Room 103 Artist of the Day: Dave Stephens

Dave Stephens is a sculptor, performance artist and film maker. He has exhibited in many galleries including the Laing Gallery, Newcastle and the Economist Building in London. In his career as a performance artist he has performed in over 100 venues in the US, Canada, Europe as well as the UK.

His practise often moves between disciplines and some of his recent work combines elements of all of them. It is a way of giving a piece a past and future as well as the present. As an educationalist Stephens has been a visiting lecturer in many art institutions including most recently at the University of Brighton. He is also Head of Design at Varndean College in Brighton.

Dave is represented by three videos in Room 103: ‘Veil’, ‘Stalagmite/Stalactite’ and ‘Come Hell and Homework’.

Opening Soon; the Doors to Room 103

Creative Clinics

Individual artists and educators sharing words, actions, ideas and space in the first creative clinic in anticipation of the next exhibition- 'Drawing what is it?'

Creative Clinics are gatherings of like-minded individuals who may be able to make use of the gallery space on days when the gallery is closed to the public; currently Sunday, Monday and Tuesday*. An opportunity to meet others, work in sketchbooks and share stories.

For more information, please e-mail: info@orielqnarberth.com

*clinic dates are dependent upon the nature of the artworks being exhibited at the time.

Simon Garrett in conversation

Simon Garrett in Conversation with Glenn Ibbitson about his show at the Gallery.  21st May 2021

Dawn Flying was the result of a long process which was to do with making something that sort of curved blimp shape, part chrysalis and part airship, but literally weightless; with the idea of transition, transformation, change.  I struggled with this difficulty of making something which has no mass. I eventually came up by accident and frustration with the notion of making them in plaster. This resulted in a white form. At some point I just grabbed a brush and applied paint and almost at random applied the colour of sky, an evening or morning sky that gave it a sense of weightlessness: since it’s sky. This gave me the first inkling that I could think better with my hands than my head.

It almost became a three-dimensional canvas for you?

Not intentionally; I have a job distinguishing  between two and three-dimensional work. Some pieces need colour in some way that I can't explain and others don’t.

Now you have said that, these works link more closely in atmosphere to the paintings on the wall. Were they done at the same sort of time?

That's interesting; they have all been completed in the same time frame and there must be a relationship to each other but it isn’t conscious. They are all very tactile; their appearance is a result of a process, which is defined by material and intent; a feeling that needs to be articulated in some way. I no longer know what's going to happen when I start and that’s become an essential part of the process. I used to have an idea and try to make it in whatever form I conceived a piece, I made it, I finished it, I moved to the next work. This seemed to me a rational, cerebral, but essentially sterile working method, closer to design than what art should be about, it didn’t feed itself. It wasn’t organic. I would be thoroughly bored with that approach now, it no longer has any interest at all. Of course, now there is a risk that they could all go horribly wrong at any time - some people would say they do! I don't know what is going to happen at the start of the process but I have an unarticulated feeling.

The method reminds me of somebody’s description of Louis Armstrong's early cornet playing as with “the abandon of someone with absolutely nothing to lose”.

Interesting you should say that because the works have a very ‘Jazzy’ look to them.

Well;  there are improvised 

Which is the essence of Jazz isn’t it? 

I usually have 10 pieces on the go the same time which means I can always stay busy. There is always a surface ready to receive attention. A process which generates more as it goes along.

I wanted to get an idea down on paper the other day and sat down with my sketchbook and I watched my pencil do something completely different to what I had intended, and I thought let's just go with that. I really don't think that my rational brain is any use to my process. It's constructive idiocy in some degree.

These two paintings, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Glimpse are pretty much contemporary. They were named after their completion. I have absolutely no idea how I did that (Kiss Me) and I would have a job to make anything like it again. I had never done anything like that before and when it was made I was intrigued by it. It was another clue about working without using my brain.

