Interview with James Rielly (2016)

 

British artist James Rielly was born in Holyhead, North Wales, in 1956. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. His work is held in major public and private collections. His extraordinary paintings, drawings and animations combine pathos and dark humour to expose the fragility of human interaction, and life’s absurdity. His imagery emerges from a combination of his imagination, newspaper clippings, and the recycling of pictures taken from old magazines and books. He currently has three exhibitions running concurrently: Galerie Wittenbrink, Munich (until 17 September, 2016); GE Galerie, Mexico (until 7th October, 2016); New Art Projects, London (until 13th November, 2016). I interviewed him from Paris, where he is Professor of Painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

Your work first came to my attention when you were included in the landmark exhibition Sensation (1997) at the Royal Academy of Art, where you were shown in the company of Matt Collishaw, the Chapman Brothers; Damien Hirst; Chris Ofili; Yinka Shonibare amongst others. But you had already been exhibiting for more than a decade before this.

I found a book in my local library when I was about 11 or 12. I kept the book for as long as possible, until the library demanded I give it back. It was full of black and white photos of artists in their studios. I loved the book and I wanted to be like the people in the photos. They all looked interesting, different and, to me, very exciting and sexy. Of course, I had no idea how to be one of them - they all looked like they knew things I did not. So I went to art school, and then I did artist residences, and showed my work at various galleries in different countries, and I'm still at it, making work and showing it. In 1989 I was living in Berlin and I sent the Galerie Wittenbrink a catalogue of my work, which they liked; and I had a show with them.  And, shortly after, I stopped making art for about two years as I got interested in Buddhism. Then Galerie Wittenbrink asked me to do another show, which got me started again. And this led to me being in the Sensation exhibition in 1997. I was then living in London and galleries were starting to look at artists in and around the east end. It was an interesting time, and for a while it was good to be part of it.

 In your work you seem to mock certain things, such as power structures; family relationships; and the roles we are forced to play in society. Could you expand on this?

For me art has to be simple or to look simple, allowing it to convey complex ideas and to be open to many interpretations, to have the freedom to do what you want. It may be true or false, but it is interesting to work with the gap between true and false.

 The children depicted in your work are sometimes damaged, or else they exhibit other frailties; but they seem quite cheerful in their injury.

I love the idea of optimism and trying to convey it.

 The mixture of pathos and dark humour in your work is really compelling. Do you think this is a particularly British attribute?

Violence and humour seem very close and near to the surface. Growing up in Britain in the 1960's and 1970's I felt surrounded by violence, this enters your waking and sleeping, and it became the backbone of my work as an artist. A British film I like is Get Carter (1971), which seems to sum this up pretty well. David Thomson once wrote in The Independent, (June, 1999): “If it's something dark you're after, the Brits do it best… Get Carter is sour, nasty and mean-spirited … It's part of a tradition and attitude that we should be proud of.”

 Your figures inhabit a strange ‘other’ world which is completely recognisable and yet oddly dislocated from reality. I understand that you collect and store imagery for later recycling into your work:  where do these images come from, and how much do they relate to events or people in the real world? 

I have always loved images, photos, films etc. I collect images and always have. Images have a great importance for me: it could be a photo I cut out of a book when I was 8, or a film still, or whatever. In a way, they all have the same importance in helping me to find my way to make my own images. I currently work very slowly and I want it that way. I like the idea of long periods of time condensed into one very simple image.

 Most artists’ work contains fruit grown from seeds sown in childhood. In a way, we constantly recycle the past into new configurations and new narratives. Do you think there are many autobiographical aspects in your work?

I try to not have too much autobiography in my work, or for it to be very slight; it's there but only if I tell you about it. For example, my mother is always sending me newspaper cuttings from the local papers. One of these cuttings was about a church that had been pulled down - they couldn’t afford to repair it, so down it came. This had been a church I would hide in. It was close to my school. At lunch time I would have to run as fast as I could and hide from boys that would beat me up. Of course now the church is long gone and I have nowhere to hide anymore. I made a small watercolour about this and called it, ‘A Place to Hide’.

 In this current climate of New Puritanism have you faced any negative reaction to any of your imagery – and if so how do you deal with this?

I nearly always get negative reactions to my work. Many years ago I showed my work to a London gallerist. He said he'd never exhibit my work as there was something wrong about it all. He could not explain what it was. But I thought that reaction was good and I kept on working.

 What have been some of your art influences?

The greatest influence has always been the power of images to convey a hidden idea, a feeling, something sliding beneath - something words cannot convey or explain or fix in place.

 You currently teach at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, whose illustrious alumni include Gericault, Degas, Delacroix, Fragonard, Ingres etc. How do you view the role of art schools in today’s society?

I'm a Professor of Painting in Paris. I love it for two reasons: they pay me; and it gives me a good reason to be sociable and to engage and talk with lots of different people. Art schools can be powerful places -long may they continue.