Steve Bishop and Jack Vickridge in Conversation

A conversation between London based artists Steve Bishop and Jack Vickridge. Bishop’s second London solo show Sheer Fatigue opens mid March at Christopher Crescent and Vickridge will be exhibiting in May at Cole Contemporary, London. Both are currently exhibiting work at the inaugural exhibition at The Woodmill in Bermondsey.

Jack Vickridge: Have the pieces in Sheer Fatigue been based on any methods/principles for working? And do you think the visual similarities between the works are a result these principles?

Steve Bishop: With the My Work Here is Done series I was interested in the tension between intention and accident when placing the materials together. The glass acts as a stretcher for the seams and the overlapping opacities of the tights to create a composition; how it was, was left to chance. The photograph Sheer Fatigue shared this interest in chance occurrence becoming some sort of compositional aesthetic. They both relate to drawing in my mind and can be related to the piece of yours, Gypsum 3 (sections), that is currently in the Woodmill show. What decisions went into the ideas behind that piece? Do you feel 'intention' is something you think about in regards to making that piece or generally in your practice?

JV: Yes, definitely, letting things happen without ‘intention’ seems to be
an easy way of stepping back. You can over see it like a director whilst also witnessing and enjoying something happening, which isn't really your own work. Gypsum 3 (sections) came out of seeing how plasterboard would act as a material with the paper completely removed. Some of the lines are natural cracks, where as some have been scored afterwards. I suppose it's like spilling ink on paper then pushing it around until the composition forms itself. The ‘accidental’ just acts as a beginning.

Using the accidents is also a way of getting away from the constraints of your own visual language and moving on. How do you feel these new works in your Christopher Crescent show relate to, or further your visual language? Is it just a coincidence that although Sheer Fatigue and My Work Here is Done were done without aesthetic direction they ended up with quite similar characteristics?

SB: It's interesting that you say the 'accidental' is the start of something for your work. With in the pieces in this show, the accident came at the end of the process. I'm setting something up in a way that accident can then be allowed to happen, and for that accident to complete the work. In terms of visual similarities, I guess they both allow for a way in which there can be an accidental line breaking up a surface plane. They are both very much concerned with surface in a wider sense also, in terms of the referential tangents of these objects and their purpose. 

Do you think about references with material when you are making work? Do you think about a material's intended use? Or is it something to exploit in terms of its physical properties?

JV: I think that when I'm exploring a material, I'm trying to find ways of moving it away from its usual references. I'm certainly not trying to hide the material in anyway or create any kind of trickery - I still want the material to be completely itself but just to offer a heightened visual way of experiencing it without the constraints of the way we have become to refer to it, or to use it. I think sometimes they can appear as though I'm trying to transform a material into a new state, but the material is still as true to it's self as before, it’s just presented in a way we're not used to seeing.

So yeah, although it's hard to get away from references I try to approach a material with a clear head as though I don't know how they are usually used and seen, and it can just be pure abstract matter again without being tied down to references.

With the My Work Here is Done series, you’re using materials that are highly manufactured, structured and contained as well as being completely loaded with reference, but then you’re working with them in quite a fluid, abstract drawing-like way. How do you hope this dualism is read?

SB: I hope it is read as you say, as two things that are happening at once, but also I want them to be as co-dependent and inseparable as possible. When this is the case, I feel all the more successful the work in question. They are both the cause for each other: the visual formal qualities, and then the referential materialistic choices. While there is a high element of the coincidental in the composition of the pieces, it’s not a coincidence that I'm using glass shelves from TV stands and coffee tables to use as 'stretchers'. The materials conjure up a very particular mood of a type of ordinary idealism, which colours the reading of the resulting 'abstraction'. While I enjoy the aesthetic of the line and tone in the pieces, the 'image' I’m creating is utterly arbitrary. All that matters is there is an image. I think this dualistic quality is something, which can be read throughout my practice; an interest in both the formal and the referential. I see one as being right here and right now and tangible and the latter being something which extends the work outside of the gallery into a wider picture concerned more with ideas.

In the spirit of the titles of these pieces, My Work Here is Done - what are your views on your own hand in an artwork? Does it matter for you, if something appears to be untouched by yourself? 

JV: I don’t think It matters whether it looks like I’ve had a hand in the work. It’s completely a visual thing, and I don’t think you can escape it even if the materials are almost untouched. Even just a decision to pick something up and nail it to a wall is an intervention. I think that maybe your trying to take less owner ship for these works than you should….

SB: I know what you mean and I agree. Maybe its because I’m trying to distance myself from the responsibility of aesthetic decision. In one hand, the shelf pieces are very deliberate – tights don’t get wrapped around glass by themselves, but after making that decision to do this I don’t feel like I have much control over what is going on, other than to say ‘okay’. I feel I’ve set up a quite structured logic by which I can create visually loose compositions that allude to the freedom of painterly abstraction. 

JV: When I start looking at them in terms of painting I think of maybe something like a Miro, but without the human touch so with a lot of distance there. And then you’ve got this really fetishised object too. A fetishistic and distant take on abstract art could be seen as quite a cold stance to take, how do you feel about that? 

