I admired Luke Jerram’s spectacular public realm work way before ever meeting him. Indeed, he often jokes that Bloomberg Television described him as “probably the most famous artist you’ve never heard of”.

Luke has an incredibly diverse, seemingly boundary free creative practice. I'm amazed by the range and scope of his ideas, the scale of ambition, impact and reach of his works, but also his dedication to connecting and engaging a broad audience. He is an expansive creative, who sees opportunities in every potential challenge or roadblock.

His creative entrepreneurialism enables him to partner with global organisations and collaborators, continuously innovating whilst supporting others, particularly young creatives.

Luke took time out of his busy schedule to answer answers my questions candidly in the first video below, reflecting on some of the habits that contribute to his committed studio practice, his creative process, how he earns income from his practice and makes the most of 'failures'.

His responses reveal an approach, attitude and work ethic that facilitates creative problem solving and the capacity to manage multiple productions simultaneously. His personal system and studio set up enables him to be resilient and respond quickly and effectively to challenging briefs, budgets, contexts and environments.

Scroll down for the second video, which demonstrates Luke's creative process in action, for a new project in development: Helios.

I was first introduced to super-group artist collective Troika around twelve or thirteen years ago, by Keri Elmsly (Senior Vice President, Immersive Development and Production, Madison Square Garden Company).

I was excited to see their show Decode in 2009 at the V&A and have followed their work ever since, and most recently enjoyed seeing Borrowed Light at the Barbican in 2019.

Their keen understanding of people and place means I have proposed them for a number of major public realm commissions, art programmes and collections over the years. Troika are three lovely and very different individual characters, with unique skill sets, ways of seeing, interacting and communicating, and it's a real treat to spend time discussing and developing ideas with them.

Having worked together now for eighteen years, they have a remarkable process and approach to listening, sharing and making together. Their deep consideration of our relationship to nature and technology is engaging, inspirational and transformative. They make spectacular, playful, dynamic work.

          Eva Ruicki, Photo Elena Heatherwick

Troika is a collaborative contemporary art group formed by Eva Rucki (b. 1976, Germany), Conny Freyer (b. 1976, Germany) and Sebastien Noel (b. 1977, France) in 2003. They live and work in London.

With a particular interest in the subjective and objective readings of reality and the various relationships we form with technology, they investigate the ways in which the digital world informs and crosses over into the physical one and how technological advancement influences our relationship with the world and with each other.

Troika’s work is part of the permanent collections of M+, Hong Kong, the Victoria & Albert Museum London, The Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA New York, Jumex Collection Mexico, the Israel Museum and Centre Georges Pompidou.

In 2019 Troika started a research project together with biologists, neuroscientists, the British Antarctic Survey and physicists from Cambridge University which will culminate in a book and a permanent outdoor installation at Cambridge University in 2023. Troika is represented by OMR in Mexico City, and gallery Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.

Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer, Sebastien Noel

What are you doing, reading, watching or listening to now that is helping you to stay positive?

I am currently reading Underworld by Robert MacFarlane, whose writing I came across in connection with a three year project that we are currently undertaking with Cambridge University.

It is a fascinating excursion into deep time, the expanses of geological time, and explores the relationship between landscape and humans throughout history. The idea that 'Viewed from the perspective of a desert or an ocean human mortality looks absurd.' feels in equal measures nauseating and consoling.

What I haven’t read or watched has probably been as defining in the last months than what I have read. Forgoing social media and the never ending ‘news’ circuit in favour of extended walks and cycles have become a new ritual. The void created by flights-not-taken has made space for more immediate surroundings. It will be interesting to see how much of these new ways we will be carrying with us into our future normal or if we will we just be defaulting to old routines.

Terminal Beach, 2020, Computer animation, custom motion capture, 4:00 min. Sound in collaboration with Dr Nigel Meredith, British Antarctic Survey

What are you working on and how have recent events affected your ideas, processes and chosen medium?

We work collaboratively as a collective with a studio based practice. So our way of working naturally had to change in the last months. Then again, we have re-invented and adapted our practice on a continuous basis for the past 18 years; so apart from the obvious gravity of the situation, it has been interesting for us to see that we can run our practice in this completely different way yet again.

At the moment we are still predominately working from our respective homes, speaking to each other sometimes several times a day, sometimes every couple of days. That we haven’t returned to the studio yet for good is partly happens stance as we are with most projects in a research phase rather than a ‘making’ phase.

One of these projects is a large scale outdoor installation that we are working towards as part of a three year project with Cambridge University mentioned above. One of the reoccurring themes in our work is how the digital world crosses over into the physical world. In the context of this project we have focused our research on how computational science is employed to explain, model and simulate natural phenomena and life itself.

In addition, we have just completed a short film called Terminal Beach that will be shown at Haus für elektonische Kunst in Basel this August. For the soundtrack we collaborated with Dr Meredith Nigel, Space Weather Research Scientist at the British Antarctic Survey. It had been a while since we worked in this medium and in a strange way being in lock-down has worked well for this piece.

Bits & pieces, studio

What do you usually have or need in your studio to inspire and motivate you?

I like being surrounded by the multitude of artefacts in the studio and equally in our home, ranging from sketches, photographs and collected objects and materials, to everything related to works that are in different stages of becoming, like half build works, sculpture moulds and tests, bits of wires eroded stones, etc.

What systems, rituals and processes do you use to help you get into the creative zone?

Our projects develop through different stages, from research and conceptualisation to formulating its physical manifestation to the actual making of the works. There are different types of creativity associated to every stage of the process. Often the physical making of one project is a fruitful catalyst for a new work as it allows thoughts to surface unprovoked.

What recurring questions do you return to in your work?

Since we started working together we have been observing and reflecting on how technological advancement is influencing our life, peoples lives. This is broad but if one starts to look closer most of our everyday actions, interactions or decisions are in one way or other governed, filtered, streamlined, aided, assisted by some form of technology.

For something that prevalent, we wanted to understand better the role technology plays in society and how we got to where we are now, a situation where unreflected, disconnected technological development endangers our very existence, be it in the form of AI, overconsumption and production of goods or infringement on natural resources.

