Tribe Magazine Issue 3 by Mark Doyle

tribe

international creative arts magazine issue 3

2009

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Taking Flight Mark McQueen markmcqueen.wordpress.com

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Welcome to the third issue Spring is upon us already -‐ we have been working so furiously on the magazine, March just seemed to creep up on us unawares. What is most pleasing for us is that the magazine is really resonating with artists and creatives across the UK and the world. One of our core values as a Community Interest Company is a commitment to showcasing the work of new artists. In a digital world of fast information and high turnover of content, it is very easy to become overloaded with information. Many artistic websites generate so much interesting content that it is very easy to be lost in a sea of competitive endeavour -‐ you are lucky on some websites if your work is featured on the front page for a day before being replaced or bumped down the heirarchy by new content. What we do at tribe is slow things down, so that artists work has time to be seen and appreciated. The magazine format is a great way for people slow down, relax and look at the work on show. And it’s available online, all the time. I remember mix tapes back when I was a teenager, and the excitement of receiving a tape from a friend and reading down the playlist -‐ it was like taking a journey into the unknown. This is very much how we see the role of tribe magazine -‐ each month we aim to deliver the best visual arts mixtape on the internet. Well, that’s the aim anyway! On a seperate note I’d like to say thankyou to Glyn for all his work on the magazine and wish him well for the future. Mark, Editor in Chief

EDITOR IN CHIEF

PHOTOGRAPHY

Mark Doyle [tribemark@gmail.com]

Mark Doyle [except where noted]

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Pete Davey [tribepete@gmail.com]

CLIENT DIRECTOR

artists have given permission for their work to be

Jean Camp [tribejean@gmail.com]

displayed in tribe magazine. no part of this

MARKETING DIRECTOR

magazine may be reproduced without the

Steve Clement-‐Large [tribestevecl@gmail.com]

permission of the copyright holder(s)

RESEARCH Hannah Doyle COVER

tribe magazine is produced by trico creative cic

Mark Doyle

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brian dettmer

martin bush

philip wakeham

noel young

fashion: RoHeBe

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Chris Halls themrchrishallsblogg.blogspot.co.uk

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Noel Young is an American ar^st from Minneapolis, Minnesota, currently living in New Zealand. He works as a freelance illustrator and designer. Noel holds a BFA in Illustraôn from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Through his work he seeks to create a personal mythology, built through a repe^ôn of symbols and characterizaôns; generally, these symbols describe femininity, fer^lity, and motherhood in opposiôn to ruin and decay. (He also illustrates children’s books.) His influences include John Carpenter, Kim Deal, Walt Kelly, Hayao Miyazaki, Gustav Klimt, and Yoshitaka Amano.

noelyoungstudio.com

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Noel Young noelyoungstudio.com

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brian dettmer Brian Dettmer carves old reference books into intricate and wonderful sculptures. His work is known across the world, and Brian took time out from his busy schedule to talk to tribe about the process of creation.

Encyclopedia Of World Travel

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Complete An^que

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How did you arrive at the idea of sculpting books? I was working on a series of collages in the late 90’s/early 2000 and began to rip up books to apply to the surface of the canvas. It made me feel guilty but I was intrigued by the textures and the actual content. This made me think about the precarious position books are in right now and I began to focus on the book as the material and subject in my work.

Considering that you are often working with very hefty tomes, your final pieces look incredibly delicate. Can you explain the physical process of sculpting the pages? The standard way I work with a single book piece is that I seal the edges of the book with a varnish (either a closed book or with the cover pulled back) and then the book is basically a solid object to carve into. I carve into the front surface and remove one layer at a time. I have no idea what will emerge as I am working and I don’t plan anything other than making sure that it will be a good book to work with so chance plays a large role in the work. The process is totally subtractive once I begin carving. Nothing is moved or added and everything you see in the finished piece is exactly where it has always been within the book. The finished works are less delicate than they look because of the varnishes I use.

How do you plan a piece? How do you know if a book is right to sculpt? I don’t plan beyond knowing the books subject, content and design will work for the way I approach it. Once I seal the book I carve in from the front and react to what emerges. I don’t plan anything and have no idea what will emerge on the next page. It’s a collaboration between me and the existing book and chance plays a large role in the outcome.

