Aaron Lister interviews Matthew Couper

AL: Residency shows are often self-congratulatory, pat-each-other-on-the-back deals. The institution is praised for nurturing the artist, while the exhibition demonstrates a fruitful period of practice under the residency. The Museum of Inherent Vice complicates this formula. A copy of The Wrestlers – a symbol of the Sarjeant Gallery – crumbles and decomposes in the space. Crap is purposefully brought into the gallery. Graves seemingly mark the death of your practice. How do you see this functioning as a residency exhibition?

MC: Ha ha, yeah, the ego-stroker. I wanted to stay away from the survey or retro[spective] thing. Sure, it’s a big show for me, my first in a public institution. Thinking about it, I could’ve easily put together a survey show of my last eight years of practice . . . eight years since I graduated from art school. But having the Sarjeant as the venue, I felt it would be a better to do a show that addressed the building, its history, past and, more recently, the political strife. I wanted to make an installation that fitted the space. It’s only a residency show by default.

AL: And this explains why you mess with the conditions for viewing art, while calling conventional gallery/museum devices into question? For a start, viewers are forced to enter the space by walking over your paintings . . .

MC: The museum idea came from a want to make a show that looked like it could have been executed by a varied group of artists or artisans – craftspeople, you know, in the pre-Victorian sense. I wanted the work to look like it came from different time periods and places around the world, that this was a true museum collection. That idea moved on a bit from there. I’d been reading about this NSK group (Neue Slowenische Kunst) and the different cells that made up the whole. There’s IRWIN, that is the art production group, and Laibach, the industrial rock band. They are probably the best-known of all the NSK cells.

I think I started this answer commenting on the ego? Yeah, that was part of getting rid of the ‘artist’ label. I think it would be great to be part of an art movement or group. I don’t know if that can happen these days. Art has moved away from the whole propaganda aspect. I don’t know if it’s lack of profundity or what. Oh! Speaking of NSK, I have an adapted version of my NSK passport in the vitrine by my expired New Zealand passport.

AL: The graves?

MC: Right, the graves. I made them because they kept popping up in many of the ex-votos and also the biggest of the three oil paintings. I think that was from my exercise regime. My friend Paul gave me an old racing bike before he left Wanganui, so I started exercising. I’d bike out to the Aramoho cemetery and back every morning, taking it easy in the cemetery to get my breath back, so I was surrounded by headstones. Also, there’s this stonemason on the Quay. There’s a great display window with all varieties of headstones you can order, and they’re displayed on the shop floor. I was looking at them thinking, ‘If they can pull it off in a shop, I reckon I can do it in the gallery’. Having the fresh dirt helps with the authenticity.

The degradation, yeah, I don’t know why I’m like that . . . why I like those things. I guess it’s the potency of them as images, the finality that they depict, and the graft of doing a show like this. The other day I was in my studio, working on one of the large canvases and thinking, ‘I’m going to be really annoyed if the world ends before this show starts’. I grew up in a caring, supportive family, where things were always stable, so you get used to the norm. I guess it’s like witnessing a car crash, you can’t help but stare.

In regard to ‘messing with gallery conditions’, it’s just a reaction I guess. I’m not totally against the gallery mentality. I like aspects of the gallery mentality: the white walls, labels, all that stuff. I am reacting against it a bit, but not denying it. It’s kind of pointless if you do, people would go “what the . . .??!?!”  You need to have some stability in the show, something for people to hang onto. The paintings on the floor and the illuminated manuscripts as labels are really all just variations on a theme. Lots of artists have done paintings on the floor: Albert Oehlen, Manuel Ocampo, Diane Prince’s flag, even those Dilana rugs here in New Zealand. They are all artworks to be walked on. I just wanted to angle them so that the person in the art gallery steps on me, both physically and conceptually. It’s an aggressive, ‘getting to know one another’ thing.

AL: But they are not stepping over you. They walk over Matthew Couper as presented through various faked art media representations: altered Art New Zealand and Flash Art covers. Why this emphasis?

