Those who watch closely might – now they’ve been enlightened – remember multiple works with his name in the title or scattered around the drawing. But his input was a lot more ‘paws-on’ than that. For a start, he spent about one third of our waking lives sprawled across the picture-of-the-day (most of the other two thirds being spent on the laps of one or other of us). But he also developed his own unique ‘trademark’; after an hour or so mousing in the garden, he would crash triumphantly through the cat-flap, bounce on to the table and march down the ‘path’ of the picture. He seemed particularly proud of this technique if it was raining outside. Hence, most of the Gersoise series (those large works that have been done since we moved to mudsville) feature strange objects, strategically placed to ‘make the most of’ his genius. He was an enormous presence, in every sense.

RIP JeJe – 2003-2010

Invitation

Chris Hipkiss
The L.I.E.S
11. November – 22. December 2011

GALERIE SUSANNE ZANDER
Delmes & Zander GbR
Antwerpener Str. 1
50672 Cologne
+49-221-52 16 25
info@galerie-zander.de
www.galerie-zander.de
Tue-Fr 12-6pm, Sat 11-2pm

We cordially invite you to the opening of our new show on
the coming Friday, 11th November from 6pm.

Chris Hipkiss and Alpha Mason are present.

Please be reminded, that Alpha Mason suffers from a serious fragrance allergy.
We would therefore kindly ask you to refrain from wearing perfume on the evening of the opening.
Thank you for your understanding.

Einladung

Zur Ausstellungseröffnung am
Freitag, dem 11. November ab 18 Uhr
sind Sie herzlich eingeladen.

Chris Hipkiss und Alpha Mason sind anwesend.

Alpha Mason leidet unter einer massiven Duftstoffallergie. Wir möchten Sie deshalb
bitten an diesem Abend auf Parfum zu verzichten. Wir danken Ihnen für Ihr Verständnis.

Nicole Delmes und Susanne Zander

London In Europe aka LIE 3/3, 112x180cms, mixed media on paper, 2011

Plan of Format 9 (working title), c. 350x540cms, mixed media on canvas, yet to be completed. The work will be based on LIEs 1, 2 & 3, shown in this exhibition.

Chris Hipkiss
“The L.I.E.S.”
11. November – 22. December 2011
opening: Friday, 11. November 6 – 9 pm

“The L.I.E.S” is an acronym of “London In Europe”, a fact which, though not a real
lie, is a reality accepted with reluctance by some. Wordplay is recurrent in the
Hipkiss universe and a formal element essential to the idiosyncratic visual
language that shapes the panoramic parallel worlds on the walls. Emblematic is an
anarchic-style of hypnotic precision and restraint, intricately repetitive and laying
bare an anthropomorphic, post-industrial world populated by mutant cyber-dominas
– an army of Hipkiss alter-egos.

For over 20 years Chris Hipkiss and Alpha Mason have been working together
steadily on an uncompromising visual iconography which is mesmerizing, if not
downright visionary. Turning their backs on the British suburban landscape they
disliked, they moved to the French countryside in the early 2000s shortly after 9/11.
The prolific body of Hipkiss-work is the result of a symbiotic interplay between two
individuals, two co-conspirators in a creative process shaped by a relationship and
its themes and the continuous exchange of ideas and techniques.

Self-reflexive and innovative, the works shown here lays bare the very
processes of creation behind the concept of “The L.I.E.S.”, allowing the viewer
to catch a glimpse at the potential of revisiting and recreating landscapes.
The exhibition is the culmination of a year’s work and a mock-up of a museum
show. It is precisely in the dialectic with the exhibition space that “The L.I.E.S”
exposes the reinvented possibilities of large-format Hipkiss works which a
restricted gallery space can only hope to allude to. The current body of work
also highlights a fact often forgotten: that the drawings are not about repetitive
detail drawn by an obsessive loner in seclusion, but about landscape, life and
the world around us.

Hipkiss work is represented in several collections such as the Collection
Antoine de Galbert (Paris), the Cindy Sherman Collection (New York), the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam) and the John Michael Kohler
Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI).

Hipkiss will be present at the opening in Cologne.

