Contemporary art writer and curator Joana P. R. Neves interviews Stephen Ellcock on the occasion of the release of his fabulous book “Elements”. What drew him to this fascinating topic? And how did his ecological trepidation make it into the book? It’s impossible to ask a visual culture curator how they manage to present beauty and dread, spirituality and fear… But this delightful conversation will provide a few clues.
Did you enjoy the episode? Think about supporting Exhibitionistas by leaving a small donation: https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionista
Is the book an exhibition? And if so, what kind? There is a mystery underlying these questions, which is the different kind of power images have in the different spaces they live in. We talk about Stephen’s Instagram account which he feeds daily, and the huge number of followers it attracts, proving that images do hold influence. But how?
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“Elements” completes a trilogy with “The Cosmic Dance” (2022) and “Underworlds” (2023), all published by Thames and Hudson.
If you don't know Stephen Ellcock's instagram account yet, you should: @stephenellcock
Music by Sarturn.
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats.
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.
00:00:08
Hi there, Joanna here. This episode is a special one
00:00:13
because we welcome our 2nd guest in this second season of the
00:00:17
podcast. As ever, the idea is to talk
00:00:20
about exhibitions of all kinds, the insurance and outs of the
00:00:23
art world, or simply the pleasures of image gazing with
00:00:27
someone who plays a very specific role in our consolation
00:00:31
of art professionals and lovers. Our guest is image alchemist
00:00:36
Steven Alcock, who talks about the book as exhibition, his
00:00:41
passion for cuttings, colleges and images when he was a child,
00:00:46
and of course, his new book Elements, published by Thames
00:00:50
and Hudson and available in book shops worldwide.
00:00:54
You probably know him from Facebook 1st and now from
00:00:57
Instagram, where he has more than half a million followers
00:01:00
and devotees, and where he posts sequences of images associated
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in the way that makes them sing to the senses and tickle our
00:01:09
brains. A few notes about the sound, you
00:01:12
may notice that it is different. This is because we recorded the
00:01:16
episode in person for the first time and we're still playing
00:01:19
with technology, figuring it out as we go.
00:01:23
So this is all the better to entertain you and create an
00:01:27
exciting, genuine, heartfelt and engaging episode.
00:01:32
Or so we hope. Without further ado.
00:01:35
Here we go. Hello and welcome to another
00:01:47
special episode of Exhibition. Is this the podcast where we
00:01:51
visit exhibitions so that you have to or so that you
00:01:54
experience them vicariously through us?
00:01:58
This time we have our 2nd guest on the podcast, The one and only
00:02:03
Steven Elcock. Yes, that's Steven Elcock, the
00:02:07
one with the books. Yes, those books that make you
00:02:12
wonder, dream, hope, escape, and return to reality with a sparkle
00:02:17
in your eye. We invited Steven because he has
00:02:21
a new book dedicated to the elements, a framing that seems
00:02:25
quite scientific, although as one might expect, alchemy,
00:02:29
mystery and myth will take over, along with the impulse to better
00:02:34
understand the universe. For us, it's a way to dedicate
00:02:38
an episode to another kind of exhibition that can be more
00:02:42
accessible to our listeners outside of London and the UK.
00:02:45
But most of all, it is the pleasure of talking to Stephen
00:02:49
and to bring some of his insights to you.
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So, Stephen, thank you so much for being here.
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Well, thank you for inviting me. It's a real pleasure to be here.
00:02:58
Thank you for that generous introduction, those kind words.
00:03:01
Thank you. Ah, my pleasure, my pleasure.
00:03:03
So I'll just briefly introduce you, if that's OK.
00:03:06
OK, to those listeners who may be living under a rock and not
00:03:10
know you. So Stephen, you were a touring
00:03:14
musician in the 80s and early 90s but experienced the
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dissolution with the music industry, right?
00:03:21
If my memory serves. That just about sums it up.
00:03:25
Yes, that does. Yes, that's a good summary.
00:03:27
OK, let's not linger. Not linger.
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No, that's not. That's not to dwell too long on
00:03:32
that. So you started another career
00:03:35
until you had a terrible breakdown that took you down a
00:03:39
very dark path, yes, which culminated into a life
00:03:43
threatening disease, in fact an undiagnosed pneumonia, which led
00:03:47
you to being housebound, bedridden and quite unwell.
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And and and quite unwell for some time.
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Yes, I I did it. It was a culmination of some
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rather irresponsible several years irresponsible behaviour
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and some cumulative effect of sort of self-destructive
00:04:06
impulses aligned with sort of addictions and things.
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So, and it inevitably, I crashed and burned after a few years, a
00:04:16
sort of very irresponsible and self-destructive part.
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Yeah, which, you know, happens to so many of us.
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You know, it's such a human thing to go through.
00:04:25
And it is also really human to have a sister who actually, as
00:04:31
you were in your home, bedridden.
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So luckily, Steven's sister, luckily for you, but also for
00:04:36
us, she actually convinced you to open a Facebook account.
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My sister in alliance with some friends of hers and a couple of
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other people, they realized I was quite, I was fairly isolated
00:04:52
at the time and I didn't really have and I didn't really have
00:04:55
much much access to the out to the outer world.
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And this was in the infancy of Facebook when it still was, when
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it still was quite genuinely ground breaking and almost
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utopian. And it, I, I resisted.
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I resisted for ages. It was just saying, well, you
00:05:13
should join every people on there, you know, and you know,
00:05:16
it's amazing potential and blah, blah, blah.
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And I didn't even have, I didn't own a computer like a desktop or
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even a laptop. I had a very, very antiquated
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second hand, I believe mobile phone, which was like a kind of
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proto type BlackBerry thing that just that just didn't really
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work. And I remember, yeah, it didn't
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really work. So I had very little Internet
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access at home. And I remember that, that very
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phone, I remember taking it, I was living in Peckham at the
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time. And when it, when it, when it
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ceased to work, I remember taking it to a couple of phone
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shops on Peckham High Street, those sort of people and the
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look of horror. What the hell is this is like
00:06:03
some ancient artifact. So, and then when I, when I was
00:06:06
actually able to, so I did join, I'd signed up to Facebook.
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And so I spent, I subsequently spent, I became quite obsessed
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with it. And when I was able to sort of,
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you know, be well enough to leave the house and things with
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my flat things, I spent an inordinate amount of time in
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Internet and spent a lot of money in the Internet cafes of
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Peckham. I used to communicate with
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people in Internet cafes. Really.
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Yeah. I did have a job at the time,
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but I was off work for several months because I was, I was so
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ill. And so I didn't really so and,
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and so in that period where I could sort of nip down the road
00:06:42
and live in an Internet cafe, I'm basically building up my
00:06:45
Facebook account. And then that continued when I,
00:06:48
when I returned to work, I, I spent, but most of my, most of
00:06:54
my time in that, in the job I had at that point in, in
00:06:58
publishing, I wasn't in, I wasn't sort of office space, but
00:07:02
I did have a sort of office desk.
00:07:04
So, and I did spend far too much time.
00:07:07
Well, actually, no, it was beneficial for me, but I spent a
00:07:10
company time. They basically paid for me to
00:07:12
set up a Facebook account. Thank you.
