India Nielsen
“When I build up imagery in my paintings it feels like I'm constructing something that is mimicking my own mental architecture more than just thinking about it as an image…”
Interview by Brooke Hailey Hoffert
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
I went to Central St. Martins for my foundation, Slade School of Fine Art for my BA and The Royal College of Art for my MA. When I went to CSM I wanted to be a screenwriter so I specialised in film and photography. For the first couple of years of my BA I was trying lots of different things.. I put on performances and made music, sculptures and paintings… I remember in my first month there we had a sculpture crit and a friend and I locked all of the tutors and students in a room by drilling wooden boards over all of the entrances. We hid drills around the room for them to find so they could let themselves out, then we just left the building through the fire escape and disappeared for the rest of the afternoon. At this stage I think I was searching for something that drew out an active response from the audience rather than being something you just looked at. I made my first paintings in my second year and I remember showing one of my tutors and him saying “that’s it, you’re a painter now, I bet this is what you’ll be doing in ten years.” I didn’t believe him at the time but he turned out to be right. I haven’t reached the ten-year mark yet but by the time I got to the RCA and ever since I’ve been focussed on painting. I think painting appealed to me because it’s so limited in terms of material- it’s just pigment on a surface so there’s not much to hide behind. It’s a very open ended, uncertain language so it leaves a lot of room to be as vulnerable as you want to be.
One thing I found quite interesting while looking at your work are the titles. How do you choose the titles of your work?
I play with the titles the way I play with the imagery in my paintings. Sometimes they are word scrambles, initials, anagrams or coded messages. Other times they’re very blunt and direct. I think this is really a spot on representation of myself and the way I communicate. I’ve always found words a bit of a puzzle. I’m very aware of how they can never quite fully communicate or grasp exactly what it is you’re feeling, or make the other person feel the way you do. I guess there’s a sense of yearning there that can’t help but flow through my paintings, although this may not necessarily be explicit.
Your work seems to always involve many aspects that are eye-catching with the various colors, text, and imagery you use. Where do you draw your inspiration for your work?
I generally source images from the internet but also from other artworks, comics, photocopies from books etc. I have to keep wiping my phone memory because I obsessively screenshot everything. I usually keep them in folder categories on my laptop, flicking through and selecting images that match a feeling I want to create or trigger memories of things that have happened in my life. The images act in a similar way to images in dreams; as stand ins for an underlying feeling. I often have dreams with recurring characters who are trying to communicate something to me but are blocked in some way, leaving me with the feeling that it’s a puzzle I have to decipher. When I paint I have that feeling too - like I’m reaching for something that’s just out of shot.
I grew up in the early 2000s listening to a lot of electronic and hip hop music that used remixing and sampling techniques, so when I started making making my own imagery it made sense to apply this approach to my paintings. I often pick artists that represent a quality I want my paintings to have and remix them together. I like the play of different time periods flattening together to make something that feels new or otherworldly while having certain footholds that anchor it to something very familiar and banal. This mirrors the way digital screens flatten and compress references together into a medium that feels constantly 'present.' Whenever I get the train out of London to other parts of England it always has that uncanny Twilight zone feeling of going back in time... like you're travelling back through to the 70s or into a Joy Division album cover. When I build up imagery in my paintings it feels like I'm constructing something that is mimicking my own mental architecture more than just thinking about it as an image, I'm trying to make something ‘happen’ both internally and externally through making the painting. So in this way they have a sigilistic function to me.
Melting m oughts oMe ot Tnthli Egins, 2020
Paul Thek Scorpio Rising, 2020
Love is (Lil Beast on the Block), 2018, installation view, Royal College of Art Degree Show 2018
Hetifr oow M ars Snmimfeg ni tears, 2020
Fifty words for “Heavy”, 2020
Gene Simmons Kiss Stallion, 2020
How me do, 2018
As well as painting you also use other mediums, could you tell me a bit about these works and how they connect with your paintings?
Painting drives and is the centre of everything I do. When I started the modular works I was thinking about the frame as a device that extends the painting into the surrounding space. However, where the standard frame is often something that’s added on as a finisher, I wanted to try and use framing in a more dynamic way, so I decided to make them modular. I made a template for the corners and edges of the paintings and built around them. This led to a process that felt much more honest and in synch with the work and I could swap and rearrange the modules both with each other and with the paintings.
I like using materials that can be found anywhere and don’t try and conceal what they are so for the modules I had been using a lot of DIY materials like wood, gaffa-tape, glitter and aluminium foil. The fur pieces were a natural extension of this material experimentation. There’s nothing illusionistic about them, you’re clearly looking at a piece of shaved fur yet, at the same time, the way they’ve been shaved and pushed through these tight, unnatural forms pushed them into a strange halfway zone that feels talismanic to me. Having grown up in an Italian Roman-Catholic family I’ve carried through this compulsion of seeing imagery as magical, transportive objects.
Do you have any rituals or listen to any type of music to get you into the headspace to create?
I’m heavily driven by rituals. Painting is a pretty wild activity, full of uncertainties, so there needs to be some constant in the background to balance it out. Painting has the potential to be quite an unhealthy activity too, so I make up the deficit by being super healthy in other areas of my life. I can’t stress enough the importance of self care, for everyone, but especially for painters! When I have a regular rhythm going, that starts to operate mechanically in the background and it helps me feel a lot freer in the studio.
Similarly when it comes to music if I find a song or album I like I tend to listen to it on repeat until I can’t listen to it anymore. For my last batch of paintings this was the album ‘Trance’ by Chris and Cosey (formerly of Throbbing Gristle) and a lot of disco.. particularly Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage mixes from the late 70s - 80s. Often the music is chosen as a soundtrack to match the energy feeling I want the paintings I’m making to have. When I don’t want to listen to music Desert Island Discs sometimes keeps me company - Kirsty Young’s voice brings me home.
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
Lucy Mckenzie’s solo show ‘Giving Up The Shadows On My Face’ at Cabinet Gallery in Vauxhall, London late last year was beautiful. I’ve been following her work for quite a while but I keep coming back to that show in particular. I’m a big fan of Cabinet’s programme in general. The Picasso on paper show at the RA is just mind-blowing. Whenever I leave a Picasso show I always feel like I want to go straight back to the studio and start making. Since I’ve been in quarantine I’ve just been clicking through the virtual rooms in the National Gallery. It’s a bit sad.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I had quite a few shows planned before coronavirus hit! The only one I had announced though was a group show at ASC Gallery in London - it was scheduled to open in March, but it’s now been postponed till Summer at the earliest. I'm also contributing to a book which will hopefully manifest into a physical group exhibition when this quarantine is finally over. When the other shows have been reshuffled I’ll post them on Instagram..
All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 29/04/20