GALERIE SUSANNE ZANDER
Delmes & Zander GbR
Antwerpener Str. 1
50672 Cologne
+49-221-52 16 25
info@galerie-zander.de
www.galerie-zander.de
Tue-Fr 12-6pm, Sat 11-2pm

…PRESSEMITTEILUNG
Chris Hipkiss
“The L.I.E.S.”
11. November – 22. Dezember 2011
Eröffnung: Freitag, 11. November 18 – 21 Uhr

“The L.I.E.S” ist ein Akronym von “London In Europe” – London In Europa – eine
Tatsache die, auch wenn keine wirkliche Lüge, eine Realität ist, die von einigen nur
widerwillig akzeptiert wird. Das Ausstellungskonzept ist darüber hinaus eine
selbstreflexive Simulation einer Museumsausstellung und spielt mit Formaten und
Hängung in enger Auseinandersetzung mit dem Ausstellungsraum. In diesen Sinne
enthüllt die Ausstellung “The L.I.E.S” auch die inhärenten kreativen Prozesse und
verdeutlich gleichzeitig eine Tatsache die gerne übersehen wird: dass die
Zeichnungen von Hipkiss nicht bloß das Ergebnis weltfremder Eigenbrödelei sind,
sondern vielmehr von Fantasie und Realitätsbezug lebende Visionen unserer Welt.

Seit über 20 Jahren arbeiten Chris Hipkiss und Alpha Mason zusammen an einer
kompromisslosen visuellen Ikonographie, die hypnotisierend, wenn nicht geradezu
visionär wirkt. Nachdem sie 2000 ihrer Heimat England den Rücken kehrten, zogen
sie kurz nach 9 / 11 in die französische Provinz. Das produktive Hipkiss-Ouvre ist
seither das Ergebnis eines symbiotischen Zusammenspiels zweier Individuen,
zweier Komplizen vereinigt in einem kreativen Prozess der sowohl thematisch wie
auch formell von einer Beziehung geprägt ist und sich durch einen
kontinuierlichen Austausch von Ideen und Techniken weiterentwickelt.

Typisch für die überdimensionalen Hipkiss-Panoramen ist ein detailtreuer und
gleichzeitig anarchischer Stil von außerordentlicher Präzision und formeller
Beherrschung, der eine oftmals von mutierten Cyber-Dominas (und Hipkiss
Alter Egos) besiedelten post-industrielle Parallelwelt darstellt. Die
Unterschwellige Bedrohung in den technoiiden Landschaften Hipkiss wird von
utopischen Gegenentwürfen unheimlicher Schönheit gekontert.

Hipkiss Arbeiten sind weltweit in Sammlungen vertreten wie zum Beispiel in
der Sammlung Antoine de Galbert (Paris), der Cindy Sherman Collection (New
York), dem Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam) und der John
Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI).

Die Künstler sind bei der Ausstellungseröffnung in Köln anwesend.

He told us that he considered himself, for a while, to have been an Outsider artist – when he lived without a fixed abode, carrying his drawings in a rucksack, sometimes forced to throw them away – but that for a good while now he has no longer fitted that category. It required a member from the same circle of art-world people, whom we also first met by chance in London, for his career to start. I have always denied being an Outsider because I had always had a desire, in some way or another, to sell my art. (To me, an Outsider is someone who is not a part of the art world in their lifetime, either because of mental health issues or other reasons, or due to their being unaware that what they created was actually art.) I just didn’t know how to do it, until I was ‘discovered’.

But looking back on those months before anyone but Alpha saw my new work (that is to say when I finally found a style and the discipline to create), I have begun to reappraise what happened. I haven’t exactly changed my mind, but imagining Widener – wandering the world working on his drawings – has made me want to revisit my own experience, when I was in very much the same way creating for myself, blissfully (you could say) unaware of a part I was playing in Art History.

For a start, although I have always been creative, I never suddenly had the intention to be serious about being An Artist. I merely fell into a style of drawing that broke through previously insurmountable barriers: no inclination to draw, no time to do it in, no enjoyment of the process… It has been written that my work looks like it has been made by someone aping Outsider art, but at the time I had no connection to the art world and was absolutely unaware of the Outsider genre. Thinking about it, the first time I became aware of Darger’s work was in the mid 2000s, such was my disinterest in actually looking at any art beyond the classics in the Tate. In a way, because of my intentions, I was appropriating a style before I even knew about it… but this was the briefest of phases in my life and career; this is why I must reject the label of Outsider for anything more than a very short period of time, which rules me out of the genre completely.

