suicide’, after deleting myself from Facebook and spending 18 months drawing every photo I had ever posted on Facebook, this body of work was then made into a 7.5kg tonne book. After losing the television I naturally found myself using my phone more. I was drawing bits and pieces from my Twitter and Instagram feed since 201,3 but much more so now. These works definitely have a different quality to them, they are mostly portrait where the television always dictated a landscape format. They are also paused studies whereas the television pieces are live action drawings. I have always been interested in rendering a transmission permanent, capturing that fleeting moment in mark and pen, the forgotten late-night movies, the D list celebrities, election nights. The scrolling of Instagram and Twitter is less permanent than television, quicker to be forgotten, more quantity, more junk, really turning our brains to mush. There is something nice about rendering that digital junk into permanent renditions, working with the sheer impossibility and quantity of content. Quickly the subject matter becomes outdated, however grouped together as a beast of a work I think it has something to say about society turning to mush. I recently saw the documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes project, who for 30 years, 24 hours a day recorded television onto 70’000 VHS cassettes. What an incredible project, pure commitment, pure art. Thinking about it I’d love to show my work in the context of that project.  

TT: You stand in solidarity with Julian Assange and hold the view that journalists should hold governments to account. With the proliferation of both mainstream and independent news channels, how do we make sense of what is real and what is ‘fake news’? Could you talk about this more in relation to your drawing of Jeremy Corbyn ‘Robbed’, 2020, 594mm x 420mm, Graphite on paper.

LS: Assange has been our neighbour locked up in solitary confinement in Belmarsh Prison since 2018, it is absolutely atrocious what is happening to him, I won’t detail the case here, please seek out the interview with UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer. What is happening should send shock waves throughout the journalistic world, the fact that it hasn’t, shows the state of Journalism today. Proper investigative journalism may have died in this country, the mainstream media, with the likes of Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston replacing giants like David Frost and Robert Fisk, Journalists like John Pilger have been marginalised to the fringes, truly investigative voices counter to the mainstream narrative are immediately called out as conspiracy theories, sowing confusion and shutting down debate, you won’t hear Nigel Farage being called out as a conspiracy theorist. I think we are living in a very dark and confusing time, a time where one side of the street are shouting “fascist scum off our streets” and the other side of the street are shouting “Nazi scum off our streets”. Through social media everyone is polarised screaming at each other, both sides want to shut down each other’s point of view down, and it goes on like that for ever. So about that piece Jeremy Corbyn Robbed, this was first made before the 2019 election announcement called ‘The Caretaker is coming’, this was when there was a real possibility of Corbyn becoming a caretaker prime minister, this would have ruled out a hard Brexit and got rid of Boris Johnson in one fell swoop, however the right wing of Labour and the Lib Dems refusal to go along proved the point, that their biggest concerns was not Brexit but a 6-8 week period with a genuine socialist prime minister. Corbyn was the biggest threat to establishment interests there has ever been and offered a genuine alternative. The 2017 election result was way too close for comfort, Corbyn’s biggest mistake at this point was welcoming the backstabbers back in, he held out olive branch after olive branch only to have each branch snapped off. The saboteurs doubled down, plotted well and ensured Corbyn would never get near power again. Then the drawing became Jeremy Corbyn ‘Robbed’, 2020.

TT: Your drawings celebrate the cult of personality. In a few gestural lines you capture the essence of politicians, royals, celebrities and influencers. You self-describe as the Perez Hilton of the art world. Will you miss the flamboyancy of Trump, as we move into a Biden administration, which is perhaps more in line with your personal politics?

LS: Really we joked the other day about Perez Hilton when he was interviewed on Hard Talk, I don’t self-describe as that! But yes, there are crossovers, in the unapologetic nature of our attacks on celebrity. I must say I have reservations about Biden, but it makes me no advocate of Trump. Of course, Biden will prove to be less controversial than Trump, less easy to satirise, somewhat duller for the art making experience, however will his foreign policies prove to be any less dangerous? We will see, I expect there will be a big change in how it is reported that’s all.

TT: What are your hopes for America in the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s Presidential term?

LS: We do have to have hope; but you do not get more establishment than Joe Biden, he has been overseeing the failures of American Politics for 50 years. Trump was the ugly boil that arose from the poison of neoliberalism, if you don’t get rid of the poison the boil is going to come back with a vengeance. But yes we do have to have hope. I do hope that Biden’s age will encourage him to do good things before he passes on. However, people are already waiting for that $2000 stimulus cheque that he and his team promised within the first week of office.

TT: You generally work from a domestic environment when undertaking a TV drawing. For your residency at the Lakeside Centre’s Media Space, we have set up a large flattop screen, a desk, chair and printer for you to work from. How do you think these changes will influence your work?

LS: It is great to have space to work I think I can be more experimental with scale and installation. What happens in the world during this time will dictate what I make. Using social media and programming from Mubi, Netflix, YouTube and terrestrial television as a source I will be essentially creating a 100-day time capsule.

TT: During lockdown people have begun to learn new skills, from making bread to beginners French. What is your advice to anyone interested in learning to draw?

LS: Firstly, don’t say you can’t draw because everyone can draw. We all draw as a child. Society dictates that drawing, painting and play is educated out of us when it is determined much lesser than learning your times table or getting a job later down the line. I think drawing comes with doing, bring out your inner child, don’t be afraid just let yourself pour out. Why not spend some time trying to draw without thinking, gather some different drawing instruments, pens, crayons, charcoal, pencils and some scraps of paper, old envelopes etc.  Like you were doodling while talking on the telephone. Try drawing whilst watching television, or listening to the radio, try doing this for 20 minutes and build up to longer periods, then after say a week, bring all of your marks, scribbles, cartoons, together and select your favourite bits, try drawing them individually on a fresh piece of paper. I think if you begin with doodling and drawing somewhat unconsciously, you are not going to get trapped by trying to make something accurate, then you are going to learn to value those scribbles and marks by recreating them on fresh pieces of paper. When you are enjoying putting pen or pencil to paper, try out something more observational, something you like the look of, but don’t give up on your doodle practice, you will find it is every bit as important as a classically rendered bowl of fruit.

