How did you get into art?

I could draw as a kid and got a lot of encouragement from home and school.

How do you get inspiration for the pieces you produce?

I am from what I call a non-art background, which basically means that high forms of culture were not readily available to me until I left home and moved to London at the age of 18. I was born in Lancaster. It’s a town in the North West of England. I grew up in the surrounding countryside in a disused petrol station – Toll Services it was called. My family were always quite distrustful of art. I think that attitude is typical of the region of where I grew up. It hasn’t many galleries and the prevailing feeling is that modern art is a waste of time. These days I try to make work that appeals to a large, diverse audience, with the bias towards those people who would ordinarily have little or no involvement with contemporary visual art. I suppose I’m trying to find ways to integrate art with daily life and make it attractive to everyone.

When did you start coming up with ideas for The Great Travelling Art Exhibition?

Straight after I left college. I had no gallery, no studio space and no money to create work. Also, I had no experience of the art world and it felt like there was no way into it. I guess the ideas came from being resourceful about that situation and needing to create an art-world of my own.

What has been your best creation to date?

I never date my own creations.

The drawings on trucks were the first phase of The Great Travelling Art Exhibition.

Yeah, I started to think about a gallery space that wasn’t fixed, that didn’t rely on people coming to see the work.

How do you decide which trucks to draw on and what determines the style in which you draw them?

Well, obviously the ones I use have to be dirty. They are called seven and a half ton Box Cargoes. I only ever draw on the white ones so that I can get the contrast I need. The images are done using my fingers, so this has a lot to do with how they look when they are finished.

Scaffolding Sculptures is the second phase of work for The Great Travelling Art Exhibition. I heard that you used to work on building sites. Was that as a scaffolder?

No, that was as a general labourer. I did it in the holidays when I was at art college. I would always get work because my dad was a site foreman. I’ve got fond memories of all that, but it was horrible at the time. The first time I did it I was 16 and I got thrown in a skip with a hose-pipe up my trouser leg. In fact, that’s nothing. The first day…we were building a secondary school in Keswick… the first day one of the labourers did a poo off the top of the building! The most massive shit you’ve seen in your life! No one had seen him all morning. Then, all of a sudden he’s on the roof waving his arms and pulling his pants down. I couldn’t believe it and I nearly quit. Then there was this one guy I was teamed to work with. This old Greek fella. Nobody wanted to work with him because he never spoke much – couldn’t speak good English. He always brought the worst pack-lunch – crap sandwiches in a plastic bag and that was it. Nothing on them but a bit of spread! Anyway, we were tidying a skip one day and we found this birds nest – like a wood pigeons nest or something, on the ground by a tree and some of the eggs were smashed but there were about three or four that were alright. And this fella, he picked out the good ones and carried them off. Yeah, so you know, naturally I thought he was going to try and incubate them or something – rear wood pigeons. The thing is he got them out at lunch time…Yeah man, he ate them!! Tapped them off into a jam jar and downed the lot! I swear to you…and there were twenty guys in that room and they all clocked him and none of them could finish their lunch. I’ve got tons of building site stories – it had a big impact on me.

Is this when you came up with the idea to make sculptures out of scaffolding?

No, this was way before.

Presumably someone taught you scaffolding techniques?

Yeah…well mostly I taught myself, but early on I went to see a scaffolder in Battersea to find out if my ideas could be realised. I didn’t know him or anything, just chose him at random. Everyone I knew said the project would be impossible, but this guy just went “Yeah that can be done”.

How much do you think hype affects the public perception of what good art is?

It massively affects it. But hype isn’t always such a bad thing. A bit of hype encourages mass audience participation which is a good thing if the art has some value.

The last CD you bought/downloaded?

I bought a Cat Power album and “Low” by Bowie as a present for my sisters birthday.

What was the last book you read?

Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

What makes you happy/sad?

Art does…my job. It does both. Sometimes it’s lonely and isolates you from the world. Sometimes it enables you to make friends in unlikely places and opens up possibilities you didn’t even know existed.

What other things do you like other than art?

Falconry.

 

Interview - Mr. Burrows 15/08/06