As different and new technologies come into the world, we have created a space for ourselves that allows us to tell a different narrative on how these new technologies shape the world and our perception of it.

Irma Watched Over by Machines, 2019, 16 shades of Red, Green and Blue acrylic paint on canvas.
161.5 x 133 x 3 cm and 85 x 63.5 x 4.5 cm, photographed at Troika’s studio

Compression Loss (Venus), 2017, Jesmonite, 165 x 50 x 50 cm, photographed at Troika’s studio

What risks have you taken in your work that paid off?

Working as a collective across a variety of media seems to be a surprisingly challenging concept for many in the arts. It is less easy to pigeon hole, doesn’t fit in with traditional expectations of the ‘genius’, the collective might break up etc. A well meaning individual has even advised us that we would be more ‘successful’, if we would pursue individual careers. I guess this largely depends on how you define success.

The Weather Yesterday, 2012, Aluminium, acrylic, LEDs, custom electronics, 200 (w) x 500 (h) x 10 (d) cm,
Installation View, Hoxton Square, 2012

What risks have you taken that perhaps did not go so well but you learnt the most from?

About 10 years ago we had way too many projects. We were constantly travelling and had lots of people working with us. It can be pretty hard to turn exciting projects down, and it can just be too easy to grow quite quickly. It was getting harder and harder to get into ‘that zone’ that you describe above. So we decided to shrink the studio as much as possible and have no one in on Fridays to ‘reset’ ourselves.

To a lot of people this didn’t make any sense. It doesn’t fit in with current ideas around progress, growth and success – and yet it was the best decision we could have made.

In general, our projects tend to be quite research intensive and we keep on pushing the boundaries of our practice to collaborate with specialists from different fields. The spectrum of our collaborators over the past years has ranged from a bryologists (moss specialist) and a space weather research scientist via mechanical and software engineers of different types to manufacturers of obsolete as well as state of the art technologies. Currently we are working with a scientist studying biomineral formation and ocean chemistry as well as an Arboriculturist.

To constantly engage with different fields of knowledge as well as production and fabrication methods is super exciting, but of course it comes with some risks and each project has a huge learning curve. There are always so many potential issues, that you hadn’t thought about just yet. One of the times where we definitely reached our limit was with the ‘Newton Virus’.

In around 2004 we made this little software, called the Newton Virus, that introduces the concept of gravity into the virtual world, more specifically laptops, and causes desktop icons to become susceptible to Newton’s invisible force so they fall and roll in accordance with any physical movements applied to the computer. The first version became part of the permanent collection of the MOMA and for some reason we felt the urge to make it available to the masses, so it would become part of the ‘real world’. We worked with a couple of different programmers and finally made it for a small cost available for download. We even set up a separate company ‘Troika Artificial Life Ltd’ in case Apple would sue us for IP infringement for a play on their logo and commercials. Although far fetched this was quite an interesting process and thought experiment and somehow part of the work.

What we had not accounted for, however, was that we became inundated with technical support questions. Quite a nightmare, especially as the programmers themselves had moved on to other projects. So the artificial life of the ‘Newton Virus’ as a commercially available entity was rather short lived. Maybe we don’t need to exist in all spaces.

Newton Virus, 2005, Custom designed USB key with virus, 2.5 cm x 4 cm

What is your favourite exhibition, event, or performance you have participated in and why?

Limits of a Known Territory at NC-arte in Bogota has definitely been one of the exhibitions that was most rewarding. I think with this installation we managed to create an alternate reality that elicits a strong visceral reaction that lies beyond a rational kind of understanding. We had the chance to work with a great team at the foundation that did everything to make it happen.

Apart from that, of course always the one that we are working on at the moment. Untertage is an immersive installation that we are currently working on and that is set to open in February next year. A publication will be accompanying the exhibition that will chart a more encompassing narrative, beyond the works shown in the exhibition, based around the research and thinking that has driven our practice for the last couple of years. It will also include three essays from writers in response to the works which we are very excited about.

Limits of a Known Territory, 2015, site-specific installation, installation view at NC-Arte, Bogota

What would you hope that people experience from encountering your work?

A slight disturbance – just enough to wonder how many different ways there are to experience this fuzzy thing called reality. It is important to me that our work has a kind of openness and generosity that leaves space for people to draw on their own experiences to complete the work. Whilst there is a a lot to discover, there is nothing to ‘get’.

What kind of studio visits, conversations or meetings with curators, producers, writers, press, gallerists or collectors do you enjoy or get the most out of?

Setting an afternoon in the studio aside for a visit works best for us. In addition to the projects we think could be interesting to discuss we often end up delving into completely different subjects prompted by the artefacts and works that are around in the studio, depending on what the visitor feels naturally drawn to.

Unedited upfront feedback is something we get the most out of there and then, but to continue the dialogue beyond a one-off studio visit and to turn it into a longer term relationship is ultimately what is most valuable to us. Our work is quite demanding so it takes time.

Borrowed Light, 2018, Installation View, Barbican, Photographic film, aluminium, motor, 12m (H) x 1m (W) x 20cm (D)

If you work with a commercial gallery /agent / producer how does this relationship affect or inform your work and life?

We work with several different galleries, but have been working the longest with Mexico based gallery OMR. It’s a relationship that has evolved and is still evolving. Despite the distance this has worked well. It doesn’t really change our work so much, it’s just that some of our works are more suited to be acquired by collectors than others. Apart from the sale of our works, they have been very supportive in facilitating larger projects and immersive installations such as Limits of a known territory and Dark Matter.

Dark Matter, 2014, Wood, aluminium, black flock, 237.5 x 237.5 x 237.5 cm
Art Basel Unlimited, Installation View, 2014, Photo: Simon Zachary Chetrit

Do you have a trusted muse, mentor, network, or circle of friends you consult for critical feedback?

The ideas and themes we are interested in come to the fore in a lot of the discussions that we might have with a closer circle of friends of artists, writers, architects and designers. Discussions specific to the works largely take place between the three of us. We have been each others sounding boards for the past 18 years and this trialogue has been quite fruitful.

Which artists or creatives do you feel your work is in conversation with?

