Interviews

Timothy Spall is an actor famous for his roles in several films and television series including a 2014 eponymous film 'Mr Turner', which laid the groundwork for his foray into painting, eventually culminating into a formal exhibition opening soon.

Eugene Ankomah is a visual artist, mentor and personality who is both known for his many innovative but unpredictable styles of art, as much as for his ever changing self created “Art Persona’s”, evolving fashion sense and for his ground breaking public art installations designed to create greater cohesion within the context of knife crime.

"In the few past months of isolation while all kind of performances and concerts were canceled, a public dialogue opened around the support of artists in Athens, Greece. Artists have found themselves again unprotected and full dependent on government decisions and lack of state care for the arts".

Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak have been working collectively since 2003. In their art practice they examine contemporary media and capital driven society as they dissect its visual and linguistic structure.

"I find a lot of inspiration in the works by Old Masters, especially the European artists of the 16th and 17th Century. These works appear perfect for their time. Their value lies in their splendour and in a special mixture of symbols for the viewer. In order to emphasize and convey the idea of my paintings, I use symbols".

"I spent the last 3 years as prisoner in prison. My body was usurped. 3 years of my stay in prison was a performative experience for me from beginning to end. And I drew a picture like crazy. All my creative potential had been revealed".

"During the period of the lockdown I was unable to work in my workshop on a daily basis, like I used to, even though it is only a fifteen-minute walk away from home. Yet this did not prove to be an obstacle for me to continue working on various ideas. Preserving my belief that the virus cannot be superior to creativity, I tried to enrich the freedom of loneliness by staging a ‘one-man performance’ at home in order to negotiate the absurdness and surreal contingencies of photography".

Timo Menke is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Stockholm. Investigating the relationship between the observer and the observed, subject and object, recorder and projector, lens and screen, his practice is increasingly aiming at a dark holistic approach. Using photographic and moving images, documents, objects, drawing and plant cultivation he approaches, renegotiates and speculates about our common nature-culture, in order to highlight and transform an increasingly dark matter: body, earth, space.

"The drift of the life of an artist is very curious. It is common to think of his career as a series of evolutions that also affect his technical skill and conceptual realization. The reading of a life in creation is according to the classical linear vision. In these pre-quantum times, I have discovered that in a way people look for ourselves, we seek our fate within a complex universe where reality is not always an absolute truth".

Ryota Matsumoto is a co-director of an award-winning interdisciplinary design office, Ryota Matsumoto Studio. He is an artist, designer and urban planner. Born in Tokyo, he was raised in Hong Kong and Japan. He received a Master of Architecture degree from University of Pennsylvania in 2007 after his studies at Architectural Association in London and Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art in early 90’s.