London Cult:<\/strong> Which leads to my first question \u2013 your current work. What are you working on right now?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Oh, nothing! Nothing! I think: What\u2019s the point? Why do you work? I sometimes ask that question. You know, the existential question: Why are we here? I\u2019m a little tired of working because I think one of the reasons for living is to share life. With somebody, with people, and I haven\u2019t been sharing much \u2013 I\u2019ve been working for myself. And it\u2019s partly my fault. I don\u2019t like to sell myself or change my work to suit others. I feel, almost, that I am not ready for this world \u2013 like when David Bowie says, \u2018I am from another planet.\u2019<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Do you think art always has to have an audience?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Well, but we all do! Don\u2019t you need an audience?<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Writing isn\u2019t very solitary. It has to be read by someone.<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> But it\u2019s more than that. An audience is important but my work is a journey of understanding. So when I paint it\u2019s a way of educating myself. Because I have always done my own thing. I\u2019ve always been doing my own projects. People say it\u2019s easy but you need to have a break. To get up in the mornings and to be inspired and to be working \u2013 it\u2019s not easy. The adrenaline has got to run.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Then what do you get inspired by?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Often, the visual part \u2013 say an orange or an animal \u2013 can inspire me because of the colour or the form. I use that as a kind of a pallet to express myself.<\/p>\n I\u2019m just finishing documenting and photographing a really important piece of work. It\u2019s important because it\u2019s not about an artist expressing himself or herself. Us \u2013 humans \u2013 we do what we can \u2013 we create what we can from looking at the past and then using that as information to create something new.<\/p>\n But what I\u2019ve been doing for the past fifteen years is collecting sacred texts from each global religion. Any religion that has over five million adherents is a religion for me to work with. There are about fifteen of these in the world. The largest are the Christians, and then there are the Jains, who are just over five million. I\u2019ve been collecting such spiritual scriptures from each of these religions in different languages. For example, the Guru Granth Sahib from the Sikhs, the Torah, the Analects in Confucianism. The Dhammapada\u2026<\/p>\n I stack them in columns \u2013 the smallest book goes on top and the largest below, and I put them one on top of the other. I\u2019ve done them in different languages, so the Bible may be in English and the Quran may be in French.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve done another column in different languages \u2013 the Quran may be in Japanese, for example \u2013 they\u2019re living shelves. It\u2019s also quite a dangerous thing to do. It can become sacrilegious when spiritual texts touch other texts. Because they\u2019re different sizes, the larger goes below. I have the Quran next to the Torah \u2013 the sacrilegious do that. They are sacred objects and I put them together: they\u2019re rubbing shoulders.<\/p>\n Religion plays a really large part in the way we live, so it\u2019s not a work of art. It\u2019s a reality, how we function, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m not the artist. These books are a reflection of who we are as humans \u2013 I find it inspiring.<\/p>\n I did it because it\u2019s a celebration of human belief. Completely. Because you\u2019ve got people who believe in religion, and then atheists, who don\u2019t. One\u2019s belief as an atheist is also important because that\u2019s how one reasons. You don\u2019t believe in God and therefore you do this and do that, and when you believe in God \u2013 it\u2019s the same. It\u2019s wonderfully reflective, it\u2019s extraterrestrial, it\u2019s as if the gods were hovering above our planet and seeing us fighting each other and loving each other. Although we have a limit \u2013 we are not perfect \u2013 we can show these beings above that we have a way of living, we have a respect for life.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Is that related to the project you were doing \u2013 Ambassadors?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Yes. Ambassadors is\u2026 Well, I was talking to a Jain and he said, Why don\u2019t you do portraits from each religion? So I\u2019ve started. I did him first.<\/p>\n I had to go to China, to South Africa\u2026 I wanted to go to the Mormons \u2013 the last saints of America \u2013 because you can\u2019t paint a Mormon, they won\u2019t allow it. I\u2019ve been to their headquarters in England and they said no. The other religion that you can\u2019t paint is the Jehovah\u2019s Witness.