Artist Story: Graham Dolphin

Please give a brief introduction to yourself and your artistic practice

I was never that academic at school and found the absolutes of science and maths a little baffling, still do, so I was drawn to the arts as they offered a pathway that wasn’t predetermined. The art room at school was a welcoming place and it was the only subject I felt I could do well. I had no idea you could be an artist or what that meant, still not sure I do. I learnt photography and darkroom processes and that was an early interest – I had a darkroom in a shed in our garden.

I was the only student on my A-Level art course and during those two years I was given a huge amount of freedom to do what I wanted, which was essentially a continuation of the drawing, photography and collage that I was doing at home anyway. The following year's foundation course cemented a need to carry on making things, but I never gave much thought as to what that would mean after education.

It’s become apparent to me over time just what a product I am of my growing up in the 1980s, in a small town in the midlands, and going to art college around the time of the emergence of the YBAs, during the period when Charles Saatchi was avidly collecting their works. With the rise of the fleeting post-internet art movement, I realised that I was invested in objects, materials and the making of things, rather than the screen or virtual. The YBA moment was interesting as art became more visible, and some interesting artists emerged, but it soon descended into brand and ego, the artwork little more than product. Most have ended up advocates of the hierarchy and power structures they originally opposed.

Without getting too ‘jumpers for goalposts’ and nostalgic, growing up, there was very little in the way of culture that was accessible to me. The things I did find, through the guidance of my older brother, were very precious. This was mostly music and film (my mother loved film and we went to the cinema most weekends). With very little money, the local record library was hugely important, that and the second hand record store where the owner allowed us to spend hours picking out records to play while we contemplated what to spend our £5 on. The influence of the music press was important as it gave a glimpse into interesting things happening outside of my town.

Formally, all my work has my hand and labour embedded into it, this bleeds into the conceptual framework of the work. I want the work to not be reliant on skill or illusion, with all of its workings on show and not hidden. There are various conceptual concerns I am interested in; perception both visually and conceptually, experience, hierarchies and worth (culturally and economically), identity and also failure.

In the development of your work and ideas, has music been more important than visual art? Do you make a distinction between what might be thought of as highbrow and lowbrow culture, or between popular and underground culture, or are they all equal in terms of their relevance to your work?

Music is way more important than visual art to me personally, I listen way more than I look. I didn’t get to see any art or visit galleries until well into my late teens, it wasn’t a part of my childhood. Film and music were the only real culture I encountered. For me music holds its own in whatever environment you experience it, you don’t need to think about it, it goes straight in and gets a response. I know nothing about music theory so have no language or desire to unpick it.

Visual art is reliant on so many different factors – historical context, placement. As I make things I have the language to understand it, I can work it out. Art doesn’t hold the same mystery for me as music and there isn’t the same enjoyment or excitement when I encounter it.

I suspect the terms low, high, popular and underground are now redundant, at least I hope so. They never meant that much to me. I’m a complete snob about my tastes – which I try to keep in check – but these aren’t based on any notions of hierarchy in terms of cultural values.

How do you choose the particular magazine covers, newspaper covers, record covers, or the records themselves, that you work with? Is the cover art as important as what’s inside?

The choices are never based on my own taste, it is always about what that record, artist or magazine is worth culturally. As an example I’ve been working with Joy Division records and images recently and revisiting the band’s legacy and myth. This is on the back of my work Door (Joy Division Version) (2012) being included in the exhibition ‘The Horror Show!’ at Somerset House, London. Joy Division are an interesting example where it’s impossible to separate their music from their visual identity; the record sleeves by Peter Saville, the black and white photographs by the likes of Kevin Cummins, and the tragic story of Ian Curtis, coupled with the limited amount of work they produced, feeds into what the music is. Some bands and musicians cross over into another spectrum where the music is just a small part of what they mean culturally. If you compare this to a band like Bauhaus for instance, they were recording around the same time, had a similar level of commercial success, but they don’t have anything like the same cultural cache.

The record cover is for me one of the most satisfying visual objects, it has a uniformity, can be owned, and is a vessel for something which is ephemeral. The best examples are when the sound is somehow encapsulated in the image.

Through the act of meticulously transcribing lyrics, do you find new meanings in the words that are being sung? Would you describe your approach to art making as obsessive? Do you enjoy laborious and meticulous tasks?

The use of text in my work is an attempt to make real something that exists in the abstract, in much the same way that I use music in that regard. Language is similar in that it holds a thought, name, image, or object, its meaning is assigned to it through reference to other words. I always refer to the text as drawing rather than words as they flux between letters and marks, especially when seen as a mass. Drawn in a small script it is hard to read, your eyes skip through lines, the original meaning is lost.

I enjoy word play and lyrical structure, but the sound is more important to me when I’m listening. I rarely know what Mark E Smith is singing, but it’s the delivery, conviction and noise he makes when forming words that I enjoy.

I don’t think I’m more obsessive than any other artist, it’s just more evident that there is a ridiculous amount of labour involved in the making of my work. It’s all on show. Painters are rarely talked about as obsessive in the making of their work, even though they play with the same materials for a lifetime – at least I change mediums!

I enjoy, or rather need, to rely on process to make everything. As soon as I start making aesthetic decisions I start questioning myself. I don’t know if I’m making the right choices, it all falls apart. With the idea laid out before I start, it feels ok and right. Due to my ineptitude, mistakes inevitably creep in and the work takes on its own form. I still enjoy making things, and seeing how the finished piece turns out. I’m in fact very sloppy in my making, but if I keep going that becomes a strength.

Why do you choose to make copies or replicas of particular objects? Would you like to own the ‘originals’ of the objects that you make copies of?