MC: The ‘me’ on the art covers could be read in different ways. From the artist’s point of view, it could be a striving, although a lot of people might see desperation. I don’t want to spell it out I guess. I think enough people will have problems just stepping on the things– you know, the preciousness of paintings and all that . . .

AL: You regularly use ‘place’, either real or imagined,  to explain or contextualise the forms, meanings and symbols in your work. The Apotropaia series came out of your experience as a tourist in post-9/11 America, and the ROSL scholarship to Scotland brought about a tighter focus on symbolism related to your personal ancestry or mythology. Is the recurrence of Tylee Cottage in the prayer line of the ex-votos related to this? The cottage seems to take on a symbolic role in your recent work, representing the joys and difficulties of being a resident artist in a place like Whanganui. Didn’t you exhibit a drawing of all the ex-residents as a kind of mutant family tree in the Tylee 21st anniversary show?

MC: Yeah, well, I drew the cottage in that drawing of all the residents, at the top above Laurence Aberhart, who was the inaugural resident. Now that you point it out, it has a symbolism. But thinking back, especially to other artists’work produced at the time of their residencies, it’s still the Sarjeant [Gallery] that they focus on. In the votos, I’m just doing the journalist thing – you know: the who, the when, the where, the what, the why.

I see what you mean, though. All those places have sparked off new things, new ideas, especially in regard to the art scene. That’s what many of those secret society drawings and paintings were about. It was good to be distanced from that.

I was coming back to the place I went to art school, so there are all those memories. In fact, some of the first stuff I did when I secured my studio was to re-paint symbols that I had painted at art school, like this Masonic taniwha, that was the first thing I painted. The votives definitely came from being back in Wanganui; they’ve got a very similar feel to the work I was doing at art school in fourth year. Place, or where you are, is very Pre-Copernican! I’m consistently looking outward from where I stand.

AL: In one of the ex-votos, you claim to be ‘so last century’, and ‘unfashionably pre-post modern’. There is definitely an anachronistic element to your work – the constant switching between past and present modes, forms, methods of display etc. The ex-votos are an obvious example of this return to older forms, and (more ironically) the values and belief systems behind them. What does it mean to pursue an ‘anachronistic’ practice on contemporary terms?

MC: I think I called my work ‘anachronistic’. . . that was sparked off earlier on when I’d been over to Italy and seen many of my favourite Renaissance artists. There’s no point in just rehashing what they were doing. I mean, I’d also become obsessed with American culture, too, and its symbolism, especially Masonic stuff. It melded into something . . . I wasn’t sure what it was but went with it. It was the reinvention of things I was doing at art school, using freemasonry symbols after finding out my great uncle was a freemason, and some smatterings of renaissance painting. I re-painted part of Masaccio’s Tribune Money like it had been ripped off the Carmine walls and put into a modern art gallery, behind bullet-proof glass. Here I am over 10 year later, using the disciples from the same painting in my work. Now they’ve all got wooden block-heads though . . .

I don’t consciously try to get that balance; it comes through the selection of the work rather than being planned out in any way. There are definitely other factors that add to the mix. The fact that the votives are quite personal, albeit sometimes quite droll, makes them contemporary, timeless even? I think people react to them and like them because they often talk about generic everyday life things. And they’ve got words, written explanations too . . .

AL: This anachronistic approach has been criticised. Mark Amery’s review of the Luck Creed show claimed that you are an eternal student, constantly trawling art history for something to cling to, following a chess game that has already been played out.

MC: Well, it seemed he was grinding an axe more than anything. I read that article a few times, took what I could from it and in the end, I'm happy with my practice. I don’t want to be locked down. I want to keep moving around and trying out new things . . . I get restless quite easily. Where does it say that you have to have a style, a look, a bloody gimmick by the time you are 30? That’s what gets me. Just because I’m primarily a painter, I have to submit to this modernist idea of what a painter does. To me it’s too much like variations-on-a-theme-type painting. I do that sometimes when I’m looking at the formal aspects of something I’m working on, but generally that type of thing bores me stupid. I’m not too interested in carving out a stylistic niche. That’s the type of thing that keeps auction houses happy, but not me, and that will happen later on anyway. It’s better to let it happen naturally.