00:07:16
Thank you. No, please don't make.
00:07:18
Employer who we won't name of Steven.
00:07:21
No, don't Nate, but they'll know who they're.
00:07:24
But I did. They did get their revenge in
00:07:25
the end because they made me redundant.
00:07:28
Well, you know, sometimes redundancy, which has happened
00:07:31
to me as well, can kind of save your life.
00:07:34
And I must say that the way I see what you started doing at
00:07:40
the time was that you started curating an exhibition online,
00:07:45
and you gathered followers, and you built a community of people
00:07:50
of now more than half a million people on Instagram.
00:07:54
And I heard you say that, you know, there's a joke that Mark
00:07:57
Zuckerberg saved your life. It transformed my life and I
00:08:00
hate to, you know, if sometimes now given, given all that's
00:08:03
happened in the intervening years, it does now feel a bit
00:08:07
like a sort of Faustian pact that I've sort of almost sold my
00:08:10
soul to the level in in incontrovertible fact that I do
00:08:15
that this, that what I do now, I probably wouldn't.
00:08:18
I would not be doing this now, I don't think without without it
00:08:24
being based in on so in social media.
00:08:26
Of course, of course, but I would also say that, you know,
00:08:30
images seem to have saved your life or more specifically, the
00:08:34
flow of visual philosophy and the connection with living and
00:08:39
long gone artists and creatives. You know, I think that's really
00:08:44
kind of the thing that really connects us to you and lots of
00:08:49
people that have claimed to have been healed by your images and
00:08:55
the flow of images and the very careful curation which takes us
00:08:59
to this book. So you've just published a book
00:09:02
called Elements subtitle Chaos, Order and the Five Elemental
00:09:07
Forces published by Tamsen Hudson, and it's in book shops
00:09:12
now, I think. There are several editions.
00:09:15
It's just been published, published a couple of weeks ago.
00:09:19
This is the beginning of December.
00:09:20
So it's published a couple of weeks ago in America, US
00:09:22
edition. And it's there are French,
00:09:24
German, Italian editions and theoretically it should be
00:09:27
available worldwide. That's amazing because we have
00:09:31
listeners all over the world. So go ahead, go to your book
00:09:34
shops and have a look at this book and buy it if you can,
00:09:37
because it is quite, I mean, it doesn't differ too much from,
00:09:41
you know, the cosmic dance or, or did you have a new approach
00:09:46
to this one? Well, this is this is elements
00:09:49
is actually the culmination of what was what was this?
00:09:54
What was initially designed as a trilogy.
00:09:58
So, so it is the third, it is the culminating, but it's kind
00:10:01
of a full stop. It's like an end of a end of a
00:10:04
end of a phase. So when I when I initially was
00:10:10
talking to Thames and Hudson, we thought I wanted to do, I wanted
00:10:13
to create a series of books that created a kind of visual map of
00:10:20
both the human imagination and the universe, which is the most
00:10:25
ludicrously ambitious aim Elements follows on from the
00:10:29
previous two volumes. The first volume was Cosmic
00:10:32
Dance was released a couple of years ago and then followed by
00:10:35
Underworlds, which is published last year.
00:10:38
And it is deliberately designed as as an as an all, as a, as a
00:10:43
map of the universe. That was kind of the culmination
00:10:47
of everything that felt like the, a kind of the natural, the
00:10:52
natural endpoint, the natural, the natural culmination of
00:10:55
everything I've been doing on Facebook and Instagram.
00:10:58
It was based on all things cosmological on and it was
00:11:02
designed as a as A and I hate to use the word journey because
00:11:07
people abuse that word as possible.
00:11:09
Journey and Curator are two of the most abused poor.
00:11:12
Abuse curator? How do you mean?
00:11:14
I know people, you people, describing themselves as we'll.
00:11:19
Talk about that. We'll talk about that.
00:11:20
Yes, obviously genuine curators and real curators, as it's
00:11:25
still, but Cosmic Dance was designed as a journey from the
00:11:30
from the micro. The micro, the macro micro.
00:11:32
So from yes. The smallest units,
00:11:34
infinitesimally small to the incomprehensibly vast.
00:11:38
Yeah, underworlds. Was was then it was everything
00:11:42
that was underneath underpinned everything that was
00:11:45
subterranean, everything that was subconscious, whether it be
00:11:48
the whether it be physical or geological underworlds or
00:11:53
whether it be psychological or fantastic underworlds.
00:11:56
And then there was some we did have some.
00:12:00
We deliberated and discussed what form the the final volume
00:12:04
would be, but it quickly came to consensus myself and editors
00:12:09
that elements was a really seemed like a really elegant way
00:12:12
of rounding things off because the elements are basically the
00:12:15
stuff that holds everything together.
00:12:17
So it's the, they are the glue of, if you like, of the, the
00:12:21
thing, the glue of the cosmos. And also they, the elements are
00:12:25
essentially a way of explaining the chaos of existence of.
00:12:30
So it felt like a way of of stitching everything together
00:12:36
and really finding a way out of chaos.
00:12:38
I would love to read the final two paragraphs of the preface.
00:12:43
Of course. Yes, because you frame it in a
00:12:46
way that is most encouraging and at the same time realistic and
00:12:54
contemporary. So you write, and sorry to throw
00:12:57
your own words at you, but it's such a beautiful preface.
00:13:00
So quote. The perpetually traumatized
00:13:03
planet on which we are currently marooned is a world that is
00:13:07
seriously out of balance, A world in the grip of an apparent
00:13:11
death wish, trapped in a feedback loop of doom, the
00:13:15
ultimate lost cause. Every day we witness multiple
00:13:20
unfolding catastrophes, a slow motion apocalypse, watching in
00:13:25
mute horror or black in black. Indifference is everything that
00:13:29
generates most of us feel disorientated, disenchanted,
00:13:34
alienated from the rhythms of the dying world around us, our
00:13:38
connection with every living thing brutally severed.
00:13:44
UN quote. So this paragraph is incredible
00:13:47
because I somehow connected your personal breakdown with your
00:13:54
very, very high sensitivity to the idea of the breakdown of the
00:13:59
universe. And I thought it was so
00:14:01
beautiful to see that here. And did you feel that when when
00:14:06
you choose your images, is it a subjective perspective?
00:14:10
How? How do you go about doing that?
00:14:12
It's intuitive. It's difficult for me to
00:14:14
articulate exactly why certain images appeal to me.
00:14:17
It's a kind of it's both. It's a subliminal level, but
00:14:20
it's also a viscal level. It's something there is
00:14:22
something that will suddenly appeal to me.
00:14:24
If you think so. It's not something that I can
00:14:27
easily explain verbally that that, that I just know that
00:14:31
image. If I, if I come across images,
00:14:33
I, I just know that they're right, whether it be for a book
00:14:35
or whether it be for or whether it be for social media.
00:14:40
The key to how I, how I put books together is, is the, is
00:14:45
finding correspondences between different images and finding
00:14:49
affinities and trying to find the best sequencing of them and
00:14:54
putting images in juxtaposing with one another, with one
00:14:58
another to give meaning to do each reflect on on the other.