From a historical perspective Juan Downey stands out for us. He was as much of an explorer and amateur anthropologist as he was an artist, always interested in understanding and making visible the feedback loops and our hidden relationship with technology. The work and/or writing of Mark Leckey, Hito Steyerl and Pierre Huyghe has had a strong influence on our practice. Maybe not exactly in conversation with, but to name a few others Cécile B. Evans, Cao Fei, Julian Charriére, Tuur van Balen & Revital Cohen, all reflect in their work in one way or another on the impact that technological development has on our perception of self and our surroundings in interesting ways.

How do you make money to support your practice?

It’s a mix - we work with several galleries that sell our works; we work with curatorial organisations on larger site specific sculptures and installations; and we do a little bit of teaching.

What advice would you give your past self?

Don’t overthink it, just get on with it and work through it. We tend to be extremely critical of our own and each others ideas which can sometimes be stifling. A work develops further in the making process and it doesn’t need to be entirely thought out right from the beginning.

Can you recommend a book film or podcast that you have been inspired by that transformed your thinking?

I have loved following film maker Mania Akbari’s ‘Conversation during coronavirus on IG live’. Some episodes are in depth conversations, in others she creates a space for someone’s meandering thoughts. I have enjoyed its unpretentious personal format that seems to be entirely unaware of an audience beyond the exchange.

maniaakbari.film

Follow Troika @troika_london, visit their website www.troika.uk.com

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I can’t actually recall the first time I met Andy Holden, because I feel like I’ve been in his orbit and a fan of his work for such a long time. I do recall a drunken male art collector declaring their love for Andy’s interdisciplinary genius in Rotterdam in 2011, after we attended a VIP tour to his show, I Promise To Love You, at Kunsthalle Rotterdam. Years later a young colleague declared her crush on Andy during a  packed Grubby Mitts performance, celebrating his remarkable solo show Towards a Unified Theory of M!MS at Zabludowicz Collection, 2013.

No doubt these facts will surprise, unnerve and delight Andy in equal measure, as that’s how he rolls.

I was warmed to see Andy geeking out with artist Jim Shaw, after an ‘In Conversation’ I staged with Jim and Laurence Sillars, (Chief Curator, BALTIC at the time) at Simon Lee Gallery, 2016. It made total sense that he would connect with Jim’s eclectic practice, fused with a heartfelt love of popular culture, bent through a politically astute lens.

We included Andy in the Good Grief Charlie Brown! exhibition in 2018 at Somerset House, London and he is currently working on a new exhibition drawing on the Beano comic archive that we initiated whilst I was still in post.

He’s a delightfully intense, meandering cultural weaver, in love with the lush gift of material culture and a unique ability to tap into the whimsy of our perverse behaviours and inability to do what’s good for us. His work is sincere, authentic, meaningful and a feast for the senses.

Andy Holden, born and still living in Bedford, U.K, is an artist whose work spans sculpture, large installations, painting, pop music, performance, and multi-screen-videos. Often starting with an examination of an anecdote or a personal encounter, these moments are then unpacked and expanded in an attempt to make sense of a larger philosophical idea.

More recently, through Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (2011-2017), Holden has been using the allegory of the cartoon as a way to comprehend our fragmented and illogical contemporary landscape. Specifically, how self-awareness, a vital ingredient of the cartoon law, ‘Anybody suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation’, helps us understand the world we inhabit.

Previous works have included collaborations with his father, ornithologist Peter Holden, examining our relationship with the natural world (Natural Selection, Artangel, 2017), a large knitted replica of a chunk of pyramid and a video of returning this piece of rock to the pyramid from which it was taken (Pyramid Piece, Tate, 2010), a seven-screen video installation which recreated his teenage manifesto which called for ‘Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity’ (Towards a Unified Theory of M!MS, Spike Island, 2013), and a library of books and sculptures dedicated to the notion of ‘Thingly Time’ (Kettles Yard 2011). Holden performs regularly and releases records with his band The Grubby Mitts and runs the project space Ex-Baldessarre in Bedford. His work is included in the collection of Tate and Arts Council England.

What are you doing, reading, watching or listening to now that is helping you to stay positive?

I am, and this will sound, well, it will sound as it sounds, slightly annoying, doing two of the Yale open courses on Political Philosophy and Moral Philosophy. I used to do quite a few of these courses, whenever I needed a way into a subject, or whenever I had long repetitive studio tasks, like knitting 50sq meters for the Pyramid Piece, streaming lectures for company. Stumbling across the Yale course on literary theory was totally transformative for me, so many ways to interpret the same book, who knew! Big part of my education.

In the evenings I have been reading Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham which had been on my reading list since I was 20, although I wish I'd read it then as I think it would have had more impact. Also, recently I started staying up in the studio till around 4am and then took my daily exercise to coincide with the dawn chorus. Birds seem to live without illusions without becoming disillusioned, they have a cosmic confidence which now is a kind of regular tune that can pull me out of my own thoughts, and it helps to know which bird is singing which melody-line in the chorus, as then you can really lose yourself. I've been practicing that, thanks to my dad.

I have not been consuming my regular diet of music, except a strange Japanese experimental but curiously smooth Jazz album from 1988 by Killing Time (not chosen for the band name, though apt, but found through a great blog of new age and experimental music called Listen To This! Run by Jen Monroe, which I use to find a lot of obscure records). I have been gradually chipping away at a new Grubby Mitts album where possible, although have not been as productive as I had hoped. It's 90% there, followed by endless tinkering and procrastination. On Saturday nights I tune in for Jarvis Cocker's Domestic Disco on his Instagram live, in which he turns his room into a disco and it sort of feels like pirate radio from the days when I lived in South London, cutting out, shout outs, glitching, vanishing and reappearing. Been also keeping an eye on all the inventive ways musicians and artists are coping with the loss of shared physical space such a getting a virtual ticket for Daniel Kitson's show.

Andy Holden, Natural Selection, 2017, Installation view, Newington Library, with Artangel, Photo: Marcus Leith

What are you working on and how have recent events affected your ideas, processes and chosen medium?

