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EMMA sEEING A MEssAGE BIGGs MATTHEW IN THE MEDIUM COLLINGs

COVER FEATURE Biggs

TEXTs ANNA McNAY Collings MIKE VON JOEL & PHOTOGRAPHs DAFYDD JONES FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD TWO ARTIsTs WORK AND LIVE IN HARMONY. CAN THE RURAL CREATIVE LIFE REALLY BE sO IDYLLIC?

EMMA BIGGs with ANNA McNAY Norfolk March 2017 internati onal commissions for museums and then we’ll see through the design and more. ‘Eventually, we wanted to go – although, as it happens, we’re trying our separate ways. The workshop runs this out for the fi rst ti me at the moment PUNCTILIOUS AND considered, choosing not to know what the grand and momen- as a shop now. If enquiries come in to – but, normally speaking, what happens her words carefully and craft ing meti c- tous thing was that I had to say. Then the site, we sti ll follow them up. But I is that I’ll give Matt some colours and ulous answers, Emma Biggs is gener- gradually, through making, I discovered work alone now, as does Tessa.’ tell him where to paint them and then, ally deemed to be the director behind that actually I do have something to say. looking at what’s happened, I’ll develop the arti sti c output of Biggs & Collings. It’s been a process of learning through But, while Biggs does conti nue to work it. It’s not part of a scheme that we’ve Could one not be forgiven for seeing doing rather than having and making an – and teach – as a mosaic arti st (she is pre-planned. It’s more organic. their painted tessellati ons as canvas ver- idea.’ currently making some benches and sions of Biggs’ own mosaic practi ce? It pavements for the west courtyard of ‘Occasionally, if I’ve made up the colours seems not, for here she becomes sud- Having watched a television programme the new Royal Liverpool University and there are a lot of instructi ons, I can denly animated: ‘Oh god, no! They’re about the Italian community who had Hospital, as well as doing some work for leave him to it in the studio. I can go off completely separate!’ She is keen to come to the UK to fi nd work – many of a chalet in Switzerland), since 2001, she and pott er in the garden or come in here assert that the ego balance and share them as mosaicists – Biggs was fascinat- has split her ti me (not always equally – [her mosaic studio] and do some work.’ of the work is equal, in this husband- ed. ‘I phoned up all the mosaic-making it’s a case of swings and roundabouts) and-wife collaborati on, and that, meet- places in the Yellow Pages. They used between this and her collaborati ve work This sti ll sounds very much like she’s in ing somewhere in the middle, ‘what we to be called things like Zannelli and Mi- with her husband, Matt Collings. charge? ‘Yes, but he’ll put the colours do together is not what is perhaps most lano and Alfa – they were sti ll all Italian on in parti cular kinds of ways. The paint natural to either of us’. names – and they said: “Yes, we have a Biggs met Collings on a blind date handling is incredibly important to how bit of work, but you wouldn’t be able to organised by friends. They got on the painti ngs read and register. If he did Born in Kent in 1956, Biggs has arti sti c do it, it’s too heavy work for a woman”. immediately but, keen to keep the something that I really felt was weird, I lineage, with her great-aunt being the That just made me all the more deter- private separate from the professional, might say something, but by and large I Irish portrait painter and stained glass mined that I was going to learn! So I kept she will not divulge details. ‘Let’s pass trust him and I’ll leave that to him.’ arti st, sarah Purser. She was good at art phoning up unti l I found somebody who over that,’ she says coyly. Collings, school, ‘but my sister was rather bett er would let me work with him. He was a who, ‘if left enti rely to his own devices, And the colours are key to Biggs & at it than I was’. At Leeds University, Jewish guy who did a bit of mosaic, but would paint quite free, expressive, Collings’ work. ‘I see our work as being Biggs studied Fine Art (Museum Stud- he needed somebody to clean his house. expressionist, painterly painti ngs’, began about formal, visual properti es that have ies), which involved some art making, So I went along and cleaned his house asking Biggs for advice on his work. ‘He an analogy to something a litt le bit like but also learning about presentati onal and saw what he did. Then I went home used to feel a litt le bit uncertain in the what you see when you see light. The and curatorial skills. ‘I’d always want- and experimented myself. studio and would ask me in to give him painti ngs are really about colour and ed to be a maker of some kind,’ Biggs feedback. Aft er a bit, he would ask me if patt ern and a sort of moving, changing, says, looking back. ‘And yet I didn’t re- ‘I was very lucky, actually. I made a I could give him litt le schemas of things reconfi guring presence. You look at them ally have the confi dence to know quite whole load of samples and took them to paint, and I would do that. Then, aft er and they slip away. They’re not quite how to make or what to feel. At Leeds, to some ti le shops near Fulham Road to he’d done them, he’d ask me in again to knowable. How something looks at one it was quite a politi cal art department, be fi xed and I got a commission more see what I thought, and I’d say: “Well, if moment is going to change and you’ll see and it made me feel there was nothing or less as soon as I went in – to make you’d done this in this way…” Gradually, it diff erently the next moment. In order parti cular I had to contribute.’ It was a cactus house for somebody in Sedle- he would ask more and I would do to do that eff ecti vely, some things have only aft er leaving university and having scombe. It was a really enormous job to more, and it just developed into being to be made more important than other a child that Biggs came across the art of get as a fi rst job. And it just grew from collaborati on.’ things. So, for example, there can be mosaic-making – which would go on to that, really. One thing led to another.’ quite close tones that have to disappear become her successful, internati onal, So, Biggs does the designs and Collings into one another. And it’s important that solo career. Biggs went on to set up Mosaic Work- fi lls in the colours? ‘I suppose you could some things come forward, so there can shop with Tessa Hunkin in Holloway say that, except it isn’t exactly like that be some much more vivid tones, because ‘The idea that I could make something Road in 1987 and, together, they pub- because we’ll start working, and it’s they take a more strident role, and some that was functi onal gave me an excuse lished a number of books and fulfi lled not like I’ve made a design in advance things go back or recede. If there’s a sTATE 24 15 PEOPLE prevailing idea, it’s restlessness. But Norfolk, seven years ago. It was a mutual colour is primary. The geometry serves a decision that they needed more space role in that it’s deliberately saying: “I’m and they wanted to get rid of their mort- not asking you to consider the loneliness gage. ‘It’s quite an interesting area from of floating on a lake or what it’s like to be the point of view of nature. It’s on the in a concentration camp”. It’s resisting a edge of Thetford Forest and The Fens, whole series of ideas that come when and it’s quite close to The Wash. There’s you see figurative images and it’s asking quite a lot of bird life here. But we don’t you to concentrate on the sorts of things really do much out-of-doors. I think that you can really only get from entirely probably we had an idea that we’d do non-figurative images.’ more than we do. Really, we’re just al- ways in the studio.’ Although neither party is remotely re- ligious, Biggs & Collings take their titles One current joint project Biggs & Coll- from the Bible. ‘We are fascinated by the ings are working on is a banner for history of ideas and the Bible is a fun- Global Justice Now. ‘Matt’s quite a damental work in terms of that. Islam, Corbynite and we wanted to do some- Judaism and Christianity all have the Old thing that could potentially be useful. Testament as a pretty important book. It’s been so eye-opening to see the ab- There’s an incredible richness of visual solute misrepresentation and lies about and metaphorical references in those what he [Corbyn] stands for and what stories.’ Other inspirations are drawn is going on. I’ve been an old leftie for from the myriad shows they visit – both years and years, but Matt’s a more re- for pleasure, and for Collings’ work as cent convert to politics, and he’s taken a critic. ‘At the moment, I’ve been do- to it with real fortitude and resilience – ing quite a lot of reading about early it makes him really furiously angry. He Christian mosaics and maybe some of was approached by Momentum to do the colours we are using relate to that. something and then the idea came to do And Matt is writing his book and is ab- solutely immersed in contemporary art. This year, the artist I’ve looked at most is Arshile Gorky, just because of the fantastic works in the Abstract Expres- sionism exhibition [at the Royal Acad- emy]. I found some of those things so exciting – they really spoke to me. Matt definitely has more time for more mus- cular, painterly, drippy things than I do. There are some artists I just don’t get at all, but I can see that paint handling is part of the appeal.’ Does she mean, for example, Jackson Pollock? ‘Oh no. Who am I thinking of? I’d have to ask Matt who I really can’t bear – but I probably shouldn't say! I think Matt would have a lot of time for Martin Kippenberger, for example. I find his sculpture visually in- teresting but his painting – in terms of a punk, nihilistic idea, I get it, but, in terms of pleasure, no. There are some artists who are just incredibly elegant, like Albert Oehlen, where everything is so a banner. We’re working together and fluid and fluent, and of course we would designing something with the guy who both agree about that. Mostly we man- does Jeremy Deller’s banners. It will age to persuade one another. Privately be recognisably Biggs & Collings, but it we can disagree, although Matt’s very will have wording on it, so it’s slightly amenable!’ new territory. There’s going to be a Mo- mentum conference, called The World Living and working together, art rules Transformed, at the same time as the 24/7 in the Biggs & Collings household. Labour Party Conference in September, ‘I would say our relationship outside the and Matt may run some sort of panel studio can be like anyone’s relationship, there about the importance of art…’ with rows and tempestuousness and being fed up: “Why can’t you do the As the one with more apparent gusto, is washing-up?” – that kind of thing. But Collings generally the spokesperson for our relationship in the studio is mutually the husband and wife double act? ‘Matt respectful.’ They talk about art in their is a natural performer and he could talk private time too, however, sometimes the hind legs off a donkey,’ laughs Biggs. right up until going to sleep. ‘Matt does ‘He’s a natural wordsmith, whereas I sometimes escape from it with televi- find it harder to articulate and explain. sion. He likes series and box sets. Netflix, But he doesn’t let me get away with it. all that stuff. If I’m escaping into - any He wants me to speak as well.’ Though, thing, it will probably be the garden.’ having spoken to Biggs alone, it cer- tainly doesn’t seem as if she is short of Biggs & Collings moved to a village in things to say…