00:15:03
And and that is the most time consuming, time consuming
00:15:08
process. I would if if I could it's most
00:15:12
eager considering the the paragraph in complete
00:15:15
contradiction to the paragraph you've just read.
00:15:18
If I if I if I felt I could get away with it and it wasn't so
00:15:21
sort of wanton destruction of scarce resources, I would
00:15:24
happily have. I'd love to have a vast
00:15:26
warehouse and have and print out every single image I'd like
00:15:31
considering for book and and just make a great call and and
00:15:34
spend ages shifting them round because I don't have much
00:15:37
sophisticated programmes or anything at home.
00:15:40
So I it was all in my head, the kind of working out sequences
00:15:44
and. You know, in Paris at the Palate
00:15:46
took you this academic, a historian called George Didi
00:15:51
Uberman. He curated an exhibition at the
00:15:54
Palate took you where you had images projected on the on the,
00:15:59
on the on the floor of the museum.
00:16:02
And you entered this very dark room and you could see lots of
00:16:06
images. And when you say that, I imagine
00:16:08
you printing them and putting them on the floor and just
00:16:11
walking around, like, sit like, like Citizen Kane, you know, in
00:16:14
the film and just kind of looking at your image, shifting
00:16:18
them around. That's the quickest route to
00:16:20
another breakdown. I've been doing that.
00:16:24
So yeah, I'm going completely so because also that that mean I
00:16:30
try to be out outward looking that sounds like I'm completely
00:16:33
obsessed with with my own process, but I try, but
00:16:37
everything I try and do and everything that and there's
00:16:40
there's a key, a key to the images I I want them to reflect
00:16:45
on. They have to reflect both on on
00:16:49
the current world and I am commenting on the world and
00:16:52
current events. I am whether people, whether
00:16:55
people intuit that and discern that or whether whether that's
00:16:58
overt or whether it's hidden. But I am everything to me has a
00:17:02
social purpose. Everything that I do, it's not,
00:17:05
I'm not just putting to, I don't feel what I'm doing is putting
00:17:08
together pretty images and a succession of beautiful images
00:17:12
just to just purely to enchant people and delight people.
00:17:15
It's a communication device that is quite incredible because you
00:17:21
are saying things across the book.
00:17:25
And it's really incredible to go over these images and to really
00:17:31
start thinking and connecting through these images to so many
00:17:36
things that you can think about the world and also to the
00:17:40
undoing of the world, which is, you know, something that that's
00:17:45
where my question was headed with this idea of the connection
00:17:49
with the universe, you know, this idea of the breakdown and
00:17:51
the chaos, and then this idea that images are kind of an
00:17:55
interface between possible worlds.
00:17:58
I think we are all fascinated with your brain, Steven.
00:18:01
That's the thing. And that room that you you that
00:18:04
you describe for me is your brain.
00:18:07
I can see that. It's like it's like an infinite
00:18:10
library. It's the sort of the bald heads
00:18:11
idea, an archive. It's the infinite number of
00:18:15
chambers and rooms and things. I still try to be grounded,
00:18:18
though. I don't try and I I deliberately
00:18:20
try and Orient orientate myself so I'm not lost in in that
00:18:24
fantastic world. I'd try and be grounded and be
00:18:27
and engage with the world. But the the.
00:18:29
Thing that I find really fascinating is that I'm a
00:18:32
fantastic so I don't visualize things in my brain.
00:18:36
And that's why I'm so fascinated with your your project, because
00:18:39
I think you do, don't you? I do.
00:18:41
Yeah, and I'm really. Interested in knowing to what
00:18:44
extent do you remember images and when you get them and you
00:18:48
get the image you're thinking about, are you surprised or is
00:18:52
it exactly? Can you remember exactly the
00:18:55
images as they are? No, I can't, no, actually, I
00:19:00
can't remember, don't and, and, and it is, I can still look
00:19:03
through it, it, it may sound implausible, but I can look
00:19:06
through this book or like previous books and I, and I tend
00:19:10
to, I tend to look forward all the time.
00:19:11
My brain is all, I'm always thinking 2 projects ahead.
00:19:15
So like, this is done to me. This is done.
00:19:17
And so I'm thinking about other things, but obviously for, for,
00:19:21
for for sort of purposes of like an occasion like this and
00:19:27
interviews like this and, and I have to, and doing public
00:19:30
appearances, I have to revisit the book.
00:19:33
And it, it amazes me every time I look through this or other
00:19:35
books, but I didn't spot, I didn't notice that before.
00:19:38
I will spot things in the images and I will spot things that I
00:19:43
didn't that when I actually, I'd spot details and think, well,
00:19:48
that's why I decided to put that image next to that one.
00:19:51
So, and I, it would be like in retrospect, there would be
00:19:55
sometimes it will just be a, a shape or a pattern or some
00:19:59
little incident or some little minor details.
00:20:02
I think, Ah, actually that, that's why there's a huge amount
00:20:05
of thought put into it. But then I I like to think that
00:20:08
that people can get. It's not just a book that you
00:20:11
just flick through and oh, my books, not just books you can
00:20:14
just flick through in their disposal and their pretty coffee
00:20:16
table books. I like to think that people can
00:20:19
revisit them again and again. And, and also there were, there
00:20:22
were deliberate, I suppose the the, the, the, the contemporary
00:20:26
term for is that Easter eggs where you would like things
00:20:29
hidden in films and games where there are things that there were
00:20:33
there were images throughout the book.
00:20:35
There, there, there were, there were that the refer to book that
00:20:38
the images earlier in the book or later in the book.
00:20:41
So there were things that are in there.
00:20:43
There are multiple pathways through the book.
00:20:47
So, to emphasize the importance that you attribute to the
00:20:52
connection with the world, do you mind if I read the last
00:20:57
paragraph? OK.
00:20:58
So it's just to give our listeners like a real idea of
00:21:01
this book and the intent behind it.
00:21:04
So you So after having written about this idea of a traumatized
00:21:10
planet, the final paragraph says quote.
00:21:13
Only by recognizing that we are subject to the same elemental
00:21:17
forces that control all creation and by learning to live in
00:21:21
harmony with these forces, can we re establish our relationship
00:21:25
with the natural world, recover balance and equilibrium and
00:21:28
avert looming disaster. Our future welfare and probably
00:21:32
our very survival depends upon our next move.
00:21:36
Let's remember our place in the universe and try not to fall
00:21:39
flat on our faces. And I love, I love this, this
00:21:44
kind of like harshness at the end where you're like, let's get
00:21:48
real, actually. I'm going to be I'm going to be
00:21:50
completely honest here now publish it is that that is
00:21:54
actually that that's not that the final sentence was more
00:21:59
extreme than that, but I was it was it was considered to be too
00:22:04
extreme my original paragraph. So I I did read it.
00:22:08
They're very good. They don't they don't tend to
00:22:10
interfere at all very much at all.
00:22:13
But in this instance, they, I think they felt I was maybe a
00:22:16
bit too prescriptive and a bit too harsh.
00:22:19
And it is redacted and slightly bulgarized.