SB: I think it’s quite an empty stance to take. I mentioned before, that what I’m interested in is that the materials can work together to create an image, and the importance is not necessarily in what the image is. That a detached logic can create something evocative of a style of painting, which is defined by a great deal of human gesture, is interesting to me. Perhaps it just reflects my opinions on painting.

JV: Which is? Are you influenced by much painting?

SB: I see the visual aspects of these works being governed by logic, in a similar way to something like Frank Stella’s brushstrokes being determined by the width of his brush, or the composition in a Morris Lewis stained raw canvas, being governed by the way the paint soaks in and runs. Their painting style to me seems very detached and the importance is placed on the process by which the image is derived and not in the image itself. 

You mentioned fetishism in relation to objects earlier. While stockings are symbol of fetishism in a sexual way, do you think an element of fetishism applies to your decisions to pick and chose material, albeit in a non-sexual way?

JV: I hope not, it’s difficult to get away from this because even though I might start using a material because it has a rawness to it that escapes desirability, our relationship to materials is always changing.  I started using plasterboard because it seemed like such background material, but when you get really used to working with the material the beauty in it seems more obvious, that’s usually a sign to move on. I think if there’s any ‘desire’ in the way I’m drawn to materials, it just gets in the way of any kind of discovery or emotional engagement.

SB: I suppose if you desired the material, then it would be hard to change it without removing whatever was desirable about it in the first place. Do you not think that in the elevating of a found object, and in the intention for it to be gazed upon for it’s physical and visual properties, with its function removed, still is a sort of fetishisation? Do you ever find material that is too nice and find it difficult to find a direction in which to take it?

JV: I know what you mean, it depends on the material really – I try to view materials whatever they are, just as a substance, like soil – I know that’s impossible when it comes to the viewer but I like the idea.  I see it like adjusting the levels in something, so plasterboard can become just abstract ‘stuff’ again. It would be great if you could do that with any material, like take gold and present it or adjust it so that its at the same level as anything else. How do you think this idea of hierarchy of objects applies to the smashed glass swept to sides of the gallery?

SB: I suppose the smashed glass on the floor is really there to emphasise the form of the glass panes that I’ve used. They are quite unique shapes, coming from parts of low-end furniture, and I wanted there to be this sense of ‘this is how it is’ and the smashed glass being ‘this is how it could be’.  The pieces on the wall could be the smashed glass on the floor, but at the moment they’re still intact. I hope it would reinforce a sense of brittle fragility in the glass, showing the potential for what could happen. The smashed glass alludes to another type of compositional accident. The photograph (Sheer Fatigue) occupies a strange ground for me, because I feel the image, despite being cropped in such a way as to give the paving slab a border, holds a sense of the documentary for me. I kind of feel that, although I chose that particular paving slab, it is ‘done’ and was ‘done’ before I stumbled upon it. I don’t see the piece as a photograph, but rather as a found paving slab, that I couldn’t move into the gallery.

That book on Roman Signer that you have has sprung into my mind. It’s essentially a book of naturally occurring ‘dones’ that he’s photographed. Obviously he chose to frame these street scenes, and thus making them be seen in a certain way, but they were there before he was, and he decided with his current position on art that this was something worth photographing in the name of art. But my question is what if a ‘done’ goes unseen, is it still ‘done’?

JV: There’s endless ‘dones’ out there. I mean that I think you just have to see it as a form of recording. Like those whitewash photos I made (A series of photographs of cropped whitewashed shop windows) - they were ‘done’ before I got there and a hundred years earlier. Again it’s a nice way of being less possessive with work, and accepting of things that are around and that become as an important a part of your practice as something that you might have worked with in the studio for months – it makes things more collaborative with history and places and less insular. Is that an alright way of taking about ‘dones’?

SB: I think that’s good. That makes it seem like making a field recording. In both of our photographs documenting this already occurring stuff, it seems we have both chosen to photograph them because it resembles our own existing work. Like how the whitewashed windows, looked like the paintings you had been doing a little while before, and with Sheer Fatigue, it came after the shelf pieces, and you’re right in saying that they resemble each other. If I had not done the shelf pieces, I might not have stopped to look at this paving slab with its lines bisecting the surface.

The question is, which has more integrity? The naturally occurring works or the works you consciously carry out yourself?

JV: The naturally occurring stuff - you get sick of your own work, but looking at cracked pavements and whitewashed windows is always going to be interesting. I suppose they just give each other more weight. I think the ‘dones’ out there that haven’t even been seen yet have the most integrity of all. 

SB: Like extraterrestrial ‘dones’? 

JV: Actually, it’s funny you say that, I’ve got this amazing picture of the surface of the moon on my wall at the moment. It’s all these circles that look like ripples from pebbles in water, and I thought about making a relief/ sculpture that looked like that, but it’s already done.

SB: I thought about making a video of a plastic bag floating around in the wind, but someone beat me to it.

STEVE BISHOP Sheer Fatigue at Christopher Crescent, 24 Tudor Grove,  E9 7QL
13 March – 10 April 2010 PV 12 March 6.30 – 8.30 pm   www.christophercrescent.co.uk