Finissage interview with Holly Hendry at Bosse&Baum (minimally monumental?)

One of the most significant effects deriving from the “return to order” that has characterized the recent best art production is also a sober return to categories such as “painting” and “sculpture”. And to this latter Holly Hendry’s art practice firmly belongs, as recently proved by her convincing first solo exhibition just ended at Bosse&Baum, the Peckham-based contemporary art platform founded in 2013 by Alexandra Warder and Lana Bountakidou. But despite a series of corpulent 3D sculptural works, the exhibition’s introductory text reported that the show – titled “More and more, more is more” – didn’t stem from sculpture, but from a Rem Koolhaas’ seminal writing, Junkspace (2001), that is basically a negation of the monumental value of architecture unconsciously celebrated in the name of Marc Augé’s “Non-lieux”. So we reached the artist on the phone, to ask her about what appeared to us as an extremely effective contradiction.

 

Are you interested in social matters?

 

Personally I’m very interested. My work addresses social matters in terms of space and the way we operate and occupy space especially in the modern way in which we live. The recent show at Bosse&Baum puts the work in a political context. My exhibition is based around Rem Koolhaas’ Junkspace. If you are familiar with the text, it is a lament on modern architecture, criticizing the way we design spaces now. He specifically deals with this idea about materials and how materials are used in contemporary architecture as a necessity instead of as an inhering quality. A lot of past work, and even my present work too addresses this idea of using materials and the importance of what materials do to us in a physical way. I am trying to apply these materials spatially as well so that we experience them, navigate through them which brings an awareness of them too.

 

What does the expression ‘More and more, more is more’ mean to you, in your daily life as an artist?

 

It is actually a quote from Junkspace. The exhibition brings together a lot of different ideas which have been going on in my works and in my thoughts. Somehow it gives them a backbone. But also I think it’s a kind of reflection of how we live at the moment. We can take things from a lot of different places and combine them together, we can occupy different spaces. We can sit on a sofa while watching tv in that space, while being on our phone or ipad thus occupying the space of the internet as well. It’s a kind of attitude of cropping and cutting and pasting bits of variety of things thus applying it to one space. In my works I also looked a lot at the idea of excess of “materiality” and how it dealt with the idea of sculpture in the past. This exhibition actually is quite pared back, which is the opposite to the title of the show ‘More and more, more is more’. It tries to deal with these masses and materials and make sense of them and of how we cope with the excess of stuff we have now and maybe how we deal with them as artists, in terms of originality for example.

 

Would you call your work ‘sculpture’ or do you prefer to consider it three-dimensional art?

 

I would call it sculpture. I think it definitely exits in the realm of sculpture. I deal with a lot of sculptural notions and I put a lot of sources from the history of sculpture. For me it’s firmly sculpture.

 

If you have to choose, would you prefer to work on the shape, on the formal level or on the material and emotional value?

 

For me the material and the emotional come first. When I work with an idea I respond to it very materially. One of the works I was making recently in touch with the hoarders and wasters is basically about the idea of making work and it was so important that I didn’t have any predetermined idea of what the work was about before making it. That becomes central to it. I was molding these inflatable, and then getting inside of them and casting them from the inside outwards. And that idea within the making was essential to it. And as the mold got bigger and bigger, it became a weighty thing in itself. At that time the initial form was taking from measurement of spaces, and the final work is quite formal in how it looks and it is almost traditional in the way that is made of plaster and it sits on the floor in a space, it occupies that space. For me the material is essential in the process of making.

 

This approach seems more similar to minimalism, the opposite of the title of the show, or the statement by Koolhaas. The main aspect is that minimalism today seems to be a strong current in design. You see personal computers, mobile phones; the object tends to disappear while the material tends to represent.

 

Yes I totally agree, and it is something I wanted to be apparent in the show. It is interesting you mention the design of modern technology as well because a lot of the work is focusing on the surface of things. Like you said minimalism and design at the moment seem to be focused on the surface where the surface wants to pretend there is nothing behind it, it’s all about flatness, about the smooth and the perfect. Through the exhibition I wanted to highlight this but also to pick it apart and start to question the moments where those veneers do break down and you start to think about the background, where this minimal, scene of design becomes the façade you become aware of.