00:22:22
So, so the the language was a bit slightly more explicit.
00:22:26
I I, I I. Sort of sensed it.
00:22:28
So this is really to say how important it is for you to
00:22:32
really communicate the power of images in that sense and that
00:22:39
you you really feel it in a situation where you go back
00:22:44
thousands and thousands of years.
00:22:45
These images are across times. They you have the past speaking
00:22:50
with the present, speaking with different times in the history
00:22:54
of humanity. And it's really beautiful to see
00:22:58
that you make it kind of tunnel towards something that is so
00:23:03
contemporary and that it has been a question for so long, but
00:23:06
has become so prevalent now. But now I have another question
00:23:09
that has nothing to do with this.
00:23:12
I would love to know more about you and I'd love to know more
00:23:15
about you. As a child, were you interested
00:23:17
in art? Were you bookish person?
00:23:20
How did you visit exhibitions? How how did you What was your
00:23:26
relationship to art and visual art?
00:23:28
I. Guess that I've always been as a
00:23:31
very bookish child and quite not quite introverted, I suppose.
00:23:39
Not, not, not not solitary. I had friends and things, but I
00:23:45
tended to have sort of maybe one or two close friends rather than
00:23:48
large group of friends. But I was always immersed in
00:23:50
books. I've something that's always
00:23:54
frustrated me and maybe this is this is kind of a displacement
00:24:00
that this kind of collecting of images is a kind of displacement
00:24:03
that could be a replacement. I was always frustrated.
00:24:07
I, I, I was terrible at actual art as a drawing, painting
00:24:12
things I had, I had, I had, I, I, I, I had very active
00:24:17
imagination. And there were things I wanted
00:24:19
to, even as a very young child, I wanted to draw and I wanted to
00:24:22
paint and I couldn't do. I just could not do them.
00:24:25
And that was a great source of great frustration and, and and
00:24:30
even when I was older that that that continued, I think that my
00:24:35
imagination was both was both verbal and, and visual.
00:24:39
And I used to, I did used to collect images as a child.
00:24:42
And I used to defate. I used to, I used to vandalise
00:24:46
and and cut up and destroy. And this is this is appalling
00:24:51
van. This is some of this is
00:24:53
appalling cultural Van Yes, I used to cut up.
00:24:55
Books I. Used to destroy books, but more
00:24:58
than but I used to sort of cut up in magazines and things like
00:25:03
mail order cat, my mum's mail order catalogues and I used to
00:25:07
cut up comics and, and just I, I actually accumulated, I ended up
00:25:13
accumulating the, the cat. They were in boxes and carrier
00:25:17
bags, thousands and thousands of images, which I, which I
00:25:21
sometimes would, but what did you do with them?
00:25:23
I create, sometimes created colleges, but more often I, I,
00:25:28
I, I had, I just had them and I used to look at them and arrange
00:25:32
them and that was it. And then sort of put them in
00:25:34
different, sort of sift them around.
00:25:36
I was completely obsessed with this.
00:25:38
Something I maybe do regret, which I should never done,
00:25:41
although I'd never retained them, is that I had, I, I have
00:25:45
like incredibly, what would be now priceless collection of
00:25:49
things like old Marvel comets from like the 60s.
00:25:52
Did you not? Cut them off things.
00:25:55
That are now worse and it's not an exaggeration.
00:25:59
Thousands. If not, they're so.
00:26:00
Expensive. Absolutely, I know.
00:26:02
Early, you know, early Spiderman, the Silver Surfer,
00:26:06
fantastic early issues of those things that I just cut up and
00:26:11
had them things so I could have retired years ago if I found
00:26:14
home run is to keep those. And how about?
00:26:16
Museums. So would you go?
00:26:18
Where did you grow up, by the way?
00:26:20
I, I was born in, I was born in Essex, but my, my because of my
00:26:26
dad's job, we moved around quite a lot.
00:26:28
All in all in the UK though. So most of my most of the places
00:26:33
like N provincial, like Northampton and Litchfield in
00:26:38
Staffordshire and Birmingham and places didn't really my, my my
00:26:44
parents were very good in terms of sort of take they used to, we
00:26:50
used to visit lots of stately homes, castles, places like that
00:26:55
And, and, but not really art museums, things like Natural
00:27:00
History Museum or Science Museum and places, but not really.
00:27:04
I think the first time that I ever went to, for example, the
00:27:08
National Gallery was probably not till I was.
00:27:10
I went on my own and but were you?
00:27:14
Attracted to museums and contemporary art?
00:27:18
Yeah. Absolutely, and art in.
00:27:20
General but but. Also like appreciation of
00:27:23
architecture and, and, but also I was, I was obsessed with the
00:27:27
sort of books that I I was always immersed in books I was
00:27:30
obsessed with, but with a lot of fiction and things, but I was
00:27:34
also really obsessed with illustrated books in particular.
00:27:38
It is old encyclopedia is like my my maternal grand grandfather
00:27:44
had who has quite a modest life. He was sort of, he's basically
00:27:48
an agricultural labourer all his life, but he was one of those
00:27:52
he, he, he had his quite a small, but a small library of
00:27:57
like reference books and things. And these were absolutely
00:28:00
fascinating illustrated encyclopedias of Natural History
00:28:04
and science and technology that were put that I suppose
00:28:07
published in the 3rd 1930s and 40s.
00:28:10
And also this incredible sort of multi volume thing that was I
00:28:14
think it was called the history of the peoples of the world,
00:28:17
which would kind of which now would probably be incredibly
00:28:21
offended. They were they they were sort of
00:28:22
produced probably in the 20s or 30s.
00:28:24
So it was sort of photographs of every that that people from
00:28:29
every indigenous people. But this, this fascinated me.
00:28:32
But also, as well as the photographs of the people and
00:28:35
the and and the and the where they lived it, it did feature
00:28:39
like their, the artifact. They may have been framed in a
00:28:41
sort of imperialist and colonialist way, but the images
00:28:45
of that that to me, I was absolutely fascinated.
00:28:47
So it's so interesting. Because it seems like the books
00:28:51
LED you to museums, but your first love was books, fiction.
00:28:57
Did you write? And I feel.
00:28:59
Embarrassed whenever I did because I because when I was a
00:29:03
teenager I was I was sort of like, I used to write and I know
00:29:07
everybody does this and it sounds like some of the most
00:29:10
appalling cliche, but I did used to I I I wrote poetry and I
00:29:14
thought I would end up being a poet and I was sort of being
00:29:18
pushed towards that because when I went by your teachers.
00:29:21
Or your parents by teachers. And but I not by my parents, by
00:29:25
teachers, and I won competitions and things.
00:29:30
That doesn't sound like a bleach, no.
00:29:31
And that's like a real career. Yeah, it was a real.
00:29:33
Like a real career. And and like when I, when I was
00:29:36
still at school, there were like, there was like
00:29:38
documentaries about my like this teenage prodigy, a poet.
00:29:44
And I assume that's what I would do now.
00:29:49
Now if I look back at that, it's, it's horrendous.
