Benjamin Murphy has a new show in London: Iconoclasm

British artist Benjamin Murphy presents his latest work at UNION gallery in London. And we couldn't be more excited about it! We’ve known Benjamin since around the time our project ROOMS was being born; he’s always been so passionate about art and the artist community. We’re loving his new work and very much enjoying following his artistic journey.

Benjamin’s current work revolves around the use of charcoal on raw canvas, its challenges and unpredictability. His fascination for this medium is central to his work. And though houseplants and cut flowers are the pictorial protagonists, they are only the medium to explore deeper questions on the limited freedom and controlled existence of these green companions. Faithful to his monochromatic distinctive style, his pieces embrace beauty and chaos, contradictions. But it's their subtle darkness which keeps us as enthralled as unsettled.

We took this opportunity to interview Benjamin and find out more about him.

What made you become an artist? When and how did you decide you wanted to be one? 

It was a real accident. I studied art out of a reluctance to join the real world. I enjoyed the freedom from responsibility that art college allowed, and so I went to university in search of more of the same. I then moved to London on a whim and got an unpaid internship at a gallery/events space in Hoxton. It was a perfect combination of that reluctance to get a 'career' and the recklessness needed to forego stability (and money - because this pursuit necessitates many, many years of living in absolute penury). I lived in the gallery and ate poorly, getting used to the discomfort that's unavoidable when you start out on a journey such as this. 

I was making work obsessively and I started getting asked to be in small DIY shows around East London. Things just snowballed from there really. It was never the plan.

What does actually being an artist mean to you? 

Freedom. Not only the freedom to make what I want to make (which is great), but also the ability to choose how I spend my own time, unbeholden to anyone. That is the greatest thing in the world. I may not be a millionaire in monetary terms, but I am in time. To me that is much more valuable.

As an artist, what do you worry about? Do you ever feel like saying ‘fuck this shit!’? 

I've never been a worrier, but artistic block makes me feel under pressure, distressed, and overwhelmed at times. I'm fortunate that I have a few different creative outlets though, so if the artwork just isn't flowing I move on for a while and do some writing or something instead of trying to force it.

I don't think I could ever fully go "fuck this shit" and walk away from it all no. To me it's an obsession that is so linked to my very being that I wouldn't be able to abandon it. It would be like cutting off a limb.

Tell us about the kind of work you are currently doing?

At the moment I'm working in charcoal on raw canvas, embracing the chaos that such a medium presents. The works explore contradictions; delicate flowers with violent mark-making, beauty and chaos, yin and yang etc.

How important are the art materials you use? Are you picky about brands, qualities, etc, or you adapt rather easily to whatever is available?  

I use a variation of charcoals. Willow for the sketching out and the edges, compressed charcoal for all the dense black areas, and charcoal pencils for working on paper.

I've been recently making my own charcoal though. Experimenting with different types of woods and different burn durations etc. I'm yet to really nail the process, so I've yet to really use it in my work but it's getting there. Once I've nailed that I'm going to make my own paper too and use the charcoal on it.

Who has been a major influence to you, as a person and artist?

Here's a list: Leo Tolstoy, Marina Abramović, Edvard Munch, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Marcel Proust, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Cornelia Parker, Mona Hatoum.

What makes your creative juices flow?

ADHD.

Which artist would you like to go out for dinner with tonight? 

I've been out for dinner with Ant Hamlyn, Oli Epp, Peter Doyle, and Conor Murgatroyd a lot in the last year, so maybe I'd just have them all together, ideally somewhere with chilli margaritas.

Is there an artist you’d very much like to read their interview?

Marina Abramović - if you're reading this drop me a line on MSN Messenger and let's plan that two person retrospective.

Introducing French Touch 3.0: French Kiwi Juice

Founded in 2012, the Roche Musique label generates a signature sound that is futuristically classy and – better still – unmistakably French. Found amongst the Roche Musique alumni, which is one heavy-hitting bunch including artists such as Kartell, Cézaire and Cherokee, is 24-year-old resident FKJ. His criminally smooth sound, sophistically transcending the limitations set by traditional music making, is totally addictive (and a personal favourite). We had a chat with one-to-watch FKJ about music, Paris and all things groovy. 

