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Times Interview Headlines
Tony King: local legend
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The Times Interview - Criminologist John Buttle, Explain Yourself to Cameron Broadhurst
The Times Interview - Peter Stichbury, Explain Yourself to Cameron Broadhurst
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Times Interview
The Times Interview - Peter Stichbury, Explain Yourself to Cameron Broadhurst
Thursday, 31 July 2008
• Howick and Pakuranga Times
MODERN OBSERVER: Peter Stichbury's
Swoon
is among a collection of his portraits,
The Alumni
, showing at Te Tuhi Arts Centre until September 21. Photo supplied.
PETER Stichbury is one of New Zealand’s most unique portrait artists. Living and working in Auckland he has developed a reputation over the past decade for works inspired by social types from a variety of media sources. Much of his work echoes the smooth and glossy feel of magazines but with unsettling undertones more in line with underground comics and a clear element of social satire or critique. Yet he sees his work within the traditions of art history and portraiture.
How did you come to portraiture and why?
Like all children, I was interested in learning about the immediate world around me. Satire and social observation are cornerstones of my practice. I still remember making bizarre drawings of classmates at high school for a friend and watching him in fits of laughter blow cola out his nose. My collectors are a little more sedate in their appreciation today. When I arrived at art school in 1994 I was immediately inspired by portrait photographers like Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus. I went on to paint series of achromatic German intellectuals. The history of portraiture is a rich and varied tradition, so I had plenty of inspiration. The very early work of Lucian Freud, Otto Dix and the French neo-classical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres have all been influences.
It seems most of your subjects are people you do not know, from society or media. How do you choose them?
I view my own work as part of the vast historical continuum of the painted portrait but with contemporary themes. The process for image selection is usually based on an idea of a character or social stereotype. In the early days I would spend many hours in magazine stores poring over fashion magazines trying to find images of people that looked anatomically improbable or vacant. I was asking questions as to the validity of these beautiful images, trying to establish where beauty lay, and how far I could distort human anatomy before it became unattractive. Of course there’s nothing wrong with beauty per se, we’re hard wired to identify and venerate beauty for evolutionary and biological reasons, but I find it disturbing when these biological imperatives are used by advertisers and media organisations in order to sell products and distract the population. Once I have an idea I make my selection from an intuitive place and then assess the photograph to see if it will work formally once it’s drawn and translated into paint. On the occasions when I can’t find what I’m looking for directly within popular culture, I’ll photograph people in the studio and build the precise identity I’m after. I hybridize identities often inventing names and building elaborate personal narratives and back stories, especially in the recent portraits.
The Alumni
Collected portraits by Peter Stichbury, exhibits at Pakuranga’s Te Tuhi Arts Centre until September 21.
Your acrylics don’t show visible brushstrokes. Why do you prefer this style?
As I was using source material from magazines, my paintings needed to have a very flat, refined and retouched quality to reflect the idea of a sterilised, blemish and wrinkle free human being, like characters from the movie Gattaca. I think the work from the last two years has become more painterly, to keep in step with my conceptual developments.
Many of the portraits have expressionless faces. Others such as
Swoon
or
Lothario
hold enigmatic expressions. When do you use expression?
I follow the idea of the character. If the idea is about representing a cliché or stereotype, someone that is narcissistic or psychologically troubled then the corresponding expression will occur. Facial enigma is a useful tool when you want the reading to be ambiguous.
What artistic influences have you had?
Ingres, Freud and other figurative painters like John Currin have influenced my style. I see my work as being a cross pollination of Disney and French neoclassical portraiture. The large eyes I paint were first inspired by an old Playstation advertisement by Chris Cunningham. There’s quite a low brow tradition of big eyed waifs, I think all stemming from artist Margaret Keane. Music and film are also influences. I love the way director David Lynch uses dark void spaces in his films to articulate emotional experiences and mystery. Like Lynch, by disposing of superfluous elements from a painting’s composition I remove a singular narrative reading. I’m also a big fan of South Park and Bill Hicks. I suppose my paintings are the marriage of many of these influences.
How has your work evolved over the past eight years?
The work has certainly changed over the years. The paintings From The Young Pleasure Seekers show were plastic in the extreme, emptied of personality. I’ve learnt that satire doesn’t have to be so obviously cynical or maudlin. You can see that progression literally in works like ‘Cratchley goes to speed dating’ or ‘Sister Wendy Beckett’, where I have used humour instead of intellectual detachment and cynicism. I’m enjoying being more frivolous and relaxed about how I render certain paintings now. I’ve become increasingly interested in representing the underdog. The early part of my career was focused on magazine and fashion culture - the people that society deem traditionally beautiful. Later works like Chester Karnofsky and Debbie Bloomquist, my first awkward adolescents, are sourced from a breath mint campaign. Looking back, this was the beginning of an investigation into the ambivalence advertisers, magazines and even art history to an extent, has in representing other social groups, especially intellectuals and outsiders. The media and other wide reaching agents act as a microcosm of our innate human tendency to stratify itself. In general the privileged, wealthy and beautiful take precedence when it comes to representation, while other groups remain invisible. I’d like to address that balance.