Interview with
RICHARD BATEMAN
Works
Pygmy Hippotamus A,
Mixed media on paper, 27cm x 35cm
Diana Monkey F,
Mixed media on paper, 27cm x 35cm
Asian Lion 1,
Mixed media on paper, 150cm x 240cm
Red-faced Black Spider Monkey 2,
Mixed media on paper,
150cm x 250cm
Joe Madeira: When did you start working on your drawings
at the zoo?
Richard Bateman: I went to London Zoo in June 2004 because I was interested in it from an architectural viewpoint. This environment was really quite special. It had a lot of ‘charged’ childhood memories.
JM: Were the childhood memories more about the space or the space and the animals?
RB: Possibly a combination of the space and the animals. I think I only went the once as a child, in the seventies. I have a recollection of certain spaces, the Lion Terraces for example, where Brutalism and London were somehow linked in my mind. When I started making these drawings, I didn’t intend them to be images of spaces. I think it was just subconscious. I came back with a pad of drawings which featured no animals and that became the starting point. From thereon, it became
a conscious act.
JM: That you were interested in the space?
RB: Exactly. But when I first went to the zoo simply to make some drawings, I didn’t have any preconceptions.
JM: Do you see your drawings as some kind of performance? I’m thinking about the sheer scale of them.
RB: No, though I can understand why that might occur to you. The original drawings were A2 and I worked mainly with pages out of pads. The larger drawings came later. By chance, I acquired some large sheets of paper and thought it could be interesting to work on them at the zoo.
JM: How did you find shifting from small drawings, with which you could have an intimate engagement and, therefore, were not so visible to other visitors, to larger drawings on big rolls of paper, which everyone could see you working on?
RB: Well, the large drawings were kind of in-between at first. They were around half-a-metre wide by three-quarters-of-a-metre long. That was the first time I laid a sheet of paper on the floor. I put some weights on it to keep it still and started drawing. I was excited by the fact that I had this piece of paper that was more or less scrap. It was the act of using it that was important. I think I was lucky because no one really stood and watched apart from one guy who was curious. He was with his son and said he thought what I was doing was interesting. So that gave me the impetus or confidence, if you like, to work on a bigger scale.
JM: Quite a bit bigger!
RB: Yes, the paper was one-and-a-half metres by
two-and-a-half metres.
JM: Did you find that drawing in full view of the public gaze interfered with or changed your way of drawing?
RB: I think it created an intensity. I really concentrated on what I was doing as a way of shutting people out. I suppose it was like a safeguard, with all my energy going into making the drawings. It was a case of ‘how can I do this and make it work for me’, and one way was doing it at speed, because, obviously, those onlookers were quite a distraction.
JM: What’s equally fascinating is that here you are drawing the space of these animals that are being observed by people, whilst you yourself become an exhibit, because those same people are watching you, too. It’s almost like a play.
Were you aware of that?
RB: In a sense, yes. In fact, at one point I started to film myself working, to see if that, in turn, might become a piece of work. But I found using a digital camera, which needs to be restarted every couple of minutes, meant constantly having to break off, so all my energy wasn’t going into the drawings. But I think it could be a good idea to borrow a video camera, and explore that again. It could become a piece of work in its own right.
JM: When you were doing the zoo drawings, I’m looking, for example, at the Diana Monkey, it’s almost as if you’ve used the paint in a similar way an animal might smudge
or mark the paper.
RB: It’s interesting you should say that. When working on another piece, which was three-dimensional, I looked at representing the animal presence by layering mono-printing over screen-printing on boxes from the zoo. In the drawings, though, I wasn’t looking to resemble animal marks. If it seems that way, it’s accidental, but I’m certainly searching for something that creates an uncomfortable feeling.
JM: Your work, especially the drawings, is almost monochromatic. Was that a deliberate decision? Are you more interested in the shape and form?
RB: It seems instinctive to use black, whereas mixing colour seems quite, well, I wouldn’t say difficult, but it’s something I don’t do automatically. In some of my work I have explored colour. Even so, I’m interested in keeping the palette quite limited. I like the idea of restricting the colour, pushing a bit of it through, so a small concentrated area becomes the focal point where everything else is nondescript; an isolated moment in the general blandness.
JM: In the zoo images, the animals are absent. What was your thinking? You’ve mentioned you were interested in the spaces but, because of the way you use paint, although the animals are absent, it’s almost as if they are there in another way.
RB: The way that I mark-make… if the marks appear to be like an animal, that, as I say, is definitely not intentional. I’m not thinking about the animal as a mark. I’m thinking about the brutality of keeping an animal in a cage and, from there,
the brutality of life generally.
RB: Well, I’m captivated by Francis Bacon’s work.
JM: What is it about it that interests you or that
you find connects?
RB: Some years ago I went to an exhibition at The Hayward Gallery, a joint show of work by Francis Bacon and Henri Cartier-Bresson. It seemed rather strange at first, these two men, using completely different mediums, being under the same roof. It wasn’t until I was walking round that I made the connection. Cartier-Bresson is famous for his composition, most notably, cropping in camera and, of course, Bacon is famous for images showing the very embodiment of fear and angst. He also made skeletal-type environments using line. It’s the way he divides the canvas, only two or three lines in some cases. So there seems to be this link with composition and space. I found it difficult to look at his paintings when I first saw them in the Tate. They were too disturbing. There was something quite frightening about them. But, at the Hayward show, I realised how these lines almost created stages and that really excited me.
JM: You mean where the action happens?
RB: That’s right. When I say ‘stages’, that’s something that’s been widely acknowledged. I think I see them more as voids. He creates these voids and spaces, which are just empty: nowhere places… intriguing… but they’re also fearful environments.
JM: What work are you developing at the moment?
RB: Well, the zoo project is ongoing and I’m looking to work on a similar scale to drawings I made on paper at the zoo, but this time on canvas.
JM: So will you be taking the canvases to the zoo?
RB: No, I’m going to bring the zoo into the studio.
Pictured above: Asian Lion E (detail), Mixed media on Paper 27cm x 35cm © Richard Bateman