Now Featuring Michael Swaney

Exclusive Print, Studio

Exclusive Print, Thin Brick Arrangement

Exclusive Print, Plant

Exclusive Print, Child Trap

Exclusive Print, Molecule Flower

MH: Who are the people who populate your collages and drawings?  Frequently they are seen in portraits, formally singled out, but elsewhere they appear in hordes, and appear to be miniaturized and numerous, like a swarm of mice.

MS: There’s no definite answer to this question because half the time I don’t even know who they are and why they keep coming out in swarms. All I can say is that they are a cast of actors/actresses and performers who give meaning to and make use of the spaces in which they appear. They are the photos I see on the internet, the people I see in my everyday life, and they are the most intriguing strangers I would like to meet some day.

Our Kitchen

Browserism

MH: I enjoy the idea of you manipulating a cast of “actors” in your artwork. Are you influenced by cinema?  Any movies in particular?

MS: Cinema inspires me but I’m not consciously influenced by it. I have a massive list of movies to see but can never get around to seeing them. The best one I’ve seen recently is “Enter the Void.” In the moving picture realm I’m more influenced by television series…specifically comedy. Anything by Ricky Gervais…he and Stephen Merchant did this great new cartoon called “The Ricky Gervais Show” show that I can’t stop watching at the moment. They sit in a recording studio with another guy called Karl Pilkington and talk about mundane topics in the best way ever. The Mighty Boosh is pretty good too.

MH: Can you talk about your relationship to masks and disguise?  Masks appear both on figures in your work, and on “figures” too, i.e. your images of toys, figurines, and so on.

MS: Masks allow us to hide our identity and to do things we might not do while unmasked. Everyone loves to put on a mask and temporarily be someone else. It’s an incredibly liberating feeling. I suppose I’m attracted to the masks and costumes because of the excitement one can feel while hiding. Ancient civilizations knew what was up.

Whirlers

MH: Can you talk about the doubling that happens in your work, both the with the masks and also in the images that in turn seem to replicate what we might think of as another image, like the collages of museum plans and blueprint-like schemes?  And also, more metaphorically, the images of “performances” which nod to the idea of documentation of liveness?

MS: The performance collage series started around the same time as the museum series. I was thinking a lot about our civilization as an artifact in the future. Asking myself how would future civilizations be able to understand what performance art was if it wasn’t possible for them to excavate any physical evidence. How would they perceive our museums and all the things inside of them? We know that prehistoric people painted on the cave walls, but maybe what they were depicting was actually performance art too. It was basically this yearning to somehow preserve these actions and houses of art as static objects or proof for the archaeologists of the future. The doubling you mentioned is also my way of crediting and appropriating art history in a very obvious way.

MH: What “ancients” intrigue you?  Real ones, mythical ones?

MS: The real ones interest me a lot more because of the evidence they left behind. I love mythology too but it’s a totally different realm because of the blurry line between reality and story. But when I’m standing in front of a huge stone head which was physically made by someone a 1000 years ago, the power in that experience is unexplainable. I’ve always been really into the ancient Egyptians, Pre-Columbian America and ancient Africa blows my mind too.

MH: What do you think is the origin of your interest is pulling back and thinking of how our world will be seen in the future?  Is it your interest in the past, and the way we see that?  Interest in the “idea” of the past, i.e. the stories and myths we tell ourselves about it, which of course vary and often diverge from historical fact?

MS: I suppose it can be explained by my/our obsession with leaving our mark on the earth. It’s definitely connected to my interest in the past and it’s artifacts but the idea of a ‘future fossil’ is really exciting to me. There is a piece by Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla which perfectly embodies what I’m getting at. Thinking about how we’ll be seen in the future is a way for me to step back for a second to analyze what we’ve really accomplished in our time, and to question which things might be truly appreciated 1000 years from now.

Making My Way To Conceptual

MH: I’ve enjoyed skimming your blog and looking at some of the artists you follow.  Where are some of the other places you look for inspiration?

MS: Music, travelling and visiting new places, simply leaving the house, checking galleries and museums, collaborating with other artists and non-artists.

Bosch To The Future

MH: Anything else you’d like to share with LPP blog readers?

MS: I’d like to say thanks to Little Paper Planes for inviting me to collaborate. Also I’d like to take this chance to big up a new project I’m working on with my friend Steve called Scrollster.