Anthony Davies in Conversation with Belinda Loftus
Exploding Myths Anthony Davies/John Kindness - Orchard Gallery, Derry. 1984
BL: Cities have almost entirely dominated your prints in recent years. Why do you think that has happened?
AD: I don't know really, because my background is very rural. I'm basically a country boy from the South of England. My mother's relatives were all landowners. I think in a strange sort of way, I'd have almost liked to become a farmer and because I didn't inherit the land, I seemed to rebel completely against that. I enjoy the countryside, but I've got no interest in doing prints of it, though it is starting to creep in a bit, with views.
But my work at present is basically about a city, and a city like Cardiff and Belfast that one can walk around. I think it's to do with the squalor as well, which is another odd thing. I mean it's something I didn't experience in my childhood, or even when I was growing up - I lived in a market town. I like the city because it's alive, I like streets, and buildings, and take-away Chinese, and building sites, and shop windows. It seems to be about life, it's about the consumer, it's about everybody. I get slightly upset with reviews, you know "the life of Hell" I don't know that it's really about that.
AD: I don't know really, because my background is very rural. I'm basically a country boy from the South of England. My mother's relatives were all landowners. I think in a strange sort of way, I'd have almost liked to become a farmer and because I didn't inherit the land, I seemed to rebel completely against that. I enjoy the countryside, but I've got no interest in doing prints of it, though it is starting to creep in a bit, with views.
But my work at present is basically about a city, and a city like Cardiff and Belfast that one can walk around. I think it's to do with the squalor as well, which is another odd thing. I mean it's something I didn't experience in my childhood, or even when I was growing up - I lived in a market town. I like the city because it's alive, I like streets, and buildings, and take-away Chinese, and building sites, and shop windows. It seems to be about life, it's about the consumer, it's about everybody. I get slightly upset with reviews, you know "the life of Hell" I don't know that it's really about that.
BL: Do you share John Kindness's admiration for the resilience of people in Belfast?
AD: I do really. I think that the dilemma is that I'm an artist and I don't really belong anywhere, although I do feel very much at home in Belfast. The is because of the whole fact of being an artist, which I do consider to be quite an elitist occupation actually, and because I've been in further education for quite a number of years. I travel a lot on public transport which means I don't go from A to B in a car locked in a vacuum and not hearing, and not seeing particularly except for the road, and I really do wonder how people can continue sometimes. Very strange things can upset me like seeing handicapped children. I am a very morbid person. It is this incredible blackness that I do have inside me. I do get very, very depressed, not particularly because of my own problems, but because of other people's. But I think being an artist I can escape upstairs and just get into something. Whereas other people really do have to face it daily.
AD: I do really. I think that the dilemma is that I'm an artist and I don't really belong anywhere, although I do feel very much at home in Belfast. The is because of the whole fact of being an artist, which I do consider to be quite an elitist occupation actually, and because I've been in further education for quite a number of years. I travel a lot on public transport which means I don't go from A to B in a car locked in a vacuum and not hearing, and not seeing particularly except for the road, and I really do wonder how people can continue sometimes. Very strange things can upset me like seeing handicapped children. I am a very morbid person. It is this incredible blackness that I do have inside me. I do get very, very depressed, not particularly because of my own problems, but because of other people's. But I think being an artist I can escape upstairs and just get into something. Whereas other people really do have to face it daily.
BL: Did you start the Urban Portrait before you came to Northern Ireland?
AD: No. The Urban Portrait was very much about 1984 and the George Orwell theme. Really it was just an idea of what was happening in 1984. A lot of it has got direct references to Belfast and Northern Ireland, but generally it's sort of all-over comment on what is happening in British Cities, Brixton, St Paul's in Bristol, Toxteth, etc. Other things came into it, like the miners' strike, Greenham Common, the Womens Liberation Movement, the Nuclear Holocaust etc. I quite like the idea of tacking into these things. I listen to the radio continually and I think that comes into it. In the Wasteland [series], one of the last ones has got the hijackers and that's something that's been in the news a lot in Belfast and Dublin recently.
AD: No. The Urban Portrait was very much about 1984 and the George Orwell theme. Really it was just an idea of what was happening in 1984. A lot of it has got direct references to Belfast and Northern Ireland, but generally it's sort of all-over comment on what is happening in British Cities, Brixton, St Paul's in Bristol, Toxteth, etc. Other things came into it, like the miners' strike, Greenham Common, the Womens Liberation Movement, the Nuclear Holocaust etc. I quite like the idea of tacking into these things. I listen to the radio continually and I think that comes into it. In the Wasteland [series], one of the last ones has got the hijackers and that's something that's been in the news a lot in Belfast and Dublin recently.
BL: Do you use visual sources?
AD: I don't have a television...but I use photographs. I'm very interested in documentary photography. I've got all the books, like Don McCullin's Hearts of Darkness, and Black and White America, and Griffiths' Vietnam. I mean, very, very shocking photographs and I think that perhaps that doesn't contribute to my peace of mind, I mean I am continually looking through them.
AD: I don't have a television...but I use photographs. I'm very interested in documentary photography. I've got all the books, like Don McCullin's Hearts of Darkness, and Black and White America, and Griffiths' Vietnam. I mean, very, very shocking photographs and I think that perhaps that doesn't contribute to my peace of mind, I mean I am continually looking through them.