I had a show poised to open, all set up, installed and then we decided not to open it. It remains sealed shut like a cartoon tomb. It haunts me a bit as I have this feeling that when it is one day prized open it won't make any sense at all, the world and its context will have changed so dramatically. Art in the Coronacene should I hope look quite different, and this show is a relic from a past era. That plays on my mind. It has been very hard, for similar reasons to start anything new, so mostly tinkering with finishing things and gently opening daunting books to edge into new topics, new research.

Andy Holden, The Opposite of Time, part of Natural Selection, Artangel, 2017

What do you usually have or need in your studio to inspire and motivate you?

Semi-legible tumbledown chaos: a lot of empty cups from a multitude of beverages, an elaborate array of vapes have replaced the ashtrays, piles of books which are gradually finding their way to new shelves, and more than enough trivial knick-knacks of various origin. Copious remnants of past projects: ceramic cats, Peanuts figurines, always a lot of Sharpies... I'm just listing things that I can see from where I'm sitting.

What systems, rituals and processes do you use to help you get into the creative zone?

The clues are in the previous answers. Coupled with elaborate mind-games to overcome self-doubt.

What recurring questions do you return to in your work?

It's a curious thing to me that although when asked about my work I feel I can now identify the common threads, the recurring questions, the dominant themes: it never occurs to me to think about them when I start a new work, and then I'm constantly surprised when I find them there again at the end. The question that is most general that I seem to return to like a refrain is: why do we come to see the world in the way that we do? I still use that as a way of saying everything and explaining nothing. Or re-formulated more recently as: an attempt to see the world as it is, through trying to discover how I see the world in the way that I do.

Andy Holden, Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, Future Generation Art Prize, Installation Detail, Venice Biennale, 2017

What do you care about?

Oh, that’s very direct. Maybe the only real question that matters. Thank you for asking. That's the first time I've been asked that in a public forum, and I didn't see it coming and it makes me feel rather vulnerable. I wish I could give a straight answer, but I feel like a snail that when prodded just withdraws into its shell, or a hedgehog curling into a ball. I don't know. I think of saying something like 'the environment' but my actions don't justify it, and I'm too fond of progress, I think of saying humans, but as a species not really, although as individuals, certainly, good specimens in particular. One at a time preferably and usually not when viewed through media. Friends, yes, I've thought about that a lot. Ah, anyone around me knows me well would just be yelling in my ear, be honest, Andy, just say, only art, mostly. Life for me is just a constant struggle for that to be less obviously the case.

Andy Holden, Character Study for Laws of Motion, 2016

What risks have you taken in your work that paid off?

Quite a lot of the risks have come through not doing things. You never get to find out if that paid off as such, but at the time saying no to something seemed like a bigger risk than saying yes. It's not always nothing ventured nothing gained, I've risked a lot through not venturing far and I'm not sure what paid off is or means but every year that I am still going seems more than I expected. I suppose I risked working independently and not joining a gallery roster. That always felt like a risk and still feels like a risk, I feel like a tightrope walker with no safety net, and there are times I wish I hadn't been so cocky as to climb the ladder up to the wire and shout look at me!, but ultimately it has opened up other opportunities while I was trying out a lot of different formats, adding juggling balls or a unicycle here and there, and when it's good you can really enjoy the breeze.

Andy Holden, Polytheistic Pareidolia, 2016, Eyes on inkjet print, 90 x 120 cm

What risks have you taken that perhaps did not go so well but you learnt the most from?

I once did a whole artist’s talk about things that I did that did not go well and things I didn't do that I should have done, objectively speaking. That talk takes about an hour. Highlights included terrible proposals for Frieze projects for which they decided they would rather pay me not to do it than go through with, deciding to pull out of building a large sculpture on the roof of the Hayward as too many people would have seen it and attempting to play ten gigs at artist-run spaces from Plymouth to Edinburgh in ten days whilst dragging a full stage show with us in a Transit van. Special mentions also go to building a large sculpture on a hill in Bedford for one day for an audience of about ten dog walkers, booking a bus tour from London to Bedford as a day-long performance, and deciding to take my dad to do Performa festival in New York to talk about British birds. Counter intuitive decisions are always good for the further evolution of the self.

Natural Selection, 2017, Andy and Peter Holden, Installation view, Newington Library, with Artangel, Photo: Marcus Leith 

What is your favourite exhibition, event, or performance you have participated in and why?

It will forever be hard to compete with my opening of Pyramid Piece and Return of the Pyramid Piece for Art Now at Tate Britain as it was also one of my first serious solo shows in England. For the opening we hired a coach from Bedford for family and friends and had Richard Wentworth as the tour guide. We missed most of the private view as we were weaving through north London listening to Richard free associate on the Death of Princess Diana. However, through that I felt a little legitimacy. Getting away with building M!MS at the Zabludowicz Collection was also like having someone help realise a dream as much as it was building an artwork. If a show goes well something always changes, the works, with the performative aspect, seem to transform bits of my life around it. Natural Selection, as it was affected some parts of life for the better, but also came with a personal cost. There seems to always be a cost to personal ambition, and you are not in control with how that cost will be paid for. Hello, well well, what's this? If it isn't the consequence of my own actions, come to visit me.

Pyramid Piece; Art Now: Andy Holden, Installation view, Tate Britain, 2010

What would you hope that people experience from encountering your work?

I'd be fooling myself if I said I didn't think about such things, but I do. Maybe too much. I try to hold the show in my head as a virtual structure and think about how much info the viewer might need in advance and then try to limit it to very little and attempt for the work itself to tell you all you need to know: there should be nothing outside of the work. Then I spin the structure around and think about what the first image is and how it sets the tone, how it will unfold in time, how long each section should be, what can be unpicked, what might be a red herring, what is a digression and how can I make the meaning as such arrived at rather than given. That is the formal answer. For a while I'd have probably pinched the Walter Pater, 'All art aspires to the condition of music', quote by way of answer. I'm particularly happy when someone comes out of one of my hour-long films having sat on a bench in a darkened gallery and says, 'that felt like less than an hour'.

Andy Holden, Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity,1999-2003: Towards a Unified Theory of M!MS, Installation view Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2013

Could you tell us a bit more about at a time when you felt stuck and what you did to help yourself out of it?