Tell me a little bit about yourself?

My interest in music started early on. I would visit my uncle’s studio in Sydney and even though I didn’t know how to use any of the equipment I was completely hooked. I would even sleep there. My earliest musical encounter was listening to my father’s records from the 70s and 80s – you know, Police, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd... that kind of thing. Later my friends and I would listen to Hip-Hop on the radio. I was really into that for a while. I always loved music and sure, it was a dream to be able to make music for a living, but that dream was big. When I moved to Paris three years ago I had a job letting sound equipment for photo shoots and commercials. I didn’t like the job much but I got to use the equipment and was able to do some recordings. There wasn’t really a “defining moment”. I was doing odd-job gigs one moment and suddenly I was making music!

Tell me about about the way you work?

For the last two months I’ve had a real studio, which has made an enormous difference. Before I was working in my bedroom and because of my roommates I had to stop at 10pm. Now I can go on until 5am, if I’m feeling it. I share the studio with two other artists from the label – Kartell and Darius. Whereas especially Kartell keeps quite a regular schedule, I work more hardcore hours. During the day I’m out a lot, taking pictures, having lunch with friends, going to art exhibitions and often having a few drinks at night. I live in Paris and I love to get lost in the city – there is always something to do and I manage to find inspiration everywhere! If something hits me, I will record a vocal melody on my iPhone and then go to my “emergency studio” at home, where I have the essentials to compose if I need to. The best songs are the ones in my head – the spontaneous ones. I often find that too much planning makes mediocre music. 

What does music mean to you? 

For me it is about the music in itself, not the genre or style. Some periods I am deeply into one thing, two months later it’s something else. When you listen to a lot of different things, and listen properly, you begin to understand the style and the different elements proper to each style. You appreciate not only the music, but the context as well. For me the main thing is having fun in the studio – with a stick, a glass, vocals, anything really. If I feel something is missing I will explore that particular cord obsessively until I really know it. I am always discovering and there continues to be stuff to learn. The beauty is that you can learn anything from anyone; the more open you are, the more you can absorb!

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And Roche Musique, what’s the story?

I’ve been part of Roche Musique for two years and it is like a little family. The manager, Jean Janin (Cézaire), is one of best friends and we were friends long before either of us got into music. We are eight to ten artists under the label and we all know each other and hang out every week. Sometimes we do tracks together, mixing sounds and playing around with some tunes. The process is interesting because you never know how it will turn out. Despite the similarity in style we all have different tastes and approaches. For example, I recently created a track with Darius and the way we combined our styles to create something distinctive from both our sounds was awesome and it really worked. On the other hand, the first time we tried it didn’t work – it was too planned! 

So, to you, what makes Roche Musique stand out? 

I don’t know any other label that brings this level of French groove – that uniquely French touch. I really feel like we are the best representatives of French funk. Apart from that, and the environment of course, I also like the visual side of the label, the cover artworks. For someone who has always loved visuals and photography, that means something too. Essentially, it’s a super supportive environment, in which we all share one main goal – it’s all about the groove! 

What inspires you? 

I am very much influenced by the atmosphere around me. If I were alone in the world, if nobody was around to listen, no doubt my music would be different. That atmospheric inspiration would be missing. But, once that is said, I make music first and foremost for me. There is a lot of pressure on young artists, once their music starts to take off, to conform to what is “expected” of them. Because of the type of music I make I am often associated with the club scene, but personally I don’t really care about fitting a certain scene. When I was younger I was more concerned with these artificial boundaries, trying to “fit in”, but all that really resulted in was fixing limits for my creativity. You have to stay true to yourself and the kind of stuff you enjoy making – even if it transcends borders. That makes your music honest and honesty is vital.

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For sure! And finally, what’s the best part of making music?

