AlexC

EXCLUSIVELY BRITISH | September/October 15 EXCLUSIVELY BRITISH | September/October 15 5554

ALEX CHINNECK

INTERVIEW WITH

CREATIVE MINDS

Welcome to the mind-warping world

of Alex Chinneck.His large-scale architectural

works play with reality, raise a smile and make you question

the familiar. And then they’re gone. Kathryn Reilly meets with

Alex to find out what it’s all about.

Words | KATHRYN REILLY

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’m not an illusionist but the work is illusionary, if that makes sense. I’m not a showman but my work does have a theatricality.’

Getting your head around the sheer audacity of 30-year-old conceptual artist Alex Chinneck’s work can take time. His aim is to bring ‘surprises, abstraction and ambiguity,’ to the streets, distorting and seemingly defying reality. But these spectacles are largely fleeting. How important is impermanence? ‘Very,’ he asserts. In Chinneck’s world, everything needs a beginning, middle and end. ‘I’m obsessed with progress, and I’m excited by being freed to move on to something new’. None of his works are ‘conceived with permanence in mind. In this fast-paced world we have a need for new, invigorating experiences. Nothing lasts forever and nothing should.’ He has a palpable dislike of things hanging around so long that they become over-familiar.‘My peace of mind isn’t accom-plished until it’s removed,’ he says.

In fact, by the time the works are dismantled (or have melted in the case of A Pound of Flesh for 50p), he finds he ‘almost hates them’ so demanding have they been in terms of time and mental energy. These cross-discipline, paradoxical pieces are huge in terms of ambition and daring. Before the building-sized works came smaller schemes. But these were no less cerebral in conception or difficult to construct. Self Employed was a curling chimney that pumped smoke back into itself, the wood-chip based ‘canvas’ Fighting Fire With Ice Cream (2011) characteristically subverted the use of materials, and concrete rugs (Concrete Cross Dresser, 2010) have all gained acclaim. Stepping up the scale, Under the Thumb to Hide from the Fingers (2013) was an inverted thatched roof that moved like a weather vane. Then Chinneck moved outside perma-nently and began his architectural designs, the audacity of which would deter a lesser artist. ‘With scale comes cost. Bigger work speaks an architectural language.’

He admits that some of his ideas have proved unachievable but, largely, he and his collaborators find a way to realise his dreams. ‘We set ourselves considerable challenges. I create the problems and my engineer solves them,’ he laughs.‘The use of illusion looks effortless, but it’s extraordinarily complex to achieve. Just because it’s playful doesn’t mean it doesn’t have serious intent,’ he believes. Accessibility – essential in the public realm of civic art – is also important to Alex. But he has some detractors. ‘The Intellectual elite are suspicious of it. They don’t know what to do with it. Popular is bad.’Just how did he end up doing this very particular work? ‘My father was a PE teacher and I was supposed to be a professional sportsman,’ he reveals. But he ‘fell in love with painting’ at 16 ’rebelling against my upbringing’ went to study painting (at Chelsea College of Art & Design) ‘just to try it for a year’. He stayed the course and left to take the traditional artistic path.

The use of illusion looks

effortless, but it’s ex-

traordinarily complex to

achieve. Just because it’s playful

doesn’t mean it doesn’t

have serious intent.

CREATIVE MINDS

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Under the Thumb to Hide from the Fingers (2013)

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‘I had a studio, did gallery shows…’ But he didn’t want to be the kind of artist ‘making the art they think they should be making’. He didn’t hold back. Inspired in part by Rachel Whiteread’s House, his architectural installations make the viewer question the nature and role of everyday materials. Under the Weather but Over the Moon (2013) is an inverted four-storey building in Southwark. Pick Yourself Up and Pull Yourself Together (2014), sees a car suspended upside down from a ‘curling wave’ of tarmac. Take My Lightning but Don't Steal my Thunder (2014) created the illusion that a piece of Covent Garden market had broken free and was floating in the air. Pound of Flesh for 50p (2014) was a large house made almost entirely from wax that was heated each night until it melted away. His sliding house in Margate (From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes, 2013) is still there but could be knocked down at any moment should a developer buy the site.‘My best work was Telling the truth through false teeth (2012) – it’s the only one I was sad to see go. It was just subtle enough that you might miss it,’ he muses. For this powerful piece he smashed near-identical holes in 312 glass panes in an abandoned warehouse in Hackney.

The clever and wry titles are generally arrived upon when a name becomes a necessity. ‘I put a lot of thought into it,’ says Alex. ‘They’re my one area of creative indulgence.’ But they’re usual-ly given flight when a name is needed for the purposes of pub-licity and PR. There’s one special project that still hasn’t material-ised yet – the ‘upside down’ wind-mill where the mill moves rather than the sails. ‘We’ve designed a lot of it inside the studio – it’s a real labour of love but it needs a sponsor’. By September 2015, over 100 people will be working on A Bullet From A Shooting Star – part of the London Design Festival – a pylon that juts out of the earth as if thrown by the gods. Once again, the decay and dereliction of post – industrial sites has inspired Alex. ‘I use the context of the site to inform the design.’ This piece bears all the hallmarks of Chinneck it’s illusory, shocking, amusing and huge; 15 tonnes or 1,000 metres of steel, 35 metres tall, with 19 metre-deep piles and 78m³ of concrete ‘foundation’ be-neath the surface. At night, it will take on another life, pinpointing the city and casting a lattice of shadows in its wake. Sited on the still undeveloped Greenwich Peninsula, next to what used to be called the Dome, it will live for just nine months.

CREATIVE MINDS

› ALEX'S PROJECT AT THE LONDON DESIGN FESTIVALA bullet from a shooting star

DON'T MISS

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19-27 September

A Pound of Flesh for 50p (2014)

Telling the truth through false teeth (2012)

Take My Lightning but Don't Steal my Thunder (2014)

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