Sarah Maple Interview

It has been a great pleasure to meet (sort of) one of my Art heros and conduct an interview with them. I was a little star stuck at Tate Britain recently and really wanted to say hello but was to scared to say hello (shame on me ! ) regardless to say I contacted her and she was willing to give an interview for my developing my creative practice grant… below is the interview thanks so much Sarah Maple………

1/  Tell me you are most famous for your works made at Kingston Uni which were picked up by Saatchi. How did that initial fame affect your practice? 

Yes when I was in my third year at art school I won a prize from the Saatchi Gallery. It was a really wonderful feeling to be selected by this prestigious panel of judges at such a young age. In a way winning was a blessing and a curse! Having that under my belt led to lots of other opportunities and helped with my confidence as an artist. But at the same time I was so young and was still figuring out what kind of artist I was. I cringe at some of that early work that never should have seen the light of day haha!

2/ What are you working on now / exhibitions, interests, development in practice? 

I am currently artist in residence at Bradford Museum as part of a bigger project with the Decolonising Institute at UAL. It’s a new program to get  more diverse artists into UK collections. It’s a really exciting project and I’ve not had the opportunity to delve into a collection in this way before! I’m a few months in and have a good idea of a new large scale video work I’m going to make but I can’t say what it is yet! I also have 2 major projects coming up in 2025 but I also can’t say what those are yet either. Sorry that’s not helpful! But watch this space basically.

3/ Tell me what's the best thing about being an Artist and what's the thing that niggles you about being an Artist?  

The best thing about being artist is that everyday I do what a love. Okay that’s not entirely true because being an artist is actually about 90% admin! But on the creative days when I’m making things it’s the best thing in the world and I’m still pinching myself that this is my job. What niggles me is….well it’s not a job where you can ever switch off. Your brain is working 24/7, even in bed at night I’m thinking about it. It’s knackering!

4/ You are represented by Kochxbox in Amsterdam, Tell me how your work is received in the Netherlands? 

I love it there and the humour translates really well. I think they get what I’m trying to say and in the way I’m saying it. It’s probably the country where I’ve shown the most and I feel very grateful for my supportive gallery there. They’ve supported me for over ten years, I couldn’t do it without them!

5/ Any advice for an emerging/ struggling Artist? 

Don’t give up! And use all the available sources out there. When I left art school it felt like a desert, I had no idea what to do or who to ask advice to. But now there’s so many peer networking opportunities and courses and advice you can get. But also - use social media to show what you do but not too much!

Interview Dr Richard Goodson Poet & Queer Artist

Yes, I consider myself a Queer Artist.  I'm a poet, at the literary, experimental end of the scale rather than the annoying 'spoken word' end of the scale, and I also write lyrical / experimental essays.  I did a practice-based PhD in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent in which I was writing poems which circled around the concept of masculinity and the male body.  Some of these ended up in my pamphlet 'Mr Universe' (Eyewear Books, 2017).  As part of my research I began curating a resource of images of the male body, taken from fitness magazines, Renaissance art and pornography.  This led quite naturally to an ongoing interest in manipulating images like these, at first in paper collage and then digitally, by editing and filtering.  So although I'm primarily a poet and essayist, I prefer to think of myself more as a writer AND - potentially! - a multimedia artist.  I'm now looking for a way to express myself visually, without being so dependent on these images.  But my aim, as with my poems, is the same:  to explore what it means to be a man, and specifically a man who identifies as 'queer' - so whatever I do, queerness is central to it.  I'm interested in queer embodiment, queer spirituality, queer masculinity - ALL my work explores what these things might look like.  Also, on a more personal level, ALL my work is a way of expiating the gay shame I was also taught to embody earlier on in my life.  

1.  That poem is the only poem I've written that's got noticed and talked about - a bit of it was even quoted in The Observer when it was reviewing the anthology The Poetry of Sex.  It's an old poem now.  I think I've changed a lot as a poet since then.  I liked the idea of objectifying Daniel Craig as 007, in that famous scene when he comes out of the sea - objectifying him wryly and lasciviously in the same way that the makers of the film were objectifying him.  At the time I think I got off on dragging some popular culture, and a wry queerness, into the form of the sonnet.  Not that that was an original thing to do.  But it was an important step for me to take.  

2.  I love Nottingham.  It's a city which is in poor shape at the moment.  Shops closed.  Homeless sleeping in doorways.  It's in a bad way.  But this will change.  And I think it's in periods of decline that artists get a bit feistier, because there seems less to lose.  So we'll see.  I haven't done any Creative Writing workshops for a few years because I realised that, as much as I enjoyed doing them, they take a lot of energy.  I also handed over 'Word Jam', a multilingual forum for poets and musicians, which I'd founded.  I made a conscious to withdraw from all that and concentrate on my own work.  Despite my jab at Spoken Word, I do love performing - but I guess I don't want my poems to fit into any kind of London-y formula or London-y scene (and Spoken Word does seem to do this).  I did a gig in Nottingham with a free-jazz saxophonist and free-jazz percussionist - that's more the kind of live work I'm interested in.  Any kind of collaboration which brings poems to people's ears - or eyes - in fresh, unformulaic ways - then count me in!

3.  Actually, I know nothing about text art so I'm not sure I can comment!!  It seems like the obvious area for me to explore - I certainly want to work out ways of incorporating some of my words into something visual.  (Maybe you can suggest something to me?!)

4.  I don't have one particular 'hero', but Derek Jarman is always there, and John Cage.  The 50's 'beat' movement was quite queer, what with Ginsburg and Burroughs etc - and I also like that period because some of them were very influenced by Zen (in their improvisatory, chance and 'stream-of-consciousness' experiments).  I'm a practising Zen Buddhist, so any Queer Buddhists are likely to be placed in my lineage of influences. 