In other words, I see myself as neither an Outsider nor a ‘normal’ artist. Not a mixture of the two either, and definitely not a Sunday painter; a new, undefined ‘someone’, perhaps. It is important to me to find a new description other than ‘post-outsider’, some way to describe my work and the work of other artists, whom I believe continue to be wrongly categorised: Plny, Doi and Widener, in particular. This work is now in contemporary art discourse and needs to be exposed next to the current wave of artists appropriating the Outsider concept; however, it also needs to be clearly classified as distinct, because by our initial experiences we all have something in common, the result of which makes our art different and original.

Any ideas are, of course, welcome!

Chris Hipkiss

She is more of a Producer than anything else.

She has always encouraged me to make art; she was the first person to call me an artist, before I thought of myself as one. By fate, when we found ourselves spending most of our time together working in the same space, she influenced me into a new direction and kick-started my career.

Very soon after, her practical advice, as someone with formal training in art and photography, consolidated and helped to shape my style. In ‘planting’ ideas in my head for new formats, media and composition, she has a constant and subtle effect on my output.

More recently, with us both reinventing ideas for ambitious exhibition projects, her role as Producer has new visibility.

Chris Hipkiss

Alpha Mason and Chris Hipkiss in front of ‘London in Europe III’, Oct 2011

Chris Hipkiss and Alpha Mason (and Persifleur the cat) at work on ‘Big Black Lie’, October 2011

Drawings for the next monster are already two-thirds done, and we are hard at work on a set of canvasses for an outing in the autumn. One day soon the website will be updated with this news in full, plus many images. It’s a busy summer here in the sunny south of France.

Meanwhile, here are a few installation shots from the Galerie Michael Haas show back in 2009 (with text in German).

Alpha Mason

This idea is a response to the need to create vast works without the practical and psychological problems I have had in the past when using rolled paper. Inspired by processes used to create Grayson Perry’s The Walthamstow Tapestry, the resulting canvas will also expand on the continuing debate surrounding appropriation and conceptual art.

I always find it difficult to adequately explain my work, but I can say that I am conscious, now, of an attempt to distance myself from the ‘apocalyptic’ label; whether or not I have succeeded is for you to judge…

Chris Hipkiss

A∴C∴H∴E∴, complete drawings, 31 May 2011

But the twenty-five years before that were spent in suburbia — in setting and outlook, somewhere in which, as soon as I reached adulthood, I knew I could not thrive. I followed Alpha — raised in provincial countryside but held in West-London ‘hell’, post-university, thanks to our relationship — back to her roots to escape. I see and live life from a kind of rural perspective, drawing from the same, but I’m still intrinsically tied to the detail, the banality, the expanse and horror of Suburbia — a place I know so well. At present it is still difficult for me to explain the intention of the work but I am aware that it is a kind of catharsis. Some reviews see cityscapes, urban decay, etc., but for the record I have found it very difficult to take inspiration from ‘the City’ itself. Living in the countryside, ‘the City’ is for holidays; in my waking, working hours, Suburbia reigns.

And then around the time of the American Folk Art Museum exhibition, Brooke introduced me to the work of Paul Noble and, despite the dismal images on-line (I have yet to see his work in the flesh), I fell in love with Nobson Newtown. It seems that his approach to suburbia is from the City itself, which makes logical sense as I believe he has lived in London for a long time. But it’s not the “nuked look” or satirical eye that so much intrigues me… Though it pains me to give The Telegraph free publicity, their review of the show at the Whitechapel Gallery I found particularly interesting, being the only one I have read that alluded to the complex point that I’m trying to make:

Noble draws things so small that the human eye can hardly make them out, and panoramas so sprawling that we can’t take them in without moving our head. The result is that we look at a work by him from close to and from a distance, as though from both ends of a telescope.

