Robert Manners: When Paul and I got the Container space, we put a notice out for a kind of open show. We put the title Under Construction Forever on various websites to invite submissions. People responded and that is how you first came to us. So let’s start there. I don’t exactly remember what I wrote...
Ben Rowe: I can’t either. I can’t remember exactly how I came across it, but I thought it was interesting. I thought sandcastles were kind of relevant as they are temporary structures, they wash away, and also MDF being a building material, put up, ripped down. But it wasn’t until the day of the deadline that I actually got my submission in, because up until then, and still now actually, I’m very anxious about submitting my work. Previous to One I hadn’t really shown it to anybody, at least not in the art world.
RM: I didn’t know that. Just goes to show the less you know, the better it is. I remember when we got the submissions they were rather a mixed bunch, as you would expect. But yours particularly struck me. I just got it immediately. It was one of a few really important aspects of Container I was driving at...
BR: Sort of accessible...
RM: Really accessible. I’m sick of work that’s steeped in...
BR: Concepts you’ve got to read half a dozen books before you can understand.
RM: Yeah. You’re helpfully finishing my sentences, which is great because you said the right thing! I persevere as an artist as well, you know, going to these shows and coming out scratching my head, thinking ‘God, what was all that about?’
BR: That’s exactly how I feel. I haven’t got the patience to go and read half a dozen books to understand what was going on in a show.
RM: I agree; I would say the same thing. There’s obviously more behind that sort of work - I wouldn’t want to put it down just because I don’t understand - but on the other hand I think I’m reasonably intelligent and if I come out completely mystified then to me it’s just not doing anything on a certain level. If it can’t cut through and leave you with an instant... you know, if you can’t bond with it on some level, then I don’t have any time for it, I suppose. I’m left wondering what it is, or what its point was, even. I certainly think, from the point of view of my own work, that I don’t want to be inaccessible. Everyone’s work is complicated, but in my opinion some good work can be read on a lot of levels, and there are levels you can easily access whether you’re an artist or not. I think that’s really important.
BR: It is something I really try for with my work - for it to have strong concepts behind it, but at the same time to be accessible to anyone, and for it to appeal to people on different levels.
RM: I remember the first few people who saw [your work] just stared at it in disbelief. That was the technical aspect, I suppose. It immediately grabs you on that level, but - and it’s an important but - there’s more behind it. When you responded to Under Construction Forever and sent in the image of an MDF sandcastle, it was immediately appealing. A sandcastle made of recycled, collected bits of wood put back together in the form of a building, for which the material is originally used for, and round and round and round. Intellectually for me it was really sound, but also really understandable. It’s succinct and to the point and stripped down and that’s what kept appealing to me. You wrote about the use of materials and in particular with Under Construction Forever how it’s a building material and buildings fall down and get swept up and maybe chucked into a hole as hardcore or crushed up and made into a new building, and so it becomes a metaphor for all of those things.
This is a good point to say that from our point of view when we were putting these shows together, we weren’t going to have someone who had just come out of college. That’s just because I am getting old! Also because there are people who have been out of college for a lot longer, sticking at it and just trying to keep going. I wanted to show what they were doing despite all the difficulties. But you were different. When did you leave university?
BR: 2007.
RM: Only a couple of years ago then, but I’m really glad to see you.
BR: So am I!
RM: You have a real obsessive interest in your materials, and that is really important to me.
BR: Well, for me being an artist - you’re different to everyone else. I always see the artist being the odd one out. I have noticed that a lot of people come out of their degree and they don’t make skilled work, they don’t make things. It’s pushed to the side, almost frowned upon, you know, like you should be making really conceptual work. I didn’t really learn any skills either on my degree and it’s kind of coming out of my degree and getting to the point where I thought, well I’m making work, and I might like the work, but I’m not
really making. ‘Making’ was kind of the important word for me, it made me flip everything and start making.
RM: What did you make during your degree then?
BR: Lots of things with found objects. Combining found objects. There’s also the idea of nostalgia. A lot of those works made reference to films from my childhood and the found objects that I was using had immediate value of nostalgia because they are dusty, old, rusty materials, objects and things.
RM: But you say you weren’t making things.
BR: No, because I was literally putting one object on top of another...
RM: So assembling.
BR: Yeah, assembling. Almost like Lego, I guess.
RM: Is that because you were being encouraged within the context of doing a degree, that the idea, the concept, was king?
BR: Sort of. I’m not really sure how it all happened. When I was on my degree it never even crossed my mind to do stuff like this, to actually get down and start making things.
RM: Did you used to make things though? You’ve clearly got an incredible level of skill...