Top: Egyptians 2016 Oil on canvas 50 x 50 inches Below: Fire 2016 Oil on canvas 50 x 50 inches 16 state 24 BIGGS & COLLINGS Top: Paradise 2015 Oil on canvas 50 x 50 inches Below: Days and Years 2016 Oil on canvas 50 x 50 inches

MATTHEW COLLINGS with MIKE VON JOEL Norfolk March 2017

REGULAR READERS of London’s Evening ‘Well it was the saving of me at that age. Standard will have noted the author I was 15 when I went there, but 14 when and critic, Matthew Collings, routine- George Lyward1 interviewed me for a ly popping up in a slot vacated by the place. I had been sent by the police, or late Brian Sewell. Collings enjoys simi- rather the local borough, because I’d lar grass-roots popularity, his easy-go- been involved in a scandalous incident ing lucidity, backed by a real knowledge whereby I was kidnapped to Canada. It of the subject, makes for informative was in all the newspapers at the time. texts. Collings also became popular on Legally speaking, it was the abduction TV (whereas Sewell appeared to irritate of a minor by a friend of my mother, Dr a general audience) and morphed, from Rachel Pinney.2 She was a well known a enfant terrible of the ‘80s art press, radical, progressive child psychiatrist, a into father confessor for a TV audience CND activist, Communist, lesbian, and ran something called Creative Listening. The ‘kidnap’ was really a culmination of events in my family – Pinney knew my father, who had been injured as a pilot in the war, and who was a one- time boyfriend of Liz Frink. Ten years later he committed suicide, just as I was born. My mother was mentally disturbed – a sensitive, intelligent and artistic woman, who had difficulty with psychotic episodes. She just could not really manage and, eventually, I went into care as she went into various mental hospitals. She died ten years ago and was a really lovely person.

