John LeKay: When did you first start making art and what were your first serious paintings like and how long have you been showing your work in the UK?

 

Mandy McCartin:  Some of my earliest memories are of my uncle bringing from his workplace these books of blank pages (god knows what they were and sadly he is long dead so I can't ask him) which I would draw in. I always drew as a little kid. My first "serious paintings, which I did in my bedroom in Sheffield at about 14 years old were about urban life, clubbing (I was, and still am, a big soul fan) and race. Most of my friends were black at that time (mid-70's) and the National Front was active and I remember making a painting about a racist march through a black area, and one about the megalomaniac power of the DJ! I have no idea what happened to them. I think I gave them away. When I went on to do a foundation course (Chesterfield College) the work carried on in the same vein - it was figurative, all to do with my immediate culture ( working class) and always had some message - I've never had the slightest desire to make art about art. Mine has to be about life, and also has to be accessible to a big range of people. On foundation I made large canvases about blues parties (reggae), installations about racism and lithography prints of Dillinger in concert!

My first real exhibition was New Contemporaries 1981 at the ICA. It was very gratifying because by the final year of my degree (North-East London Polytechnic) I had become alienated from the tutors - I was  passionately resisting their attempts to make me intellectualize my work, I could see no point in making things more obscure than they needed to be - and the painting that was accepted was done completely freely without any tutorial input, proving me correct in my own judgment.  I remember the tutors being quite surly and miffed about it!  So I've been exhibiting since 1981.

 

Milenium

 

JL: Can you tell me about "Two skins"; who these two people are and how this one came about.  Also, do you work from photographs or paint from memory or from life etc.?

MM:  OK. Two Skins were just that - I noticed them In Soho, firstly because of the leopardskin tattooed on one's head and then I noticed the other little weedy one. They were standing near some scaffolding which you can just see in the middle of the top of the canvas and were looking slightly bewildered at all the sex shop and live girls signs surrounding them. I have no idea who they were, but the painting was about fronts - looking tough but not really being it inside - another fucking self-portrait looking at it in hindsight ( one of my ex's reckons all my paintings are about me and she's probably right!  But I suppose that's the case for most artists...) I never work from photos - I just see something, some situation or person  that moves me emotionally in some way and really try to look at it (though with some of the characters I have painted,  staring hard at them is not a good idea!).  I find that if I have been moved enough to notice something, it remains seared on my brain enough to work from ,plus I don't get superfluous details to detract from the vibe I want to get. I suppose you could call it working from memory, but  I put it down in shorthand (words and pictures) in a small sketchbook as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I'm crap at being a proper artiste and am rarely carrying a sketchbook when I see stuff I want to paint.....             

 

 

Site Specific

JL: How have your experiences been showing paintings like "Site specific" to some of the mainstream London art galleries? 

Also what do you think of the London gallery scene and the YBAs? 

MM: I've mainly found a distinct lack of empathy for the subjects I choose and the way I present them from the gallery scene. There have been a few gallery owners who have been very enthusiastic but they tend to be smaller operations lacking sufficient funds and connections to launch an artist onto a different level, and often come and go.  I've always felt that galleries seemed scared of me and my work, my appearance, my accent and my direct manner . Although I'm very polite I'm definitely not middle-class and I don't think the galleries have any experience of working-class people within their portals!

But yes, things in the art world really changed for the worse in the late 1980's/90's. This shallow, advertising con-big star crap - its destroying pop music, film and art by being a cynically manipulated exercise in making people famous, not the work they are doing, which comes a poor second, and it shows. My work is very direct and I want people to be able to relate to it. I can't see the point of making something so obscure that no-one knows what the fuck it's about- all that bollox about "taking time to really see the challenges in this work" or something,  WHY?  Why would I want to waste my time pondering what something means if it has not been done by a real artist who can actually communicate strongly and has something to say. I've lost count of the dull, samey and downright pointless stuff I have seen at galleries.

As for the yba's - well, I'm jealous as hell, of course. They were lucky bastards, helped along by being in the right place at the right time and being a part of Saatchi's master plan to sell his product and make money. I haven't seen any of their work that I think is any good, a lot of 'em don't seem to even make any of their own work. I just can't respect them as artists - the whole setup is too cynical and manipulative.
 