00:29:52
Maybe you should. Cause I mean in your, so the,
00:29:54
the books are really interesting because I mean elements also
00:29:58
corresponds to this structure where you have an introduction
00:30:03
about each section, so about each element in this case.
00:30:07
And then you have really interesting quotes from all
00:30:12
kinds of literature and from everything.
00:30:14
And and including like text science textbooks and things
00:30:18
there's lots of. Things in here, maybe in future
00:30:20
books you can kind of like put some of your poetry.
00:30:23
No, I'm not. Put it like that, I I actually I
00:30:27
did. There was for my second book,
00:30:31
Book of the Book of Change, which was a bit of an orphan
00:30:35
because it's not quite finished. I had a sounds like I'm most
00:30:40
accident prone to, but I did have quite a nasty accident.
00:30:42
We're doing it and it's also during COVID.
00:30:46
So it's not, and it's not quite finished.
00:30:49
It's not quite perfect, but it's just sort of, I regard it as a
00:30:53
bit of a sort of unfinished and potentially my masterpiece if I,
00:30:57
oh God, I said master. I don't mean I, it's potentially
00:31:00
my best book, but it's not quite finished.
00:31:03
I did for the introduction of that which I, because I had an
00:31:06
accident where I smashed my arm. I had to write the introduction
00:31:10
again in bed using my phones. I couldn't type and and it's
00:31:15
typed with just my thumb. And I did incorporate some of my
00:31:20
poetry in. I took it out before it was no,
00:31:23
no, I removed it. Why did?
00:31:25
You do that. I was slightly embarrassed I it
00:31:28
didn't it, it seemed incongruous with the pros around it.
00:31:31
It didn't didn't quite work. I'm.
00:31:33
Sure, it will come back. So I was trying to frame because
00:31:37
of course our names are exhibitionists and I was trying
00:31:40
to frame this idea and, and your interview in the sense that a
00:31:45
book can be an exhibition. So I, I wonder if that's
00:31:49
something that has brought up to you, has been brought up to you
00:31:52
that if you think like that or if there's a very, very crucial
00:31:58
difference that kind of maybe undermines that idea.
00:32:03
That it's an exhibition? Yes, I, I think it is.
00:32:07
I think it is. That's how I, that's how I,
00:32:09
that's how I try, how I try and frame it to myself and how I try
00:32:12
and envisage it when I'm putting it together.
00:32:15
And I do and I do as I mentioned that the thought, the thought of
00:32:19
having all the images and putting them out on the floor, I
00:32:22
also envisage them as as at least certain sections of most
00:32:26
books, as as if they were on gallery walls.
00:32:29
Yeah, because when you. Describe that for me, that's the
00:32:31
way a curator thinks. You know, you think of the
00:32:34
images together, you think of relationships between the
00:32:37
images. And I was even trying to look at
00:32:39
them and thinking, oh, there's a lot of approaches through
00:32:42
colour, for example. But then there's a lot of
00:32:44
structural approaches. The image is structured in the
00:32:47
same way and conveys a similar kind of not same, not same
00:32:52
message, but like a theme or approach.
00:32:55
And then there's relationships between very different things
00:32:59
and and you can see that the, the, the way they're articulated
00:33:04
together is much more, is much deeper.
00:33:07
And it's not only on the visual sense or kind of takes the
00:33:10
visual to another realm completely.
00:33:13
And that's where, you know, it kind of takes off and it's quite
00:33:16
an incredible experience to leave through the book because
00:33:19
the associations are not basic, you know, they're not like
00:33:23
they're really incredible connection.
00:33:25
So I was really kind of thinking about this idea of exhibition.
00:33:29
But then there's something that as a curator myself is really
00:33:34
funny because when I read the the captions of the images,
00:33:40
there's the title, there's the date and there's the author or
00:33:43
the artist, but you don't have size or materials.
00:33:47
That's not. That that's not my decision.
00:33:49
That's that's that is I see. Yeah, that's.
00:33:53
That's the house style of Thames and Hudson because.
00:33:56
I must say that I have kind of a very similar experience to you
00:34:01
when I was a kid. And being from Lisbon, from
00:34:03
Portugal, obviously lots of those masterpieces that are, you
00:34:07
know, encyclopedias, you know, they're in books, you don't have
00:34:11
access to them. And I remember the first time I
00:34:14
saw a painting by Caspar David Friedrich.
00:34:18
It's so small. And it changed the way I related
00:34:22
to it because I thought it's a much more cerebral relationship
00:34:25
to landscape. Than what I.
00:34:27
Thought because it's so small and for me the dimensions and I
00:34:31
keep thinking Oh my God, how big is this?
00:34:34
What is it made of? And I'm really curious about
00:34:37
that. And I'm interesting to know,
00:34:39
interested to know that you're curious about I, I and.
00:34:41
I always so, so, so, so on. As far as so on social, if I
00:34:46
post on Facebook or Instagram, I will always post that.
00:34:50
You're very careful. I will always.
00:34:52
Try and post the, the the the attributions and all the
00:34:56
dimensions and media and things where it's available.
00:34:59
Sometimes it's not always available or I don't have time
00:35:02
to do spend hours and hours of researching, but I know that's
00:35:06
important. I know that's important.
00:35:07
I know it's important both to the people that create it.
00:35:09
That is it respectful is out of respect to the the artists or
00:35:13
illustrators or photographers. But I think it's also important.
00:35:17
I think people appreciate that people who view it and it's
00:35:20
important to me. But it is, yeah, I think, I
00:35:24
think it's because a book of these this these kind of
00:35:26
dimensions that if you put too much on there, then it then it
00:35:30
clutters the desire sort of clarity and and cleanness of
00:35:34
design. If if I had my way, they would
00:35:39
maybe be. If it was, if that was a
00:35:42
concern, then I would have a addendum at the back with full
00:35:47
credit. But that.
00:35:47
Takes me to a deeper question, which is the status of images,
00:35:51
which I find really interesting because you and I have the very
00:35:55
similar experience of connecting with art through books.
00:35:59
Yes. And it's a.
00:36:00
Very, I think, common experience to a lot of people and suddenly
00:36:06
these very material things become images and become
00:36:10
something else. And I'm really interested in
00:36:13
that because in the curating world it's kind of anathema.
00:36:16
You kind of think, no, you have to respect the the work and what
00:36:20
you do here, you know, for example, exhibition catalogues
00:36:23
is really kind of shocking. Like you have to really
00:36:26
carefully think about the scale and about the material.
00:36:29
But at the same time, once you've absorbed the work or
00:36:32
you've seen the work published, it still exists for you in some
00:36:36
way. And that's the thing that I find
00:36:40
really interesting with your projects.
00:36:42
Suddenly you're in another realm and you're in a different
00:36:45
relationship with these images. Can you talk a little bit about
00:36:49
that? I'm not sure yet.
00:36:54
Yeah, it's, I don't know. I think that I, I, I try and
00:37:02
respect all the images I do. There were certain things where
00:37:05
and, and I try and, and and and I try and I, I do.
00:37:11
So I put myself into the, my, the mind of the, of the creator
00:37:16
of these, of, of, of, of all the images.
