FEATURES ARCHIVE

Christie’s Murray Macaulay, Director of Multiplied, interviews Jack Featherstone, this year’s Multiplied guest graphic artist.

How would you describe you work?
It’s always a difficult question to answer because you don’t want to create false illusions or pigeon hole yourself. I guess I would describe the territory that I work in as being between design and art. I sometimes find it difficult to see the difference between the two but that’s the grey and blurry boundary that I cross and try to balance.

What was your background?
I did my foundation in art at Falmouth College of Art in Cornwall, and then studied graphic design at Chelsea College of Arts.

I grew up skateboarding and consuming skateboarding and music magazines and doing street arty kinds of things - some of it quite cheesy - but that’s what got me interested in visual language and the consumption of visual culture. Skateboard graphics and clothing were basically images used to sell things, but they had integrity because they were made by artists who came from the scene. I guess that’s where the hybrid between art and design started to emerge in my head.

Two years ago, after I graduated, I had the opportunity to set up a studio with my friend Kate. It’s been a huge learning curve - and I am still learning.

Would you see yourself as being part of a ‘scene’ now?
Loosely. London Club culture would definitely be a scene I would be a part of - I don’t really like calling it a scene, it’s just a group of friends.  I do a lot of art work for my favourite parties and then there are people around who are interested in music, the culture of music and the swapping of records. I also live South - so I mix with the South London art scene.

I see a sort of purity in your design work.
It’s a nice compliment but I’m not sure it’s the best way to describe it.

I strive for simplicity - it’s a constant challenge to build things up and to strip things back - to know what is important and what can be taken away. But sometimes it is important to embellish also.  

Talk us through the thought process behind your sitemap for Multiplied 2011?
When I think of the word ‘Multiplied’ I think of a design term for a transparency setting - I don’t think of multiplication but of transparency and layering - so that’s what I went for in the piece -something which is multilayered.   

I wanted to make it look like a blue print in places, and also wanted to create a sense of movement with the lines and the curve creating a circuit which reflects the movement that people will be taking.       

You’ll be launching an edition with Print Club London at Multiplied. Tell us about it.
The work had to be a screenprint so straight away there were certain techniques and aesthetics that were ruled out. A lot of my work is very complex and can only really be printed digitally or exist on computer. So I was limited in technique - which is a good thing, to have limitations. I wanted to really strip things back and to do something nice and clean. So I came up with quite a simple idea, a black on white design.

I had just been home in the countryside with my parents and was noticing the changes on the season, and was feeling kind of at one with nature. I don’t usually do anything representational, but there is often a motif which pops into my work, the circle, and the most obvious circles are the sun and moon. So I decided to do a circle with a diagonal line which could suggest a mountain. I have also been working a lot with lines and trying to master the use of lines in my work. The work will be B2 (27.8 x 19.7 in) and an edition of 100, with 10 special gradient print proofs. Hopefully it’ll resonate with people and have some emotional impact on them.

What other projects are you working on?
I recently started printing all my works because I am fed up of looking at my images only on a computer screen, with the view to setting up an online shop so I can sell my selected prints directly.

I’ve have just done a range of T-shirts for my favorite club night ‘Warm’ and a print which will be sold for their birthday.

At the end of the month I’m off to Berlin. I’ve been in London for five years and I feel it’s time to get out for a bit. Berlin is my favourite city - the freedom, its historical weight and the people. I’ve been there three times so I’m going to try it out for a month and may stay a bit longer if I like it.  I am going there to have a good time but also to work on some of my own stuff with a view to putting on my own exhibition hopefully sometime next year. 

You admired a modernist painting when we first met at Christie’s several months ago – if you were to buy a painting who would it be by?
I would probably buy a Frank Stella. He is quite a recent discovery for me - he was working out all these geometries and ways of playing with shape and form without a computer. His work is amazing.

Either that or I would like a work by Carl Gerstner, the Swiss graphic designer. He is probably my favourite designer - he managed to not only become a great designer but also a great artist who devoted almost his whole life to colour. He was a pioneer in using the grid in graphic design, often in a really expressive way. Grids are so often seen as boring, rigid structures but they're not – within those limitations and structures, you can create these really beautiful patterns - and essentially that’s just what nature is, repeated patterns. I would love to own one of his works. But, if I could only buy one it would be a Gerstner.