BR: Yeah, well as far back as I can remember I always made things - you know, those little packs of Airfix models and little craft kits. I have always been making things. All this is self-taught, things I have had to work out for myself. I haven’t really had much teaching at school, how to use a chisel or anything like that...
RM: Do you use a chisel?
BR: I prefer to use chisels because there’s something pure about carving with a chisel in your hand, taking away material and ending up with something. Although the way MDF is a lot of the time it’s just not feasible, I work with files and saws and sanding, really.
RM: The format of One was to present a new piece of work, hot off the press, the latest piece in an endless cycle of production, to represent where an artist is at that time, at that moment. Tell me about when I pitched the idea of One to you, because I felt you got it quickly.
BR: Yeah, I did get it really quickly. I liked the idea of downstairs having that one finished, polished piece, complete in itself. And I liked the idea of source materials being shown upstairs. I wanted my work to be accessible. It’s almost a route into my head to see the process that I go through, you know, looking at these films, slowing them down, finding these very minute details to replicate. It was a bit intimidating from the point of view that a lot of the time I work in my studio, doors shut. Nobody sees my work, I’m kind of very private about it. And then suddenly with One there’s nobody to hide behind or fall back on, you know, it’s people coming to judge my work and my work alone. It took me a couple of weeks to calm down from that. I hadn’t shown any of the MDF work before at all.
RM: See, I didn’t know you were feeling that at all. I didn’t know that you hadn’t shown any of this before.
BR: Well, I had shown stuff, but none of the MDF works.
RM: You emailed me actually, and I think I remember saying to you “would you like to do it?” I’ve discovered that’s really important. How the artist responds to elements of the show, the brief, and in presenting what is behind their work and things like that. Unless the person gets that and is prepared to tackle it, or square up to it in their own way, that’s what makes it interesting, their own interpretation of that, then it isn’t going to work. From my point of view it was very easy with you. What you were presenting in that area of support material is not a piece of work, it was an unambiguous and honest presentation of what interests you and makes you do the work that you do, it’s not subject to concept.
BR: In some senses it’s not about it being a finished piece of work, but almost a fluid motion from being downstairs and going into the source area.
RM: It’s definitely an integrated thing and you chose to use that smaller room and use the fireplace for the source material element of it, and that’s the same as I did actually because well, my work’s the complete opposite of yours, but I wanted to show a load of stuff in there that I use in my studio and it’s a bit chaotic and one thing I was trying to show was that out of that chaos there was a point and it wasn’t just willy-nilly whacking it up and there you are. There was some method in the madness. The room next door only had two pieces in it, so out of all of that stuff I tried to pick things and hone it right down to two pieces that were calm and finished and simple in the end and I wanted people to walk through there to go through this stuff and end up here. That’s exactly what I’m doing. It may be that way is a future layout. You walk through the source material bit to the other part of the studio, and that is a sort of metaphor for what the artist is doing, working through their stuff to arrive at wherever it is that they are trying to make more clear.
Tell us about your source material for this show because downstairs you had This Is It -Don’t Get Scared Now. Tell me about that.
BR: The piece downstairs, This Is It -Don’t Get Scared Now, is based on the film Home Alone when Macaulay Culkin gets left at home and the bad guys try to rob his house.
He makes all these cartoon-esque traps to stop them. There was this one trap in the film where there’s a fan in front of a big pile of feathers attached to a trip wire, so that when you walked through the door you’d walk into a big piece of cling film covered in glue and trip over the wire and the feathers would blow into your face. The thing that really struck me was that every single trap was designed to cause some kind of physical damage to the criminals, apart from this one. It just really stuck out and I thought, why is it there? It doesn’t fit the same kind of pattern as the rest. Looking up these films is to do with nostalgia and getting back to childhood - an easier time when you haven’t got to worry about money, or a job, or what’s coming around the corner next.
RM: Are you fighting that do you think?
BR: It’s a losing battle. It gets to a point where you need money to live and you’ve got to do the work, that’s the problem.
RM: ‘We are all Peter Pans’ you say on your website.
BR: I think secretly everyone is Peter Pan, no-one really wants to grow up and face the real world. But the interesting thing is as a child you have this urge to be part of the adult world and be grown up and have all these other things. At that point you don’t understand how easy things are.
RM: With it comes responsibility. So you’re freezing that moment or feeling in this series of works? They all come from the same source, don’t they?
BR: The same sort of era.
RM: Also in our show upstairs you had the piece from Back To The Future.
BR: In the film it’s called the ‘Flux Capacitor’. My piece is called Parted In Time.
RM: Would you tell me why it’s called that?
