Copyright of images belongs to the Artist.
Copyright of interview belongs to Ovenden
Contemporary (Art Promotions) Limited. Any
un-authorised use is strictly prohibited. All
rights are reserved.
(c) 2006 Ovenden Contemporary (Art Promotions)
Limited
OVENDEN CONTEMPORARY INTERVIEWS GARETH BUXTON...
OC:
Hi Gareth. You became an Artist fairly recently
didn't you? Tell us a little about your life
before you started painting.
GB: Life before painting was a dark, barren world
of misery, despair and hopelessness (smiles). No,
it was fine really. Before my artistic impulses
arose I was very much into technology and
gadgets. I was pretty geeky, (pause)....not that
being geeky is anything to be ashamed of!
OC:
So how did you get in to Art? What prompted you?
GB: There was an imbalance in my life that I
wasn't paying much attention to, I was sketching,
mainly pen and ink, sometimes with biro, a
marvellous and vastly underated artistic tool. It
wasn't formal or planned and I didn't do it
everyday. I was, and still am, keen on making
music, writing and playing songs for guitar and
teaching myself piano. As a teenager I wrote
poems which were pretty awful. They are now
safely locked in an underground bunker! Before I
started painting my right-hand brain was more
dominant. Nowadays, I am living in a more
balanced world, one where art and science
coexist.
OC:
Do you think that your life would have remained
the same if you had not been involved in a road
traffic accident? One imagines that to be the
sort of event that focuses the mind!
GB: Indeed the mind is very focused when a
several tonnes of horse transporter lorry comes
hurtling out of nowhere and hits you nearly
head-on! I don't think my life would have
remained the same with or without the accident as
I was already on the curve of discovering the
creative side, having done photography and
sketching courses at that point.
OC:
So, what effect did the crash have then?
GB: What the crash did was provide impetus for
change. It was the catalyst that drove those
processes already underway forward with speed.
The analogy of spinning cars and acceleration and
momentum is strangely appropriate I suppose!
There was much that was not good as a result of
the accident. I got away with minor bruises &
suspected broken wrist but my girlfriend's
injuries were worse and we were emotionally
drained for weeks afterwards. There were positive
aspects to the accident however. For me in
particular, I was left with the need to
accelerate the creative drive and not wait until
I was too old before I could get down on canvas
what I needed to. Some people are uncomfortable
when you speak of the idea of such an event
having any positive aspect....its almost a taboo.
To me it was epiphany, in the most secular sense
of the world!
OC:
It all sounds horrific Gareth and it must have
taken a great deal of strength to turn an event
like that around to a positive. It's interesting
that the word 'positive' is so appropriate when
describing your artistic activities, given that
the majority of your work possesses such a
darkness. It may well be that you were already on
this creative road prior to the accident but we
wonder if your output would have been completely
different if the accident hadn't happened?
GB: I don't think that the accident radically
changed my work but I think it influenced the
tone of it and brought out themes concerning the
vulnerability of the flesh and the proximity of
death in all our lives. It made me aware of how
close we are at times without realising it.
Rather than being a negative influence this
realisation pushes me to use the time available
to me and do something useful with it.
OC:
And you want to spend your time creatively now
that you are aware of how valuable time is?
GB: Well, not really. Art for me is a cathartic
experience; I don't just paint because I like it.
I feel the need to paint, it helps me express
thoughts and feelings. The accident helped me
remove the 'filter', the self censorship, that I
was imposing on myself, gradually allowing
greater freedom of expression and not suppressing
my creative urges or more extreme ideas.
'Bio-clock' is an example of that, I nearly
didn't modify the clock in that way, I nearly
left it alone, the poor thing! But then I pushed
myself and ignored the nagging voices and just
went for it, and I'm glad I did.
OC:
A lack of self-censorship would explain the
subject matter of some of your more recent works,
'Bio-Clock' included. You seem to be exploring
concepts that most of us don't usually think
about, or, at least, don't freely admit to
thinking about.
GB: Yes, all that darkness. Well, really I'm not
a Goth! I don't sleep in a coffin and only have
one body piercing (smiles). I guess the subject
matter of my work is stylistically flavoured by
my visual experiences over the years and my brain
has, sort of, distilled these. It just so happens
that I have fed my visual cortex mainly with a
diet of cheap sci-fi, horror and occult for most
of my life. It's this material that is now part
of my visual vocabulary which influences the look
and feel of my sculptures and paintings. I have
always been drawn to the grotesque.
OC:
It seems, the more you paint, the more grotesque
your visual vocabulary becomes. We are thinking
particularly of your recent 'bio-sculpture' works
that caused such a strong reaction at the Anglian
Contemporary Art Fair when they were featured on
the OC Stand.
GB: Great! I like to provoke a reaction from
people, I like to see art make people think, make
them challenge assumptions about themselves or
their environments.
OC:
But, the suggestion offered by these particularly
visceral pieces, that the body is nothing more
than a machine that can be repaired or even
replaced by electronic components, struck a nerve
with everyone that viewed them. It seems as
though the accident has left you with some sort
of belief that you can cheat death again. Are
you, in some way, taunting your own mortality?
GB: I am interested in your use of the phrase
'more than a machine'. From my point of view all
machines are important. Isn't all life just tiny
machines, even viruses? Centuries of religious
teaching has tried to pursuade us that there is
an afterlife, that we are more than just a body,
and as a devout Atheist, I don't believe a word
of it! The machine is everything, there is no
afterlife, no soul, no spirit, no separate
existence. When the machine stops we stop. We are
all a by-product of our 'organic flesh machines'.
On the one hand, this is something to celebrate-
the wonder and pleasure of all the organic
processes of life. Conversely, I am frustrated at
being part of this process. The fact that the
body denies the mind immortality and there is
nothing that myself or medical science can do to
stop this process is disappointing. This is the
core of the dilemma, the tragic interplay between
the pleasures of the organic machine and the
vulnerability of the flesh.
OC:
So are you 'taunting' death? Do you want to live
forever? Would you trade the 'pleasures of the
organic' for an immortal flesh rather than a
vulnerable one?
GB: No, I am not "taunting" death. It's more of a
taunt to science and human development. All this
culture and technology we possess and yet we
still bend to the power of life's processes and
the whims of the planet. One of the reasons for
me doing what I do with the sculpture and
painting is an attempt to understand the
inevitability of this cycle. It's cathartic and
preparatory in that way. I think the pleasure and
rush of excitement of life in a short time is
something that I wouldn't exchange for a long but
dull existence. Put me down for the pleasures of
the flesh please.
OC:
So, what is Gareth Buxton planning on doing with
the remainder of his inevitably short but
potentially exciting life?
If I can carry on eating cheese and drinking red
wine I will be more than happy. I plan to
'bio-ise' some more objects. I'd like to scale up
my bio-sculptures to a much larger size, get some
on public display and I have quite a few ideas
for paintings relating to 'bio' and medical
themes. Ideally I'd like to get some collectors
for my bio-sculptures. I'd like to use my art to
be making a living and challenge people to look
at the world in a different way. But pet
portraits are absolutely out of the question,
unless I'm allowed to turn the pet inside-out
first............
OC: Any takers?!
(August
2006)