Tom Bull
"My sculptures emerge from this encounter between the personal and the critical."
Interview by Richard Starbuck
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
I’m from a small village with around twenty houses, just off the A14 in the heart of Northamptonshire. I’ve always enjoyed describing the location of where I grew up, starting with a relatively unknown county in the UK and narrowing it down bit by bit to a tiny plot of land. It’s quite sculptural to describe a location not by its name but its surroundings. There’s also something quite remarkable in this day and age to use landmarks, terrains, stories and words for that matter to draw a whereabouts of a location rather than just googling it or recounting its postcode.
After living in the sticks for 19 years I moved to London to study a BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. After 3 years of graduating from my BA at CSM I continued my artistic development in the MFA programme at Goldsmiths, graduating in 2022.
In your 'Alchemical Landscape' exhibition at Cob Gallery, alongside Sholto Blissett, your sculptures intriguingly blend historical motifs, such as Shaker furniture designs, with modern symbols like discarded nitrous oxide canisters. This combination appears to foster a dialogue between the past and the present. Could you elaborate on the interplay of these elements in your work and discuss their significance in terms of our changing relationship with the environment and cultural heritage?
Shakers were 18th century religious group in America that built their self-sustaining villages in remote areas, away from the perceived sin and corruption of cities. Part of the Shaker life was living honestly; these values were reflected in the household objects they designed and built. Ornamentation was deemed excessive, and veneers were considered deceitful. Consequently, The Shakers became known for their minimal aesthetic and modest existence.
A mass wave of ‘authentic’ style (appropriated from such groups) has become the contemporary norm in office furnishing and home decoration as a response to a rise in immaterial labour, capitalist realism, space shortages due to rise in population, wastefulness, etc. What is being peddled here is the myth of peacefulness, understandability and order. As the world gets more complicated rural design, artisanal practices and the calm aesthetic of beige becomes more popular, as if the answer was to blind ourselves with cottagecore paraphernalia from the actualities of what is actual concerning and present. This whole situation seems absurd, uncanny, and frightening to me. However, like a horror fan I wanted to see how hardcore cottagecore could get.
The incorporation of an industrial amount of used nitrous oxide canisters was a way to jar the authentic oeuvre of Shaker design but also to draw parrel to the fine line between reality and fiction. Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, is a colourless, non-flammable gas. This gas is used in medical and dental procedures as a sedative. It helps to relieve anxiety before the procedure and allow the patient to relax. It is also inhaled recreationally for its rapid but short-lived feelings of euphoria, relaxation, calmness, and sense of detachment. Consequently, it seemed the most seamless substances to disrupt and modernise the iconic Shaker design and ironically solidify these sculptures in an uncomfortable here-and-now.
Alchemical Landscape, 2024, Installation View, at Cob Gallery
Alchemical Landscape, 2024, Installation View, at Cob Gallery
The decision to coat your sculptural works in bitumen, a material emblematic of industrial waste, adds a complex layer to your exploration of the British landscape and its cultural narratives. Can you delve into how you choose materials for their narrative potential and the role they play in weaving the story you aim to tell through your art?
The shiny bitumen-covered sculptures are both warmly familiar and strangely unsettling. Dripping in black, oozing with a living presence, their forms are recognisable but obscured under layers of a sticky entombment. Drawing from a vernacular of rural living, industrialisation, medieval torture and archaic exercises, I want to push my practice in a curious, sticky and pressurised way.
Across my body of work is a balance between concept and material, a focus on the process of making and consideration of the why and the what of a particular material. These materials are also unwieldy, you’ve got the sogginess of bitumen and the expanding foam which takes a long time to cure, you can’t control it all. Sometimes it doesn’t really work, it kind of falls apart and the sculpture takes its own agency over what is possible. That’s the goal, to make objects which hold their own presence and in doing so, become all the more confronting.
In your sculptures, you delve into the complex relationship between reality and fiction, as well as the blurred lines between violence and sensitivity, truth and mythology. This approach seems to reflect a unique perspective on contemporary life. Could you discuss how you use folklore, urbanization, and rituals to navigate these dualities in your work, and what inspired you to explore these themes?
My relationship with what is contemporary is complex, a combination of living in a remote village in the countryside and the distance which studying at art school in London. My sculptures emerge from this encounter between the personal and the critical. Wary of the dangers of glorifying rural life, which can produce a romanticised version of nationalism and its conservatism. Yet I also push against the negative, city-centric narratives about living in the countryside. There is a kind of horror around the countryside, but there’s an importance of being in touch with community, land and play. This dualism pushes out of my work and becomes both paradoxical and comparable.
Acid Peat, 2023
Hardcore Cottagecore III, 2023
Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?
I rent a studio in Bow Arts, however I also treat my endless hours of consuming, archiving, editing, and scrolling YouTube videos an act of studio labour. Consequently, the studio is a platform that houses my ever-shifting temperaments from being sanguine (warm and social), phlegmatic (relaxed and concrete), melancholic (insular and nostalgic) and choleric (irritable and hot-headed). It’s imperative that the studio travels and mutates through these motions as it keeps the work current, nuanced and complex.
Recently I have started to work internationally on shows in Korea, Mexico and Germany. I have enjoyed uprooting my practice and tackling differing modes of communicating and producing in areas that are unknown to me. I’ve never enjoyed the saying ‘art for art sake’ it seems frivolous and gluttonous to just make with no strings attached. I like to work with and against situations, land, histories, rules, sequences, conflicts, fears, politics, and irony. It feels more grounded this way.
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
BLUR BALLAD at Emalin by Nikita Gale was phenomenal. Their blend of display, cerography and concept made me re-believe in the potential of art as a discursive space of nuances that breakdowns binaries, theory and classifications. It was much needed, especially in an oversaturated time during Frieze London.
I was also lucky enough to see in the flesh work by Roger Muñoz, represented by General Expenses in Mexico City. I was instantly drawn to Roger’s hardcore aesthetic that blends imported culture with tropical horror, a hybridisation that unearths a politicised uncanniness that is brutal and uncompromising.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
An exhibition this year at DES BAINS in London, my first solo show on home turf. Expect a rise in temperature!
All images courtesy of the artist and Cob Gallery
Interview publish date: 04/03/2024