BR: As a kid I lost my dad and I grew up watching Back To The Future as one of those Sunday afternoon films they have on telly every couple of weeks. As a kid I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have a time machine and go back in time and alter the past, and save him, basically. Now I have made it and it still doesn’t work. It’s never going to work you know. And the title Parted In Time is taken from his tombstone. It just seemed to fit exactly what the piece was about and what I was trying to say.
RM: Interestingly, my show was, I think, rather like yours. It wasn’t really about my dad but a lot of him was there. There are other similarities in your work and mine through the use of certain external materials and words. I have done some work where I have punched a hole, embossed it into print and it’s kind of there, not obviously, but it’s there.
BR: Hidden below the surface.
RM: Yeah. I have never tried to make it blatantly obvious.
BR: That’s exactly how I feel about the Parted In Time piece; it shouldn’t be obvious what it’s about. But maybe it’s quite nice for people to look at it, and read the title, and start to think about it and their lives and what’s happened to them in the past and who would they want to go back and save.
RM: That’s something much more personal. You didn’t advertise that in the show and nor did I, actually. I wouldn’t want to do that, but a discussion like that makes it more serious.
BR: It takes the light-heartedness out of it.
RM: It’s a really good thing you just said there, because there is a slight quirky, jokey element, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory kind of way. But there is a slightly cartoon element isn’t there?
BR: I totally see that, in the way I simplify the objects so that I can work out how to make them. The show I was in, in Redruth, was the first time that I’d taken the fan out of the crate since One. I took it out, it was just the fan, it wasn’t the whole piece. I placed it on the table and stepped back and looked at it and thought actually it’s not that great, I could do that so much better now. I’ve noticed looking back like that my skills have improved so quickly.
RM: That’s normal for people who do anything like that - say if you’re a musician and you think I could play better than that but you can only do it the best you can at the time. That’s certainly taken me a long time, but you gradually begin to realize more and more that you’ve got to just do it. I think the hardest thing I find is to clearly identify when you’ve finished sometimes. You could always keep going on a painting, and keep doing one painting for the whole of your life, you know, because you just keep doing it.
BR: I get to a point with these pieces, where obviously you can see the imperfections in the MDF because it’s made up of lots of different materials compressed together, you get these anomalies in the wood that actually look like you’ve just left a dirty mark there.
RM: Does that annoy you?
BR: At times in does, if the imperfection is...
RM: In the wrong place!
BR: Yeah, just looking at this there’s one right in the middle of a key and it’s quite distracting. It does look like someone’s just left a mark on it -
RM: - a greasy fingerprint.
BR: I have to step back and think - I mustn’t sand that, I need to just step back.
RM: Because that’s tinkering with it, isn’t it? That’s prettifying it.
BR: That’s it. When do you stop, when do you step back?
RM: I think you’re right, because it’s almost like product design isn’t it? The final model before it goes to the mould-maker, before production begins or something. I do actually remember someone at your show making that comment, and I think they were being a bit, well very, critical of the level of workmanship. But from that point of view, and I think they were a model-maker, they were finding all sorts of faults with it, you know they could have made this better...
BR: I think that’s the thing though. If this was completely perfect and you didn’t have those imperfections, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. Going back to the ‘Flux Capacitor’ piece, the way that I make the pipe work on it is to cut hundreds of circles which are then glued together and sanded. What happens quite often is the MDF gets burnt as I’m cutting through it and it actually leaves a really beautiful mark on it. If that was all one piece that was completely smooth it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting, because also these lines that are produced almost create a grain to the MDF. Look there and there’s almost a grain.
RM: Yes, I’m with you, definitely. Because initially it appears to be some kind of
perfect reproduction and then you realize that it isn’t, it’s a hand made, crafted object.
BR: Exactly. I’m sure I could go to some company and give them specs, all the exact measurements and they could cut it on a laser, but then you lose that handcrafted feel to it. I think it’s nice for people to get in close and think - ah, that’s how you’ve made it.
RM: I was thinking about when I first came in here and looked at the MDF planes. I kept looking at them. I knew that all the things in here were made from MDF. I was standing about an inch away from them and I still thought they were made from paper, brown paper, folded. As I walked away I kept thinking, those paper planes in the corner, they were paper weren’t they?
BR: A lot of people who see them are like that, and some people will not believe me that they are made from MDF. You have to really push it and make them believe, because they have that quality about them. They are kind of strange pieces as well because when I started making them they weren’t about making a finished piece they were about actually just seeing how far I can push the material.
RM: It’s about the limit, isn’t it?
BR: Exactly, that’s it. I mean, what can I do with it?
RM: What were the films you had on a loop as the source material?
BR: There was Home Alone, I also had The Goonies, GhostBusters, Back to the Future, He-Man, Masters Of The Universe...
RM: Which was the one of the turbaned guy with the red eyes?