‘My mother had been on the fringes of the Chelsea scene, and, as Rachel knew both her and my father, she kept an eye out for me. I would go home to Chelsea for weekends but stay at Rachel’s house in Oakley Street. It was a real contrast to the greyness of the children’s home insecure about contemporary (and any in Orpington, which was quite terrifying. other form of) art. So given Collings’ Oakley Street was a bohemian haven fame – in media terms – and position of for eccentrics and unmarried mothers. influence, it would be easy to imagine It wasn’t exactly art, but people like RD him cruising celebrity preview parties Laing and Eddie Linden [Scottish poet] and holding court in the media clubs of hung out there, and my mother too Soho and beyond. Nothing could be fur- when she was out of hospital. She was a ther from the truth. In fact, Collings, and distant presence for me at this time and his wife of 20-odd years, artist Emma Rachel was much more immediate. But Biggs, have carved out a rural, William Rachel really was quite alarming – she Morris-like existence in Norfolk. Their would walk around totally naked and large corner house nestles next to the would not speak on Wednesdays (until village church and could have been the the bomb was banned). So I had a very Rectory (it wasn’t – it was once a shop). unstable upbringing.’ And the Morris analogy is apposite, for this is where precise and exquisite paint- ings are manufactured in a joint enter- prise by Collings and his wife. Not to When Collings was released from mention Collings’ splendid Karl Marx/ Orpington it was into the care of his William Morris-style beard. mother, with what might be seen as pre- dictable results – and it precipitated one This oasis of peace and tranquility is es- of the most bizarre experiences of his pecially valued by Collings, whose own young life. upbringing was both extreme and ex- traordinary. He had little or no formal ‘I came out of the home when I was 13 schooling and, as a troubled teenager, and the situation with my mother was was sent to an institution for maladjust- a re-run of when I was 6. She just could ed children called Finchden Manor. not cope. My mother lived in Sloane state 24 17 PEOPLE