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Full Set Of Funk

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Modern Painters

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Do you feel a connection to the authors of the books you work with? How do you feel when you are reforming someone else's work to create something new and exhilarating? I do. I often work with non-‐fiction and reference books so there isn’t one specific author or I’ll feel a connection to the book’s illustrator or designer more than the author if there isn’t one specific voice in the text. I compare it to a DJ who may crate dig and then remix someone else’s music. You use it because you admire the original and think you can add to it on some contemporary way while keeping the original inspiration visible to maintain an honesty to the work. Antoine de Saint-‐Exupery once said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." How do you know when you have reached that state with a piece? I’ve been called a perfectionist before but I don’t agree because I don’t think there is such a thing as perfection, especially in art. I try to get my work to the point of balance, whatever that my be or however I may interpret it in a specific work. Balance between the existing book and my contribution (or subtraction) to it, balance between all of the individual elements, balance between text and image, between past and future…. Which artists inspire you? Are their any contemporary artists that you admire/respect particularly? I’ll name drop Tim Hawkinson, Tom Friedman, Gordon Matta-‐Clark, Buzz Spector, Tony Fitzpatrick. What is your next artistic challenge? Are their any projects you have yet to realise, or would like to in the near future? Right now I have been combining multiple books, interleaving each page into each other, creating tall, totemic columns that go from floor to ceiling. The construction is going well. Now I have to begin carving. <

briandettmer.com Brian was talking to Mark Doyle

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Type to enter text

Prose and Poetry Of The World

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The ROTC Manual

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Satura^on Will Result

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Key Moments No.2

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April Brosemann etsy.com/people/CanvasAtelier

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Ashwan ashwan.co.uk/default.aspx

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MARTIN BUSH

interview: pete davey

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What gives you the passion to paint? From a very early age, it’s always been there in the background – painHng, drawing – but my travels through school and college were more three-‐ dimensional – furniture, metalwork, that kind of thing – that’s kind of where I was going originally, and I took that trail for quite a few years. But at the same Hme, I was sHll drawing and passionately painHng my own private collecHon, if you like. And then, some years later, at the great age of 32, I felt it was Hme to get serious, and I felt that art seemed to be the way forward. Already at that point I had done a lot of travelling around the world, picking up thoughts and ideas, and I ended up living in Thailand, and started painHng. And I felt that painHng -‐ more from a serious point of view, as opposed to just painHng for me – was perhaps what I’d be doing when I got back to the ‘real world’, to the Western trappings, if you like. And sure enough, aQer nine months I’d returned home, and showed the painHngs that I’d done to family and friends, who were quite impressed, so I thought, “Yes, this is definitely what I want to do.” There seems to be an Eastern feel to many of your painKngs... Two main influences on my work, I think, have been Thailand and Asia. I was very humbled by the culture there, how it’s driven by Buddhism. I’m not saying I’m a Buddhist or anything, but their Ten Commandments really work. It’s something to absorb and take in for your own self and your own understanding of the world, if you like. Another place that I love, and just flashes colour in my mind – but also teaches you entrepreneurism and business -‐ is California: I love the sun, the people, the gayness, the way of life, and incorporaHng all of that into my work somehow. A lot of your later work is very colourful and very bright. Is that the California connecKon?

sense in the way they looked at art over there. I absorbed that, and when I came to paint in this country, it was very important that I was painHng for me and found a different way to paint to what I’d observed around me in the local galleries. I’m not saying there aren’t differences there, but that’s the angle I was approaching it from. There’s also a surreal or dreamlike quality to some of your work. My aim as a painter is to paint from the innermost self; going back to Buddhism and how you feel inside. I paint quite subconsciously. But before my trip to Thailand, when I became interested in painHng, I was doing what I’d call commercial art. I was doing very quirky, interesHng mural-‐type stuff for pubs and hotels. That led to a lot of chalkboard work, where I was allowed to express some crazy ideas and add a lot of fun and colour. A lot of stuff was going on in those days, which bent towards commercialism by selling things, but I somehow learnt about myself through doing all that, and I met lots of people. There was a Thai arHst who I followed – can’t remember his name – who is a very successful painter, and who paints his subconscious, paints of the moment, and the painHng has to be done within that span of that emoHon; he does not go back to finish it later because the emoHon has gone. I’m not saying that’s how I paint – if I get it right the first Hme, I’ve done very well – but I do like returning to a painHng and adding to it. So the marks, the movement, the scale of the marks I make, are done in a subconscious way, and then the finality is bringing the conscious back in and deciding whether those marks have gone right or whether they need jiggling a li]le bit, unHl something becomes right. But it all starts with this emoHonal journey. >

Yeah. I’d been to California before my travels to Thailand, and thereaQer. I was naturally gravitaHng to galleries and looking at the work, and what was on show was far more interesHng and colourful, deﬁnitely. The abstract was evident in a lot of what we were looking at in L.A. and San Francisco, and I just felt there was a diﬀerent

