From the Artist’s Mouth Jul 2024 Jack Brown

the Fourdrinier is an online journal dedicated to contemporary artists, exhibitions and visual art projects, with a focus on the North West. As part of our remit, we’ve always sought to give coverage to independent, artist-led and not-for-profit spaces, and individual artists.  With this in mind, we are opening up a pre-existing section on our site, ‘From the Artist’s Mouth’ to allow one artist or artist group per month/issue to submit a text of their own wording (whether descriptive, critical, or experimental – subject to editorial). Please see the ‘About’ page and/or email thefourdrinier@gmail.com for more information on ‘From the Artist’s Mouth.’ This new strand kicks off with Greater Manchester-based artist, Jack Brown, who has a studio at Paradise Works, Salford and is represented by Gertrude.

What I talk about when I’m talking about my work.

Jack Brown

I discuss my work with all sorts of people; artists I know, members of the public, people I work with, visitors to my studio, participants in my public projects, school kids, friends and strangers.

Through conversation I repeat, refine and rehearse the way I talk about the work I make and how I make it.

What follows are eleven headings or quotes from recent discussions about my work, things I’ve noticed myself saying, things I felt worth getting down on paper.

A constellation

I describe my body of work as a cluster or constellation.

Some artworks are central, in comfortable conversation, others a little further out in dialogue with the core. One or two positioned far away from the centre but still held in the same orbit.

I don’t work in a straight line, a work just finished does not lead to the next. I jump around restlessly between projects, unfinished works, new ideas, tinkering with an ongoing series or pulling something out of a drawer to re-assess it or make a new version of it.

So, imagining my artworks as a cluster or constellation reflects the way they are made.

I see them floating in space, re-positioning, re-aligning, grouping and ungrouping as works are added or subtracted.

This also allows for outliers or satellite artworks, a long way (stylistically, thematically, aesthetically) from the central constellation, but still part of my body of work. 

I could draw a star map of my works, capturing them in their current alignments. I’d draw in lines of connection, circle groups and name sub-sets, only for the drawing to be out of date a month later as the whole thing will have shifted around and settled into a new configuration.

The dirt off the back of a van

Since childhood I’ve been interested in incidental details, leftovers, bits and bobs, animal tracks, clues.

As an artist I’m drawn to the overlooked, stuff I think other people may have missed.

And if I look back over the works I’ve made I find I’m often dealing with trace (human, animal, societal) in the (often urban) environment.

Once we are looking at trace, we are really looking at absence. The body or object is no longer present. There is a poetry to this, a new mini-history emerges between the original thing or moment and its trace.

I think that’s why I’m drawn to these little stains, residual smudges, flecks and gestural marks, they reflect something of the mismatch between the solitude and the fierce kinetic energy of our cities and towns; the lone commuter, a smashed bus stop, a lost shopping list, an empty rope swing, a keyed car or the working patterns of a white van driver.

To wander, mooch or drift

I love a wander, a day of exploration. Carving out time to pass through or be in places differently; switched onto a task, maybe collecting things, taking photos, making notes or looking out for a particular detail.

I’ve always been drawn to the outer edges, the peripheries of a place, the back alley, the boundary fence, the top level of a multistorey carpark, the foreshore.

I make, or at least start works in these spaces. Sometimes I’ll realise or leave artworks in these spaces too.

When I’m wandering/working in a busy urban setting (car park, train station, shopping mall, on a bus) I’m aware I’m drifting against the normal flow of these spaces.
I’ve slowed down, I’ll have some equipment with me to take a sample of something, or take a transfer off a wall, or maybe I’m secreting an artwork somewhere to be found when I’m gone.

I’m mindful, in these moments, of issues around permission, class, race and gender. It’s easier for me than most to wander, to drift or do ‘weird art stuff’ in public spaces, safe and unchallenged. I’m also aware of the possibility of my own actions becoming almost instructional, an invitation to others to wander out of the ordinary.

The lists

I’ve got lists and lists of possible artworks, ways of making artworks, tasks, starting points and titles.

Some lists are made up of phrases or words; cat’s eyes, a vibrating table, a wedding ring in a lake, the smell of burnt toast. Some lists are more to do with ways of making or possible outputs; carve it in wood, a beach towel, a large varnished drawing, use an escalator handrail as a dolly for a video camera, tin foil casting, a ship’s bell, shampoo in a fountain.

There are lists that are titles or formulas for artworks; rubbing out annotations in library books, someone who’s passed out drunk and been drawn on, tug of war drawing, clock covers.

Some ideas sit in these lists for years, some are added and get made straight away.
Usually though, something else, some other force, or reference or event (personal, domestic, global) happens, the world changes and an idea I’ve been sitting on chimes, it resonates and I’ll start to make it into an artwork.

‘At large’ and ‘of use’

After graduating in London I got a studio, worked in a pub, painted and kept my life/job/income generation separate to my studio practice. I gradually found work in education, ending up working at a primary school as an artist in residence in Deptford, London. This led to 15 years of leading public facing projects, working with school kids, community groups, galleries, artist networks and festivals.

I was out and about being a useful artist. I’d found a work ethic that had evaded me at art school and was keenly aware of the value of art and contemporary art practice as a tool of good. The boundaries/hierarchy between my ‘work’ and my work with other people had collapsed.

This collapse, combined with a spell of not having a studio, pushed my practice out into the world.

