Interview

Jan 10

Anthony Vizard

Anthony Vizard is a British-born art and design graduate. He was born in South Wales, soon after the mining community that consumed the toil of his grandfathers capitulated.

Anthony studied under Royal College alumni, Anthony Corner in the early ’90s. His interest in enclothed cognition, color, fabric, travel and creatives like Martin Margiela and Rei Kawakubo, led him to a career simultaneously in creating clothing and art.

Anthony then began working at Paul Smith in Floral street London, where he had the opportunity to spend time in Pauls's office/studio, with his plethora of eclectic paraphernalia from his travels, from which Anthony curated window displays.

He has since travelled extensively, guided by his work in the fashion industry, primarily as a creative brand consultant. Anthony’s artwork combines all these elements of discovery in a multi-faceted cultural extravaganza, colourful and complex in their exploration.

What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?

“My grandmother was an avid collector of eclecticism, in her way paralleling Paul Smith's boutique of things, where I had previously worked. These experiences, along with my interest in clothing and art, codified my creative frame. After five years in London, I spent eight years in Amsterdam, in the fashion industry. I would also travel to New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo on projects.
In 2007, I moved to Hong Kong, where I became a creative brand consultant. I stumbled upon the work of Albert Ohlean on a return visit to London and the Tate Modern. This event coincided with Raf Simons collaborating with Sterling Ruby: integrating clothing with contemporary art, catalyzing a cauldron of culture. This was the spark of my artistic reawakening.”

“Call and response and continuation is another method I am developing. Overwriting images selectively curated from fashion magazines, themselves a legacy medium that crossed this threshold in our time. Some from the present, others collected over decades.
The catalyst here is conversational creativity; an interaction with and about time. Taking something in existence and redirecting its purpose; repurposing something that was in some sense meticulously finished, and using it as a basis for the beginning.”

What inspires you most?

“Autonomy, reflection and contemplation, coincidence, opposites, serendipity, perception and chance all inspire me. If I was to put a single word to it, that word would be ‘time’.”

What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?

“My work comprises creating digital imagery, printing and overpainting, overpainting photography, a continuation of found imagery, the interplay between digital and analog, kaleidoscopic collage, colorwork, shape work, and layered work. The mediums make the message - the superposition of culture and creation. At the crossing of pre and post-internet, 3rd, and 4th industrial revolutions and a time where information is often subtractive, a mixing up rather than crystallizing - puzzling rather than clarifying, complex rather than simplex.”

How would you describe your work?

“In essence, I would describe my work as a cultural kaleidoscope. Folding-in time and history are both content and mediums. More broadly, my works are a conduit of ideas, intuition and thoughts, sometimes followed by finding sources of reference that pre-exist, and sometimes imitating those to abstract the essence. Juxtaposing, connections, disconnections, in culture and composition. Forms, formed from fashion in the macro meaning, that being the things that define the times. Making art is a journey of exploration, following interest and intuition, referencing the past in the present: projecting forward by looking back and forward, again to the now.”

What artists influence you most?

“I am inspired by color, from Cezanne to Howard Hodgkin, Keltie Ferris to Stanley Whitney and Katharina Grosse. Re-vision from Picasso, cultural collage from Rauschenberg, Warhol, and Michel Majerus. Medium mangling from Richter to Urs Fischer, to Julian Schnabel to Albert Oehlen.”

What is your creative process like?

"I create works that irreverently juxtapose, scale, and distort common objects through blurring the two mediums— painting and photography— and exploring perception, representation and process. I work with available materials and imagery to weave in history as a medium. More broadly, in my process, I utilize the resources of painting and clothing, advertising, media and medium, screen-print, tape, aerosol, acrylic, photography, iPad, iPhone, Photoshop, and canvas digital printing. I work on several series simultaneously across several sizes. The large format I adopt is 50x38 inches, while small works start at 6x4 inches.”

“For my Doodlemanship process, I start with a basic iOS drawing app, creating thumb and finger drawings, often while commuting around Hong Kong. I mirror the endless scrolling of my fellow travelers, but instead opting for creation rather than consumption. Back in the studio, I recreate the quick phone doodles as large-format paintings. There is the medium of time in several senses, not least upcrafting from doodles.

What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?

“The broader frame of culture encompasses society when we ask, ‘what is the role of art?’ Art is viewed best through that lens. The American graphic designer David Carson proclaimed, ‘You can’t not communicate.’ Thus, what we do or don’t do leaves an impression of the present. Add to that Ernst Gombrich's concept of the beholder's share: with communication as a medium, the creator and experiencer, that in essence, perception is an act of generation. It's worth considering Iain McGilchrist, when talking of the coincidence of opposites, referenced philosopher Alfred North Whitehead saying, ‘There are no whole truths, only half-truths. Taking half-truths for whole truths plays the devil.’ Time ticks vibrations of values themselves as transient as fashion over an arch of time.”

Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?

“I am just making work presently. Being based in Hong Kong, and not emerging through the art world or as an artworld insider, I have no network and have not attended to that side of the process. However, I am open and interested in growing connections towards curators, galleries and collectors.”