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Are you interested in creaKng layers within your texture? I never make conscious decisions about what a painHng’s going to be. The actual outcome of its philosophy beyond that comes out when we’re si_ng in a gallery talking about a painHng, and people start pu_ng their expressions into something. And because I don’t make a purposeful journey, perhaps, and let things happen, more interesHng things can happen from the result of the painHng. It’s interesHng, and so important to me now, to have a door open to the public to transpond and respond to my work. It helps me envelop the passion to paint more, and new ideas happen. When I ﬁrst start a painHng, I may have a theme. This year has been about the emoHonal sense of sailing, and what that means to me: painHng something more obvious, with sail-‐boats, and then the not-‐so-‐obvious, more the mirage or the sense of sailing. You start the painHng with quite few free brush marks, and I have a vision in my mind, perhaps. You do, I think, have some sort of vision for painHng a parHcular object. And that object comes within while you paint; someHmes you abstract it out, and then you bring it back in again. So you’re doing the painHng process. Having a gallery, I’ll someHmes put the painHng out on the wall halfway through – I always have an experimental wall somewhere in the gallery. I’ll put something on the wall just to see what reacHon I get; people come up to the painHng and discard it, or they’ll come up and say they love the colours, or they love the marks, or something about the painHng, and I’ll think, “Ah, we’re onto something now, this was the kind of feedback I was hoping get,” and then that is usually the catalyst for a whole series of work. Once I have that one ﬂowing piece, the rest of the pieces will follow thereaQer.

Do you ﬁnd peoples’ expression, when they look at your work, inspiraKonal in the sense of conKnuing your work or coming up with ideas? I think so, yeah. I’m not quite sure how to perceive it myself. I mean to actually rely on people, as an arHst, to decipher your work as you’re painHng it, is not something you would normally expect an arHst to do, perhaps. The arHst should know what they’re doing! It’s a conHnual experimentaHon: we’re pu_ng this stuﬀ called paint onto canvas and creaHng an image which one will live with, or not; one person will buy it, one person won’t. We are here to sell them, I presume – I’m here to make a living out of it. I don’t rely on anything else. But I don’t make it a point of painHng something that it becomes a painHng to sell – I actually paint for myself. And over the years I’ve discovered that the way I paint seems to capture the imaginaHon of the public, and they buy quite happily. But it is about that interacHon with other people, of all walks of life. I think it comes from my pub game, meeHng all those people in pubs doing all the murals and chalkboards, when I met all walks of life, from Central London and down in Knightsbridge, the poshest pubs with the poshest people, from the nasty to the nice. And all walks of life come into this gallery. I get all kinds of interesHng remarks and inspiraHon, and I seem to quite happily inspire all types of people. A lot of people don’t get abstract and I predominantly paint abstract, but I’ve had many a conversaHon when they’ve said, “But I quite like this work, there’s something about it.” So actually, you’ve lost the thought of it being abstract painHng and people not understanding it. Quite oQen it’s colour combinaHon or the marks, or the movement, and the freeness of the style of the painHng that appeals to the layman, if you like; the person who really doesn’t understand me will seem to sHll get it, which is a lovely thing to be able to achieve. >

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Does the colour make a diﬀerence? Do you use colour to signify a parKcular mood? I think I’m probably more likely to paint bright colours when my gallery’s due some bright colours! I remember in 2010, a series called ‘New Guinea’, which was aQer a long series of work that was quite autumnal, what I termed as more “English pale]e” type painHngs. I was warming up for my spring exhibiHon – the word “spring” just says bright colours, California, Thailand, hot weather – I was painHng in mid-‐February in the freezing cold, out came the bright, colourful pale]e, which was what I was doing before the other series. I wanted to revisit it, so everything was bright, hot, warm, passionate -‐ a smooth, curved, mixing, melding style of painHng, which I really thoroughly enjoyed. And when we put the show on, we put both series together, and I’d been painHng throughout the seasons and I’d been painHng the seasons while those seasons were there. I didn’t know it, but it was there within the work. So when you look back at your work, can you someKmes see other elements that you didn’t noKce at the Kme? Most deﬁnitely. A lot of my painHngs here in the gallery now are a mixture of last year’s, but there are some from a few years ago, and I’ve probably talked about those painHngs twenty or thirty Hmes to various people. And I discover new things within a painHng that might trigger a thought, or my next move on a series that I may be doing now. I might pull it out of that canvas and put it on the new canvas somewhere. You menKoned that your academic background was more craU and design-‐based. What made you decide this wasn’t the direcKon you wanted to go in?