00:37:19
But I do and I don't, and I'm not egotistical enough to think
00:37:24
I'd give images new life. And although maybe in some, in
00:37:28
cases where they are drawn from maybe illustrations from old
00:37:33
encyclopedias or textbooks or, or 19th century illustrations or
00:37:39
children's book illustrations, I maybe do, I'm giving them new
00:37:42
life because they, they, they, they may be obscure or now or
00:37:47
currently or people that have been forgotten or unknown.
00:37:50
And I hope that gives them new life and putting them in, in,
00:37:54
in, in, in, in, in juxtaposition with better known things.
00:37:59
And I do think that they, they images do take on a different
00:38:03
life in a book than they do on on a wall or in a or in a
00:38:08
gallery. Yeah.
00:38:10
Let's say it because I think the other the the the reverse is
00:38:13
true as well, where suddenly you have a painting by Paul Nash,
00:38:18
for example, in relation with a a detail of an illustration of
00:38:24
an encyclopedia. To be honest, I don't know
00:38:27
exactly what a page I'm talking about and if it's true, it's
00:38:30
Paul Nash or someone else. But it does also give a
00:38:33
different kind of life to Paul Nash's painting.
00:38:35
You have on page 219 an incredible talismanic shirt with
00:38:45
the whole Quran written inside, which is already, I think, in
00:38:50
the book. It has that existence where you
00:38:52
can't see it, but you know it's there.
00:38:54
And then you have the Paul Nash painting, yes, of the sunflower,
00:39:01
which is absolutely incredible in terms of relation because the
00:39:06
the front of the talismanic shirt has a sort of astral
00:39:13
decoration, right? So it really is this ability for
00:39:19
this specific medium to bring these images together.
00:39:22
So that's really incredible that you're touching upon that
00:39:25
because there is now we're going through a phase, some of us in
00:39:30
the art world where we're looking at a very dry, dogmatic
00:39:36
history of abstraction, for example, of modernism, for
00:39:41
example, and kind of detecting all the spiritualism that went
00:39:48
into it, all the power that was attributed to images that kind
00:39:53
of was drained out of it. In some cases, even Mondrian was
00:39:57
interested in Theosophy, for example.
00:40:00
And that has been somewhat hidden to us, you know, in our
00:40:03
history. And you're kind of bringing that
00:40:05
up again. That's hugely.
00:40:07
Important to me spiritual dimension and all the
00:40:11
supernatural magical dimensions and of art.
00:40:16
I think, I think we, I think they're, I think they're hugely
00:40:19
important. And I think that we can, I think
00:40:23
in the world that we inhabit, which is so it's so grim and
00:40:27
going through this, there's no, there's no denying the fact
00:40:30
that, you know, if you, if you think objectively and you really
00:40:35
look rationally about the world, it's, it's absolutely
00:40:37
terrifying. We, we aren't living in
00:40:39
miserable and very quiet and scary tumultuous times.
00:40:45
And I do think that without being without, without without
00:40:49
adhering to any kind of necessary spiritual or religious
00:40:54
belief system, the way that you can connect with the planet is
00:40:59
via the spiritual strands in whether it not just whether it
00:41:05
be in art or whether it be in literature or poetry or cinema
00:41:09
or music in anything or photography, fashioning.
00:41:12
That's really important and that's not wishy washy and it's
00:41:15
not insipid. And it, and, and it should be
00:41:18
allied with a sort of pragmatic approach.
00:41:20
I think there's a way, I think if you're going to, if you're
00:41:22
going to address things like climate breakdown and, and, and,
00:41:26
and the, the, the kind of the, the obvious implosion of Western
00:41:32
hegemony, then you then to have a sort of a feeling of a
00:41:38
connection with a great something greater than yourself,
00:41:42
which is doesn't have to be a supernatural being, but can be
00:41:46
with, with other people and with the people around the planet.
00:41:49
That is the, that is the way forward.
00:41:51
And that's the, we have to establish those connections with
00:41:53
people. And I don't care if if that
00:41:55
sounds hopelessly utopian, because I think that is the only
00:41:58
way, the only way forward, because we're otherwise we're
00:42:01
being LED, we're being driven off a Cliff.
00:42:03
I knew. Your books through an artist and
00:42:06
the way they describe the books was everything coming together
00:42:11
and looking across the world of things that we have formally in
00:42:15
common. And I thought, that's terrifying
00:42:19
to me because I love difference. I don't like the idea of
00:42:22
sameness. It's great to change your mind,
00:42:26
you know, and it's great to learn with other people because
00:42:28
I've changed my mind completely. Because your books are not about
00:42:31
sameness, they're about these small connections that could be
00:42:37
aligned, you know, say, worshipping the sun, for
00:42:39
example, the Mayans did not worship the sun in the same way
00:42:43
some other indigenous population did in the Pacific Islands.
00:42:48
And maybe this idea, the connection that they have is
00:42:51
that relationship to the sun. But then there's a lot of
00:42:55
difference. And I think your books respect
00:42:57
that a lot. That to me.
00:42:59
That, that that is so important with, with what I do is to try
00:43:03
and represent as many different cultures and as many different
00:43:07
traditions and as many different diverse ideas and, and, and and
00:43:13
philosophical concepts as possible.
00:43:17
And, and it's not always easy to find to be truly represent a
00:43:21
different truly inclusive, but it's, it's actually becoming,
00:43:25
it's becoming, well, it was becoming easier, but until sort
00:43:28
of there were, there were certain great certain certain
00:43:33
corporations who are now making it more difficult to find things
00:43:36
because they're dependent actually on advertising.
00:43:38
But it is becoming more, it is becoming easier to find images
00:43:42
from different sources. It's still frustrating to me
00:43:46
that, for example, if I want that, that this, it's still
00:43:50
difficult to find, for example, a lot of African art online
00:43:54
accessible partly because it hasn't been digitised and it's
00:43:59
not easily scanned. And, and, and it, and it is also
00:44:02
frustrating to me that there's sort of a lot of indigenous art,
00:44:05
not just from Africa, but maybe from Oceania or from Pacific and
00:44:09
and South America, A lot of the things you know, and constantly
00:44:13
directed to American or European museums.
00:44:17
If I want to use African art, it's, it's really, it's really
00:44:21
disturbing for me that the stuff that's been stolen by a Met, you
00:44:25
know, it's in the Met or the British Museum or the Kunst
00:44:28
Historic Museum in Vienna. But that's that that those are
00:44:34
things that that that's accessible to a non expert like
00:44:37
me who doesn't have actually privileged access.
00:44:42
But nevertheless, I hope that the fact that people may spot
00:44:46
that those things are in European or American museums,
00:44:50
but that makes people question what they're doing.
00:44:52
And obviously they're obviously de de accessioning and the whole
00:44:56
thing of decolonising the collective collections of of
00:45:00
European and American. It's hugely institutions is
00:45:04
hugely important and restitution and giving due recognition to
00:45:09
the people that created those things.
00:45:11
But now. Shifting perspectives.
00:45:13
What is your element? My element.
00:45:16
Because there's. 5 right there's water, fire, earth, air and
00:45:23
ether. I would.