Church View: Biggs & Collings’ studio in their rambling Norfolk idyll

Street and Rachel was nearby, so I spent tati onal – and certainly not violent. for four years and then [in 1983] edit said: “we like the way you tell us about more ti me in Oakley Street. By then the it for another four. I sort of tumbled these things why not present the items house was full of musicians from the ‘Actually I was always talented at art as into running Artscribe and making it yourself?” Actually, I found the camera underground rock scene – I remember a kid. It’s a very common story – when fl ourish. Actually, I admired the people thing easy and was happy to be part of Family and Mighty Baby – and I would you get to an art school you realise that who edited it before me, because they a collaborati ve process. That way it is an hang about with them. Rachel was very everyone there is similarly talented. I’d had ideals and believed in something easier life. But really it was ideas as en- worried about drugs and I’d got into this worked on building sites before I went to [abstract painti ng]. We sold it to survive tertainment and so that’s when I signed a litt le, so her soluti on was a new life in the Byam Shaw and so I chose to stay on and in the end I had a lot of stress with on for an MA at Goldsmiths, which is a Canada. She gave a Canadian hippy visi- there – the smart ones went on aft er the the new publishers – which I took out two-year, part-ti me course. That was a tor called Alan £200 to take me back with Foundati on Course to proper art schools on some poor kid in the offi ce. Jack and very busy ti me for me. him. I know – it sounds completely crazy. like Camberwell. But I had a grant and it Pat Butler3 might have spent a lot of And how could it ever workout? Even- was somewhere to go everyday, and it money on the magazine but their vision ‘I was at the BBC for about eight years tually the Mounti es located me in this was there that I realised there was such of art was defi nitely not mine. I ended and I just felt I should be doing some- squat in Toronto and I was apprehended a thing as an ‘art world’ – galleries, art up hitti ng this kid and – quite justi fi ably thing else. When it ended, I thought I – although I had actually done nothing il- magazines, art books, private views... – got fi red. I was 32 then and probably would never work in TV again. But when legal. When I got back to England – well, you previously thought art was all about didn’t realise the full extent of my I was asked to put ideas up for an inde- that’s when I got referred to Finchden the past. About history. I did four years internal anger and frustrati on. pendent company it all kicked off again Manor in Kent. Sixty maladjusted boys at Byam Shaw and there are a couple of and led on to Channel Four. It has only lived there all looking like hippies, but people I am sti ll in contact with today. I ‘A friend had read my funny text in Mod- recently come to an end – again! many of them were extremely violent. had a girlfriend. Friends. Overall, it was a ern Painters describing the Artscribe Others were very bright and clever. We benign environment compared with my events and asked me to come to the BBC ‘What they always want is rati ngs and did get what I now know to be therapy, past experiences.’ to do some research work. My view was they choose the big names because and in retrospect I consider it did save that art on television was stupid and ir- they assume everyone will watch. How me. It was a 100% positi ve experience By the mid 1970s new technologies relevant. I was ungrateful and surly, but subjects are treated goes in cycles for me – whose life was very un-positi ve in printi ng had brought the costs of the more sneering I was the more they and for a while now we have had the at the ti me. Now I have stability – have publishing right down and ‘litt le maga- liked it. I was really in the gutt er at the enormous, endless, conti nuous cycle been married for 20 years with kids – zines’ proliferated. Artscribe had been ti me, so I went to work on the launch called dumbing down. You have to and there is more light than shadow…’ launched in 1976 with a pronounced of The Late show. They just loved play with the medium and accept the dedicati on to abstract painti ng. When everything I put up because the BBC conditi ons. No one in TV is intellectually Collings joined the producti on team in knew nothing about what was really go- playful, that’s just impossible, but 1979, it was a fashionable journal for the ing on in contemporary art. I’d say: there you can be enthusiasti .c But there are Collings began his life in art at the Byam liberal left , art educati onalists and Arts is this American stockbroker who makes certain formulas that have been in place shaw school of Art, which was most likely Council funded galleries. millions a year but also does crazy sculp- for years that you have to obey. Arts the fi rst ti me he became part of a social tures, called Jeff Koons – and they’d go: programmes like Monitor?4 Well, those grouping more empatheti c than confron- ‘I went to work on an art magazine “Wow! Fantasti c!” One day they simply were experimental ti mes. They were 18 sTATE 24 BIGGs & COLLINGs addressing an educated, middle class fi gurati ve painti ng – despite the obvious Biggs and Collings interpreted their audience that exists in a diff erent way conclusion that one is about form, and response to the Five Sisters windows now. If you are explaining art on TV today the other carries a narrati ve which in the famous Yorkshire landmark. you have to do it within a rigid format dominates the reading. Widely reviewed, Collings insisted the that is almost childish. Nowadays, you collaborati ve nature of the event was deliver a package.’ ‘I don’t see a diff erence – and neither clearly noted: ‘Emma is the mind,’ he does Emma – which is maybe why we observed, ‘and I am the hand.’ More recently, Collings has resurfaced as got together. I would never take the an arti st and specifi cally as a painter, col- narrati ve of a narrati ve painti ng all ‘The main thing there was the mosaic laborati ng closely with his wife, Emma that seriously. I would always think – although we did have painti ngs in that Biggs. Being represented by London’s that the treatment of the narrati ve was show – which had materials from the 12th Vigo Gallery has given the duo a com- the serious thing. Clement Greenberg century given by York Art Gallery. This was mercial profi le that is att racti ng serious supposedly thought formalism was enti rely Emma’s thing. It ran down the criti cal acclaim. Working so inti mate- good, but the thing you must not be centre of the church and you could walk ly, one with another, to make art is not today is a formalist (you must not think alongside it. Now that was epic.’ unique, but it does require a disciplined of a painti ng as having no meaning other approach. Biggs creates the grid-like basis than how it is done). But I do think that. So, aft er a life with more than its fair for the work and Collings meti culously ap- I have always thought that. The work share of tribulati ons – and now enjoying plies the colours. One can see the obvious itself is an object that looks good or not the comfort of success and acclamati on State: How did you fi rst discover therapeuti c value in this precision, focused – and if it doesn’t then its not happening. – is the arti st happy? Emma [Biggs] and Matt hew and controlled formula for Collings. And if it does look good what are the [Collings] and what interested you factors involved: has it got depth? Is it ‘I am happy… watching TV…’ in their work ? ‘For me, painti ng overlapped with TV only superfi cially good? That’s what we for many years. I have been working do really. I harness – or harvest – the Toby Clarke: We fi rst met when I with Emma for over 20 years, but it is fantasti c ‘crocks’ of Emma’s colour ideas. was at the Fine Art society about only since we collaborated with Toby It’s an endeavour. We are both involved 12 years ago. I was att racted to [Clarke] that we have had any sort of in an enquiry and I accept the limitati ons their modus operandi of limiti ng commercial success. Before that it was on myself. the structure of their painti ngs to intermitt ent. We now have regular a classic repeti ti ve framework in shows with the Vigo Gallery. Christo and ‘That patt erns also have limitati ons is NOTEs order to concentrate on the eff ects Claes Oldenburg, for example, were al- only true in the sense that anything has 1. George Aubrey Lyward (1894-1973) – a charismati c of colour relati onships and texture, ready fully formed as arti sts when their a limit to it. When we are painti ng we educati onalist who founded the Finchden Manor in eff ect, restricti ng themselves in partners joined them. Emma and I are are considering how to make the colours community in Kent. order to push further within that interested in one thing and we invent- vibrate and we work on unti l nothing 2. Rachel Pinney (1909-1995) – a Briti sh doctor who scope. ed this one thing. In my case, I feel I am looks as if it needs correcti ng. This pioneered therapeuti c approaches to children’s objecti vely making something. I respect thing I do with Emma is not really about development in the 1960s; she was a Quaker and In fact, Vigo was instrumental committ ed Peace Acti vist. From 1927-1934 she joined in Biggs & Collings moving into art therapy but I do not recognise that patt ern, it’s about reality. Patt ern is the in a group of eccentric philanthropists who donated in what we do – but – I do acknowledge vehicle by which we express reality – via money to the Nati onal Trust. exhibiti ng in a gallery environment. Emma’s dominance in the process. I be- light and the way objects are revealed How did you persuade them this lieve in the authority of her sense of col- by light. You could say Beethoven’s 1812 3. Pat and Jack Butler, a reti red American couple was the way forward? who had homes in London, New York and Florida. In our relati onships in the pictures we are symphony is just notes, but it’s not, it’s 1985, their cash turned Artscribe into a glossy colour making about vibrati ng colour – I don’t the whole experience – a comment on magazine. It was actually at FAS that I started have the range of colour ideas that she life in 1812 itself. That would be the same working with them. They loved the 4. Monitor – a BBC arts programme launched in 1958 historical context but when I left has and so I would not work in that way as saying our painti ng is just patt ern.’ and which ran unti l 1965. on my own.’ they left , and then joined the gallery One might say that this theoreti cal 5. Five Sisters, York St Mary’s Church, York. May- about 6 months later. It wasn’t hard November 2009. Commissioned by York Museums to convince them as we got on from Collings once famously said that he sees approach was perfectly delineated by Trust and involved a huge mosaic and a set of white oil no diff erence between abstract and the York Minster project5 in 2009, when painti ngs. the get-go and they are great to work with.

There are mixed views on artwork

created by a ‘duo’ despite a number of successful practi ti oners (Gilbert & George; Christo & Jeanne

Claude; Oldenburg & van Bruggen). Do you fi nd any reti cence amongst collectors for ‘joint’ painti ngs? “ I don’t actually with them. Traditi onally, they att ract collectors on all levels, from Foundati ons and important collectors all the way Emma is the mind, through to corporate commissions and normal homes.

How are they received abroad – do and I am the hand. you include them in works taken to “ art fairs outside the UK? Very well. We have sold them into many good US and Scandinavian collecti ons – but they have a large domesti c audience also.

Vigo Gallery 21 Dering street London W1s 1AL

www.vigogallery.com

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