really ge_ng that out. And there’s an element of speed there, because to create a piece of furniture or a sculpture takes a long Hme from start to finish, and you sort of lose the impetus, I think. I don’t think that’s what I’m terribly good at. My a]enHon span is relaHvely short. If you want to get the ulHmate result from one human being at their best, then you have to find that thing that works their cogs best, and painHng is the one for me. I know people who are designers, who are fantasHc designers, and they’re the kind of people who take Hme to develop the honest end result. But for me, I get the end result very quickly, and painHng is the way to do that. As an arKst, how does it feel to run your own gallery space? How do the business and arKsKc sides work for you? Well, like most things in my life, I have a goal, but other things happen inadvertently. I went looking for a space where I could work and show, and ended up with this huge gallery within the Royal William Yard, and it’s a very nice space too. But over the years, people have started coming through the door, and I end up talking to them, and it has actually become part of the way I paint, as I menHoned before. People come and look at my work, they see work in mid-‐flight, you get comments and you get feedback. You get that whole connecHon with the humanness of people, which oQen you don’t get walking down the street or si_ng in a coffee bar. You see them talking, but you don’t get them feeling. When you get them feeling, it’s so wonderful to see them feeling something from something you’ve made. So it’s become an integral part of who I am and the way I paint. Yes, it’s seven days a week, we don’t make huge amounts of money and the bills are always creeping up. It’s difficult someHmes, and you do need a break. <

Well, my creaHve buzz was always there. I did drama at school for a year or two and we created some strange, abstract plays, and I did woodwork and then went on to do a design degree course, which was predominantly furniture. And I felt at the end of all that it was too restricHng, to me as a person. I wanted something with which I could express emoHon, and painHng was one way of

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CHASING THE PHEONIX TRIBE DEBUTS THE FIRST COLLECTION FROM THE RoHeBe LABEL DESIGNED BY ROB TARASEK AND HELEN COBBOLD [redbox79@gmail.com] PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK DOYLE ASSISTANT: PETE DAVEY MODELS: ALISA VASEGHI, SHARON CHIDOMAYA, AMY JANE EATON, VICTORIA YORK, JENNIFER-‐KATE@BOOKINGS HAIR & MAKE-‐UP: EMILY COLLEY, ALISA VASEGHI LOCATION: PIPE GALLERY, PLYMOUTH

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Silk Organza Sequined Evening Dress Model: Amy Jane Eaton

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Wool Mini Skirt; Silk Chiﬀon Top Model: Alisa Vaseghi

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Sequined Jumpsuit Model: Sharon Chidomaya

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Silk Oxford Bags; Silk Chiﬀon Top Model: Amy Jane Eaton

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Next pages: Wool Jacket; Silk Top; Devore Trousers Model: Victoria York

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pages 63-‐65 Sequined Silk Organza Cocktail Dress Model: Jenny Evans

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Wool and Silk Opera Coat; Silk Tulle and Wool Cocktail Dress Model: Alisa Vaseghi

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page 69: Sequined Jumpsuit; Silk Top current page: Low Waist Ra-‐Ra Dress (silk tulle, silk organza, net) Model: Sharon Chidomaya

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Hannah Wallace hannahwallace.co.uk

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Philip Wakeham South West sculptor Philip Wakeham talks to tribe about art and his work. Interview: Mark Doyle Pictures courtesy of the artist

What is so fascinating about the human form for you? Our brains are wired up to find more richness in each other than anything else. My work is about people not objects, so what could be more fascinating? It goes deeper, when you begin to really look, I mean really look, in the way only art can make you. The smallest things take on a beguiling and extraordinary aspect -‐ the shape of a hand reaching out, the tilt of a head, the space occupied.... Disregarding the obvious difference between painting a figure and sculpting a figure (2D v 3D), what does sculpture offer in terms of interpreting the human form that painting or illustration cannot? This is difficult to explain in words as language is such a hopelessly inadequate vehicle for the visual. Sculpture has unique magical quality 2D images do not. It changes as you change view point and this can completely transform what is being communicated in ways that i still find hard to believe, but I have seen the expression on a face cast in bronze change with the angle of the head. All art is an illusion but sculpture occupies that liminal space between illusion and reality, a sculpture of man occupies space just as the man does, yet one is a man the other is not. And then, maybe it’s just that you can touch sculpture. How important is public space to your work? How do you see the role of sculpture in public space? There is a difference between statues and sculpture, sculpture is art whereas statues are not. And there is 'public art' an oxymoron for sure, as its neither art or for the public (ordinary people who wouldn't be seen dead in a gallery). To many compromises for all the wrong reasons and not enough authenticity to have truth. As to my own work most is very intimate and not of a scale to fit into public spaces, I'm not very interested in ego. >