My analogy for being an artist in the Cartoon Landscape is that one has to walk out over the cliff edge, knowing enough to not look down. If you look down, and become aware there is nothing beneath you, then down you fall down. Be like Bugs Bunny; aware of the laws of gravity, but never study law. Those who can walk out furthest for the longest are the best artists. Like everyone, I have from time to time looked down, and had to climb back up to the top of the cliff and start again. Climbing up does require fashioning your own ladder out of whatever is to hand.

What kind of studio visits, conversations or meetings with curators, producers, writers, press, gallerists, or collectors do you enjoy or get the most out of?

Cold-calling studio visits have often produced blissful afternoons. Visits from interested parties have gradually tapered off, but there was a time they were my main source of company. When I was working out of the remote Rectory Farm in Bedfordshire there were weeks, I would only see Colin the sandwich-man and renegade Kerry the farm owner dropping past to say hello with his shot gun under his arm. So, if a curator, or student, or artist came by it would be a chance to unleash my pent-up verbal deluge and find out if any of my thoughts made sense when said out loud. Now I have set up my gallery project, Ex-Baldessarre, at my studio in Bedford, as, in part, a way of providing an excuse for more people to drop by. Once this lock-down passes I'll be there every Saturday as normal and awaiting your company.

Andy Holden, IF YOU INSTAGRAM MY DEAD BODY USE WALDEN AND TAG IT #NOFILTER, Rowing Projects, London, 2016

If you work with a commercial gallery how does this relationship affect or inform your work and life? 

I don't, so it doesn't. I'd be interested to know how it would. I was too contrary.

Do you have a trusted muse, mentor, network, or circle of friends you consult for critical feedback?

I made a film about the relationship between friendship and creativity called Oh! My Friend's a couple of years ago to explore the way certain friendships were intrinsic to creative development. It was also a sub-plot of M!MS. For me friendship as a place to experiment and challenge oneself has always been crucial, a good friendship is how you grow, through getting to know another. Much of artmaking is very solitary, which makes the blossoming of friendship and dialogue more precious. And now, yes, the friendship of certain artists means the world to me and I could not overstate the importance of those friendships in making me a better artist and a better person.

Andy Holden, Unquiet Grave, Temporary Public Sculpture, Latitude Festival, 2014

How do you make money to support your practice?

I've always juggled a few things, combined a few streams, some dry up, then try and get another one to flow a little, dig a new tributary here and there, build the occasionally damn, regularly forget to tend to the banks. Teaching gives a little, music loosens about the same amount of money, grants and commissions makes new major works appear, but I always seem to go over budget so that’s normally just the material, so then the cost of life comes from the occasional sale, selling small editions, performances, talks, loans, bailouts, windfalls, miracles like the Hamlyn Award or getting the Artangel show to tour. This year I was saved by the Tate acquiring some works. Every year has been different. I should say that for the first six years of getting started, even when I had shows at Tate and Kettles Yard, I didn't make enough to move out of home, I stayed in my childhood bedroom and used my friend's mums warehouse as a studio, without those support structures I'd have been sunk. I would advocate grooming unlikely patrons and the system of support-in-kind. Favours from friends and exchanges of labour were a huge part of my economic life early on. I have a both a large unpaid student loan and a shit ton of psychic debt.

Andy Holden, Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will, Paint and collage on melted gramophone records, 2008-11

What compromises have you made to sustain your practice?

Living with my mum and dad until the age of 30, spending most of my twenties on my own on a farm in Arlesey, and ruining a relationship. See also the psychic debt mentioned above.

What advice would you give your past self?

Take piano lessons. Draw more. Be less self-absorbed. Listen to your mother when she says maybe you should think about a career in IT as it’s an up-and-coming field.

Andy Holden, The Third Attempt, Temporary Public Sculpture, Netherlands, 2008

Can you recommend a book film or podcast that you have been inspired by that transformed your thinking?

To answer this would be the history of my internal life.

Follow Andy on Instagram @andyholdenphotos and Twitter @andyholden_GM and visit his website https://andyholdenartist.com/

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An interview with

I have known Iain and Jane and been a fan of their work for over 15 years. I am continually amazed by their endless curiosity, thirst for knowledge and ability to chart new waters.

They have an incredible ability to see opportunities where others see obstacles. Whether it’s performance, curating, producing films for the cinema or TV, they are meticulous in their planning and collaborative processes, in extending themselves and others to go beyond the imaginable. They are experts at spotting and mining the real potential, interrogating identity and getting to the heart of the matter. They think big and they always deliver. Their honest answers are reflective of their preferred way of working – straight talking, rising to the occasion, enabling others.

Photo: Paul Heartfield

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard are artists and BAFTA-nominated directors working across film, installation, performance, sound, documentary, and TV drama. Working collaboratively since meeting at Goldsmiths in the mid-nineties, their work has been exhibited around the world and is collected by museums and institutions including Tate and the Government Art Collection.

Their debut feature film, 20,000 Days on Earth, won two awards at Sundance and nominations from BAFTA and the Independent Spirit Awards. In 2015 Iain & Jane received the Douglas Hickox Award for best debut director from the British Independent Film Awards.

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard with Nick Cave, on the set of 20,000 Days on Earth, 2013. Production Still Amelia Troubridge

What are you doing, reading, watching or listening to now that is helping you to stay positive?

We try our best to help each other to keep things in perspective. But with all the perspective in the world, it can still be tough to stay positive. We’ve been trying Transcendental Meditation, and that’s been helping. We’re finding that TM works for us better than mindfulness. The book ‘Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity’ by David Lynch is an inspirational read.

One thing that’s been amazing to see is so many friends creating these incredible communities online. There’s Carol Morley’s #FridayFilmClub, where people watch a film at the same time and then discuss it afterwards. Sue Tilley’s life drawing classes have kept going on Facebook and Noel Fielding’s #NoelsArtClub on Instagram every Saturday 3-5pm is giving kids and adults a creative outlet. Tim Burgess’ #TimsTwitterListeningParty have taken on a momentum all their own, and Jarvis Cocker is helping the nation drift off to sleep with his #BedtimeStories on Instagram.

We don’t avoid the news as much as we’d like to, but we try to balance it with equal amounts of comedy, satire and funny cat videos.