When you go to the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s show of Noble’s recent work, watch how other visitors respond in front of the large-scale drawings. Restlessly, they move back and forth, unable to find a comfortable place from which to look.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3623954/A-town-made-of-nightmares.html

I am sure that this was one of the artist’s primary intentions and not just the accidental result of making a vast landscape from minute detail. And the impact of this vastness is the landscape of Suburbia, where the ‘people’ of the city and the ‘nature’ of open country are hidden in the immensity. In the behemoth that is Suburbia, there is no room for these essential motifs but they have still got to be there somehow. In Noble’s Newtown, the overall effect seems to show a bombed-out city; in my work, or so ‘they’ say, it is decaying cornfields and strangled trees. But both are a kind of ‘self-portrait’, each from an opposite socio-geographical standpoint, drawn by artists intrinsically linked to their respective, current abodes.

Maybe it is because of the media we broadly share — not to mention the similar methods of creation — that it’s easy to identify with Noble; maybe there are other artists with whom I have much more in common, but whose work I cannot look at or appreciate in the same way… but I can’t get away from the feeling that we both create in a ‘feminine’ way that is rare, even in female artist peers; just as my figures are representations of aspects of myself (not ‘objects’ as certain — mostly male — journalists try to imply), his motifs are playful and personal. There is a humour in our art that is frequently ignored or misinterpreted; the drawings act as a kind of ongoing journal — intensely tied up with the everyday — and for that to be possible, there has to be a cathartic element, along with room for human detail.

Chris Hipkiss

What ARE obvious are the differences between the two works. The Walthamstow Tapestry is in high colour and, with its socio-cultural references, it is typical of Perry’s work. To me, it seems fairly easy to deconstruct, and Perry himself has done so on numerous occasions. By contrast, Lonely Europe is superficially black and white and somehow, along the way, I lost my originally-intended narrative. It is not a preference of mine, exactly, to leave the interpretation of my work to others, but it has nevertheless always been that way. I regard this as a result of my not having attended art school and thus learnt how to contextualise and present my output in the accepted, formal way. I do not keep records of my creative processes, either in my head or on paper, thus I did not log why I used such and such motifs and constructions.

Leaving aside these differences, however, there seemed to me obvious similarities in the overall structure of the two drawings. Though unintentional at the time, Lonely Europe offers a presentiment of Perry’s birth/death, standard left-to-right narrative in its two constructions at each end; at the ‘beginning’ is a thin, almost feminine birth structure and, at the ‘end’, a bloated, masculine moon. In The Walthamstow Tapestry, the structure of the narrative is based on a ‘blood river’; in Lonely Europe, ‘the river of blood’ is black and broken, but is clearly seen throughout the drawing. Both narratives are also supported by the use of a continuous motif: in Lonely Europe, it is a dark, ornate wall-like structure; in The Walthamstow Tapestry, it is a golden-yellow road. There is a religious central character (a Hindu-styled goddess and a ‘Madonna’ respectively) in both works too, looking down with head leaning to her right. Of course, any wall-hanging Bayeux-Tapestry-type format limits the artist in some way; this was probably why I floundered in connecting all the disparate designs during the difficult two-and-a-half year creation of Lonely Europe, resorting to a tried and tested blood river of my own, taken from earlier large works…

Then, on closer inspection, something else struck me: There is a large boat that floats on Perry’s ‘blood river’. Taking in the whole work, it became more and more apparent that this river was not just something that flowed, but that is was an actual river. And not only that; it was the River Thames. To expand, the mother on the left is the source of the Thames in Gloucestershire; fitting neatly with Perry’s observations of English culture, it represents the very centre of the Heart of England. At the end lies Old Father Thames, exhausted and/or dying in the London Estuary. Along the way are lakes or reservoirs. More importantly, it is the linear shape of the river that gives it away, being very reminiscent of aerial London; the classic Eastenders image of London, in fact.

My analysis was starting to make sense. The Walthamstow Tapestry is a monumental work, Perry’s largest to date. With all its references to big names, from Louis Vuitton via The Guardian to PG Tips, Walthamstow seemed far too provincial a setting for such an epic modern tale. And the river is certainly not the River Lea. The birth-and-death theme, the devil, the river of blood, the shape of this river, the numerous references to consumerism, the nod to Old Father Thames and to the quintessential Heart of England could only mean one thing: the work should be called The London Tapestry.