Glimpse; the very simple blue-and-white painting there, puzzles me too. It is as if I didn’t have anything to do with its making. The American poet Robert Frost said “if there is no surprise for the poet, there is no surprise to the reader” If things don’t surprise me, then they get painted over or stuck in the bin.

What did you use to apply the pigment here? 

A cloth, I think. At some point I almost completely gave up using brushes. I often use my fingers to apply acrylic to canvas to make the process as direct as I can make it; as if forming the paintings and the sculptures were the same thing. Liquid and solid iterations of the same state of mind. The process is very direct between the surface and the hand and as tactile as I can make it.

Several of your works  remind me a little of Jean Dubuffet

I love his playfulness and he was obviously  a great champion of ‘Outsider Art’ which is a great interest of mine, together with paleolithic cave painting, which is probably the single longest fascination for me and is being reflected in my artwork more now. On one level art is what humans do and always have done for whatever reason; on the other hand it represents something very mysterious. I don't think I know any works of art that I really like that I actually fully understand.

The development of Western Art can be seen as an increasing cultural layer upon layer which eventually forms a cataract between the viewer and the object. I'm thinking in terms of prehistoric peoples by contrast having a much smaller cultural library to draw upon.

I don't know what the cultural sector was like 60,000 years ago! Essentially, they would've been just as we are; fully modern humans. With intelligence and experiences very similar to ours. Painting would've been very much more central to their culture. There is some very good drawing - and obviously not from life. I imagine they would have had a more visceral relationship with drawing.

It is interesting to view art by someone with an insider skill set but practicing outsider art.

 I think it possibly has in common with a lot of creative disciplines, that you have to learn everything about it; and then forget everything you've learned. Otherwise you end up trying to work with Botticelli looking over your shoulder, and several hundred years of art history breathing down your neck. I find it very difficult looking at other people’s work, either if it's interesting I'm jealous of it or otherwise I'm not interested and it annoys me so I have to be in a very specific frame of mind to be able to look at art.

When we were hanging this show together the other day I must admit I started out presuming the paintings were to be used as backdrops to the sculpture. I initially saw the paintings as subservient to them. It doesn't look like that now. The exhibition looks much more balanced.

There is a risk that if one puts them too close together they interfere with each other.  Sculpture can really hit you in the face in the way it occupies more volume. The paintings are to some extent field paintings; they're not so obvious. They take a bit more time to get to know. For example I don't know quite why or how, but sometimes their colours change with the changing light: movement. It isn't something that you see immediately. It's not intentional. I very much doubt I would be able to do it again because I don't know how it happened in the first place. There is an endless fascination with paint; it's a very seductive material.  

What are your thoughts on iPad art? I feel it has evolved no visual personality of its own as yet.It is the absolute opposite of what I do. My art is about emotion, feeling, and the hand and the way it manipulates physical material, if I can’t get it on my clothes I'm not interested. Digital is an interesting medium and I expect exciting things will happen - but not by me..

In the series of Beacons, I was thinking about non-digital communication over long distances. I'm a great fan of Alfred Wallis, I love his lighthouses.

Another outsider 

Yes, a sailor and an ice cream seller who wanted to paint what he had seen in his life, and also to fill in the long evenings after his wife died. One definition of the artist is someone who goes somewhere and comes back and tells you what it is he has seen. That’s what he was doing. I think that's what I do in a curious way. It resonates for me though whether it's a useful definition or not I don't know. 

listen: it’s the sound of the universe reminds me of those time lapse films of fungi growing on rotting wood

 Yes  a little boy came in the other day and said it looked like a poisonous mushroom. This I feel is a ‘quiet’ piece. It is unusual in that respect. I'm not quite sure why I feel it's quiet though I was thinking of hearing things; some sort of listening device.

