Tim Fishlock | Exploring Paradise

In celebration of his current music-inspired exhibition at Hang Up, the artist tells us a bit more about his inspiration and reveals two exclusive playlists…

Hang-Up: Hi Tim, thanks so much for talking to us today. Your forthcoming show, Paradise Version, is inspired by records and the online blurb that helps sell them. Why is music so important to you?

Tim Fishlock: I have a very low boredom threshold and am always looking to the new. The world of music, both undiscovered and newly released, is boundless and always rewards investigation. It is the ultimate in artistic expression because it has the power to define cultural movements, it impresses itself on your psyche but also, when played through a decent sound system, music moves you physically. You don’t dance to a good book.

HU: True! Do you have childhood memories of discovering music? What was the first record you ever bought?

TF: I’m going to say two records here. When I was 6 years old, I asked my Mum to buy the theme tune to my favourite TV show, Monkey. That was a 7” on BBC Recordings. The first record I ever bought with my own pocket money was when I was 8. It was Einstein A Go-Go by Landscape. I mixed it the other day with a dubstep tune and it worked surprisingly well.

HU: We hope to hear it at the exhibition! The pieces in Paradise Version feature abridged descriptions of records. How did you arrive at the words for these works?

TF: Through hours of scouring online record stores and music reviews. Honest Jon’s deserve a special mention for their reviewing skills. They’re always on point – and they have DJ-ed on opening night too.

HU: Like abridged versions of these online music reviews, the words in your pieces for Paradise Version act as a kind of muso’s secret code, referencing beats, styles and bands. Will regular visitors be able to crack them?

TF: Laura (Hang-Up’s Gallery Manager) set me an exacting assignment to write a paragraph or two about each of the 16 paintings! Hopefully, these notes will help crack a few codes, and they’ll also provide people with a bit of backstory and a few recommended tunes too.

HU: What if you’re clueless about music. Can the pieces be read another way?

TF: Absolutely and essentially! That’s an important feature of this series. The fact that they are teaming with encoded knowledge gets to the heart of what language is about. But, at the same time, words are free and open to any interpretation you care to project upon them. The more I make text-based paintings, the more I obsess over short batches of words.

My approach to language has shifted in the last three or four years: Adopting the dadaist cut-up technique was instrumental in altering the way I approach image-making with words. I try to remove my conscious thoughts from the process. Essentially, I’m trying to get away from me to a place where serendipity and absurdity take over and unusual and ambiguous narratives emerge. It genuinely feels to me that I may see as much beauty in an assemblage of four or five words as others might discover in looking at a landscape painting.

HU: Words are a continuing theme in your work…

TF: All my work nowadays is a celebration of the beauty, design and power of words. The Paradise Version series is no exception to this approach. In this case, rather than using literary techniques like cut-up to get to something deeper, something unconscious, I’ve adopted the words of others but taken them out of their immediate context so that they can be appreciated in isolation and interpreted at random.

HU: Aside from the words, the backgrounds in these pieces are noticeably different from your previous pieces: they’re fluid where others have been bold single colours. They almost suggest synesthesia.

TF: Yes, there was a conscious attempt to reflect the music in the creation of the backgrounds. Some were made with the words in mind and others were matched to the words afterwards. I worked with ink and acrylic gouache on extremely thick (600gsm) watercolour paper. The paper was soaked with water and then ink and paint was applied and left to dry. That process was repeated at least a dozen times on each piece. It’s an unpredictable procedure that I definitely got better at over a few months, but ultimately it’s gratifying to leave some aspects up to chance.

HU: Lastly, we can’t finish the interview without asking what your ideal soundtrack to the exhibition would be?

TF: I’ve created two Spotify playlists: HEAD and FEET.