When my state of mind is right, it’s euphoric. It’s better than any drug, and such a big part of my music. Of course travelling and making gigs is always amazing. Meeting people and performing, having the opportunity to communicate the euphoric state I was in when I created a track is a special feeling. More than anything, I’d like to be able to think of myself as a composer of good atmosphere. That’s it, that’s what it’s all about for me – creating something groovy and having fun while I do it. 

ROCHE MUSIQUE

ANNA POGOSSOVA-Playful Master of modern still life

Moscow-born Anna Pogossova studied Fine Arts in Sydney. With a major in Photomedia and a flair for the waggish, Anna explores the dialogue between old and new, between still life and fashion. 

Would you say your art is provocative? 

Not intentionally no; my objective is more playful than provocative. The erotic collages for example, were made up of many fairly mundane landscape images and household fixtures. None of these are provocative in nature, whatsoever, until they are layered in a particular way to suggest bodies. Suddenly they become something of a more pornographic nature. I think that kind of thing is quite funny.  

What is the common denominator of your work? Your concept, so to speak?

There is one underlying idea across my art practice, which is concerned with the experience of familiarity in fiction.  This is something I observe closely throughout the process of creating an image, or while reading fictional works. I am always thinking about how it’s communicated and read in a way, which makes sense and triggers recognition, regardless of how fantastical the content might be. This is so, whether it can be attributed to the artist’s fluency in sign and symbol, which is learned and handed down, or if there are truly archetypal forms, which are created and understood, time and time again, intuitively. 

And how does this manifest in your work?

Each body of work, so far, has focused on a particular iconography, where cultural snippets were abstracted and regrouped to create an identifiable narrative. I approach every series as a kind of experiment, hoping to reveal something about the nature of our collective imagination.

Could you talk a little bit about a recent piece and the inspiration, creative processes, material etc. behind it? 

I had a very clear narrative and tone in mind for the H series images, which would borrow heavily from film, particularly science fiction. I imagined a fully realised world, with very specific scenarios and locations, which I wanted to execute (the shipping container in the middle of the road, the cinema, and the billboards), in which the identities of seemingly autonomous objects are embodied, to convey aspects of the human condition from multiple heterogeneous perspectives. 

Most of the works needed to be constructed as small-scale sets, which were photographed in a studio setting, and later digitally composited with real-life landscape images collected during my trips overseas. I’ve built up a library of images of various landscapes and skies, which I often pull from to construct my fictional environments. I would generally shoot two versions of everything, one on medium format film and the other on a DSLR, depending on what kind of quality I am after.

Does your work have any connection with renaissance artists?

I identify myself as someone who only works with still life, but I’m always looking for loopholes within that genre, often asking myself questions like: “how can I make the body still life? What can I get away with?” There are some elements of my images, particularly in the Empires II series, which appear to be similar in composition to that of some renaissance artists. I was thinking about Old Masters paintings at the time, and was pulling out specific forms to include, which triggered associations with classical antiquity; the columns, clouds, statues and the shell vase, pictured in Venus, which instantly reminded me of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. As I moved further along in the process, it became more intuitive and less directly referential to any particular era or style. I was more interested in the types of imagery that I instantly responded to as having seen or experienced before without being able to pinpoint where. 

And finally, what is the muse of it all?  

The Moon.

ANNA POGOSSOVA, saatchiart

ROOMS 16 presents: LUCY LUSCOMBE

The Filmmaker Method

Lucy Luscombe's career is like cracking open a bottle of Moët et Chandon with the toughest cork, it felt stuck at first but once it's open, it just keeps gushing out in all her stormy glory, drenching her in a sea of projects that she comfortably swims though. Vogue, Channel 4, Nike and many other organizations are just a few of her high profile clients. Since the interview she's already released another music video for artist Juce! for her single “6th floor”, in which the banality of London lives of a few individuals are amplified and celebrated, in similar fashion to some of her other works including Tiny Ruins' video “Carriages” which features Channel 4 actor from “My Mad Fat Diary” Nico Mirallegro. The sentiment is very much reflexive in her works, it's invoked rather than shown or told. ROOMS exclusive interview with the 28-year-old Lucy Luscombe can be found in ROOMS 16 Superluminal