In Blue with Strange Receptors, that was receiving something other too; I didn’t have a notion of what information it was receiving. It arrived. I thought, what is that about? After I finished it and looked at it it occurred to me that it did look as if it might be some sort of dream Jodrell Bank receiving some sort of signal or mysterious energy from somewhere are other in another way This one (listen) is much more emotional in a way that I can't put my finger on. The idea of dream as a metaphor seems to be a useful one. Another particular interest of mine is Aboriginal painting. It took me a very long time to begin to understand, as a Westerner, their creation idea of ‘The Dreaming’ the idea that everything was and is made in the dreaming. Thomas Pynchon said "maps begin as dreams". Dreaming [not the simple go to sleep dreaming] seemed to be a useful metaphor for a wider consciousness, rather than narrow rational consciousness that we use to operate a computer and so forth.

I wondered about tools which have no real obvious function. That's quite true of a lot of relics. They did have a function; we just don't know what it is now. The group of Three Magical Utensils come into that category. Perhaps like dowsing rods. I always thought I would make a good dowser, but sadly I’m hopeless, I’m not sure what I would be dowsing for with these tools. 

Dreams?…

As you can see these objects (the maquettes) are extremely delicate. Something I was thinking about at the time was chrysalises and cocoons and things going through stages of transformation. One theme if you like was movement; a spirit boat of some kind; the other theme was transformational change from one condition to another.  They are very fragile and difficult to make bigger. I don't usually sit down with a pencil thinking that I should illustrate or plan something out; instead very often it might be a rhythm, or trying to describe energetic points, or movement.

Talking about energy points; on something like Yellow with Warm Nodes they are almost like sunbursts 

For some time I imagined it was an asteroid; having started off as an ugly pea pod. It was ugly - it still is in a way. The asteroid seemed nondescript, so I tried to make it more suggestive.

A lot of the 3-D pieces are made in plaster. The armatures were made from a variety of materials; paper, aluminium foil, anything that can be formed by hand, tactile, plasticity is vitally important because the armatures have to be formed by hand freely and then after that a lot of it is rationalising the surface so it is a finished piece rather than just an armature. Texture is important. Form suggests texture. Similar shapes can be quite radically changed by texture Some seem to suggest that they need to be smooth; others rough. I am wary of over-finishing pieces. Some I have done and they lose their tactile quality, if they are ever completed.  Even the fairly smooth ones like Icarus are actually pretty rough if you look closely.

The exceptions are perhaps some of the bean-shaped ships, although in the case of Stealth the surface itself is very smooth and quite a lot of trouble went into finishing it  I seem to have deliberately ruined that smooth surface by splattering paint all over it in the most violent way I could. On top of the plaster I use a lot of gesso as a finishing medium; pigmented gesso. I use a lot of polymer clay because it is tactile; like a permanent plasticine. Gold leaf because it is a better way of getting a gold colour than paint. I also like the fact that gold leaf has been used for so long. Thousands of years….

Painting is almost always in acrylic unless I want to stick things into it. Some have elements of polymer clay gilded in them. A notion I pinched from the Palaeolithic; there are lots of instances  of teeth being stuck into cracks in their cave walls; a strange thing to do except that in a dark cave  they would reflect torchlight. Somehow that resonated with me in a way that I can't really put my finger on. It seemed to me quite sensible; quite understandable.

At least two of the comments in the visitors book describe these pieces as ‘edible’

I'm not sure about edible. l I know that they’re not. I quite like the idea because it's another of the senses which is being evoked in some way or other. It is not conscious, though I do enjoy cooking; maybe somewhere that expresses itself in some way through the work. I'm not sure I'd recommend they lick the work -especially post-Covid.

Something that struck me having put the exhibition up is how many of the pieces float, which is a slightly odd thing to say since I mentioned flying in the exhibition title. For some reason it hadn’t struck me. I was particularly puzzled by the pieces I called Trees which are obviously missing one of the key features of a tree; they have no roots; both of them float. I was reminded about some of the beasts in cave paintings. They are beautifully drawn; there was no lack of skill on the part of the draughtsman, but a lot of the animals don't have feet! The best explanation I've come across is that they don't need feet because they don’t walk on the ground, they are spirit animals. I have a feeling that is why my trees might not need roots.

SIMON GARRETT @ORIEL Q