Additionally, when I looked at the work from the artist’s cultural perspective as I imagine it to be, a new dimension evolved. Perry, from Essex, or more pertinently from north of the Thames, had sketched a London seen from the north looking over the river to the southern horizon; I came to this conclusion because much of the ‘action’ seems to be on one side of the water. As a Londoner myself, I am acutely aware of the river as a dividing line, as it is in other European cities. In the case of London, it is more a frontier where the city ends. Looking over the river, leaving The City, The West End, the East End, leafy North London suburbs and Walthamstow behind, even the landmarks on the south side — the Tate Modern, the London Eye, the Globe Theatre, MI5 — seem to turn their backs on South London.

This personal revelation was very interesting as it reminded me of the initial ideas I had when I started an earlier large work, London. My intention was to draw a Greater London landscape based on the Thames, as a central theme, with some level of accuracy. There is an estuary of sorts — the river was based on the aerial view — and some landmarks (Trafalgar Square, Houses of Parliament, etc.) are correctly located. However, it is clear that I soon gave up on the idea of including any real, prominent features for South London; the extent to which disinterest, ignorance or lack of planning played a part, I don’t recall. Whatever the reasons, I was aware that I wanted to create a narrative of some kind of my love of London and The Thames.

In London, the ‘beginning’ is depicted as a lake full of people in the top left corner, intended to represent Perivale Sewage Works, close to the hospital where I was born; my West London roots. The ‘end’ is Canary Wharf in the far distance, at the time the only prominent Docklands building whose flashing light could always be seen on the approach during regular travels to London from our Kentish village. In the centre is the mess of the big city, made from my memories and inspirations, albeit badly executed in the end. I can’t help wondering whether a similar, if basic, personal narrative also runs through the The Walthamstow Tapestry. The birthing as quintessential England, in Gloucestershire, where I believe Grayson Perry now lives; a representation of his life in the main centre; the devil/death scene as Walthamstow and his studio in London. He seems to have constructed his London from his current geographical ‘upside-down’ viewpoint, just as I constructed my London from my former Kentish, south-of-the-river perspective.

Acquired by the Outsider Archive in the 1997, London has since been exhibited at IMMA, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery and CAIXA, Madrid.

Of course, I have little idea whether these similarities were intentional or coincidence on the part of Perry. However, a very exciting offshoot from my ponderings and – perhaps over-imaginative – examinations has helped me to solve a more practical dilemma that I have had for a good few years.

My drawings are detailed, take a long time and are shown and sold as originals. Alpha works full-time with ‘Hipkiss’, so we’re keeping a whole household running on my art alone. We have yet to profit from limited editions, books, etc., and there is always a shortfall of available work. Not being fully accepted as a contemporary artist without the ‘O’ label attached, we still struggle to achieve pricing which enables us to survive financially. My desire to produce gargantuan works has consequently been frustrated for many years; Lonely Europe was my last large drawing and I long to work on the same scale again. I abandoned a work to rival it a few years ago because of time constraints, but also — it has to be said — due to the same old difficulties of creating a coherent and sophisticated narrative on such a vast canvas, especially when the work on it must be fitted in around the making of pieces for sale; progress was too slow.

Knowing the processes Grayson Perry used has led me to a workable solution: The Walthamstow Tapestry began life as a 4m long (i.e. relatively small), monochrome drawing which was then manipulated using Photoshop®; the resulting colour image was used to create a 3x15m, machine-made tapestry, designed specifically to hang on one wall at Victoria Miro Gallery, London. For the last four years I have been working on identically-dimensioned, mostly portrait-oriented landscapes; I have now realized that they could all appear to be part of a larger picture. I plan to use the images from seven, new and similar-sized drawings — each complete compositions in their own right — to create a single panorama of about 2×8 metres. This could then be printed, from large-format EKTAs, on one piece of paper and reworked to create a new original, thus solving both the demand for saleable works and my desire to produce significant and meaningful large canvases at last. And for that, I have Grayson Perry to thank!

Watch this space…

Chris Hipkiss

Inside Out: Etiquette and artistic inspiration.