I was listening to an interview with Gary Hume recently and he was talking about the same thing. He’d feel pressured to make something similar to a previous work, like to make it part of a series. He’d start work on the next painting of the series and it would start moving somewhere completely different and he’d get annoyed and say to the painting, ‘You’re supposed to be the second one in the series!’ I guess looking at it all, my concepts are all about links, like the Charlemagne principle, six degrees of separation. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I want the work to be the same. That would get boring for me, very boring.

AL: Your work explores a set of issues related to art and power – how certain symbols, forms and artists have acquired power and status in culture. Why this interest in loaded symbols and art forms and what does it offer you as a contemporary artist?

MC: As Amery said, I’m always looking back. You know, I’m interested in where things, well, symbols come from. I like to know its history. But then you're always thinking, can you trust what you are reading? It's a belief . . . a romanticized structure. A good example is the Picts. I’m supposed to be a descendant; you know, Scottish ancestry, Celtic, Scythian and all that. I used pictures I found when I was in Scotland – these classical nude figures covered in blue woad designs. This is, of course, total speculation; there was no documentation of what they looked like, only sparse historical tidbits in translated texts. I really like that.

AL: And these are the very questions that the viewer is forced to consider when standing in front of your work, or walking over it. The focus on the fake and the apocryphal in this exhibition really foregrounds these issues. Even in this interview you are weaving stories around your practice. The story of cycling through the graveyard and seeing a stonemason at work has classic elements of artistic mythology and apocrypha. It is very close to the stories of Colin McCahon cycling through the Nelson hills, or seeing signwriting on a hairdresser and tobacconist’s shop window. How suspicious do we need to be of the stories you tell about your own work? Are the ex-votos as personal and ‘honest’ as they claim to be?

MC: Did he? I didn’t know that. That’s true, well; you’ll have to take my word for it. I hope the votives don’t become apocryphal. They are all true. It’s a diary. Of course in the exhibition context, people will be suspicious of them, but I hope they will act as an appendix or something similar.

AL: That’s an interesting way of describing an element of your work – as an appendix. Do you think about all of your work in this way (as parts of a larger whole, contributing to a wider project etc)? Or are you just meaning that the ex-votos serve as an appendix to this exhibition? The reason I ask is that you are one of those artists who seems to heavily ‘curate’ their own work. Your paintings are often made up of multiple pieces or forms, everything is interrelated, conceptual threads are picked up over disparate works and exhibitions. This is clearly related to that Charlemagne principle, your interest in the connections between things. Not surprisingly, you are also a damned good curator. Prologue [Sarjeant Gallery, 2006] and Vista [Mahara Gallery, 2002] were both well-curated shows . . .

MC: Well, they’re an appendix for this show, but in the future, they’ll act as appendices. Well, all work acts like appendices doesn’t it? I guess it depends how much of your life story is in your work. I guess most artists use their life story as a starting point; it just depends how far you move it on. Conceptually that is, like, whether it’s autobiographical, biographical or based on a true story. You know, my work hasn’t been assessed yet as a whole. I’ve been in group exhibitions that are focused on a theme, like the [Gordon] Walters thing, or dioramas or whatever, but that’s about the skin surface. Those shows don’t go too much deeper into the artist’s work. They’re about collecting stuff together that fits a theme. I was just reading over a couple of catalogues I’d produced for dealer shows over the last couple of years and, to me, there are strong threads trailing through. But then I’m the one making the stuff. Whether people actually take the time to think about it, or think about whether it’s worth thinking about!

