Green Park
Euston
This Week we interview a couple of the artists who will be exhibiting their work at The Florence Trust this week
up first is Fred Sorrell.
1.If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
A doctor.
2.Can you tell us more about your work and what are the main ideas you would like to express?
I am using the torn posters from underground platforms, as well as other objects that interest me, as inspiration for my work. The contrast of materials and natural decay on the surfaces you walk past each contain a unique visual history, which for me reflects our experience of the city because they are a shared memory. There are times when I see a big blank advertising or construction hoarding that commands such presence. They can contain such a unique, almost totemic quality that I want to immediately recreate it and add my own story to it.
3.How do you start the process of making work?
My process revolves around combining my ideas with the visual information I accumulate from when I go out drawing and taking photos around London. I tend to make lots of thumbnail sketches with rough ideas for colours and titles, followed by a painted study that often dictates the size of the canvas. I find planning the work carefully in this way allows the physical act of painting to be more free.
4.Do you consider the viewer, when making your work?
Not when I am devising ideas, or while I am painting. But I am concerned about the quality of the work, which has to do with the viewer- I hope someone would be happy to look at it everyday and also I do want to make work that people find interesting and also gives people something positive.
5.Name 3 artists that have inspired your work.
Currently Robert Rauschenberg, Jose Parla and Brice Marden.
6.What defines something as a work of art?
For me, something that has beauty and has been thoughtfully crafted.
7.Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
That’s a good question! Picasso as an old man, content in his painting.
8.What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
That I had taken visual inspiration and ‘shot’ it ‘through the prism of my imagination’.
9.Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship? Agnes Martin.
10.Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
Yes. I put so much time and effort into it. I have to balance this with other work and pay bills… I could have been a doctor! No really, It’s my passion, it’s a career, it’s a skill I have developed so how could I not?
11.What’s next for you?
I want to keep working all the time, keep progressing and hope that I can produce something of good quality. I have two more exhibitions scheduled this year, so I’ll be making work for those. I’ll keep sieving through the ideas and let’s see.
You can see Fred at The Florence Trust Sumer Exhibition
And at “SHOT” WITH: HAROUN HAWARD,INGRI HARALDSEN,MERLIN RAMOS,FRED SORRELL LOUISE THOMAS
Opening on THURSDAY 1st of August at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (ArtEco)
Read Alexandra Wilk’s Interview HERE