In 2000, a New York Times reviewer wrote, of Chris Hipkiss:

“… a certain illustrational quality could suggest the hand of a trained artist mimicking the look of visionary Outsider Art.”

It was an observation that took us completely by surprise; the notion of mainstream artists wandering purposely into such territory had never occurred to us. Since, of course — as so often happens after revelations — we can’t help but notice the not-inconsiderable number of people who have done just that.

There is, amongst others no doubt, one stand-out difference between untrained artists and their contemporary, conceptual-art peers; the former are not expected to invent a whole new idea for every project, whereas, for the latter, this constant pressure is a major part of their profession. This factor alone may explain why, in recent times, so many have latched on to the suddenly-highly-publicised idea of ‘Outsider’ art; after all, it offers an opportunity to get ‘back to basics’ in terms of style and skill; a lot of it looks fun — carefree and childlike in a way in which most conceptual artists don’t have the chance to express themselves. Without the ‘mental health issues’ and ‘marginalisation’ commonly associated with ‘Outsider’ artists, these modern professionals can, arguably, enjoy something of a sabbatical in taking the concepts forward. No wonder it’s an attractive proposition.

However, to revisit the perennial theme of this blog, the ‘Outsider’ word as employed here encompasses a rather broad church of untrained artists. There is a tendency — through no fault of their own, given the overriding discourse surrounding the categorisation — for these borrowers of ideas to credit only the genre in general, or subsets of it, with the exception of certain dead, very famous examples such as Henry Darger (and, even then, it’s not always done). What’s the problem? If the artist is dead, it’s a reference — an honour which finally embraces them within the chronology of art history — and evidently so to any aficionado of the scene; if they’re living, surely the original artist — or artists — were they to register the appropriation at all would feel flattered; after all, they don’t create for anyone but themselves, don’t have any professional aspirations, do they? Such is the rather condescending, accepted view of ‘true’ Outsiders. How those ‘true’ Outsiders’ might actually feel, were they furnished with the details, is a subject for discussion in itself.

But what about living artists erroneously caught up in the categorization?

Coming back to a detail of the review of my first paragraph, it’s worth pointing out that Hipkiss is far more akin to an old-fashioned landscape painter, albeit with no sense of colour (in the old-fashioned sense) and a post- or alter-modern twist, than he is any kind of ‘visionary’; his scenes are almost all based on real-life places, buildings and countryside, with his trademark androgynous ‘fairies’ featuring as the only other-worldly element. However, when his art first started to gain recognition, it was frequently referred to as ‘illustration’, despite the obvious inappropriateness of that label (inappropriate labels have been something of a theme of Hipkiss’ career). It was down to shows of his outsize panoramas of the early 90s — made years before similarly-formatted works by contemporary peers — that that description was gradually rendered just too inappropriate. As such, he was inadvertently amongst the original instigators of the recent Drawing-as-Proper-Art movement.

The point is, Chris is a living, professional artist, but his craft is not the creation of a series of concepts; his work is a gradually-evolving, life project. One all-important concept. Casual appropriation of that concept — of his compositions, style and formats — whilst offering a diversion to a much-more-well-known borrower, means that, should Hipkiss produce a new, large panorama, or even have one of the old ones shown in a major institution, it would be as likely to provoke yawns as wonder this time around: “Oh, he’s copied XXX contemporary artist.” It is not a level playing field; Hipkiss has a fraction of the publicity of his art-school-trained peers. Again, this is not said to point fingers at the conceptual artist(s) concerned, but rather at the journalists, curators and academics who write off any untrained artist as an Outsider and, thus, not professional — credits not required.

And even if such appropriation is not intentional, should the mainstream artist — as well as those journalists, curators and academics — not be aware that the onus to research possible predecessors is on them…? Apparently, once again, the Outsider label offers a ‘free pass’ in this respect. As such, a contemporary artist like Dominic McGill may or may not have seen the work of Jean-Pierre Nadau, another untrained artist corralled into the Outsider fold, before embarking on his recent projects, but that isn’t the point; Nadau’s work is not unknown, by any means, and one would expect that McGill’s training would require him to have sought out such a historical reference. And if he failed to do so, one would think the critics, etc., would step in. McGill is represented in major contemporary collections; Nadau must still resort — many years after creating his concept and his first long scroll, of which McGill’s are so reminiscent — to donating, or as-good-as, to ill-fitting Outsider museums. As such, this is more a matter of justice than mere etiquette — and, more mundanely, that little issue of making a living.