Yeah, the two shows I’ve curated, I had a great time with those. Vista was a lot of hard work, as I did it pretty much on my own, the concepts and selection of artists that is. Prologue was easier as I had Jo [Russ] doing half the work. She’s great at writing things out precisely and it was our own collection of artworks, so we’d had them around for a long time. You know, in the end, with both those shows, even though they were themed, you still end up hanging it so that this work looks good next to that work, that one plays off that one and so on. It’s still about the visual. It has to look good to have that initial pulling power for the viewer. I guess that is where I get my chance to pre-empt the viewer – in the physical curating of the show. I don’t think about the viewer when I’m making the work, so it all comes out in the curating, yeah.

AL: One work that takes on an almost talismanic role in this exhibition is a drawing of the crucifixion you made as a three-year-old, recently found by your father. How did you respond to the rediscovery of this drawing?

MC: Well, I still remember drawing that. When I got it from Dad it just provided another link in the chain, especially the votive thing. You know what I remember? Drawing nails in Christ’s neck because I couldn’t work out how his body was suspended. I didn’t realize it was just his hands and feet that were nailed and that it was to inflict pain. I’ve framed it up now in a white decorative frame. It’s a really important image to me.

AL: How much of your work – or this exhibition – is a comment on contemporary practice? It always feels as though you are forcing your work, or the viewer, to act in unconventional or unexpected ways. I was struck by another of the comments on the ex-votos – this time about the illuminated manuscripts – which state you were glad that you did not have to illustrate an entire book and that ‘contemporary artists have got it too easy’. Do you really think this?

MC: Hmmm, you’re getting into perilous territory there. I have to be succinct about this. Are you wanting to know if I’m the type of artist that hates conceptual art? You know, if you’re a painter do you have to be earnest, into composition, clarity in the boundaries of the canvas edge, linen or canvas, which ounce? I’ve gotten into all that technical stuff over the years. But when I was starting out at art school we weren’t taught about paints, brushes and all that palaver. It was about the ideas. Can painting be conceptual? Definitely . . . yeah. My tutor, Peter Ireland, used to say that the ‘painting’ – the crafted aspect of paint, that is – will happen if the ideas are good enough. You have to find a balance between the two. I don’t just want to illustrate ideas, especially in paint. You can do that with a drawing, but need to find your own painterly sense. It still hasn’t really arrived for me; I’d be bored otherwise. No, I like this thing I’ve got going on, the lifting of older art forms. The scrimshaw, the reverse glass painting, the renaissance thing and the ex-voto, retablo thing. They all seem to be parts of a sum that hasn’t manifested itself to me yet.

AL: At the same time, the broad cultural references, heavy symbolism and internal complexities of your work place a heavy burden on the viewer. Is this the same issue? Do you think viewers of contemporary art have it too easy?

MC: Probably. Are the big paintings too heavy going for viewers? I don’t know, it depends what the viewer knows, what knowledge and nous they bring to it, whether it visually interests them, for a start. I’m trying to make my work more accessible. Well, I’ve been aware that some of my work has been impenetrable, but I can’t really help it. It totally depends on my mood, whether I’m doing a work to say something, or doing it for me, something I’m passionate about, or for myself. The Law and Other Inexplicable Fallacies is pretty much indecipherable unless you read the title and the text on the illuminated manuscript.

Do art viewers have it too easy? Not really. It’s probably harder now than it has ever been. In the old days, you couldn’t read so you’d go to a church and look at the passion cycle. You’d know that the guy with the big beard in the sky was God, the guy with the halo, nailed to the cross, was Christ, Mary wore a blue cloak. These days you’re asking, is it ironic? If it’s not ironic and you think it’s ironic, have you missed the entire point of the work? Do I have to read entire screeds of Post-Structuralist theory to even just get an “in” into the work, or would a smattering of Hegel and Kant just do nicely? I mean art needs to keep up, push forward, suggest and examine. But when is it total masturbation and self-serving in-jokes for your mates, well . . . I’ve done that in the past. I guess I find myself often asking, as a viewer of art, why would the artist feel the need to make this work?