Interview with ignacio Darnaude

Dear Ignacio Daraude, 

That would be great. Sorry for the slow response as we were away on our annual holiday in Amsterdam (Where my partner is from and where we have a flat) 

I prefer to do interviews via email as it gives you time to think about the questions and I'm a bit old school anyway having grown up without the internet in the 80's. 

The following questions will be published both on my own website www.mrpauldavidchisholm.com and I'm looking to start a website for my research called something along the lines of ArtWorldinterviews. 

If you would be so kind to answer the following questions that would be great and much appreciated and just so that you know this research is funded by the Arts Council England. I'm also a post grad Artist considering a PHD in Fine Art so these interviews are a foundation to my ongoing research as a Queer British Artist. 

1, What did you do today? 

I spent my last day in Iceland visiting Reykjavik, which has a fabulous Penis Museum. I was thrilled to discover that, in addition to its extraordinary landscapes, Iceland features the rainbow flag wherever you go, from schools to hotels, churches, government buildings, stairs, main streets, roads, soft drinks and even in rainy skies.  Absolute heaven. The flag’s creator, Gilbert Baker would have been really proud.

2, Does being Queer as an Artist affect the way you read a painting? 

100%. As an art lover, whether a painting has a clear queer theme or a coded queer theme which I can detect, makes me focus intensely on the artists’ intention, their creative process, why they chose what they depicted or omitted. Paying attention to these details enhances my experience and makes me appreciate their work of art even more.

3, There are two seminal exhibitions at major institutions in the U.S and the U.K in the last ten or so years 'Hide and Seek at the Smithsonian and Queer British Art at Tate Britain'. With such a history of ignoring or maliging us, how far do you think these exhibitions went in presenting Queer Art? 

I saw both, loved them and cried in both of them. When I entered the main room of the Tate Exhibition and I found myself surrounded by all the artists I adore, acknowledging that they were gay, it was a transformative experience, I had to sit down and compose myself. It was the reaffirmation of everything I’ve known but the art world refused to acknowledge until then.

4, Who are your favourite Queer Artists? A long list I'm sure !  John Singer Sargent, Jean Cocteau, David Hockney, Kehinde Wiley, Duncan Grant, Lord Leighton, Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Michelangelo. Thomas Eakins, Grant Wood, Caravaggio, Donatello… the list is endless

5, Why did you start breaking the gay code in art? What's your background/ professional experience/ Passion? 

I have a very unusual background. I grew up in Spain, where I was a lawyer and a journalist. I moved to Los Angeles to study film production. I had a very successful career in the studios as head of international marketing for Disney and Sony.

Art is a true passion of mine and, thru the years, I realized that many of the artists that I loved happened to be gay. Not just the ones that many people know: Warhol, Haring or Mapplethorpe but many others I responded to but didn’t realize until much later that they were gay. When I started investigating why I was reacting so strongly to their art, I discovered that key artists in history, from Michelangelo to David Hockney used secret gay codes in their work and there are secret gay images hiding in plain sight in iconic, world-known works of art. This astonishing discovery galvanized me into leaving Sony to develop my project HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT – BREAKING THE GAY CODE IN ART, which encompasses lectures, articles, Instagram posts @breakingthegaycodeinart and a docuseries in the works uncovering how, in spite of enormous repression, queer artists and queer imagery in art, both, openly or through secret codes, have revolutionized mainstream art and culture from the Renaissance to present times. 

I just finished a 4-lecture series at LA’s LGBT Center, supported by and Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood and recently flew to New York to be a key speaker at a panel that NY HISTORICAL SOCIETY organized around their J.C. LEYENDECKER exhibition https://www.nyhistory.org/programs/coded-the-hidden-love-of-j.c.-leyendecker?date=2023-07-07  I’ve also written feature stories on this subject for the GAY & LESBIAN REVIEW.

The response to my lectures has been extraordinary because the sexuality of these artists has been excluded from schools' curricula, keeping their achievements hidden from both the heterosexual and the queer communities. My goal is to enlighten audiences of all backgrounds and ages on the extraordinary queer heritage in art history, which has been widely ignored, informing young queer generations of how they come from a magnificent lineup of trailblazers.

6, How can the Art world be more inclusive/ diverse/ open to Artists of all walks of life? 

The art world has always denied the importance of an artist’s queerness in their work. If we are talking about Picasso, it’s ok to discuss his female lovers but if you want to discuss the queerness of an artist, the response from museum curators and conservative boards is that their queerness is irrelevant. The two exhibitions you mentioned confirmed how important an artist’s queerness is in their work. This is changing but we have a long way to go.

7, What makes an Artwork appeal to you? 

It’s hard to describe because I have such an eclectic taste. Sometimes is the motive the artist depicts, the colors, how the artists’ lives affected their work etc. I have very visceral reactions to paintings which come from deep inside me and even I don’t know where my response comes from.

8,  So many Artists bodies of work were lost and thrown on the streets especially during the 80's and 90's with the Aids pandemic how can we overcome this tragedy if at all? 

Fortunately, this is changing. The work of Felix Gonzalez Torres, Peter Hujar, Hugh Steers, David Wojnarowicz etc is now getting skyrocketing prices. They are finally getting their due

9, What's your favourite Queer Art book ? 

Any book that discusses John Singer Sargent’s sexuality openly

10, What's the future for LGBTQ+ Artists in the museum sector do you think will grow or will we be marginalised again via hate?  

It’s a tricky question, I live in the US where we are witnessing a huge attack on gay rights and expression right now. It feels that we had one step forward and ten back. I don’t know how this will pan out but we have to keep fighting and showing the world how our queerness is essential for our planet to survive

Again many thanks for your time 

Kind regards Paul Chisholm