JJMORGAN When did you realise that you wanted to become an artist?
JULIAN I don’t recall an exact moment as it was more of a gradual development. I had a strong inclination towards music and writing from an early age, though visual art came later on. I remember being about 18 and realizing I was interested in drawing. At that time I had followed the advice of my high school teachers and gone straight into university to study physics and calculus, basically because I had a lot of ability in this field. Somewhere along the way I realized that having that ability did’t mean I had to go on to become a scientist or mathematician. I had never had a great degree of ability in drawing, but there was something about it that excited me. I followed that sense of excitement and it led me to where I am now.
JJMORGAN Why do you make art?
JULIAN Sometimes I ask myself that, as on many levels making art is illogical. In terms of its usefulness it doesn’t fill any utilitarian role or meet the primary needs of anyone. Its” function” is limited to aesthetic or cultural appreciation. However I think art serves a need we as human beings have which is beyond the logical or utilitarian. Wherever you find people you find some form of artistic expression. For some reason we make and respond to art, and whatever that reason is it’s profound and operates on a deep psychological level. At one point I decided to stop painting out of frustration and a sense that I wasn’t making any progress - It seemed like it would be a better idea to pursue a regular profession. I stuck on my “normal guy” hat and went about my life as a non-artist. I’ve never felt so devoid of purpose as at that point, life had been reduced to the merely functional. Some people are perfectly happy having regular jobs, and I guess their sense of meaning is derived from their jobs, friends or family. For me meaning and purpose are derived from making art. Simply put, I make art because I’m compelled to.
JJMORGAN Can you name anything or anyone that has had an influence on your creativity?
JULIAN In my experience creativity is a powerful but utterly anarchic kind of energy, it won’t obey an imposed system of order, and as much as I may try it won’t bend to my will or anyone else’s for that matter (hence the need for dialogue). There have definitely been a few people along the way that have helped me appreciate that and find ways to engage in a creative process. I guess I’d say a couple of tutors from art school, particularly Robert Franken and Peter Adsett have influenced the way I think about my work. Also my uncle, Hamish Horsley, has influenced my ideas. He’s been a practicing artist/sculptor for over 30 years and has a wealth of experiential knowledge which he’s always been willing to share with me.
JJMORGAN Can you tell us something about your work (painting/Drawing)?
JULIAN I’ve always found discussing my work difficult, and I think at least partially that stems from the fact that what I make, and the whole process of thought behind it, is really abstract. There is something that takes place in the art making process whereby the work itself has a significant say in what happens. It’s a kind of conversation between me and the materials, and the result is the art. That conversation isn’t easily translated into verbal language as it’s conducted in visual language. Though I guess you could say my work is about visual relationships, and the correlation of order and chaos. Most natural systems involve a delicate balancing act between structure or pattern and the unbridled anarchic force of nature. I like to think my art work bears some similarity to this. There is pattern, structure, and organic order, but there is also unruliness, rawness, and chaos. These opposing dynamics play off against each other visually in my work.
JJMORGAN With the above thoughts/comments in mind what can you tell us about your working process or actions in relation to your thoughts? Do you have a material selection or particular working method?
JULIAN I tend to make a material selection before I start working, so for example I know I’ll be working with pencil, ink, and acrylic paint from the get go. Once things are set in motion by starting to draw or paint, I quickly move into experimental territory. For some reason I’m not able to follow a plan or move toward a preconceived image, even if I try to the work will inevitably lead me somewhere else. Once working I tend to swing between a very loose and open approach, whereby I let go entirely of any sense of control and just free-form with the materials, and a much more controlled one where I hone in on areas of the work and focus on detail. I guess my thoughts follow this pattern and alternate between very creative/unstructured and controlled/ordered.
JJMORGAN Your latest set of works has involved a long drawn out period of thought and action, how have you maintained a constant flow between both?
JULIAN On some level thought and action are intertwined; they feed off each other and move the work forward. There can come a point when I over think things and my head starts to drive the whole process. This tends to be where things go wrong for me, and I have to step away from the work and revisit it again when I’m more disposed to operate in a synthesis between thought and action. For my art process stepping away and observing is equally important as actually working on a piece. I need to allow time for the work to evolve, and that can mean just observing the work, or even putting it to one side and working on something else for a period of time. So reaching the point where things aren’t going right can actually serve the work in that it signals time for another aspect of the process to take place.
JJMORGAN Taking a closer look at your work; one can see that you have started to make a big shift recently away from larger recognisable flat shapes and have introduced a more organic flow to your work. What has influenced this change?
JULIAN Largely this has been influenced by developing a greater sense of fluency in visual language of the work I’m making. Going back about 3 years I was working in a way that can loosely be described as landscape painting. It wasn’t conventional landscape by any means, but the underlying visual reference was there. You could say the vernacular, or mode of expression was landscape based. From there I’ve shifted into making work which is entirely non-representational, and it’s taken a bit of time to really come to grips with this new modus operandi. Further to this I’d say that the ideas underpinning the work have had a chance to evolve. My earlier abstract works were largely concerned with creating ambiguous visual space and/or playing off illusional space against a 2D surface (for example setting up an area of linear perspective, and then undermining the illusion by drawing the viewer’s attention back to the surface of the work). In making these works I was drawn into thinking about the visual relationship between the controlled and the chaotic, which lead me to my current work.
JJMORGAN And your palette? What is your thinking behind this choice of colours?
I have noticed that you have more often than not made the choice to introduced grays’ into your work at the beginning and half way through the working process. Is this a conscious decision that has been made to subdue the palette and isolate areas of colour?
JULIAN I think at one point I did make a conscious decision to move toward a lighter palette. I was making work that used a lot of black and had done so for a long time. One day it occurred to me that using a different palette would open up a whole range of new opportunities visually. I had been looking at Robert Ryman’s work and thinking about how he had been able to use just white paint to come up with an inexhaustible range of visual ideas. I tried working just with white paint, though that didn’t last long as the work kept leading me away from that. In the current body of work I’ve found the neutrality of gray can offer a visual rest from the chaotic visual assault of colour and line that is otherwise taking place. I think this helps the overall balance of the work.
JJMORGAN It is interesting to hear that you have looked at the work of Ryman and how this had an almost reversible influence on your thoughts and practice. Are there any artists or particular theorists that you maybe following or are inspired by at the moment?
JULIAN I think in general other art practitioners tend to have a peripheral influence on my work rather than a direct one. I like to look at what’s out there and figure out what motivates an artist if I find their work compelling. It’s rare that I’d try something like I mentioned with Ryman’s work, though every now and then I find it useful to explore an approach that isn’t otherwise a part of my practice. Along the way there have been a few things that have really interested me, Modernism in its many forms, Abstract Expressionism, to an extent Post-Modernism. I’d say individual artists and thinkers relevant to my practice today are Kirk Varnedoe for his ideas on abstraction, Gerhard Richter for his treatment of paint, Gordon Walters for the way he explored visual space, and Hundertwasser for the irrepressible energy and eccentricity of his work.
JJMORGAN Where to from here for 2010? Do you have any projects or shows in the pipeline?
JULIAN 2010 is shaping up to be a huge year for my art practice and my life in general. I’m currently in the build up towards 2 exhibitions. In February I’ll be showing a series of works on paper at snapshot in Island Bay, and then in March I’ll be showing a selection of works from the last 3 years at none other than J J Morgan&Co. The 2nd show will include an auction as part of a fundraising effort as I’m heading to Europe. I’m going to be based in The Netherlands for the next year or so pursuing residencies and exhibition opportunities. It’s going to be a big year, right at the moment I can’t imagine a more exciting situation to be in.