 

Is there any artist of the past that inspires you in particular?

 

In the historical context I was really fascinated by Vitruvius and the Vitruvian Man in relation to architecture and how we can think about that now and how we can interpret that now and also in the way the buildings are related to the proportion of the body.

 

Could you briefly describe your art practice?

 

To sum up in terms of practice, I think it addresses architectural concerns from a sculptural prospective, using materials and techniques from architectural form and language. It always comes back to a complex relationship with space. A lot of materials I use relate to the building site and building work. I try to adopt the veneer of architecture. Previously the framework surrounding these spaces was very important. I usually try to work around the confines of those spaces and address the body and building within that. I’ve tried to sum up from recent things I’ve been doing to earlier works I did within the last year. More recently it has been more concerned with surface.

 

How long generally does it take you to make an idea come true?

 

That can take between one minute and one year, I think.

 

Let’s put it in this way: do you spend more time making the artwork or researching for it?

 

I spend more time making. As I am making, those ideas and research evolve.

 

Do you have any assistant?

 

No, I don’t. On larger projects I’ve had some technical help. But it’s actually really important for me to make everything myself. By doing that I get a better understanding of the material, and I go through processes that I wouldn’t know in any other way a part from by having that kind of physical experience.

 

In the show there is a canvas with a hand indicating something at the very centre of the space.

 

Yes, it’s a digital silk print.

 

Is it supposed to be a sculpture or do you consider it a two-dimensional artwork?

 

This piece relates a lot to the plaster works I was talking about before. At the time I was making the plaster works I got really obsessed and interested with the Laocoön’s Group and Laocoön’s missing arm. And how it has been reinterpreted over the years by so many different people that has almost become a sort of pop icon. When there is a part missing or when we found a part, we try to construct the rest with our imagination. The plaster works from the hoarders and wasters have these cuts, the holes where which I would go in to cast the works. I covered the holes up and made these slices, like it’s the hidden arm of a classical renaissance sculpture. The silk prints you refer to are digital images of these missing parts. There actually are four in the show; the big hand of Constantine of Colossus, the Laocoön’s arm, a smaller one which is a nose from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen, where a Nasothek collection of the restoration nose are on display. All these noses have their own history and connections to different sculptures which I found really amazing. These silk prints that I have exhibited within the space almost act as flags for the sculptural works, giving hints to the idea of research behind the work itself.

 

In which of the two realm are you working, figuration or abstraction?

 

I guess abstraction, and doubling in figuration… if that category exists.

 

What role does architecture play in your life?

 

I’ve always been around it. My dad is an architect. So from a critical and physical prospective, it has been around ever since I was around. He designed and built our family house when I was young. As it was never really finished, I was always around that physical building work as well as the design side of architecture. However now, I look at it in a more critical way. For me it’s always a framework but also quite an emotive thing.

 

Does he like Rem Koolhaas?

 

My dad? I think some of his earlier works.

 

Have you ever worked in open spaces? Conceiving arts for open spaces?

 

I did a project last year, in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. I did a work, Homeostasis, that was installed in a public courtyard within the city. I found it very exciting but also a different experience. It was a place I’ve never been before and I was invited to make a work there. You feel this awareness of not knowing the place and suddenly coming along as an outsider to the country and installing a work in a place like that. Moreover, because of working overseas, I had to get all of it fabricated so there was also an element of not actually being able to physically making everything there. Initially I struggled with it a bit because I didn’t get the same process of material making, those little details of things that you change as you go along. But it was such an exciting experience, seeing the work change over time in different weather conditions, in different lights. We had a sandstorm one day and it was just amazing to see it all coated in fine sands.

A lot of my past pieces worked with the physical architectural space, that’s why I found it quite strange to place my work in a white cube context. But I hope it still references the things it does when it has that physical engagement with the actual architecture as well.

February 25, 2015