BR: That would be Big. That film interested me because it was about a child who wanted to grow up and become an adult, and the moment he did he wanted to be a child again. That seemed to fit in perfectly for my work and what it was about.
RM: Yes. Having had feedback from the people who came to your show, who spoke to me about it, you got a really interesting reaction. Having done it and faced the brief really well I wonder what your thoughts were about the work you’re doing, did it influence in any way what you’re doing? Not by changing what you’re doing, but because I asked you to present what was behind what you were doing, has it helped or hindered you in going about this current piece of work that we’re looking at?
BR: I don’t think it has. In some sense it has helped people who have seen my work and people who are going to see it again, now they know my source material and they know where I’m coming from. Hopefully when they see a new piece there will be that element of, “oh, I don’t know what that is, what film is that from?”
RM: Has it made any other ideas come up, or made you look at what you’re doing in a slightly different light than previously?
BR: I don’t think it has actually.
RM: I only ask you that because some of the people who have exhibited have said that it’s been a really interesting experience, and in having to present stuff about source material in this particular way that it’s made them think quite hard about what they were doing and that was a good thing, a very positive thing. Maybe - and I’ve been thinking about this as I’m talking to you right now - interestingly enough you’re the first person who’s said “not
necessarily”, and I’ve just thought perhaps that is because you are recently out of
university, which is a very concentrated time that one gets to think about everything, and actually the rest of us who have done it (One) have been out of it a lot longer, and it’s harder to keep that kind of level of momentum up and maybe that’s why they, myself included, found it a really good exercise in concentrating hard about what we are doing at this time and where our practices lie, where are we with our work right now? Pulling a lot of threads together that have been knocking around. Maybe that was the difference.
BR: It could be that or because I work in the art world (as a gallery technician) I’m constantly working with artists and talking to artists; I’m so saturated with that world and that way of thinking.
RM: It obviously doesn’t confuse you then.
BR: No, I don’t think it does. I try to stay very clear about what I’m thinking and what I know I’m doing.
RM: Good luck! [Laughter] why don’t we talk about what you’re working on right now? We have talked about it already a bit. What’s it called?
BR: Batteries Not Included*
RM: Oh, yeah, that’s what they have on packaging and things.
BR: It’s also because it picks up the title of another film from that era Batteries Not Included so...
RM: I haven’t seen that one either! [laughs]
BR: I’m slowly building up quite a large collection.
RM: You could have a Ben Rowe film night! All night loops. Book The Cube.
BR: I have a huge collection of these dvds because I’ll see something repeated on the telly and I’ll think, that’s a great idea! And buy the dvd to have a closer look at it. But then I might dismiss it and put it to the side for six months or so. This piece is from He-Man - Masters Of The Universe, which is another 1980’s film with Dolph Ludgrin as He- Man.
RM: Is it nearing completion?
BR: It’s fairly...it’s getting there I’ve still got to finish the keyboard and finish off my jump-leads, I’m very keen now to get this finished.
RM: Do you reach a point where it starts to get frustrating, you’ve spent long enough on it, you need to finish it?
BR: No, in the sense that they are made up of all these different components. If I get bored working on that bit then I’ll go and work on another section of it for a while, just to give me a bit of a break. But at the moment I know exactly what I’m doing for the next piece, so I just want to get this over and done with because the next piece is now whizzing around in my brain and I’m trying to work out how to make it. I’m going to make a copy of the BMX from ET.
RM: With the basket on the front.
BR: It’s not even a basket. It’s more like a plastic crate, like a milk crate.
RM: I haven’t looked at it that closely. Is it tied on to the front of the bike?
BR: It’s tied on but it has also got supports underneath it. I’m waiting for the dvd to turn up so I can have a closer look at it.
RM: A bicycle!
BR: Yeah. It’s whizzing around in my head and I’m just trying to work it out, because obviously when I come to building the wheels, they are going to be very, very fragile but they have to hold the weight of the rest of the thing. So I’m trying to work out how it’s going to work.
RM: The spokes and everything?
BR: The spokes are going to be so thin, it’s how do you get that to support.
RM: And why the bike from ET?
BR: It was a few weeks ago, when I saw it on TV. Bad guys are chasing him and at that moment he just lifts off on the bike.
RM: Escapism.
BR: Yeah, escapism! I guess that’s what the work is about. Escaping the real world - back to that easier time, you know, childhood, no worries.
RM: That’s interesting because one could associate escapism with quick fixes, like taking drugs or something -you know, bang! It’s all going to come nice and fast. Whereas this escapism is incredibly laboured, it takes an awfully long time to get there.
BR: I think also when it takes that much time it’s about getting that much closer to it. You know you’re becoming surrounded by it, you’re submerged in the escapism.