 

 

Tube Girls

                             

 

 

 

 

Charity shop

JL:  This is a quote you wrote about your painting - Charity Shop (notes on the painting): It was a real incident. I was in a charity shop, when this bloke came in. He was screaming obscenities into a mobile and sweating. He was carrying cans of Tennents and sweating, and was obviously on something. He was very agitated. The words that are written on the painting are what he said to the woman behind the counter in the charity shop. After he'd left the shop, the woman behind the counter was quite shaken up, and I said I would paint it - it's the type of thing I paint. She looked at me as if I was mad. It just one of those sharp emotional urban moments that I paint.  Mandy McCartin
 
You have really captured a visceral and the highly charged energy in this painting. Not only in the man's face and body language, but also in the chaotic jumble shop landscape.  This man looks like he's been smoking crack. What do the words say in the painting exactly?   Do you usually paint in oil or acrylics.
 
MM:  The words in Charity Shop - there are two lots, the ones in red spray paint  on the left are what he was screaming into the phone as he came in the shop which were "It's not my fucking problem, get it sorted!" The words on the right on the white lines are what he said to the woman behind the shop counter which were "Oh excuse the language. love, that's my brother - I had to shoot him in the fucking kneecaps - do you want to buy this coat?"

When the woman explained that he was in a charity shop where people
donate clothes and that they didn't buy them he went out with no bother, still clutching the coat...

Apart from the very early days when I painted in my bedroom with acrylics I have always used oil paint - I think when I first tried oil I never went back. I do use spray cans, house paint and felt pens on the same canvases, though. That started at college partly because I couldn't afford decent oils (still can't) but also because I liked the variation of marks made and  because using street materials tied in better with my identity and what I was painting about.
 

 

Two Skins

 

JL:  What are your thoughts on the acquisition by the Tate gallery of a Piero Manzoni sculpture, (Merde d` artista), consisting of a can of his feces, which they bought for 39,000 pounds. But simultaneously rejecting 160 donated Re-modernist stuckists paintings, saying that they do not meet the Tate gallery's high standards etc etc etc?

Also what do you think about this post modernist phenomenon of "feces on canvas" in general?

MM: I had no idea the Tate had acquired this shit sculpture or whatever it is. I've never heard of the geezer either. I don't take much notice of the art press anyway, its always stuff that annoys or enrages me and I don't need it. This guy must have the right connections to trigger the emperors new clothes charade that makes so many crap artists rich and famous.

As for rejecting the Stuckists, I wasn't surprised - the Tate could not possibly do a u turn and admit its all been a big con all along, could they?  The public would without doubt have benefited from being able to see the Stuckists diverse work - some of it IS crap, actually, but at least it's INTERESTING. That's what I really hate about a lot of conceptual stuff - it's so fucking boring to look at!   That's why I have very little to do with it all - it doesn't hold my interest visually ...

And as for the  shit  - dull dull dull, its all been done before and it's just a gimmick, but its bloody worked. Must get one.

 

Fake Fur

 

JL: They seem to be drawing much more than usual critical attention in the press these days and from other artists.

Do you believe that there is hope for the authentic in art?  Or do you see the art establishment falling prey to more advertising campaigns, mass marketing and hypnosis etc etc etc ?

MM: I always knew that the bubble would burst, the emperor would be revealed in all his naked glory. (yes I know its a cliché but its so wonderfully apt) The stuff will go down in art history as an era of madness, where everyone ran like sheep after nothing.

I'd like to be optimistic and hope that real stuff will be promoted and helped - I know from the reaction of people of all kinds to my shows that there is a hunger and a big audience for art which has a heart and a soul, and speaks about being human and living in this world. The problem is that the art world seems to attract bloodless, detached people to its positions of power - critics and curators especially, and they have created this whole other world that they feel very superior in, and they are not going to give it up easily. As long as there are silly rich people who want to be part of that club, and will pay vast amounts of money for crap, it will keep going, but its so shallow its got to peter out eventually. Unless we are heading for a Brave New World scenario where everything is mechanized and instant and surfacey, and all the real people are living outside on a reservation - in that case, I'll be outside.

I think a lot of the problem is down to artists being on the whole very incestuous - they talk about art, they knock around together, show together, live in an esoteric world of pointless ideas and concepts that no-one else is interested in. I don't have many artist friends - I operate in a more mixed environment - I make art about what it is to be human, not what it is to be an artist.

JL: The woman looks homeless and an alcoholic. Do you know what happened to her neck?  

MM:  I have no idea. She was wearing a neckbrace. She was a bag lady in Brick Lane market, and what struck me was that she was sitting on a weird 70's patterned tubular steel framed chair, and sitting next to her in an identical chair was a teddy bear. It looked like it was her companion, I was in a very bad head (and heart) space at the time I painted it, as I had just split up with a woman and the painting is about loneliness and abandonment and fear, being old and alone and such cheerful stuff!

Back to Top