Tony Gill Interview

However much we may resist it, we like to label and give things neat titles. It provides us with a sense of security, a pointer to how we should react or behave towards each other.

Your job is one of the biggest labels to cart around: banker ( rich ) nurse ( stressed ) teacher ( clever ) artist ( a bit bonkers.)
But, these labels are increasingly being broken down. The rules no longer apply. Now, bankers are more likely to be stressed and artists rolling in loot. And what we once saw as off-the-wall, is now, in this open, fluid, global community, perfectly valid.
One artist whom it’s very hard to label is Tony Gill, 40, who’s returning to his native London -  after moving to New York back in the eighties -  for an exhibition at the Idea Generation Gallery, which was just part of (another ) Shoreditch arts festival, the inaugral Concrete and Glass.
Part of the Long Island Artist Collective his work fuses hip-hop with street art and the narrative of comic books.
Loma-Ann Marks spoke to Tony – who studied at Chelsea Art School at just 17 - as he strolled around New York, carrying his sleeping baby Crusoe in a sling having just dropped off his daughter Aurora at school.

Are you looking forward to coming back to London?
Yes, definitely.

What do you think of the city’s art scene?
I don’t know…  the London thing shows no sign of dipping. New York is  always the same,  although there are some good underground things. But then there’s not a lot of difference in NY and London. All the big global cities become one country: London, Paris, Tokyo.

Do you still live in Manhatten?
Noooo, we’re by Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It’s where people go to have kids.

Why did you leave London for New York?
Three reasons:  one to be an American painter because at the time it seemed the only relevant thing to do.
Two: I was sort of hitting a personal crisis,  and didn’t want anyone I knew to see me go through it.

What sort of crisis?
Oh, what lots of people go through in their late twenties: what am I doing with my life, what is life, all that malarkey.

And three?
Oh yes, there were three reasons!
At the time I felt like hip hop in its broadest terms was the most significant export culturally. Here, there were gigs in Brixton with Run DMC and Public Enemy. But I didn’t want to take part in a strange , diluted version of it.

So you just upped sticks…
I arrived without going through the proper channels,  but I had friends and I  had $200. I came on holiday and just stayed. On the plane I met a David Bowie impersonator who said
“You can’t stay in the YMCA, come and stay with me,” so I did. I made lots of friends very quickly. With my English accent, people assume that I’m smarter than I am.

How did you get into the New York art scene?
Well, I was never interested in ‘graffiti’ artists, that name is just a construct. Keith Haring wasn’t a graffiti artist, neither was Tony Shafrazi or even Jean- Michel Basquiat. They were attached to galleries.

But you kept painting?
I was painting for the longest time, with a bunch of mates.
Then I got involved with this girl, Christina, she was a new age practitioner. And I have this disposition to see things like auras and chakra imbalances. So we had this idea to form a cosmetics company based around understanding the power of colours, understand what energy is. We though we could change the world.

And did you?
Our company – Tony and Tina – did really well. We went right across the board : nail polish, skincare, herbal therapies.

What happened to the painting then?
Well, the best way to explain this is in bullet points.
I was a big drug-taker and I went to the Amazon jungle to take Iowasca, a preparation made from plants and have the most mind-expanding trip of a lifetime.
I did two shots and absolutely nothing happened. Everyone else was tripping. The disappointment  at feeling ‘nothing’ was so great that I couldn’t handle it.

Why?
Because it felt like I was rejected by nature. There was a  breakdown… then I saw myself and the hut and Amazon basin.I felt  that in the absence of there being someone here there was nothing pretending to be everything. It was a spiritual experience.

What happened then?
When I got back to New York, almost immediately Procter and Gamble bought Tony and Tina and then dissolved it.
Normal functioning came back to me, but there was a shift.
I’d stand by a  Rothko and a de Kooning,  which were made in a timeless place, great abstract work will always bring you heavily into the moment. I realised  that painting was the only thing ludricrous enough to do that.
Now my work is automatic. I have no idea of what’s going to happen.

So you’re trying to be more present?
It’s more than that. My daughter gets it : she says that nothing is pretending to be everything. Only when you realize this, then it’s the end of seeking.  I think I’m enlightened, then it falls away.
Stop asking questions of meaning and purpose because there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. Do what comes  up. People keep  trying to be present. Sometimes the present that you are is all good, just behave a bit better.
The paintings I make are from that,  they serve as an invitation to have a moment.

Tony Gill, Idea Generation Gallery, 11 Chance Street, London, E2 7JB, until 22nd October