Saturday, April 30, 2016

Meet the Artist... Micah Purnell

Si: Hi Micah, and welcome to the exhibition blog.
Can I start by asking you to tell us a bit about your work and the motivations behind it?

Micah: Hmm, what's to say... I'm a city dwelling, real ale drinking, husband and father of four, graphic designer, artist, family-centric, brought up Christian but tend to keep that quite due to peoples pre-conceived media spun ideas of what that means. These are the things that motivate me and my work. A desire to get in and through the dominant, corporate, commercial self interested voices and put something alternative in it's place...



Si: That's interesting, because when we first got the go-ahead for this exhibition, I knew that I wanted you to be part of it -  there's something very Blake-ian about the work that you make and where you put it - something subversive and which looks to confront those dominant cultural narratives that we're surrounded by, something that's restlessly seeking a better way to be...
I wonder if you recognise that connection to Blake? (or whether it's just me getting carried away!)

Micah: Ha, yeah I guess so, though I am shamefully unaware of the majority of his work. Having delved into Jerusalem a little via conversations with your good self and simply wikipedia I now see a much bigger picture, and might even sing it next time.



Si: Heh heh! Maybe we should've had some karaoke for the opening night. Then again... maybe not :0) 
I'm wondering if there are other artists or designers or creatives who have influenced your practice and your thinking...? who do you recommend that we should seek out...?

Micah: As much of my work is text based I would have to include Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer and Anthony Burrill [below] who all have some level of self social critique, humour and analytical critique.



Si: Have you got any other projects on the go, or exhibitions coming up that you'd like us to know about?

Micah:
I'm currently working on www.intervalprojects.tumblr.com. https://twitter.com/IntervalProjcts It's an curated outdoor art space in the public realm which offers an interval between the ads, a gap between the consumer tone of visuals we're used to seeing, to offer something back for free. A similar previous project I initiated was http://print-and-paste.tumblr.com/. Print & Paste exhibited artists from the UK, New York, Japan, Sweden and others and made it into Creative Review and other international online creative magazines.  

This year I want bus shelter size back lit ad spaces in 10 cities across England (to start with) I just need £10K and people with prominent sites in cities to make it happen. If you're one of those people please shout.


Si: That sounds brilliant (literally!) - we'll look forward to seeing what comes of that... Lastly, thanks again for designing our exhibition publicity material. We really love it, and it's been great taking it round places and seeing folks reaction to it. People really like those cards...


Micah: Thanks, I've really enjoyed learning about the project and getting involved.

No comments:

Post a Comment