ATP DIARY Interview with Jonathan Monk – Claymation, Museo Zauli Matteo Mottin October 3, 2015 Jonathan Monk. Claymation - Residenza Museo Zauli, Faenza 2015 - Work in progress On October 5 Museo Carlo Zauli in Faenza will present Claymation, solo show by Jonathan Monk curated by Guido Molinari. The exhibition features ceramic artworks designed by Monk during his June residency for the XII edition of the project Residenza d’Artista. We asked some questions to Jonathan Monk to know more about this project. ATP: Could you introduce us to your residency? How did you manage your time in Faenza? Jonathan Monk: I managed it very well. It was quite short and reasonably intense. I haven’t really worked in ceramics since I was in high school, so it was really a chance to explore the media again. In the end I came out with two different things, and the third was just an attempt, or an experiment. From my experience at high school, I remember that there was a clay bin in the corner of the space. It was there to recycle failed attempts. Once students made an object and they were not happy with it, the clay was just recycled. It was a big bucket that was full of water that people would throw their mistakes into, so the clay can be used again. I took this idea and actually made a one to one copy of a dustbin, that would be painted outside black, like the plastic bin it’s been taken from, and the inside just shows the clay and my fingerprints how they were pushed into the mould. This is one of the pieces that were made. The other piece is actually quite hard to explain, and even when you see it it’s hard to imagine, but it was a vase, or it is a vase, or hopefully it will be a vase if it survives the journey through the kiln. It’s based on my hands, I used them as the negative space inside the vase, so it’s possible to put ten flowers in it. Each stem of the flower goes into what would be the negative of my fingers. It looks kind of crude, but hopefully it will work. It was very complicated to make. I’m not involved in that process, we just used my hands. ATP: In Faenza did you discovered new or traditional techniques that inspired you for other works? JM: Maybe more about the process of how you can work with clay became interesting during the days that I was here. Being such an old and traditional material, to be honest I’ve not really explored it greatly, but it was nice to come here and thing about the possibilities of using clay in different ways. I had ideas for other things that I could make in the future, maybe with other ceramicists from this area. We’ll see it if it goes any further. ATP: What are these ideas about? JM: I want to copy an existing sculpture by someone else, and then find this moment, which I’m not really sure exists, where the clay is not dry exactly but it’s possible to take it out of the mould, and cut it in half, or bend it slightly. I don’t know if it’s even possible. We made another cast yesterday and we took it out of the mould today, and I think there must be a moment when you can still play around with the clay before it’s dry, and then hope- fully fire the clay when it’s been manipulated slightly. ATP: Could you tell me further about your interest in the process? JM: I guess with clay and ceramics you’re always following almost the same process, and then every ceramicist over the centuries added their own touch of magic – not that I feel that I have any magic touches, but you can see what other people have done and maybe twist the process slightly, hopefully changing it and adding things that have not been added before, which I’m sure it’s very difficult, if not impossible. I also like the idea that in the last minutes or the last seconds of a piece being made, if you have air bubbles in the clay, it can still actually explode in the kiln. I guess it’s like when you make a film on real film and you’re not sure until it gets processed of what’s on the actual film. It’s something that I still find interesting, the excitement whether the things actually gonna work. You can spend months creating something with the idea that it could be destroyed when you try to finish it. ATP: Why did you decide to call the exhibition Claymation? Is it also the title of one of the pieces? JM: Maybe not. I didn’t really have a title, I have to say, but I quite like this idea of claymation. Wallace and Gromit, you know? That’s not clay, but it’s some material that they animate with stop motions, and these char- acters come alive. I guess the idea of claymation is speaking about what essentially is just soil and that you can give it life – up to a point, I mean, it doesn’t appear to be alive but you give it another life, so that’s why I thought claymation might makes sense, even if it’s not really Wallace and Gromit. (laughs) It’s funny, but it makes sense. Jonathan Monk. Claymation – Residenza Museo Zauli, Faenza 2015 – Work in progress Jonathan Monk. Claymation – Residenza Museo Zauli, Faenza 2015 – Work in progress Jonathan Monk. Claymation – Residenza Museo Zauli, Faenza 2015 – Work in progress Mottin, Mateo, “Interview with Jonathan Monk – Claymation, Museo Zauli”, ATP Diary (Online), 2015 Why Philadelphia Is Commissioning Skateable Public Art The city hopes to engage young people in its downtown parks and museum plazas by installing skateable sculptures. One of Jonathan Monk's "skateable sculptures" (Facebook/City of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program) Philadelphia kicked off its new public outdoor-arts exhibition Open Source: Engaging Audiences in Pub- lic Space on Friday with two sculptures made for skateboarding on. The artist Jonathan Monk installed the “Skateable Sculptures” in Paine’s Park, a publicly funded skate park built in 2013, not far from the downtown Philadelphia Museum of Art. Monk’s sculptures appropriate, in some ways, some of Sol LeWitt’s public art- works found in the museum’s sculpture garden. In an effort to “explore and illuminate Philadelphia’s diverse urban identity,” additional pieces built for public interaction will be created through October by a range of artists, including Shepard Fairey and immigrants-rights activist and artist Michelle Angela Ortiz. The project as a whole is part of Philadelphia’s famed Mural Arts Program. Monk discussed his minimal approach to designing the sculptures in an interview with Gregston Hurdle at Green Label: [Hurdle]: Your approach to your work is similar to a skateboarder’s approach to their environment. You take what is established or "not to be touched" and make it your own. Has this ever occurred to you before? Was it the reason your pieces for Open Source incorporate skateboarding and skateboarders? [Monk]: Perhaps. But in this case I was specifically invited to make a skateable sculpture for Philadel- phia. The skate park's location helped, so I drew direct parallels to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's small sculpture park, a short skate from Paine's Park. Monk will add more “skateable sculptures” over the next few months, but says his exhibit won’t be com- plete until skaters actually start using them. It was just six years ago that skating in Philly’s parks was il- legal, with police sometimes enforcing the ban through excessive force. Monk’s collaboration with the city seems, in part, an effort to renegotiate that downtown space so that its youth can co-exist with tourism and basic city leisure without the tension of aggressive police oversight. Said Monk to Green Label about skating on his sculptures, “I just hope nobody hurts themselves. It does seem to be pretty dangerous.” Mock, Brentin, “Why Philadelphia is Commissioning Skateable Public Art”, CityLab (online), June 15, 2015. FERNANDO FRANCES | DIRECTOR OF CAC MALAGA When visiting a theme park one maintains an innocent attitude that responds to the childlike illusion of experiencing and playing with curiosity, while keeping the surprise factor active. These are exactly the sort of exciting experiences that the viewer has when suddenly encountering a work of art, although the desired result is not always achieved. It is precisely this capacity that is contemporary art’s principal virtue and if there is one artist who stands out in this sense it is Jonathan Monk (born Leicester, UK, 1969), a leading name in conceptual art. CAC Málaga is now presenting the work of this British artist for the first time in a museum in Spain. Monk invites the viewer of his work to climb onto a roundabout of emotions, to have fun, to rediscover the playful side of life and above all, to keep alive the capacity to be surprised at what is to be seen in the gallery. In all his previous exhibitions Monk has succeeded in preserving intact both uncertainty and the surprise factor. One example is the exhibition organised in 2005 by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, which was the first retrospective of Monk’s work to be held in his native country. For this event Monk divided the gallery into two different display areas: one of them had fixed, unalterable works in it while in the other, the arrangement was changed every day.