All that aside, Saatchi has an upcoming show entitled The Power of Paper — the latest of a plethora of major shows devoted to drawing… and, for us, above all, it’s just great to see Hipkiss’ chosen medium get the recognition it deserves.

Alpha Mason

He was, surprisingly, so intrigued by this act, performed as it was by someone who had up until that point only existed to him as a one of the ‘unproblematic’ names on the school register, that he enthusiastically suggested that I should join The Debating Society — after removing any remaining ‘work’, naturally. For some reason — perhaps stemming from the blossoming teenage realisation of the futility of life, etc. — I said, “No thanks, I’m an anarchist, I don’t believe in talking,” before swanning out, leaving a sullen, rejected, broken man (or so I imagined). For this I am truly sorry, because he was a good headmaster, an all round nice chap…

The point of this is that, years before, in primary school, I drew exclusively in black on white, be it pencil or biro — and some of the stuff I did was not bad. With my friend, Nicolas Killalea, I designed ‘ant colonies’ on A4 paper; always starting with a black prison in the corner, we would mark — in meticulous detail — tennis courts, dining rooms, airports, etc.. A favourite theme that I drew repeatedly was of a plane crashing into a pond; it sounds prosaic, but the outcome was esoteric. In a moment of uncharacteristic clairvoyance, I also depicted 9/11, twenty-five years before it happened, with another repeated motif: Madagascar/Manhattan, a three dimensional aerial view of a skyscraper built on a forest island being attacked by planes… And then there were the battles between the Penguin Army and Killer Flies, etc., etc.. I could go on.

In 2001, my work was featured in a show at Galerie Halle St. Pierre, Paris, entitled Noir sur Blanc. Don’t get me wrong, I was honoured to be there, but by then I had long started seeing my work as made in colour, like that of most other visual art. Indian ink on white canvas is black and white; but in the shades of grey produced from varying pressure put on soft pencil, or in the areas I have worn away during production — even more so in the shaded silver ink that subtly changes according to natural and artificial light — there is undoubtedly colour.

Not everyone seems to get it. A few months ago I had a lengthy and quite heated argument (in French; I was pleased with my proficiency) with a photographer, of all people, who steadfastly refused to accept that the EKTAs of my work with which I’d supplied him were in colour, not monochrome — despite the colour-code bar and cream wallpaper of the studio they were shot in, and not to mention the colour-transparency processing number on the film itself.

However, initially, in the 1990s, we had a problem even convincing the world that my work was not ‘mere’ illustration. The art of drawing in general — even just simple pencil on paper — is now being rediscovered by contemporary artists, and I think that part of the reason for this is a collective mind-change to view black, white and shades of grey as the colours they truly are. This seems to have happened so gradually that we have barely noticed until lately.

A good example of how effective this understanding can be within a curated exhibition setting was the recent Acquisitions show at FRAC Picardie in Amiens, France, a state museum specialising in drawing. Returning home after a long trip to Cologne, we made a detour and managed to catch the exhibition before the place closed. Having been shown around the space emptied of, I could almost say, the ‘clutter’ of people, it took a little while to fully express the shock and delight we both felt at what we had just experienced. Not exactly frequent gallery visitors, we tend to gravitate to just one thing if any at all — or, if my work is being shown, furtively hang around eavesdropping on conversations, appreciating neither art nor dialogue.

In contrast, here, the mix of contemporary artwork — from video installation to sketches — that included, amongst many others, some sublime works by Gabriel Orozco, was so well planned that we saw the whole as one, taking time to actually look at each work, knowing somewhere in the vastness of all this talent hung a large Hipkiss called Three. Next to a fine circle drawing by fellow self-taught artist, Hiroyuki Doi, we could finally see my work in the context we have long felt it belongs, without worrying whether it is seen as outsider, self taught, black and white, illustration, visionary, whatever. I don’t think I can even remember whether black and white was predominant. It just didn’t matter, and it was like coming home.

Chris Hipkiss