The first replica I made was Bench (2010) which was a recreation of a park bench in Viretta Park, Seattle which has become a shrine to Kurt Cobain as the park overlooks the house in which he lived and died. I initially thought about buying the bench from the local council but that felt very outside of my practice. By remaking it in meticulous detail, and I’ve now made two versions of it, it fits in with my approach. All of these remade objects are amplifications of the originals as they are based on thousands of photographs of them. The original objects are constantly being added to by visiting fans, there is never a definitive, end version, they are always in flux. I liked that all of the work was done for me, the pilgrims had made their own drawings onto the objects which I faithfully copied.

The things I choose to make replicas of are all very emotionally charged, everyday objects – doors, rocks, benches, flagstones  –  that happen to be near to a tragic event. Their power exists not in their materiality, it's just a wooden bench, but in the human investment people have instilled into these objects. They’re oddly moving as symbols of our collective need to mourn something lost that was only known to us through secondary sources.

I would hate to own one of the original objects and I’ve only ever seen one of the original objects in person, a wall in Moscow dedicated to the singer Viktor Tsoi of the band Kino. The secondary experience is more important as I only see the objects through photographs taken by others, and seen by their eyes.

Is the emotional value of an object more important than its financial value? Does an object become more valuable if it shows signs of being loved or adored?

With the record pieces I try to buy original pressings which inevitably have a history of use and ownership embedded into them. I hate the current trend of reissuing on vinyl, new releases make sense, but why do we need more copies of Queen’s Greatest Hits in the world? It’s all landfill in more ways than one. As the prices for vinyl have gone up I’m happy I’m looking for the more worn, non-mint copies, the more worn and adorned the better.

Records are really important to me as cultural objects. They are mass produced, but you can still own a physical representation of an ephemeral source. Having a monograph of a particular artist is nice but it’s not the ‘actual thing’. I have a copy of the first Velvet Underground LP and it is the actual work, I own it.

There is a heartbreaking scene in Joachim Trier’s film, The Worst Person in the World (2021), where a character, who has been diagnosed with cancer talks about his emotional investment in records and books that have defined him and which are now pointless as he faces death. That hit a chord!

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore talks about these cultural objects as the nearest he gets to a spiritual connection. That power isn’t in the paper or plastic, the formal qualities of the ‘thing’, but it holds something that is important.

How important is the concept of fandom in your work? Would you describe yourself as a fan?

Fandom fulfils some kind of spiritual need and that can take on many forms, from the avid BTS fan to the bus spotter – they’re one and the same thing. There’s a need to identify with something outside of the mundane every day. I would find it hard to visit a shrine to a fallen idol and leave my message – I’m too self-conscious for that – but I love that people do. A modern pilgrimage. I’m a fan of fans.

How do your film and sound works connect with your drawings and sculptures, or are your films and sound works a distinct part of your practice?

I approach them in the same way. All of my work is from an initial idea which is usually a mix between the formal and conceptual, with each reinforcing the other. There isn’t a split in my thinking or even making when I switch between mediums.

I do, however, find the technology involved in presenting film and sound cumbersome. The formats are ever changing, and this can get in the way or become a distraction when trying to exhibit in a simple and clear way – there is always a battle with getting things ‘right’. This is less of a problem with physical work where the object stays the same – it isn’t reliant on other structures.

You’ve recently made a film piece working with the musician John Snijders. Is collaboration becoming a growing part of your practice?

I’ve worked with a number of musicians in the past, including Jason Pierce, Jad Fair, Susan Stenger, FM Einhert, David Grubbs, Richard Skelton and Dean McPhee, where I have given them basic instructions to follow and they do their thing and I then present it. I’m unable to do what they can so I employ them to bring their skills and status to the work. Sometimes that is quite structured; with John Snijders I asked him to play six Erik Satie scores which were filmed from above, and then the footage constructed into a single film, with all the scores played together.

With Jason Pierce I asked him to improvise drones on electric guitar as I filmed him from various angles, and again these were arranged across various monitors and played together to make a single form. With Jad Fair I asked him to write a song about me, giving him very basic details of my background. This formed a larger work Self Portrait By Others and was included in my survey show at NGCA, Sunderland, in 2016. He’s a genius and it was the best thing in the exhibition!

When money and resources are available I love to work with others, I’m currently working with a number of photographers, including Kevin Cummins, using their work as a surface on which to draw.

Are you interested in finding visual equivalents to music? You’ve made some works that use musical notation as imagery – do you see music as a kind of universal form of communication?

Music notation is like hieroglyphics to me, an unknowable language. I’ve played with it formally, overlaying scores to create new ones. In the same way the English language has only 26 letters to express all of human experience, music notation has the same capacity. I’ve long wanted to find someone that could transcribe the later work of John Coltrane into music notation to see what happens when you try and capture it in a strict form.

Do you have any particular memories of your experience of working with Vane?

I moved up to Newcastle from London with Sara, my partner, just before BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art opened in Gateshead, as she got a job there. I didn’t know the city, or anyone who lived here. It was an exciting time, with the ambition of the area realigning to having this international gallery on the quayside in Gateshead. I must have met Paul and Chris at one of the early BALTIC openings and was invited to show some work in a group show ‘Translator’ at the Guildhall in Newcastle, before they had a permanent venue. That show was exciting in its hands-on aspect, there were no demands or expectations. I subsequently showed in ‘They call us lonely when we’re really just alone’ group exhibition with Vane, which was the first time I exhibited my record and lyric pieces. They have always been very supportive and generous and it is testament to them that they continue to have an appetite to find and nurture emerging artists.

Interview by Stephen Palmer

Read more about Graham Dolphin’s exhibitions at Vane.