TT: If you were to make a ‘how to’ internet video what would it be?

LS: I will make one and we can post it up during the residency let me think that one over.

Thamesmead Texas spent some time catching up with Helena. Welcome Helena! Thanks for joining us in Texas. Whilst talking Nollywood with a friend and artist Debo Adegoke, we were told about a local artist who paints scenes from Nollywood. That artist is you; we then saw your work on Instagram and we absolutely had to talk to you. If you can begin by telling us, what is Nollywood? 

HF: Thank you! Nollywood is the popular term used in referring to the Nigerian film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood. Although, thinking back to my early memories of watching Nigerian movies, I seem to recall it being referred to as ‘Home Videos’. 

TT: It was only recently, whilst building the Thamesmead Travelling Cinema, we discovered that Thamesmead was a hub for Nollywood talent. Who knew that Nollywood actors, writers and directors were living here amongst us in Thamesmead! How did you come to use Nollywood as your main source of inspiration? 

HF: That’s interesting but not surprising. In a way, I think of Thamesmead as mini Abeokuta – A quieter, undiluted neighbour to Lagos in the same light that I think of Peckham and Woolwich as the Lagos of London where one can find everything they possibly miss from ‘back home’. It was this longing to connect back to ‘home’ that gave birth to my Nollywood obsession. 

HF: Having grown up in Benin city, Nigeria to an Igbo mother and English father, moving to London in my early teens was a huge culture shock for me. The feeling that this can’t be it… People made jokes I didn’t understand and I often felt lost when my peers referred to certain cartoon characters or movies they watched growing up – not realising that my reference point was far removed from theirs. However, one evening in flipping through Sky, I stumbled upon ‘Nollywood Movies’ a tv channel that broadcasted Nigerian films round the clock without any interruptions. I can’t describe to you how excited I was to actually see something that was familiar. Immediately, I took out my phone and started taking pictures of the film, a memory I wanted to hold on to in the case I never get that moment again. I stayed up throughout the night glued to my television set – It felt surreal, like I was going to wake up and no longer find this channel. 

In my view, Nigerian movies reflect the reality of its society. One can relate to the concepts being portrayed on screen, the everyday concerns highlighted, the moral subjects, and aspirations expressed. Naturally, watching these films became a source of inspiration to me as they reflected some of the themes I was starting to explore in my paintings. Essentially, it became a portal into my home away from home – a way to connect and be grounded in the rich cultures around the part of the world where I grew up, perhaps for fear of losing a part of my identity to my new found home.

TT: We have previously discussed other painters who take inspiration from the world of cinema, can you talk a bit about this process of taking the moving image and transforming it through paint? 

HF: Process is key! But, firstly thank you for coming round the studio. It was so lovely to speak to you both about life, art and artists in relation to the work I have been creating post lockdown. As much as I enjoy solitude, it’s refreshing to come out of my head every now and again and see the work through the eyes of another.

Now on the subject of process; I primarily work from photographs I have taken myself or re-photographed from pre-existing imagery taken from family photo albums, instagram and film. I think my approach is similar to that of a film editor. I tend to edit the source image by zooming in on particular characters as I paint. It becomes less about the original image and more about breaking down the image into the composition I have in my head. Although, some paintings may undergo very little alteration, but more often than not certain elements are borrowed from various sources; an expression, gesture, feeling, colour, object… merged to create a new narrative. I’m constantly editing with every decision I’m making, but unlike film, the possibilities with paint is endless and no mark is ever the same as one’s energy shifts with every second, with every brushstroke.

TT: You sometimes work directly from your mobile phone is there a fascination with transformation through the bad image, or bad reproduction? 

HF: Yes, I’m particularly drawn to imagery shot on analogue film. This is one of the reasons classic Nigerian films from the 90’s appeals to me. I love the ‘bad’ qualities that it is often criticised for – The grainy effect, sound and low lighting conditions are the type of imperfections I very much celebrate, because life isn’t perfect. To an extent, there is a certain freedom that comes with this imperfection because I find working from an already perfect image difficult when it comes to maintaining a balance between loosely painted marks that suggest movement versus defined marks which appear static. It makes the process of painting less enjoyable with no room for the unexpected to happen. Finding this balance is sometimes my biggest challenge. 

TT: For the one-month residency at the Lakeside Centre, we have proposed to set you up with a monitor where you can play, pause and rewind Nollywood films live in the studio, how will this working process differ from your usual ways of working? 

HF: Vastly. I do have days at the studio when I watch Nigerian films purely for my own amusement. However, I’ve never paused to paint or tasked myself with painting fully from memory like we discussed of Rose Wylie’s painting of Nicole Kidman with ‘black strap’ (Rose Wylie, Syracuse Line-Up, 2014, Oil on canvas, 185 x 133 cm).

Over the years, I have fallen into the habit of painting directly from my tablet or mobile phone and I realised I was only doing this when working on smaller paintings. It’s a more intimate way of working as my movement in relation to the surface is different. My focal point is fixed and I avoid stepping away from the painting until I feel it’s finished. All the same, I am intrigued to see how this new way of working will turn out.