MICK PETER

 

Buckets and Planks

 

John LeKay:  "Buckets and Planks" makes me think about impromptu bridges that carpenters and bricklayers build on construction sites. The one plank looks like its wrapped in a tartan table cloth leading to an empty box. The set-up looks pretty futile and humorous. What are these planks made out off and are the buckets ready-mades?

Mick Peter:  When you need a parking space for your van you put down scrap materials, often lengths of wood raised up, to make sure you keep it. I wanted to harness this quietly unlawful act and make all the elements more precious, almost in a ludicrous way. Every part of the piece is studio made. The crate is made from cut card, the fact that it is direct copy of one that formerly held some rather nice Belgian beer helps, it lends it a kind of proto Flemish art connection which features in the title sometimes (I add 'trappiste' which would be beer making or any other monk-like activity!) The buckets are coloured rubber casts and the planks are folded paper with spray paint patterns. In a gallery environment I'm always at pains to install it in the most awkward way possible. It's a little anal like that, a bit painterly for my taste sometimes..

Decebrator

 

JL: When you talk about installing the piece in the most awkward way possible, do you intend for it to obstruct the indoor pedestrian show traffic? In the sense of occupying space, such as Richard Serra did with his monumental out-door "Tilted Arch" sculpture in New York City, in which there is a sense of occupying space in obstructive ways?

Why did you make the planks, buckets and box as opposed to using ready-mades?

M P: When I made the piece in the FRAC in Rochechouart, France, actually the invigilator sat behind it on their chair which was nice, almost like they were guarding the same thing as the work rather than the work. As far as Tilted Arch goes I usually refer to these kinds of bombastic works in a rather ironic way, I enjoy them probably because it's monumental art like a fist in the face!. The notion of making things from unlikely materials is about indulging in sculptures sleight of hand possibilities, creating a kind of new syntax of materials for every conversation built into a piece.

JL: Decebrator looks like a brain damaged and made out of polystyrene with additional spikes stuck into it. Also it brings to mind Chernobyl and nuclear accidents.  What did you make the spikes out of?

MP: The piece initially referred to a cabinet of curiosities. The overall shape is a derivation from crystals protruding from more awkwardly shaped rock. The spikes, or crystals, are made from card covered in an adhesive material which is printed with a pseudo marble effect. The idea of the brain or a cloud, nuclear or otherwise, really entered the work with the title and the display screen which sits in the front scrolling the title over and over. I paraphrased the term from a poem by, I think it was, Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Michael McClure. The time that was written contains many strange ideas of altering the brain in various ways, it also had great improvised hippy sculpture, I loved the imagery in Joan Didion's writing about Haight Ashbury and also the desperation and sordidness and wanted to make something about societies meltdown.

Bah

 

JL: Was "Bah" also included in the exhibition in France with Decebrator?

MP: Bah was made for a show with Michelle Naismith called Darling Treest Do You Need Telling here in Glasgow. In this case we had been working from a number of texts. Principally these were Alisdair Grays' Lanark, Huysmans' A Rebours and E.T.A Hoffman's The Life And Opinions of The Tomcat Murr.We used these novels to create some common starting points which made the show have a more coherent dynamic.

Fountain

 

JL: Pieces like "Fountain" and others have a kind of anti narrative component. Is "Fountain"  a reference to Duchamp's fountain, or would you say it's closer to an outdoor garden fountain / bird bath etc? 

MP: Fountain originates in a desire to make a kind of sculptural collage, a  thing derived from the notion of inter-textuality, cobbling things together from odd sources. It originated in a print and I was interested in transforming a 'wonky' object into being about decoration. The fact that it has a water pump adds to the sense of dislocation. In that sense art history is only as important as fuel for the cut-up machine!  I'm just as inspired by novels, particularly ones that have, as you put it, a kind of anti-logic. This would be things like Tristram Shandy, Bouvard and Pecuchet, The Life and Opnions of the Tomcat Murr etc.

You Bear The Stigma Close

 

JL: What about "You Bear the Stigma Close"?

MP: You Bear The Stigma On Your Mug was the first piece to be literally collaged from different bits of other sculptures. The rams head is a a clay rendition of a French print which draws parallels between different human physical characteristics and animal faces. As you approach the object you can see the coloured lights but only when you are over it do you see the glossy face bathed in red. It's a strange medley of theatrical and nasty interior
design, a purposefully uncomfortable pairing.

 www.mickpeter.com