Interview with Stuart Pearson Wright

We talk artificial insemmination, Keira Knightley and the snobberies of the art world with artist Stuart Pearson Wright whose exhibition I Remember You/ Maze is currently showing at Riflemaker.

What themes are you exploring in your work in this exhibition?
I am trying to get to grips primarily with male identity but I am also interested in how fiction operates in identity construction. Man's relationship to nature was another important idea that I considered whilst painting, in particular, Long Time Gone.

You were one of the first children born in the U.K. by artificial insemination. How does this experience inflect your work at Riflemaker?
I should say that I was one of the earliest children born by artificial insemination in the public sector. the process had been available in private clinics for twenty years or more. The experience has given rise to something of an identity void, a sense of rootlessness. This has, in the past been a cause of very morbid feelings but in the context of the work in this exhibition, the 'identity void' has become an excuse to explore other identities, with relish.
 

You have chosen to use portraiture in a time when this is not always seen as a legitimate or popular form of modern art. Why have you made this choice?
I don't think of the work that I do as portraiture. This is a complex point, as many of the paintings are of figures. However, it's my feeling that portraiture has a very different set of objectives to those that interest me, primarily elevating the subject in some way. Portraits are a form of identity propaganda. They present us as we would wish to be seen, or as society would like us to be seen. What I do might be reasonably described as "portraiture" rather than portraiture. That is, I am referencing the idea of the portrait but playing with it and subverting it to suit my own ends.
 

You have spent much of your career subverting traditional portrait painting. How do you do this in this exhibition?
There are only three pictures in this exhibition that could claim to subvert traditional portrait painting. They are: A Whaler's Tale, Homeward Bound and I Remember You. These three paintings borrow the format of the portrait but these are not 'real' people but instead myself and friends posing as archetypes taken from old movies. They are a form of parody, fictional portraits.


The exhibition at Riflemaker includes the double-screen film installation “Maze” starring Kiera Knightley. How did Knightley come to be involved in this project and what was it like working with a Hollywood star?
I met Keira at the theatre one evening and then bumped into her at a party. I simply asked her if she'd like to be involved, having shown her an earlier video piece I had made called Knight's Tale.  She was great to work with: intelligent and gracious. I think she gives a fine performance.


How does the film “Maze” compliment your paintings?
Maze draws upon the same ideas in the paintings. it's another opportunity for me to dress up as a heroic character and indulge in some self-parody. Cowboys, Elizabethan courtiers and sailors all manifest the same ideas. Maze could equally have been set in ancient Greece


 The figure of The Cowboy is prominent in this show. What is this and how do you portray this traditional figure?
I wasn't actually a kid who was particularly interested in cowboys. As a boy I was obsessed with Star Wars. One could, of course, argue that Han Solo is a cowboy re-invented however. I have read somewhere about George Lucas's obsession with Saturday morning picture Shows: the B-movies. The cowboy is just a classic male ideal. To paint the pictures I was careful to observe the characteristic heroic qualities manifest in the film stills I referenced. I recreated these subtle character inflections and turns of the eyebrow in my own visage and then just painted what I saw.


What do you hope viewers will take away from this show? 

I hope they'll buy the paintings and hang them in their homes. They'll have a lifetime of pleasure and I will be able to pay for my imminent wedding and honeymoon. Everyone's a winner.


 Your work seems to explore the boundaries between high and low art. How important is this to you and how important do you think it is in modern art in general?
I get quite fed up with the hierarchical nature of the art market. It's inevitable however that anything with a high price is going to command a particular kind of audience. The art world is beset with social and intellectual snobberies that are really very tedious. Since value in Art is so relative and largely a product of good PR it's an interesting exercise to take a painting that has been bought from Deptford market for four quid, paint some figures into it and then sell it for a five-figure sum. The direct juxtaposition between 'good art' and 'bad art' poses some interesting questions about how we value art, in the context of my paintings, the two juxtaposed painting languages (my painted figures on found landscapes) also poses interesting questions about the idea of representation in art.

I Remember You/ Maze at Riflemaker, 79 Beak Street
Soho, London W1F 9SU, 020 7439 0000 until 26th June