The Dali & The Cooper, 2018, Episode in Sky’s series Urban Myths, first aired on 3rd May 2018. Directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, featuring Noel Fielding as Alice Cooper, David Suchet as Salvador Dali, Sheila Hancock as Gala Dali and Paul Kaye as Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon. Original score composed by Richard Hawley and Jarvis Cocker

What are you working on and how has the lockdown affected your ideas, processes and chosen medium?

The hardest part is fighting the feeling of frustration. Almost all our work has fallen away, with little promise of any of it returning anytime soon, and that’s an enormous weight on the mind. We also feel the weight of knowing full well that this long period free from many of the usual daily distractions should be an ideal time to be creative. It’s especially frustrating, as an aspect of our practice involves scriptwriting, and on paper, isolation should be the ideal time to write. But so much energy is needed just trying to stay stable and sane, that the focus isn’t there. It’s especially tough working collaboratively, as our brief periods of productivity never seem to coincide. It’s a daily challenge, but we battle on!

There’s a couple of ’strategies’ we’ve tried to implement. We’re forever making lists of films we want to watch or see again because they relate to a particular project or idea. But it’s one of those things we've rarely found time for. So, at the start of the lockdown, we committed to watching one film every day. The discipline of it is useful, and the 55+ films we’ve watched so far has left us feeling enriched.

Another project we’ve undertaken is using the time to take stock. We’re going through more than ten years’ worth of hard drives, making sure our masters are properly archived. Along the way, we’ve unearthed some fantastic memories. We’ve shared some of them on social media.

The World Won’t Listen, 1998, 60 minutes, Live performance featuring The Still Ills

What do you usually have or need in your studio to inspire and motivate you?

People! Our work relies on meeting, talking to and collaborating with others. If anything, people are the “stuff” of our practice. That’s what we’re missing the most right now. Sure, there are other ways to communicate. You name it, we’re using it; we’re Skyping, Zooming, hanging out in Google Hangouts, chatting on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, getting annoyed with Teams and even Houseparty-ing. Of course, we’re lucky to have all these options, but none of them beat being in the same room. And while it’s possible to keep talking about our work, so far, we haven’t found any way to continue actually making it.

One of our biggest inspirations is books. Our studio (and home) are full of them. But our studio is also a very practical space, with whiteboards and everything on wheels so we can quickly reconfigure. Since we moved into our studio at Somerset House, we’ve discovered that the absence of things is as important. Home is full of distractions. Oh, and cats. Same thing, really.

Poster for 20,000 Days on Earth, 2014, Feature film, 97 minutes, Director: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard; Writer: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Nick Cave; Producer: James Wilson and Dan Bowen; Composer: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis; Starring Nick Cave, Ray Winstone, Blixa Bargeld, Kylie Minogue, Susie Cave, Arthur Cave, Earl Cave; Cinematographer: Erik Wilson; Production Stills Amelia Troubridge

What systems, rituals and processes do you use to help you get into the creative zone?

In our quarter-century (bloody hell!) of working together, we’ve learnt quite a bit about the nature of creativity. We’ve been lucky enough to witness it in some remarkable people and talk to them about it.

Here’s something we know we know, something we learnt from Nick Cave. Creativity is not difficult. Anyone can do it. You can take the tiniest idea and, providing you stick with it — put the time and effort in — it will grow into something. You must do the work and trust the process.

And here’s something we know we don’t know, inspired by Gil Scott-Heron. Creativity is elusive; it comes from somewhere else. Gil would say it came from ’the spirits’. The name doesn’t matter, but you do have to understand that it comes from the side. Somewhere out of view, often from the darkest corners at the back of your mind. Sometimes in the shower. Sometimes only when the fuse is lit by the creativity of others. It's sparked by many things and will bounce hither and thither, as you try to catch it. It’s elastic, elusive and electric.

In our experience, creativity is also obstinate. It refuses to be tied to a specific ritual or circumstance. To us, creativity seems to be 90% effort, maybe 9% bloody-minded self-confidence and 1% pure magic.

Who is Gil Scott-Heron?, 2015, 60-minute feature documentary

What recurring questions do you return to in your work?

There’s a line that pretty much sums it up for us. It's from an oft-quoted Albert Camus essay:

“When we are stripped down to a certain point, nothing leads anywhere anymore, hope and despair are equally groundless, and the whole of life can be summed up in an image. A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened”.

In our film 20,000 Days on Earth, Nick Cave elegantly describes the process of song writing as chasing after “those moments when the gears of the heart really change”. And, while we’re throwing around the quotes like an art student on an essay deadline, we should also mention our fondness for these words from Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’: “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart… you need to live in the question.”

That’s what we’re trying to do; live in the question.

What do you care about?

We care about the arts. This is the stuff that we build lives around. Many of us construct our very sense of self through our relationship to arts and culture. They are a powerful tool, able to effect great change. And when the going gets tough, the arts are a lifeline. Who isn’t feeling even a little bit less isolated right now by climbing inside a book, playing great music, watching movies or playing video games? Yet as a society we seem to be giving up. We’re literally letting go of the stuff that makes us who we are. It’s a catastrophe.

In 'Know Your Place', his essay on class in the art world, Dan Fox puts it perfectly succinctly: “Art is for everyone, but participation in its professional systems is not.” He goes on: “I find art profoundly interesting but, despite 18 years in the business, I feel alienated by the games of hierarchy that play out around me, because they involve forms of classism that few will admit to.” It’s well worth a read in full.

DOUBLETHINK, 2018, Video installation, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Tudor Square. Photo Henry Rees

What risks have you taken in your work that paid off?

Risk is such a hard thing to talk about. There are artists who’ve taken a risk by introducing a new colour into their palette. And there’s artists who’ve taken a risk by getting themselves shot. There isn’t a ‘risk scale’ that makes any sense to draw comparisons.

Likewise, how do we quantify whether a risk has ‘paid off?’ In our minds, it only makes sense to talk about risk if there’s something genuinely at stake. Maybe if you’ve built a commercially successful practice by doing one particular thing, then anything that deviates from that is a risk to your steady source of income. But because we’ve never had that, we’ve never had to face those sorts of risks.