BL: There has been much comment on the way you distort space in the Urban Portrait in order to bring together apparently distant or unrelated objects. I would like to know whether this is deliberate. For example in the print that shows the top of Rossville Flats in Derry, is it just accidental that the petrol bomb resting on the parapet is having a head on collision with a lorry coming down the street, or is it something you wanted to happen?
AD: Well perhaps I did want it to happen, I put it down there!
BL: It wasn't that you ran out of space?
AD: No, not at all. I know exactly where every thing is going and once each bit is put in there that's it, it's not removed. I do work out the compositional thing on a drawing and composition is very important to me. I look for the in other artists like Goya and Beckman.
AD: Well perhaps I did want it to happen, I put it down there!
BL: It wasn't that you ran out of space?
AD: No, not at all. I know exactly where every thing is going and once each bit is put in there that's it, it's not removed. I do work out the compositional thing on a drawing and composition is very important to me. I look for the in other artists like Goya and Beckman.
BL: Another thing that seems to be very apparent in the Urban Portrait series is this wanting to bring together violent incidents and very banal details of everyday life. Why do you do this?
AD: I live in a road where there are quite a few old people and every morning they're out cleaning their windows, their little space in front of their houses, that's about everyday life, and something I've got about people is that there are a lot of successful people out there, doing exciting things, but a vast percentage of the population are just existing. People do just exist, the whole question of unemployment. I think perhaps that comes through a bit more in Les Misérables which is all to do with my son really.
AD: I live in a road where there are quite a few old people and every morning they're out cleaning their windows, their little space in front of their houses, that's about everyday life, and something I've got about people is that there are a lot of successful people out there, doing exciting things, but a vast percentage of the population are just existing. People do just exist, the whole question of unemployment. I think perhaps that comes through a bit more in Les Misérables which is all to do with my son really.
BL: Why did you choose to use drypoint for both the Urban Portrait and Les Misérables?
AD: Purely out of simplicity. I just like the way I don't need acid or aquatint. This was just something I wanted to really direct. It was something I could just do in the house, just sit here and work away.
AD: Purely out of simplicity. I just like the way I don't need acid or aquatint. This was just something I wanted to really direct. It was something I could just do in the house, just sit here and work away.
BL: Did you deliberatly choose to work from dark to light in Les Misérables, to get across what you wanted to say?
AD: I wanted to make Les Misérables different to the Urban Portrait, because in the Urban Portrait, I'd put in everything bar the kitchen sink, and I thought, well, there's sure to be some bright spark who when they review, says that. So the idea of Les Misérables was to have a lot starker thing when you had one or two prominent figures and then this frame-like figure which is more or less a commentary. In most cases, it's a mother or father type figure. It's very much bound up in my life and the effect that my parents had over me, they're always there somewhere, it's a sort of judgement really.
AD: I wanted to make Les Misérables different to the Urban Portrait, because in the Urban Portrait, I'd put in everything bar the kitchen sink, and I thought, well, there's sure to be some bright spark who when they review, says that. So the idea of Les Misérables was to have a lot starker thing when you had one or two prominent figures and then this frame-like figure which is more or less a commentary. In most cases, it's a mother or father type figure. It's very much bound up in my life and the effect that my parents had over me, they're always there somewhere, it's a sort of judgement really.
BL: And do you feel some sympathy with your son and the punks of his generation?
AD: Oh very much so. Luke was in trouble with the police, and I've had many skirmishes as well, but I was an art student and I could get away with a bit more than what he's doing. Also the art thing, is almost like a religion, you've got something to hang onto.
AD: Oh very much so. Luke was in trouble with the police, and I've had many skirmishes as well, but I was an art student and I could get away with a bit more than what he's doing. Also the art thing, is almost like a religion, you've got something to hang onto.
BL: Why did you choose linocuts for the Wasteland series?
AD: Linocut was purely because I could get Lino from the college. The money's been tight. And to be a print-maker, it's very important, even to be a teacher that I can teach things, that I know the whole thing. It's not good enough to be a teacher and just to take them through the same weary, tried things all the time. I mean everybody the does a linocut or a woodcut does it in a German expressionistic Nolde tradition. The whole fact that I've used caustic soda on it, makes it a bit softer. Most of it is done with a scalpel. I don't really use the traditional Lino tools a lot. I like the scale of them. That is one thing that I do find about print-making is that to me, it does seem to be very domestic, it's always governed by the size of the press you can have. I've got my own gear, but because things are so expensive, you can only work in a small way anyway, you've got to thing of the editioning, you've got to think of the framing. That is one of the things I do have against print-making is that it's always framed and mounted, it does seem to be very precious. That's why I suppose my editions have always been quite small. Once I've done the image, then basically I just want to go onto the next one.
AD: Linocut was purely because I could get Lino from the college. The money's been tight. And to be a print-maker, it's very important, even to be a teacher that I can teach things, that I know the whole thing. It's not good enough to be a teacher and just to take them through the same weary, tried things all the time. I mean everybody the does a linocut or a woodcut does it in a German expressionistic Nolde tradition. The whole fact that I've used caustic soda on it, makes it a bit softer. Most of it is done with a scalpel. I don't really use the traditional Lino tools a lot. I like the scale of them. That is one thing that I do find about print-making is that to me, it does seem to be very domestic, it's always governed by the size of the press you can have. I've got my own gear, but because things are so expensive, you can only work in a small way anyway, you've got to thing of the editioning, you've got to think of the framing. That is one of the things I do have against print-making is that it's always framed and mounted, it does seem to be very precious. That's why I suppose my editions have always been quite small. Once I've done the image, then basically I just want to go onto the next one.
