If we can go back a little, how did you develop your craft?
That is something that comes much later.
When you are in conventional study, that environment, you are taught that art is a skill. If you are going to draw you have to be able to replicate what it is that you are drawing, the same with painting. That approach of learning skills probably dominates until your GCSE years.
Once you reach the A level stag things change. I had a wonderful teacher from Omagh, Anne-Marie McCaughey, who said, “Throw that orientation out. All of it, out. If you are drawing an apple, ask yourself what does the apple mean to you, what aspects of the apple do you want to capture?”
That approach was effectively getting rid of all the ideas you had learned up to that stage. Once you go to do your Foundation year at Art College, again you are stripping away the ideas you were taught during A levels, and you go even deeper into conceptual practice, deeper into the ideas of what art is.
Sometimes you would use a material during your GCSE period where the material was simply the vehicle to get your idea across or get an idea onto a page. But later you learn to interrogate the materials you are using. What is the history of the material, why does that material matter in certain contexts, and perhaps not in others, or the material can have an actual meaning beyond the piece you have created using it?
Apart from the development of your skills, and learning about materials, what about the question of being issue based?
That is one of the easier aspects of my arts practice in that issues emerge continually. You really don’t have to wait around for inspiration. Whether they arrive on a macro level, international situations, or the micro level, that could be a very localised issue, issues will constantly emerge.
Once you decide on the issues you wish to address, you have to think about the artistic approach, the visual form, you want to use. You still have to work in layers, you still have to find ways to make art with a number of different elements, so that the work can stand as a piece of art as well as dealing with, or expressing, the ideas behind a specific or particular issue. You want people to be able to continually visit the piece and find something new each time they look at the work.
It is one of the biggest hurdles; finding a way to create a piece of work which will stimulate people artistically as well as make them think about the issue the work emerges from.
And you are constantly developing that side of your approach?
As an example, I have an interest and a fascination with biology, and when you look at bacteria or viruses, blown up, they take on the form of a community. Often you might use colours, especially colours found in nature, a deep red to signify, or suggest, danger.
Sometimes, I would use very bright colours to bring people into the work, I often used very bright colours when I was working with ceramics.
I do tend to find in nature, starting points for the work I am making especially around the question of community and difficulties which arise in communities.
How did you become a sculptor?
After a number of years working in the industry, theatre and film mainly, where I had done quite well, I decided to move into sculpture.
When I came to developing my work as a sculptor I think the spatial awareness I developed during my education in Theatre Design really helped. I think if you want to be a sculptor you really want to be able to think in 3 dimensions rather than the 2 dimensions most artists work with.
I took on a course at Millfield, the Metropolitan College in Belfast, and I started casting in bronze. I used the Lost Wax and Lost Foam techniques, and I did a lot of Sand-Casting. I worked in bronze, and then, later, ceramics.
I had a couple of exhibitions and I sold some of my work and received good reviews. At one of my solo exhibitions, I met Brendan Jamison and he was a sculptor who had worked using sugar cubes, and I had admired his work from afar.
How does that relationship develop?
We got on very well, and he asked me to collaborate with him for a project with the RUA (Royal Ulster Academy of Arts). There was some sort of an interactive theme, there was an idea of creating a sugar cube metropolis, we teamed up and from there we started working together.
I think we worked very well together, we think very much alike and we started working with sugar cubes and the rest is history so they say. We were invited to do international projects, working on shows, curating shows. And that all started in 2011 and so I have been working as a sculptor for 13 years now.
To see Mark Revel’s work click on the links below