For sure we’ve taken chances. We’ve borrowed money to make up shortfalls in project budgets. We once completely changed a proposal that had been agreed by a museum, and somehow managed to convince them to come with us on a completely different creative journey. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes it backfires. But artmaking should be a process of constantly taking creative risks. Without that, what’s the point?

What risks have you taken that perhaps did not go so well but you learnt the most from?

When things haven’t gone well, it’s usually because we’ve pushed things too far. But we feel duty-bound to do this. Maybe if our practice had evolved with a specialisation, we’d feel different. But our interest is in what it’s possible to achieve as an artist. That means we’re always going to try to break things.

Probably the first time we understood the value of this was while we were making a series of live art projects in the nineties. With one project, we found the breaking point for that set of ideas. But by being pushed to confront failure we were able (eventually) to reformulate that strand of our work into what became our biggest and most successful live project. Perhaps it’s too much to say it would never have happened without the earlier mistakes, but it was absolutely better for what we’d learnt along the way.

Such a mixed practice has given us an amazing range of experiences, even if we’ve learnt it’s a hard way to make a living. We’ve worked with live performance, directing film and television, video editing, scriptwriting, curation, sound installations, collaborated with musicians, writers, actors, technologists, scientists, even magicians. And although what we choose to experiment with frequent changes, we enter each project with the same heads, minds, and hearts. For us, that’s what being an artist is all about.

Silent Sound, Installation view and performance, St. George's Hall, Liverpool, 2006/7

What is your favourite exhibition, event, or performance you have participated in and why?

Like children (so we’re told) it’s hard to pick a favourite. But the projects we enjoy the most are invariably the ones that scare us the most. Fear is important, it’s the fuel in the tank.

Silent Sound, a live performance and installation we made in Liverpool in 2006. It was the first time those two sides of our practice came together, with the gallery component of the piece created, quite literally, overnight. This was also the first (and to date only) project which involved us personally performing. Aside from the huge adrenaline rush, the work also felt like it was entering new territory for us. A lot of subtle psychological trickery went into a piece that was ultimately rather honest and exposing.

It would be impossible not to also mention 20,000 Days on Earth. This film allowed us to work through so many experiments. It was making this that we met the cinematographer Erik Wilson, who we continue to work with. He’s truly inspirational. And of course, the film has opened doors to projects we would have previously never been able to realise. So, it’s very dear to us.

20,000 Days on Earth, 2014, Feature film, 97 minutes, Production Still Amelia Troubridge

What would you hope that people experience from encountering your work?

Put simply, we want to make work that can make someone else feel the way we have felt in the presence of transformative objects and experiences. We want our work to have an immediate effect and leave a lasting impression.

Could you tell us a bit more about at a time when you felt stuck and what you did to help yourself out of it?

Whenever someone badly lets us down it throws us off our tracks. When you’ve put so much of yourself into a project, it can hit hard. We’ve been in some real ruts over the years. It’s rare, but when it happens, it’s the most anti-creative situation we’ve ever found ourselves in.

There’s something debilitating about feeling like you have no control over anything anymore. And that creates a completely different kind of crippling fear. It's tough to claw your way back from feeling so powerless.

Very early in our career, we did a project with an ‘artist-run’ space. We’d agreed to split the costs of making the work 50/50. But when the bills started coming in, the gallery always had a reason why they couldn’t pay their share. We scraped by and borrowed money to clear the debts, hoping their contribution would eventually come through. It never did. For a pair of baby artists, just finding their way in the world, that was so destructive. To this day, we find ourselves occasionally being unhelpfully distrustful in a way that we know traces straight back to that experience.

There’s no sure-fire fix that we’ve been able to find. In time, you dust yourself off and start to try things. Play. Fail. Daydream a little. Slowly you being to bounce ideas off other people. And bit by bit, you become unstuck.

Doublethink, 2018, Two screen video installation (15 mins, looped), Filmed at Somerset House Studios, London

What kind of studio visits, conversations or meetings with curators, producers, writers, press, gallerists, or collectors do you enjoy or get the most out of?

The best visitors are those that bring a cheque book! (Sorry, not sorry.)

Okay, flippant answers aside, the best meetings and studio visits are with those who can push you beyond the things you usually say. Those stock phrases you collect about your work that act as a crutch when you’re forced to talk about it. We’ve never believed that we’re the experts on the theory surrounding our work. We know what we’re trying to do or say, but that doesn’t mean we’re succeeding.

Listening to someone you trust completely tell you something you never realised about what you do is incredible because with this new insight we’re able to progress, refine or change what we’re doing.

If someone enters a dialogue with an open mind and an open heart, we will get along just fine. We give a lot of ourselves when we meet people, and it’s rewarding when that’s given back.

Multigraph 013 (Paul Kaye), 2018, C Type Fuji Flex, 32.5 x 48 x 3.5cm (framed), Edition of 3

If you work with a commercial gallery how does this relationship affect or inform your work and life?

We are represented by a commercial gallery (Kate Macgarry), and we have a manager/agent who looks after our film and TV projects. Working with a gallery has helped get our work placed in museums and public collections, but we’ve never really found our feet with private collectors. We know we’re not an easy fit for the art market. But as much as we wish that wasn’t the case, making work that tries to chase the market just isn’t for us.

We’re never been an easy fit in any of the industries that we have worked in. We tend to operate in a way that never quite fits the models for success. Despite their often-modest budgets, we find institutions are a good setting for us because our ambitions tend to align. We are always interested in bringing new and diverse audiences in to experience our work.

With film and TV becoming part of what we do, we now have a manager. He is a brilliant sounding board. Someone who will always tell it to us straight, even when it is not easy to listen to. Maybe because film and TV are inherently collaborative mediums, we have found that world a little easier to navigate. So much of the art world seems to go on behind closed doors, or at least doors we have never learnt how to open. We haven’t made things easy for ourselves.

Poster for File Under Sacred Music, 2003, single channel video, 22 mins 

In 1993 at 'A Fete Worse than Death' we met Joshua Compston. He became the closest thing to a mentor we’ve ever had. We would meet most Sunday mornings in Shoreditch and tape record our conversations. These blew our minds wide open. Joshua wanted us to document his ideas, but we became hooked on his self-belief and the scale of his ambition. His ventures were a heady mix of brilliance and bullshit, but he taught us more in the short time before his death than anyone else.