00:45:25
If I say ether that's going to sound incredibly pretentious and
00:45:29
self regarding I think why? Why, why why Why makes it like
00:45:33
I? Live on a I'm not airy fairy and
00:45:36
sort of above. I consider myself unworlded.
00:45:40
I'm not, I am perhaps slightly unworldly, but I do, I do also
00:45:45
have a, a quite a down to earth nature and perhaps an approach
00:45:50
to certain things. But I do possibly, I think fire
00:45:54
maybe as well, which may be, which may be slightly
00:45:56
surprising, But I'm, I'm I'm, I'm incredibly driven and
00:46:01
passionate about things. So I'm obsessive about things.
00:46:03
But ether as well, because I do think that because ether was the
00:46:06
most ether that actually do the chapter on ether was that was
00:46:10
possibly the most, it was the most challenging to compile, but
00:46:15
also possibly the most interesting and satisfying
00:46:18
because I could, I could publish several volumes of images of
00:46:22
water and fire. But ESA will present what how do
00:46:25
you represent ether? Because ether is basically
00:46:28
spirit. It's the stuff that holds
00:46:29
everything together. It's it's thought forms, it's
00:46:32
thought, it's processes of it's, it's, it's basically, it's
00:46:36
inexplicable. It's something deliberately
00:46:38
misdeed. So I had to think.
00:46:40
I had to think in the creative ways to try and of of of finding
00:46:45
images that which to represent that rather that wasn't that
00:46:49
weren't just sort of although the chapter does include a sort
00:46:53
of Victorian ghost and the great artists who who who the
00:46:58
channeled spirits like the Hilmer F Clint or Georgiana
00:47:02
Houghton and Emma Kuntz. I wanted to include other things
00:47:06
as well that made-up to me represented listen.
00:47:10
Yeah, I'm so happy you say that because that was going to be 1
00:47:13
the focus of one of my questions, because I reread and
00:47:16
read leaf and leaf through again the chapter on ether because I
00:47:23
find it the most moving 1. And I'm really interested in the
00:47:28
fact that the first full blown page image is Paul Clay's Dawns
00:47:35
of the Moth. I was so surprised the first
00:47:39
time I saw it. I thought, oh, why, why is this
00:47:42
painting here? And then, as you said before,
00:47:45
you go back and you think, ha, OK.
00:47:49
And I find it really moving this chapter because ether represents
00:47:54
at the end of the day and as far as I've gone in the book,
00:47:57
because as you say, this book will accompany you and all your
00:48:00
other books through your life. It for me, it's represents the
00:48:08
obsessive, almost hubris like drive to know the universe and
00:48:15
to look for answers and to look for a primordial thing that
00:48:21
links everything together, like a sort of ectoplasm that comes
00:48:25
from the ears of people. Because in the other elements
00:48:29
there's this really annoying thing of antiquity, which is
00:48:33
always the hierarchy. Which one is the best one?
00:48:36
Which one is the creative one? This is the way.
00:48:39
Of bursting through that and transcending that, yes.
00:48:42
But transcending hierarchy and transcending fixed.
00:48:45
Transcending a fixed system, yes.
00:48:48
Exactly. And it's absolutely difficult to
00:48:51
tell what it is. And your attempt to illustrate
00:48:55
it and give us several answers in correspondence to the
00:48:59
introductory texts that kind of gives a sort of overview of the
00:49:03
different approaches to this notion is really, really
00:49:07
incredible. And it's so inspiring.
00:49:10
It's really absolutely remarkable.
00:49:13
Like you have Paul Clay and Max, and but then you have real
00:49:18
images, scientific images. There were things like the.
00:49:21
The Russian Bone music, it's an X-ray that has been transformed
00:49:26
into a record, a vinyl or not vinyl because it's a long X-ray.
00:49:31
And this was I I found out about these completely by accident.
00:49:36
Somebody interviewed me, Uncle Stephen Coates, who does a
00:49:40
programme on Soho radio, and he interviewed me about
00:49:44
underworlds. And then we've started talking
00:49:47
about general things and he we mentioned these and he has a
00:49:50
whole website full of them. What these are, what, what these
00:49:53
are, are these are artefacts from Stalinist Russia.
00:49:58
And then sort of slightly later Khrushchev and conceded when
00:50:04
Western popular culture was prescribed and considered and,
00:50:08
and was banned basically in in the Soviet Union.
00:50:11
And so there was a huge underground scene where people
00:50:15
would smuggle records into into into Russia and throughout
00:50:22
Eastern Europe post post Second World War in particular, there
00:50:28
was a huge appetite for jazz, particularly sort of modernist
00:50:32
bebop jazz post Second World War.
00:50:35
And it, this was, this was a mark of rebellion.
00:50:38
So there would, there would be this underground where people
00:50:40
would smuggle records in and they would be distributed widely
00:50:45
and people would, would, would, they'd have underground clubs.
00:50:49
But if this was highly dangerous, particularly in
00:50:51
Stalin's era, for the before the Second World War, there were
00:50:56
records were smuggled in, particularly from from Europe
00:50:58
and, and the and the States. But after Second World War,
00:51:01
there was a terrible this was complicated by the fact that
00:51:06
there was a complete shortage. There was no acetate, so people
00:51:09
could not, they worked out how to say what they they would
00:51:11
reverse engineer record. They had cutting sort of
00:51:14
underground cutting plants where they were cut, where they would
00:51:17
basically bootleg tribute them, put them in in book covers and
00:51:20
sell them and distribute them throughout the Soviet Union.
00:51:24
After the war, there was no they they couldn't get hold of
00:51:27
acetate. So there's nothing to make the
00:51:28
record from until somebody worked out that X-rays are
00:51:33
basically acetate and they, and they tested it by and they
00:51:37
tested using X-rays and cutting records on them and it worked.
00:51:43
And so there became this thriving scene where people
00:51:47
would they, they did do deals with hospitals where they would
00:51:52
get discarded X-rays and they would, or they would actually
00:51:57
break it and they would steal X-rays and then create records
00:52:02
out of them. And this, this, this lasted
00:52:07
until from, this is essentially from sort of the immediate post
00:52:11
Second World War till about 1965.
00:52:13
So the, the image that's in the book is, is basically of a it's,
00:52:18
it's an X-ray of somebody'd neck.
00:52:20
And I think it's a broken neck that has been transformed.
00:52:23
This I believe is a, is a Charlie Parker 78.
00:52:28
The fidelity is not wonderful, but it's but it's so it's so
00:52:32
sort of Peters out sort of about 1965.
00:52:36
But there are things like the early Beatles albums and Bob
00:52:38
Dylan things that are on expressed on X-ray X-rays of
00:52:42
people's sort of tumors or the fractured legs, which are
00:52:46
basically like A Hard Day's Night or with The Beatles, or
00:52:50
it's just the most extra. And they're they're kind of the
00:52:53
the the ingenuity and the human that just to just to do this is
00:52:58
just extraordinary. And some of them are just
00:53:01
incredibly beautiful artifact just to look at it's so.
00:53:04
Tragic, Yeah. At the same time, because it's
00:53:06
disease, you know, it's I'll bodies trying to bring music and
00:53:11
joy to people and arts in a, in a very authoritarian context.
