JL: This is a quote you wrote about your painting
-
Charity Shop (notes on the painting): It was a real incident. I was in a
charity shop, when this bloke came in. He was screaming obscenities into
a mobile and sweating. He was carrying cans of Tennents and sweating,
and was obviously on something. He was very agitated. The words that are
written on the painting are what he said to the woman behind the counter
in the charity shop. After he'd left the shop, the woman behind the
counter was quite shaken up, and I said I would paint it - it's the type
of thing I paint. She looked at me as if I was mad. It just one of those
sharp emotional urban moments that I paint. Mandy McCartin
You have really captured a visceral and the highly charged energy
in this painting. Not only in the man's face and body language, but also
in the chaotic jumble shop landscape. This man looks like he's
been smoking crack. What do the words say in the painting exactly?
Do you usually paint in oil or acrylics.
MM: The words in Charity Shop - there are two lots, the ones in
red spray paint on the left are what he was screaming into the
phone as he came in the shop which were "It's not my fucking
problem, get it sorted!" The words on the right on the white lines are what he said to the woman behind the shop counter which were "Oh excuse
the language. love, that's my brother - I had to shoot him in the
fucking kneecaps - do you want to buy this coat?"
When the woman
explained that he was in a charity shop where people
donate clothes and that they didn't buy them he went out with no bother,
still clutching the coat...
Apart from the very early days when I painted in my bedroom with
acrylics I have always used oil paint - I think when I first tried oil I
never went back. I do use spray cans, house paint and felt pens on the
same canvases, though. That started at college partly because I couldn't afford decent oils (still can't) but also because I
liked the variation of marks made and because using street
materials tied in better with my identity and what I was painting about.
-
- Two Skins
JL: What are your thoughts on the
acquisition by the Tate gallery of a Piero Manzoni sculpture, (Merde
d` artista), consisting of a can of his feces,
which they bought for 39,000 pounds. But simultaneously rejecting 160
donated Re-modernist stuckists paintings, saying that they do not meet
the Tate gallery's high standards etc etc etc?
Also what do you
think about this post modernist phenomenon of "feces on canvas" in
general?
MM: I had no idea the Tate had acquired
this shit sculpture or whatever it is. I've never heard of the geezer
either. I don't take much notice of the art press anyway, its always stuff that annoys or enrages
me and I don't need it. This guy must have the right connections to
trigger the emperors new clothes charade that makes so many crap artists
rich and famous.
As for rejecting the Stuckists, I wasn't surprised - the Tate could not possibly do a u turn and admit its all
been a big con all along, could they? The public would without
doubt have benefited from being able to see the Stuckists diverse
work - some of it IS crap, actually, but at least it's INTERESTING.
That's what I really hate about a lot of conceptual stuff - it's so
fucking boring to look at! That's why I have very little to
do with it all - it doesn't hold my interest visually ...
And as for the shit - dull dull dull, its all been done before and it's
just a gimmick, but its bloody worked. Must get one.
- Fake Fur
JL: They seem to be drawing much more
than usual critical attention in the press these days and from other
artists.
Do you believe that there is hope for the authentic in art? Or do you see
the art establishment falling prey to more
advertising campaigns, mass marketing and hypnosis etc etc etc ?
MM: I always knew that the bubble would burst, the emperor would be
revealed in all his naked glory. (yes I know its a cliché but its so
wonderfully apt) The stuff will go down in art history as an era of
madness, where everyone ran like sheep after nothing.
I'd like to be optimistic and hope that real stuff will be promoted and
helped - I know from the reaction of people of all kinds to my shows
that there is a hunger and a big audience for art which has a heart and
a soul, and speaks about being human and living in this world. The problem is that the art world seems to attract
bloodless, detached people to its positions of power - critics and
curators especially, and they have created this whole other world that
they feel very superior in, and they are not going to give it up easily. As long as there are silly rich people who want to be part of
that club, and will pay vast amounts of money for crap, it will keep
going, but its so shallow its got to peter out eventually. Unless we are
heading for a Brave New World scenario where everything is mechanized and instant and surfacey, and all the real
people are living outside on a reservation - in that case, I'll be
outside.
I think a lot of the problem is down to
artists being on the whole very incestuous - they talk about art, they
knock around together, show together, live in an esoteric world of
pointless ideas and concepts that no-one else is interested in. I don't
have many artist friends - I operate in a more mixed environment - I make art about what
it is to be human, not what it is to be an artist.
JL: The woman looks
homeless and an alcoholic. Do you know what happened to her neck?
MM: I have no idea. She was wearing a neckbrace. She was a bag
lady in Brick Lane market, and what struck me was that she was sitting on a weird 70's patterned tubular steel framed
chair, and sitting next to her in an identical chair was a teddy bear.
It looked like it was her companion, I was in a very bad head (and
heart) space at the time I painted it, as I had just split up with a
woman and the painting is about loneliness and abandonment and fear,
being old and alone and such cheerful stuff!