Since then, there’s not been a single figure, although certain individuals at different times have been important to us. For example, the body of live work we produced early in our career would have been impossible without Vivienne Gaskin, who at the time was Director of Live Arts at the ICA.

Being two people means we have an inbuilt, and constant, level of self-criticism. We know two sets of instincts are better than one. And when they naturally align, we know we’re onto something worthwhile. But for us that only works at a project level. Regrettably, we’ve never been able to apply those instincts to any sort of career strategy.

Things are a little different in film. The art world seems so firmly bought into the idea of the autonomy of the artist that it seems to be only after something has been completed that people step forward to tell you what they think of it. Producers and executive producers in film are always able to be consulted during the making process. Most of the time, that’s a good thing! Maybe commercial galleries can provide that for some artists, but we’ve never had those kinds of relationships in the art world.

Our friends are brilliant — always open to reading a script we’re developing or watching a rough cut of something. So, there’s a handful of people we return to when we need an outside voice.

Bish Bosch: Ambisymphonic (with Scott Walker), 2013, 25 minutes, Ambisonic sound installation, Sydney Opera House for Vivid Festival

Which artists or creatives do you feel you are work is in conversation with?

To be honest, we have never thought of our work in that way. Even some of the pieces we have made that very directly riff on existing artwork, such as ‘Walking After Acconci’, were never about a conversation with the original artist. It’s the dialogue with an audience that’s important to us.

Of course, there’s a sense in which all our work is in conversation with fellow creatives. That might be the more subtle collaborations that take place between us and, say, a cinematographer. Or sometimes the collaboration is more overt, such as the project we made with Scott Walker for Sydney Opera House. These real and direct conversations are incredibly important to us and our work.

Kiss My Nauman (still), 2007, 4 channel HDV projection, silent, duration: 47 mins

How do you make money to support your practice?

It’s rarely talked about, but one of the most difficult things is that the projects we’re best suited to are usually larger scale, working with public spaces. Even when the budget to realise the work is there, it rarely covers the true time, effort, and resources that the project requires. As the artist, you’re expected to be the most committed person in the room. We have no problem with that, we work stupidly long hours every single day. But when everyone around you is on a salary and your artist fee isn’t covering even close to minimum wage, it’s tough.

There’s such a strong sense in this country that the arts are a luxury, and that if you don’t have a private income to support yourself, then you should go and do something else. How do we even begin to fix that?

For almost twenty years, we supported our practice with part-time jobs. Initially in the book trade then, for 12 years in the record industry. We weren’t able to fully reshape our working life until after the success of our first feature film. Although it brought us little in the way of hard cash, the doors opened have been immense. We’ve been able to incorporate film and TV work into our practice. As glamorous as this perhaps sounds, we’re only able to take on a small amount. It’s gruelling work, and we’re not right for the sort of conventional projects that enable directors-for-hire to make a good living.

So, there’s still no single or solid source of income in our life. We try to keep enough plates spinning in the hope that some eventually pay off. We’ve never liked the lack of transparency in the art world, so let us put our money where our mouth is and give you an idea of how we’ve made money over the past year.

It’s been a real mix: Small development fees for scripted projects that may never move beyond development; some income for work on a Nick Cave exhibition which was due to open in Copenhagen but is now on hold; a percentage of the anticipated income for co-curating an exhibition that has now been postponed; tiny amounts from royalties and image licensing; an executive producer fee for mentoring a friend through the process of directing her first feature documentary.

Other than that, there may be an occasional modest fee for a mentoring day or something similar, but it’s shaky. And we’re now seriously concerned about making it through this year and the current pandemic, as we fall through the cracks of almost all Government support.

David Suchet as Salvador Dali in The Dali & The Cooper, 2018

What compromises have you made to sustain your practice?

We haven’t pursued creating a family. it has never felt financially viable, and we don’t have the first clue how we would navigate that as well as working as a collaboration. Around us, we’ve built up the most wonderful community of friends and peers, who we value immensely. Perhaps this is our compensation for not having a larger family of our own.

We work incredibly long hours, typically 12 hours a day, and always 6 days a week. More when we need to. It’s the only way to fit everything in, especially when juggling part-time job commitments.

We’ve compromised ourselves financially in every way imaginable. Everything that comes in, goes back into the work. We’ve had one ‘holiday’ in the last 25 years. Don’t get us wrong, that isn’t meant as a sob story. We’re incredibly lucky to be able to travel often with our work, and we’ve often tagged days off onto the end of a work trip. But there’s no doubt we could’ve had a better standard of living with a more conventional choice of career.

What advice would you give your past self?

Oh, we’d have been far too stubborn to listen. Worry less, maybe.

Something we’d love to have understood sooner is this, a quote from Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli “The best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.”

Sheila Hancock as Gala Dali in The Dali & The Cooper, 2018

Can you recommend a book film or podcast that you have been inspired by that transformed your thinking?

It’s attitudes we fall for. Anyone who refuses to accept there’s a way things ought to be. But it’s a kind of alchemy, you have to be an active element in the inspiration equation.

Two books we’d heartily recommend are ‘Lanny’ by Max Porter and ‘Waiting for the Last Bus’ by the Right Rev. Richard Holloway. The Two Shot Podcast hosted by actor Craig Parkinson is a wonderful series of brutally honest conversations, mostly with actors, but they reveal so much about creativity.

The films we return to most often are ‘F for Fake’ by Orson Welles and ‘O Lucky Man!’ by Lindsay Anderson. Both have been transformational.

Visit Iain and Jane’s website and find them on socials @iainandjane and at Kate Macgarry.
All images c/o the artists and Kate Macgarry

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Coming Next...

An interview with George Vasey, a curator at Wellcome Collection and writer. In 2017 he co-curated the Turner Prize at Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. His writing has been published in Art Monthly, Burlington Contemporary, Frieze, and Mousse magazine. He is a trustee at New Contemporaries, an Artist Adviser for Jerwood Arts and on the executive committee for AICA UK.