R.M Phoenix Answers FADs Questions

Image:White Diamond

Where did you study art? Did the school shape your approach to art making?
I did a foundation year at Chelsea college in 1998, and then my degree in Bath straight after. Not at all, I was such a lost soul at university and there was such a long time between leaving those places and actually finding an approach to art making that works for me. Though the confidence I got from my tutor at Bath, Michael Simpson, has stayed with me.

You currently work with artist collective Portable Isolation Unit, is it important to you to work collaboratively?
Not especially, but it can be interesting and a welcome challenge. It’s something I like to try and do when someone else’s work excites or fascinates me.

CRUX is an exhibition about shifting perception and knowledge, how does your work respond to this?
I think the work presents a proposition of simplicity that then undermines an initially accepted perception, highlighting surface and material as well as subtleties and frailties in the systems of making. I’ve been interested in Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Verfremdungseffekt’, a dramaturgical device he used to distance the audience from a comfortable entertainment, with the intention of highlighting social ills so that the audience would reflect on them and be driven to act. I’m still unsure of how my work actually reflects this, but it’s one of the driving forces behind what I do.

You work across many different mediums, including books and record covers, do you think it has become more common for artists not to limit themselves to one?
I don’t think it’s any more or less common than ever before.

Your work has become increasingly stripped back over the past year, is this a movement towards purity of form? What has driven this?
Working previously in a more gestural and expressionistic way made me unhealthily anxious, and I found it difficult to acknowledge an end point in my work, there was never any reason to stop working on a painting. I don’t see it as anything to do with purity though, maybe more like clarity.

You’ve recently exhibited in Mexico – how does the art world differ there? Did you feel it was a radically new audience for your work?
I have no idea. I was put in touch with the artist D*Face who had been asked to include some work from artists he liked in a drawing exhibition. I gave him a drawing and it got posted to the museum in Mexico.

Do you feel like there is a coherent movement or group of artists emerging in London the moment?
Not really. As ever there’s some interesting work, some work I strongly identify with, made by interesting artists that can end up in the pub together, and lots and lots of crap.

Do you think the arts cuts will impact on young people’s ability to pursue careers as artists?
Sure but I think it’s more of a worry how much the cuts are impacting on young people and people with disabilities just trying to have an education and a decent way of life. Being an artist is not a viable career, it’s a commitment to something that means something, with or without the cuts. I think what has more of a negative impact is the impossibly ridiculous living costs of London and leaving school with the lack of anything resembling a trade or something that can provide one with an income and a useful contribution to the soul and to society.

What projects are you working on beyond CRUX?
I have a book coming out with Museums Press, called ‘Anchor & Drift’, and have just had a print collection release in the US with Little Paper Planes. And in October I’m moving with my girlfriend to a small village in the hills of North Wales to give myself more time to make work

You can see R.M Phoenix at CRUX from 5th – 14th October