Interview by Kate Gardiner
Our New Visions II featured artist is John Ford, a Bristol based painter and print maker. We met at the Grant Bradley Gallery Cafe to talk about the pieces chosen for New Visions II, his artistic journey to Bristol, his influences and his future plans.
The three paintings selected for New Visions; In-between, Route Through and Stairway are part of a larger body of work, inspired by an urban space in Bristol, underneath the Hotwells flyover. John was attracted to the place he describes as a bit ambiguous, a bit strange, because of the modernist style of architecture and the abstract patterns formed by the slabs of concrete. The space itself is quite isolated and he’d walked through it many times, aware of an absence. For him it appears as an island within the city totally different from the nearby bustling centre. It is this sense of isolation and existence, purely for its own sake, that he’s tried to encapsulate in his paintings. He started by taking photos as he explored the area, aware of how his feelings towards it shifted, depending on the time of day or night, from it being an uplifting place to an intimidating place at times. He then worked on reducing the images down, as a way of isolating the area from its context, leaving the viewer to question what the space means. It is at once familiar and strange, haunting and cold. This is part of the thrill of the paintings; we think we know that space, but still we are unsettled or moved by it.
The process for making these paintings is both organic and complex. I was interested to know if he has a preferred medium but he explained that he’s equally at home with painting and printing and he allows each piece to dictate the medium as things develop. Originally the work started with a canvas, primed with around 15 layers before he started to paint, working from a photograph of the area. The initial paintings weren’t quite right, so he painted over them, but was left with some ghost images, which he found added something. The paintings were then photographed and worked on in Photoshop and a base layer screen printed on to the canvasses. He was then able to mask off separate areas, airbrushing and building up thin layers of acrylic and biro. He can’t always see the final image that he’s working to, but uses his artistic instinct to develop the work in this way.
His fascination with modernist architecture can be traced back to the time when, during his Fine Art Degree in London, he explored themes of isolation and alienation, using the Barbican as inspiration. He describes initially feeling quite antagonistic towards it before eventually turning full circle in his passion for that type of architecture.
Ten years later he’s continuing with these themes, looking for found images on the internet and finding inspiration in books on architecture, the dystopian novels of JG Ballard and, more recently, a book he was introduced to at Bristol’s Festival of Ideas;Edgelands, by the poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts which explores the spaces on the edge of a city, areas that are generally ignored or vilified. John’s also interested in the politics of architecture and what’s appreciated and what we want to disguise or tear down. His research for found spaces has lead him to explore architecture and political change including overgrown and abandoned Constructivist monuments in Serbia and the architecture of former Soviet States. As an artist he’s constantly looking for images that will inspire his next piece and help him to produce work that might encourage the viewer to see architecture or the space around them in a different way.
John started his career with a Foundation Course at St Martin’s College of Art, then a Fine Art Degree, initially in London but then at the University of Plymouth in Exeter, before settling in Bristol where he’s been a member of Spike Print Studio for the past six years. His artistic influences include Martin Kobe, Richard Gaplin, Ian Monroe, Karla Klein, Tatiana Troube and Toba Khadoori.
In September he will be studying for an MA in Multi-disciplinary Printmaking at UWE to help him explore different types of printing, other than silk screen printing, which has been his focus up until now. He’s also looking forward to the structure that comes with being part of a course and to sharing and sparking ideas with a group of fellow artists. Like many of us he responds well to a deadline. Earlier in the year he had an exhibition at St Georges, Bristol and also previously at Centrespace Gallery, and found that having to produce works for a certain date helped him to get finished pieces of work ready.
This is undoubtedly an exciting time for John, and we’re thrilled to be able to showcase his work as part of New Visions II. We look forward to seeing more work by this talented and thoughtful artist.