Having relocated to Manchester, being ‘of use’ continues to be an anchor point for my practice. It currently spans studio based making, public realm commissions, work in schools, developing projects in conversation with communities and producing outputs for galleries, institutions and public spaces.

My imagined audience

This stems from a late-night conversation with an artist friend of mine.

We were talking about who we thought of as the audience for our works.

Who were the people we made work for?
Without thinking about it too much I said it was the kids and families from the primary school I worked at, people living culturally rich lives without much need or interest in contemporary art or artists. Since then, having thought about it more I’m pretty sure that’s who I have in mind when I’m planning, making and sharing my work.

Of course, my peers, curators I’m in dialogue with, subconscious art ancestors and stylistic ghosts wander amongst this audience, but at its core it’s largely from outside the artworld, ‘unprimed’ and uninhibited by the baggage of ‘art lingo’ or for that matter art history.

This means I try and make works that are generous, open and have multiple ‘ways in’. These ‘ways in’ span common cultural references, humour, art world tropes, placing the work outside of a gallery, familiar materials use in unfamiliar ways or sharing the authorship of a work during a public project I’m leading.

Trying to say anything but ‘Multidisciplinary’

Many of my contemporaries describe their practice as multidisciplinary. It’s a useful categorisation, but for me too serious, too dry and it makes no sense to most people I talk to about my work.

I’ve instinctively worked across mediums, medias and modes of output for most of my artistic career. I’ve recently been mulling over the idea that this way of working mirrors how most people consume culture today; across a range of mediums, medias, platforms and situations.

So, it feels natural, to me, to make artworks/add new cultural items into the world, in a way that reflects the way I and most people around me interact with the world.

It would arguably be quite odd for someone alive now to try and make sense of the world by just looking at paintings, no internet, no newspapers, just actual paintings. So it follows that it could be seen as odd that artists self restrict their output/how they make sense of and affect the world to one discipline.

These observations look OK on paper, but I’m still stumbling around them in conversation, they need more chat, more testing, to be challenged and corrected.

Moving away from words like ‘multidisciplinary’ and towards a more lyrical way of positioning my practice is an attempt to ‘unwankify’ the language I use around what I do.

Collective peripheral vision

I’ve been using this phrase to try and describe where I look for common or familiar reference points for my work.

I like to use points of reference that take a bit of work to get to, to retrieve or remember. Things out on the edge of our communal reference pool.

These references work as entry points to my artworks; floral foam, narco subs, the grease mark left by a passenger’s hair on a bus window, a fruit machine, soap, the football chant ‘glory, glory Man United’ or the pattern of a crossword puzzle.

Using these sorts of references slows down the viewers/audiences response to my works. They work as orientation points for the viewer, opening up conversations regarding personal responses to the original reference point and subsequently the work itself.

Through conversation, I float or try out new reference points, see if they spark interest, see if they resonate, while conversely discovering new insights, points of interest and observations about the works I’ve already made.

 Slightness

When talking about some of my works I use the word ‘slight’

There are some artworks I’ve made that are ‘only just’ artworks, they’ve made it by the skin of their teeth.

I will have found something of interest, taken it from the world, adjusted, tweaked, re-versioned it, maybe just recorded it. The new version of the original thing is then placed back in the world as an artwork.

Sometimes these artworks are placed directly back into the world (as in, they don’t go back into a gallery) and end up on public toilet sink tops, down street drains or become silk hankies. This adds to the perceived quickness of their turn around; from in the world to out with me for a tweak, then back into the world to be discovered.

Stretching and testing ideas around collaboration.

Collaboration in its many guises runs right through the centre my of practice.

At one extreme I work with unknowing collaborators; the person who left a residual mark or trace that I’ve recorded and transmuted into an artwork. At the other, I work face to face with community members to co-author new artworks about the place they live.

Looking at my work through the lens of collaboration, layers of authorship are revealed. Multiple players each adding their own touch, passing it onto the next.

I come in near the end as an additional author, before passing the whole thing onto the audience/the public, themselves the ultimate authors of the meaning of the work.

The tunnel

This turned up recently when I was making a speech at the opening of a public project.

I was talking about how working with other people affects my practice as a whole.

I was gesticulating (as I do when I’m nervous) and started to describe a tunnel, making the shape of a tunnel with my hands as I spoke.

What I was getting at was, that’s how I see my practice, I know what kind of an artist I am, I know the sort of works I’ll probably make, so I see my practice as a long tunnel or tube stretching out ahead of me.

What happens when I work with other people is that tunnel is stretched outwards. Working as an artist in conversation with groups of people or communities allows me to discover new reference points, go off on tangents, experiment with new tech, borrow from new pools of thought and through shared authorship make artworks I would have never got anywhere near to on my own.

After these periods of ‘tunnel expansion’ I’m left with an enriched and broadened practice. I could have gained a new making skill, been reminded about the potential of a certain medium, staged an exhibition/event in a way that will inform how I show my own work in the future or have been gifted a new peripheral reference that I might begin a new work with. I may have co-authored or ‘team built’ an artwork that I can bring back into my own constellation of works, to see how it complements, adds to or reshuffles what’s already there.

Jack Brown The grease marks left by a passengers hair on a bus window (2024) Limited edition digital print on paper. 30 x 30cm. Available to purchase via Gertrude. click here

Jack Brown

https://jackbrown.me.uk/

@jackbrownwork