Artist Collaboration / 01
In our first commissioned peer to peer, Australian artist Alasdair McLuckie and British artist David James from Venture Arts supported studio, are working collaboratively during March-April 2021. With an open brief, an 11 hour time difference, zoom sessions, and a willingness to just see what happens, they are exploring and experimenting with each other’s practice.
David James
"My work is very vast. I am inspired by everything I see around me, I put it into my work somehow."
David James is a prolific and ambitious artist who works with various techniques, particularly paint, collage and found objects. David once described one of his intricate and complex artworks as “a never-ending masterpiece”. Inspired by complex structures and textures, he seeks to capture the elusive and transcendent qualities in life and being. David is a practising artist at Venture Arts, Manchester. Recent group exhibitions include Artworks Together in May 2021, Venture Arts Presents at The Manchester Contemporary in 2017 and OutsiderXchanges at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead in 2016.
Alasdair McLuckie
Alasdair McLuckie graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) in 2007. He is represented by Murray White Room in Melbourne and Mothers Tankstation Limited in Dublin, and has participated in numerous residency programs throughout Australia, and in New York. With a strong formalist aesthetic sensibility and utilising various techniques, McLuckie’s practice adopts a meticulous process to explore the mythology, history and ritual of making.
Recent exhibitions include The Honeyed Moon, a solo show at Murray White Room in 2019, and inclusion in group shows in 2020: TwentOne_004 at TwentyOne in Sydney and The Grey Zone at Artbank in Melbourne.
The Outcome
In the initial conversations between David James and Alasdair McLuckie they discussed different animals they liked including those native to the UK and Australia. They also spoke of their mutual interest in great architectural structures like Blackpool Tower, the Sydney Opera House, and the incredible buildings in Federation Square, Melbourne. David talked about looking down from platforms within buildings alongside looking up from the ground level at the various shapes created. With an open collaboration framework, they set to work in their respective countries, using these ideas as a departure point.
Alasdair: I carry around a little obsession with Henri Matisse's late ‘cut out’ work, The Snail (1953). It was with this obsession that I initially arrived to the first meeting I had with David to discuss the possibility of collaborating together. After speaking with David about this project the snail seemed like a perfect place for me to start. My obsession with Matisse’s collage is expressed throughout our collaboration with the snail motif slowly working its way across the project, symbolically representing the process of passing time as well as our ever-moving and evolving sense of place. The hard-edged and ridged structures we take for granted as our shelter here, thinking from a different perspective, becomes light and flexible enough to move along with us.
David’s work: David started by looking at printouts of all the buildings that had been discussed initially over zoom and City of Angles (see image below) was the first drawing he created. He says of it, “It’s about perspective and it’s about scope. The buildings are shiny and interesting. I connect buildings.” From this point, he started incorporating topical materials like shiny silver foil as he likes the texture and sheen it creates on his artwork.
David James, City of Angles (original), 2021, Pencil on paper, 30x42cm & Alasdair McLuckie, The Snail (David), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm.
In the image on the right, Alasdair has repeated and mirrored David’s original image from the left.
Alasdair: The works for the project have developed as a series rather than a singular outcome. Initially I was making small gouache paintings simply exploring the formal elements of the snails form as a symbol that I then set up in a scene to photograph as a diorama. This was a response to elements of previous work of David’s he had shown me. Once we had both started making and sharing our pictures I began incorporating David’s drawings into my own work. At first directly, and then over time by mirroring and patterning his works as a print on paper, I would render over the top and through David’s images in an immediate and responsive way. David’s drawings became a starting point, the previous work of David’s informing how the next snail appeared on the page. The more I developed this process the more each snail also reflected the architectural perspectives David was exploring in his drawings. Each work acts as a stepping-stone to the next that makes the project as much about the holistic journey of making rather than simply arriving at the end.
David’s work: Across the four weeks, David built on his interest in architecture by starting to form structures from a silver shiny padded fabric. What began as flat 2D creations have developed into a multi-dimensional work that is free-standing. He said of the process, “It's good I like it, I have ideas on the go. I think it's like, gotta be about the work.” Even though David and Alasdair’s works are very different on appearance, David said of Alasdair, “He uses colours and textures in a different way. But yeah, I like it.”
All images above are by Alasdair McLuckie.
Top row: The Snail (01) and The Snail (02), 2021, Ballpoint pen and gouache on paper, 15x21 cm.
Second row: The Snail (The Arrangement 01), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm, and The Snail (Colour Arrangement 01), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm.
Third group clockwise from top left: The Snail (03) and (04), Coloured pencil and Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm, The Snail (06), 2021, Coloured pencil and archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm and The Snail (Colour Arrangement 02), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm.
For the background of the snails, Alasdair has repeated and mirrored several of David’s original drawings to create a base to work over.
Alasdair McLuckie, The Snail (08) and (07), 2021, Coloured pencil and archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm.
These two works have an earlier photograph by Alasdair seen earlier on the page, used as a mirrored image across the base of the work.
All images above are by Alasdair McLuckie.
Clockwise from top left: Landscape 03 (The Snail), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm, Landscape 01 (The Snail), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm, and Landscape 04 (The Snail), 2021, Archival inkjet print on paper, 21x30 cm.
All images above are by David James.
Top image: City of Angles, 2021, Pencil and 3D foil on paper, 42x30cm.
Images L-R: Eyes in the Sky, 2021, Coloured pencil, posca pen and acrylic paint on paper, 35.5x22cm, and Peacock, 2021, Coloured pencil, posca pen, tin foil and acrylic paint on paper, 35.5x22cm.
All images above are by David James.
Trail all over the World, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 42x30cm, Turtle Mania, 2021, Mixed media on paper, 42x30cm, and Tower in the Sky, 2021, Mixed media sculpture, 9x9x48cm.
See below for further descriptions on these works.
Alasdair: Working with David has been a real privilege and pleasure. Apart from admiring his beautiful work, our weekly conversations (via zoom) have been the most interesting aspect of the collaboration, in listening to David respond to my work and articulate his thinking about his creative process. David’s spontaneity of ideas and fascinating ability to make correlations between initially seemingly disparate elements has been fundamental to my own approach and thinking when engaging in making for this project.
David’s work: David spoke about the process and that he tried to put different cultures into his work, based on conversations he had with Alasdair. Many of David’s works featured buildings. His final work also saw a snail introduced that is climbing a building, taking inspiration from Alasdair’s works. David said, “It has been nice working together in different ways and I have tried lots of new things that I have not tried before.” Of Alasdair’s work, David said he enjoyed seeing how abstract the snails became and could often see calligraphy in the work. Both artists have been working in different scales and have said they enjoyed letting go of control over their work, being open and allowing themselves to learn something new.
In David’s Turtle Mania there are lots of things going on, with him taking inspiration from Manchester’s Beetham Tower and Sydney’s Opera House. David said, “This piece is about buildings and towers with snails and turtles swimming around and crawling over the buildings. Along the far left side, turtles swim over buildings. In the middle, snails are crawling over the buildings. The large silver material area is Blackpool Tower with turtles swimming down it.”
In his Trail all over the World, David said, “Snails are coming up and down the buildings in Australia. The middle area with sliver, gold and red foils are based on Australian snails crawling over the buildings.”
Banner image: Detail of a work in progress between David James and Alasdair McLuckie for Peer/Peer Collaboration