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The Girl With The Dove

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What are you hoping or trying to convey through your sculpture? I am not explicitly trying to convey something, whilst in some of my work there was a very really personal thought or emotion involved in its creation, that is between me and the sculpture. Other times it is enough to find the beauty in something. I am much more interested in the space between the work and the viewer were something new is born. How do you build and maintain a relationship with your model? I am grateful for everyone who sits for me, it is a real commitment as sculpture takes along time, and can be a gruelling process. I see it as a collaboration as each model brings with them a unique quality only they can provide . At its best there is a dialogue between myself and the model that produces something neither one of us could of done alone. You would have to ask as them to what specifically they get out of the experience. But I do think it is such an unusual way to spend time in the modern world to essentially sit with no other purpose than to be present and that in it self has great value. I’m happy to listen if they want to talk while we work! A special mention must go to my regular model Nicky Prout who sat for The Girl with the Dove, which led to Somedays Are Harder Than Others and Nicky With Paper Crows. And also to Jane Stewart who has been enduring a standing pose six hours at a time. Models are the life blood of my work and I’m always looking. I will be working with a former member of the GB athletics team in the near future. There is a sense of otherworldliness with your work -‐ fantastical/mythological. How influenced are you by classical mythology and classical sculptors? I am in no way concerned with the classical. I use myth in a immediate and present way -‐ I am very much concerned with the mystical by which i mean direct personal experience of "un-‐worded things". A client recently said Somedays Are Harder Than Others; "It made my gut pull at my chest". Any symbolism in my work is open to the viewers interpretation, so they can use it in what ever way is meaningful, in creating their own stories. As to feeling a connection with classical sculptors, I respect their skill but for the most part their motives don't resonate, with exceptions such as the Boxer of Quirinal. >

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Somedays Are Harder Than Others

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Finding Love Is Harder For Some

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Birdman

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I feel far more empathy with figurative sculptors of the 20th century. I do feel a deep connection with ancient bronze founders, as I cast my own work im part of a tradition of lost wax casting that goes back at least 5000-‐years,so I know we share so much, linked over millennia by the fierce heat of the furnace; a molten rivulet of metal. Images are produced, disseminated and reproduced at incredible speeds due to digital technology -‐ where does sculpture, which takes longer to create and generally requires a space to be shown and appreciated properly, fit with the way people view art now? Has easy access to images online changed the way people view or appreciate sculpture do you think? There is an element that on the net everything becomes photography and I think people understand this. Actually being in the presence of sculpture is a profoundly different experience from viewing a photo of it at 72-‐dpi, which will most likely be distorted by the lens changing the shape. So it isn't even the same thing anymore. The risk I think is the temptation for everything to be 'eye candy' -‐ all about speed. The point of sculpture is its in 'slow time' just as it took weeks and weeks of intense looking to create, the finished work if good, will reward years of looking. But i know that this is a 'mystical' idea you have to experience for your self -‐ you can’t be told, as Ludwig Wittgenstein once said; "what can be shown, cannot be said". This is all so tied up with 'seeing'. I didn't learn to draw until my 20's, so really learnt first hand and learning to draw IS learning to see! What do you think is the future of sculpture? How would you like to see it evolve as a creative practice? Well I guess 3D printing is going to make a mark, but I fear it will be the same way the computer has made a mark on music -‐ gimmicks at the expense of content. But I think it is a mistake to think of art like science, a step by step progress towards 'truth'. Art has always had a intuitive quality, it does need the 'new' but only as a way of retelling what has already been said but in a way that modern minds can hear. Humans haven't changed in thousands of years, and the concerns of our hearts are still in need of the same conciliations only art can provide. But what do I know I am after all using a 5000 year old technique! Seriously it doesn't need to evolve. Until humans evolve its already capable at best of saying everything that needs to be said. >

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Where would you like to take your work? My work im taking it ever closer to the edge between control and chaos . This is were life resides. Welcoming in chance, randomness, balanced with control. I keep trying new things with movement and time, and simpler experiments with oil color on bronze. But I keep returning to the Head and what it can express. I am excited to be taking part in collaborations. On going is the Trinity project with Nicky Prout and Rosalind Chad and a narrative experiment with the writer /musician Jacinta Rosielle. I love the creative energy that can be produced when the right people get together. I get up everyday and try to express my vision with more eloquence then the day before, this is my reason for being. <

beauKful-‐if-‐oblique.com

Finding Love Is Harder For Some

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Paper Crows

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April Brosemann etsy.com/people/CanvasAtelier

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Together As One Mark McQueen

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markmcqueen.wordpress.com 93

to submit work to tribe tribesubmit@gmail.com say hello to tribe tribequery@gmail.com

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