AL: The statement that you are striving to make your art ‘more accessible’ is interesting, especially since the three large paintings in this exhibition have devices that get in between the viewer and the subject: a cliff face, and painted scaffolding and planks of wood nailed up at the front of the picture plane. These barrier devices seem to cut off access to the work, whereas the ex-votos are designed to provide open access?

MC: Those barrier-type devices came from a reaction to the ex-votos, about November last year. The big paintings were like stage sets, pure picture plane stuff. With the ex-votos having text, I think people tend to gravitate to them, they can read what’s going on. So I’m in the studio looking at the simple, direct nature of the ex-votos and then looking at the big, hulking obtuse canvases. They were at a certain stage and I felt they needed more as they were just illusionistic paintings and that wasn’t enough for me. It’s kind of perverse using those devices, I don’t know if it pushes away or holds viewers back. I hope it makes them look at the fractures and cracks, show a bit of initiative, be a bit more inquisitive about what’s behind those barriers.

The scaffolding in TheBirth Of Death came from a photo of conservators working on a fresco. It’s an image from the net that I’ve Photoshopped, but the idea came from a photo I took at San Marco of a conservator through a chapel window. It tied in nicely with the inherent vice theme. The planks in The Law turned out to look like a crucifix, especially with the crown of thorns hanging on a nail. The chasm in TheEdge of The World, I see New Zealand being at the bottom of that waterfall but out of sight of the viewer at the same time. You know that these weren’t conscious decisions; I just felt the paintings needed more. What started out being barriers sitting on the picture plane ended up being important aspects of the painting. I guess that came from working on the paintings for over a year. They’ve had me staring and cursing at them for a long time now.

AL: What about drawing? The medium clearly holds an important place in your practice and this exhibition. Is your use of drawing akin to the ex-votos? How does drawing figure into your art-making?

MC: There’s drawing and there’s drawing. You should see the initial sketches I do when I get an idea. They’re terrible, like the most simplistic, blobby line drawings you can imagine. But that’s because I’m trying to get the idea down on paper. The drawings I exhibit are ideas that I don’t think would work as paintings, so I do them as precise drawings. But they often turn into paintings or are featured in larger paintings. Like Serenade, the blues musician with the Maori dancers, turn up in The Law as kind of serenaders to the Prometheus figure painting the canvas. It’s funny what works in one medium and not in another. I often get it wrong, but I’ve started getting a feeling for what each idea needs. The ex-votos are pretty close to my rough preparatory sketches, but because they’re oil and have toned backdrops, they feel more substantial as images.

AL: A lot of the perversity in your work comes from pursuing this ‘anachronistic’ practice from the contemporary moment – ex-votos devoted to computer crashes and so on. Again, so much of this seems to be about contemporary conditions, and the role that art and the artist can now find. At times this opens up broader cultural issues, like what it means to be a contemporary Pakeha artist. Serious questions are raised: can we trust museums and artists? What is real, what is fake? Who makes culture?

MC: Yeah, well, I’m to blame; well, artists are to blame for the fakery. There’s a lot of stuff in the show that is fake, total fakes – the scrimshaw for instance, then there’s stuff that's the real oil, like the ex-votos, they are probably the most ‘honest’ things I’ve done, as in the most personal. That’s why I started doing them. You’ve got me wondering now if viewers will feel everything is fake? Ha. Oh, well. I need to have a group of those people you see on TV that can read or sense what is fake or not – that would be interesting. I should do a polygraph test during the show!

The Pakeha thing . . . we are the majority of the art-makers in New Zealand, but totally disparate. Well, that’s my feeling, that we are far too competitive. I think I’m getting over that. The art race at the moment seems so unnecessarily fast. Being in Wanganui has somewhat isolated me from it, or it from me. It’s my own choice of course, and it’s totally in my head. You know, I chose to go to exhibition openings, I chose to be part of the art scene. It definitely didn’t select me.

AL: As the faked Couper on the cover of Art New Zealand/Flash Art suggests . . .