<\/p>\n Besides them, there are two other outstanding religions \u2013 Shintoism and Atheism. There are no Shintoists in Europe because it\u2019s not a religion in the sense that you go to a temple and meet each other. It\u2019s a private thing, so you have your gods, your little spirits, and you pray to them \u2013 they\u2019re by your bedside like in a theatre set. It\u2019s a way of life. I have to find an atheist, too, and not just any atheist but an atheist that we all know.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> We started off by talking about the past and the present and the relationship between these two. I went over your work and there was a collection that didn\u2019t have a name but it consisted of Irish landscapes painted in dark colours. I noticed that in your more recent work you used brighter, happy colours.<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> I wouldn\u2019t say they\u2019re happy colours. The 1980s, these dark landscapes \u2026 I was living in Ireland. They are just gestural. I showed them when I came back and got told by an artist that I should go to art school. They\u2019re just full of emotions. I went around Wexford, looking at areas: a tree that was broken, a landscape with a cliff. They reflected how I felt at the time.<\/p>\n I painted a self-portrait with meat behind me once, tearful. I always had problems with backgrounds. You know you paint someone, the eyes, the mouth. You\u2019ve done a portrait and you need a background. If you’re a sculptor your background is the world. With some portraits you use a bookcase or a landscape. I love meat, the incredible colours and the provenance of the various cuts. I painted the background of the self-portrait with meat, but I did it as if it was wallpaper. So these colours are very red, very blue. The colours are vibrant but it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that they are happy.<\/p>\n But really, I always preferred painting portraits of women. Because I just find this maternal softness in them. With men there is a lot of muscle and strength. In a woman\u2019s body it\u2019s different. So I\u2019ve done lots of portraits of women but not in the conventional sense of faces and bodies. I\u2019ve been taking parts of the body that represents woman. I paint parts. The eyes, the mouth, the ears. The bosoms \u2013 a door to yourself. I\u2019ve had many models whose portraits I\u2019ve done in many ways in different projects.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Speaking of models. Your show in 1999, Birthdays, was a collection of photographs of women, men, dogs \u2026<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Dogs were actually in a different one, but Birthdays was males and females of every age from one-year-old up to a hundred. It took three years to complete. They have more of an importance than if I have portrayed them by painting. Because a photograph is quite real \u2013 there is very little subjectivity. All these people came to my studio and stood in the same place to be photographed.<\/p>\n My then-girlfriend, Claire, and friends accompanied me to nudist beaches and I advertised the project. My family also helped me in finding models. It was difficult to find people of every age.<\/p>\n But I would do anything for my work. When I have these projects I will go the full length, and I love a project that\u2019s difficult. The more difficult, the more intriguing for me.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> What is the most difficult project you\u2019ve done?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> I\u2019d like to think it\u2019s a future project. I\u2019m doing this work with fish. I\u2019m going to Alghero in Sardinia to paint fish, and this project is going to be difficult because I\u2019m not good at living away from England.<\/p>\n I\u2019m trying to catch the spirit of the fish without actually depicting it as you see it. It won\u2019t be a head and a tail and a body: it\u2019s more that I\u2019ll try to document what I see to catch the spirit through the internal physicalities.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Japan could be a perfect place for catching spirits.<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Yes? Well, I am free.<\/p>\n But I love Italy. I\u2019ve been there for two years. Alghero has a port and there is a fish market for about two hours in the earlymorning. It\u2019s perfect for my work.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> You\u2019re not good at living away from England, what do you mean by that?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> I need to have creature comforts. I\u2019m terrible alone. I\u2019m not good in my own company, especially in the evenings. When you eat, for example. I find that eating is to share, eating by yourself is just really weird. Because it\u2019s a wonderful thing \u2013 eating food and conversing and sharing.<\/p>\n LC:<\/strong> Do you think that the modern world has become very antisocial?<\/p>\n
\n[Laughs]\n![\"Venimus,](\"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/anthony_noel_kelly-venimus_vidimus_vicimus.jpg\")
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