A Conversation with Andrew Bick

A conversation with the multidisciplinary artist.

Drake's: Could you please tell us who you are and a little about what you do?

Andrew Bick: I am an artist, painting and drawing out of a studio in SE1 for the last 17 years, exhibiting with Hales Gallery in London and Galerie von Bartha in Basel, working in Universities, largely with MA students and PhD supervision as well as being chair of Tannery Arts, a studio organisation. I make abstract paintings and right now am working on a large scale public commission, which transcribes how these paintings work in to a gate as entrance to a pocket park in central London.

D: Where do you find/draw inspiration from for your work?

AB: From other artists, from a lifelong love of visual art, from architecture, writing, music, aesthetics, politics and love...

D: Why do you use the materials you do?

AB: I am interested in slowness: how unusual materials such as wax encaustic combine with water colour, pencil and marker pen and sit next to or overlay each other on one painting. This creates a complex set of optical pressures and visual sensations that can suggest different ideas, spaces and senses of time. In the 1970s Systems artists in the UK talked about this approach to making in terms of ‘visual syntax’, an idea I find enduringly useful.

D: Have you got any upcoming shows? What's next for Andrew Bick?

AB: I am doing a three-person exhibition with Hales Gallery in London, which happens this coming Autumn, followed by a solo exhibition for Liverpool Hope University’s Creative Festival. There is the commission I mentioned, due for completion in 2017 and a big project in Switzerland in the early stages of planning and discussion.

D: Why did you fall into the medium you have?

AB: I was taken to Den Haag where I saw the Mondrian paintings in the Gemeentemuseum at the age of around 19, that, and influential older friends, convinced me that light, space and forms of art that create attentiveness were what I desired to make. My use of materials is an ongoing process of adapting and adjusting, nothing is really fixed other than the way a few moments in life, such as the one mentioned, have triggered a sense of conviction that remains consistent in what I do.

D: If not art than what else would you be doing?

AB: Possibly architecture, or writing, or in my laziest and most anti-social moments being a professional fly fishing guide somewhere really remote. Though the latter wouldn’t really be lazy, just completely lacking in the need to engage with other people on a complex level.

D: What do you like to do in your spare time when you're not working?

AB: Tinkering with my road bikes, fly fishing, reading, cooking…

D: How would you describe your style?

AB: Relaxed but tidy, a series of uniforms calibrated to the occasion, occasionally used deliberately to put people off guard by playing the role of the traditional Englishman…

D: If you were going out for a bite to eat or a drink in the evening where would you go?

AB: Simon the Tanner in Long Lane near my studio is a great place for a pint and pub food. For a really special meal I love Pizarro’s in Bermondsey St. With my family we enjoy our local Nepalese restaurant in Lewisham. There are also some great places I go to when in Basel such as Zum Goldenen Fass. Occasionally I use my membership at Chelsea Arts Club, which is always a fun place to take friends from abroad of have lunch with a colleague or one of my old art tutors.