00:53:16
It's it's so incredible. Do you find yourself more drawn
00:53:20
to images when they have a history behind them, or do you
00:53:26
have drawn to specific kinds of images?
00:53:29
Do you notice a pattern in in your I?
00:53:32
I don't think no, I they don't necessarily have to have.
00:53:37
They can be. They can just be a purely
00:53:38
beautiful image and just pure, just pure abstracted that maybe
00:53:42
doesn't have any. It just appeals to me on a
00:53:45
purely emotional or aesthetic level so I can.
00:53:49
Plug your Instagram account. It's quite interesting because
00:53:53
sometimes something happens. I go on Instagram and I see one
00:53:57
of your images and I see tongue in cheek reaction to, you know,
00:54:02
things that happen worldwide and.
00:54:05
An oblique relationship with the sort of commenting oblique.
00:54:08
Yeah, I do that. Yeah.
00:54:09
Most people probably don't get it, but and that's that's that's
00:54:13
that's perfectly. That's absolutely fine.
00:54:14
I don't expect, but because it it it appeals to me.
00:54:17
I do it for my own benefit primarily.
00:54:20
But I hope that people see that I'm commenting on current
00:54:24
events. Sometimes that gets me into a
00:54:25
lot of trouble, but we won't but.
00:54:27
It's, I think it brings connectivity and a sort of
00:54:32
solace because at the moment we have such a hard time talking
00:54:36
about what's going on for fear of depressing the person in
00:54:41
front of us or, you know, bringing even more sadness into
00:54:45
people's lives. So sometimes we try not to bring
00:54:48
too much, you know, these subjects that are, you know,
00:54:51
really worrying us and seeing images online that kind of hint
00:54:56
at that situation and just they make you feel less alone in this
00:55:02
collective sadness or worry or, you know, despondency that
00:55:06
sometimes you can fall into. So it, it really is, there's a,
00:55:10
a power of images that I think, I don't know if you agree with
00:55:14
this, but sometimes I see images as if they're lying dormant and
00:55:20
someone comes and wakes the wakes them up.
00:55:22
Yes, I. I do agree with that lie to that
00:55:25
there is. There are images that may be
00:55:28
very familiar that have a different meaning and can and
00:55:32
you can and can be mined and used.
00:55:35
It's interesting. Because we're talking on the
00:55:37
very day, hopefully the last day, that Storm Dara is hitting
00:55:42
the UK. And I did notice Jeff Walls, a
00:55:45
sun gust of wind after Hokusai. And I looked at it in a
00:55:50
completely different way because I've always.
00:55:52
So this is an image of four men, the fourth of which on the far
00:55:58
left side is sort of scattering documents and papers that are
00:56:02
flying about. There's kind of a a tree that's
00:56:06
also kind of bent by the wind. And I've always focused on the
00:56:09
foreground. I've always focused on the four
00:56:11
men and today I was looking at it and I was looking at the
00:56:16
background and looking at the weird choice of background that
00:56:21
seems so much of kind of urban or near, you know, those those
00:56:30
landscapes in the outskirts of cities a fashionable.
00:56:33
Way it's liminal spaces, but also sort of wasteland.
00:56:37
It's there's something very apocalyptic about this image,
00:56:40
absolutely. And I had never seen it like
00:56:42
this. I always saw it as a sort of
00:56:44
prowess of staged photography that's supposed not to look
00:56:49
staged. And all this discourse that was
00:56:53
always surrounding Jeff Wool images for me, you know, And
00:56:58
then today I had a completely different relation to it.
00:57:01
And I focused much more on this background.
00:57:05
I mean it looks. Like a still from the movie,
00:57:10
like the road or something like that.
00:57:14
And I think it's an extraordinary part.
00:57:16
It's again, this is a very familiar image and the image
00:57:20
that people that are over the last 20 or so 30 years, I guess
00:57:24
it is natural people have been familiar with.
00:57:27
But I think it would praise constant.
00:57:30
There are depths to it that yes, as you, as you correctly pointed
00:57:35
out, and I was looking at it for not doing it, for putting
00:57:38
together like a PowerPoint presentation for talks.
00:57:41
I was comparing it to, to the actual hockey side, how he's
00:57:45
really clever way that he references it and, and, and
00:57:49
subverts it. But also as I found a lot of the
00:57:52
preparatory work and all that because it was a product of it's
00:57:55
basically Connor's product of a couple of years work and
00:57:58
planning and just some of his preparatory.
00:58:02
He apparently worked and sketches and basically collage
00:58:07
is putting things together to see individual small photocasts
00:58:11
to create, to create what is basically a large.
00:58:15
It's essentially a collage rather than it's just, it's just
00:58:19
extraordinary, the process that's gone into this and the
00:58:21
thought and the and I yeah, I think it's one of the most
00:58:25
powerful images of the last 50 years.
00:58:27
Yeah, it's. Incredibly powerful and like you
00:58:30
say, you know, it keeps changing and the relation to it keeps
00:58:33
changing and what's left for me? But to ask you, what would your
00:58:38
dream exhibition be? Would it be in space in the
00:58:42
museum? Would it be in a book?
00:58:44
Is it your next book? What what would your dream
00:58:47
exhibition be? A.
00:58:48
Film, a film, film or film or theatre.
00:58:53
I think that sounds hugely ambitious.
00:58:56
I would like to do and, and I'm talking to people about doing
00:59:01
actual exhibitions in galleries. So there were things, there are
00:59:04
things that that that not quite confirmed but are like 90%
00:59:09
confirmed that would be happening in the next couple of
00:59:12
years with people. My next book is hugely ambitious
00:59:20
and it's going to be slightly a different, a different format
00:59:23
and a different entirely new approach.
00:59:26
So it's getting the my next book more explicitly addresses the
00:59:31
the current state of the planet in a, in a more direct way
00:59:35
because it's it's it's the title is Ark.
00:59:38
So it's basically going to be, it's an attempt to Noah's ark in
00:59:43
book Paul, what do we want? What do we say?
00:59:46
From the living. World and my original
00:59:48
discussions Timbers and Hudson were cheap.
00:59:50
Oh why did we include everything that's too vast a subject would
00:59:53
include the products of human imagination.
00:59:56
If you start in front of include art, music, literature,
00:59:59
philosophy, science, etcetera. It'll be in multi volume series
01:00:04
of books and impossible tasks to do.
01:00:06
So I'm focusing on just on flora and fauna.
01:00:08
So it's animals and plant life. So it's living things.
01:00:12
So I want it to be a celebration and also a call to, you know, an
01:00:19
alarm call And, and my most hyperbolic, I want it to be a
01:00:24
sort of manifesto for a better planet.
01:00:26
Amazing that. Sounds absolutely incredible and
01:00:29
I can't wait for it. Thank you so much.
01:00:31
Thanks very much and hopefully we'll have a chat again for
01:00:35
about the new book in a few years.
01:00:37
When is it going to come out? All being well, Spring 2026.
01:00:44
Good luck with. This project.
01:00:45
Thank you so much, Stephen. Thank you.
01:00:47
Thanks.