1.If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
As long as I’m making something, I’m happy.
2. Can you tell us more about your work and what are the main ideas you would like to express?
I’m interested in making a hybrid model of virtual worlds and non-places. Influences range from the the Victorian’s fascination with Atlantis, psychedelia, computer generated imagery, wastelands, airposts, malls. Anywhere which is either visionary, or conversely, nowhere.
3. How do you start the process of making work?
The best things come from mistakes. I make something, then I break it. Then I remake it properly.
4. Do you consider the viewer, when making your work?
Always. It’s about communication.
5. Name 3 artists that have inspired your work?
Vincent Fecteau, Charles Ray, Rene Lalique
6. Name 3 of your least favourite artists.
There are some whose work I never considered to be art. I can never remember their names.
7. What defines something as a work of art?
The head and the heart. It is what transforms something beyond being just an object or an image.
8. In times of austerity, do you think art has a moral obligation to respond topically?
I noticed a lot of retail outlets over the past few years employed what I call ‘recession aesthetics’. Out went the the glossy surfaces and shiny metal, in came the scraped-back paint stripped wood. I don’t think art is obliged to, but it tends to reflect in similar ways.
9. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
10. What is your favourite ‘ism’?
Maximalism.
11. What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
It’s like sci-fi flower arranging.
12. And the dumbest?
It’s like sci-fi flower arranging.
13. Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
Roy Lichensteins” Mirror” pieces would be fun.
14. Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
To make or to sell?! The books have to balance.
15. If Moma and the Tate and the Pompidou wanted to acquire one of your works each, which would you want them to have?
I’d make them a bespoke wallpaper piece each – so I’d be permanently on their walls.
16. What’s next for you?
I am currently putting the finishing touches to my solo exhibition, “Dead Channel” at Vitrine Gallery. It involves a wall drawing made from cut paper which will cover the entire back wall of the space, which I think is my most ambitious project to date. After that, I’m really looking forward to being part of Alien Sex Club, a group show curated by John Walter at La Scatola Gallery.
