We know our way round a party here at LSD, but this is pure next generation stuff as every single synapse crackles into a lightening bolt of gobsmacked wonder and the barriers crumble before the onslaught of thousands upon thousands of heaving minds, bodies and souls coming together in breathtaking unity and rushing their fucking nuts and their bolts off. After the spellbinding spectacle that was their field at Glastonbury, we caught up with Pip Rush and Bert Cole - the visionary nutters behind it all for a word...
Can you tell us a little about your backgrounds
PIP - I grew up in the countryside in Dorset within a family of artists. My brother Joe had just started the Mutoids when I was born so got a lot of inspiration seeing their shows as a kid.Tried the school thing but didn’t enjoy the system, Started working on and off with the Mutoids 15 years on, learned how to build big scrap sculptures and enjoyed some wicked parties around the world.
BERT - I grew up in the Dorset countryside with an early passion for mechanics, machines, improvisation and acquiring the skills for making things. I went to my first Glastonbury 20 years ago and witnessed Archaos aged 10 which helped my wheels get turning. I took off on the road at 16 with tent company Kayam that took me all over the world in amongst festivals and events and was quickly made a tent master and spent the next 11 years touring the globe in the summers with a motley tent crew moving giant structures for events from orchestras to raves. In the off season I started to put on my own free parties and was becoming more interested in getting people together with music and entertainment outside of the normal system.
How did you come together to create Arcadia?
PIP - I started a traveling arts café and travelled round European festivals and squats building party environments. It was hard graft with no funding and we spent a lot of time trying to fix the trucks and acquire diesel... But it was loads of fun, and we met hundreds of creative, driven people. We rocked up at a Spanish festival one day and bumped in to Bert who I vaguely knew from childhood. He was erecting these massive tents, having fun with his crew playing about with serious machinery. I was really inspired to see the possibilities when you had quality tools and good food…and I think he was also inspired by how much fun our freestyle creative lifestyle was…
The next year we scored a good budget from a festival in Ireland and he came out to help with his crew. It was a real potent mix of crews and we built an amazing environment full of sculptures, with a big tent in the middle with bands and stuff. Sometime in the early hours we had a chat about how a linear stage and a separation between the musicians, crowd and sculpture was all wrong, so decided to try and merge it all in to one 360 arena…. From the outside we looked like a dribbling mess, but on the inside wed just hit on an idea that was about to grow beyond our wildest visions!
BERT - I knew of Pip from an early age as we grew up pretty near each other but started to get more in touch as time went on and we realized we had some common interests. I worked as part of a team Pip put together to produce an area at Electric Picnic in 2006 and there was something really positive about working together and the ball started rolling there really as the momentum gathered to try and create, make or produce things in festivals that were nothing traditional but a fusion of influences and elements that combined, made for a full 360 degree all encompassing atmosphere in which people could really let themselves go. This was made relatively obvious from witnessing years of festivals and concerts always following the same old linear formula of stage and auditorium etc. We quite clearly decided to turn it inside out and upside down and create a hub from which effects, music, energy radiates in which people are amongst rather than simply watching. Where things have got to now is a mere evolution of what started for us there.
How important is recycling and mutation in within the Arcadia concept?
PIP - Hmm, it’s massive. Anyone with a few basic skills and a welder can make amazing things out of scrap with very little other resources. Also the inspiration that comes from visiting a scrap yard and seeing mountains of machines from past generations piled up high is massive in itselfe.… We get all our stuff from military scrap yards, Its interesting seeing crates and crates of
BERT - I feel like we start with outlandish concepts and then search for good bits of scrap as building blocks, slot then in and re arrange them. This allows the concept, design and manufacture to organically and simultaneously develop along an exciting path.
How important is wider team spirit and the essence of collaboration in the bigger installations?
PIP - It’s all about that really, building creative stuff, pushing the boundaries and having a big party at the end really brings the best out of people. ‘Arcadia’ has attracted so many amazing individuals and groups in to my life, all who have inspired me and shaped how I live. I think everybody must have a similar motive, because they all give their heart and soul to work around the clock and make it happen… and they’re definitely not doing it for the money!
BERT - It’s all about the people, community and spirit. What we do is fuelled greatly by huge amounts of enthusiasm, focus and relentless hard work towards a collective goal by many amazing people who have a huge range in skills, interests lifestyles and ideals. Together these form a multi faceted, ever changing collective who point in the same direction.
If you enjoy science fiction then your already familiar with world renowned author William Gibson. The man whom created the term 'CyberPunk' and wrote a library of classic works within the genre. This isn't a review on the book it's posted purely because Banksy and Hackney are mentioned in Gibson's latest epic Zero History. One of the main characters pays a visit to Hackney and another character owns some Banksy works and adores the artist...Wayne nearly fell off his bike when he heard it on the ipod...
We had a overview of the film from the director of Doco Banksy in a past issue with regards to a secretive film he either found or was given or stole (not really). We haven't seen many of his ten pound note stickers lately and wondered what may have happened to the project now that Exit through the Gift Shop had gone global. An eagle eyed LSD reader living in Paris spotted the stickers on a poster and sent us the shots...
Here's a wee flashback to the first viral video we did for LSD Magazine Issue One. I got Sirius23 to write a big brother type script and provide the voice of big bro which i then recorded over Skype on to dictaphone. I utilised my Apple qualification and knocked up something we hoped could attract attention because we had zero marketing budget. We had to do it the old fashion way. Grassroots up...
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Since we last spoke to Stik in Issue 3, not only has he got exponentially more prolific, but he has seemingly become pretty politicised, and is lending his talents and his characters to various campaigns. Add to that a visit to the House of Lords, and we just had to chase him up for another chat
We’ve snapped you around town over the last 12 months and you’ve been a busy boy. Tell us about some of the summer’s highlights so far…
Over the last few months I’ve been back to Glastonbury after the council deleted my mural in the town itself. I went down to the festival to paint some walls but I got there so early, there were no walls yet built to graf so I had to go off in search of somewhere to paint. I did the town mural three months ago and heard it got defaced before the council deleted it. It actually made the local newspapers and online community because the people of Glastonbury was asking for it back. So it was quite a pleasure to go up and put it back early on a Sunday morning. It made the Glastonbury Festival paper as well which was cool. Whilst I was still up there the mural got defaced again but by the time I heard and went up there somebody in the town had actually repaired it. I’m really happy the town people have adopted the piece. I’m just learning how Glastonbury works and how street art is being received by the people and council. I’m starting to try and put roots in Glastonbury as a second or third home. There’s a lot going on there - different camps and tribes from hippies to healers and white goddesses while at the same time there’s a very conservative viewpoint in play as well. It’s really about people trying not to offend and move things gently on in the street art scene. I did some pieces at the Glastonbury Festival as well - the toilets. They were the only standing structures when i arrived there.
We noticed you’re getting involved with certain activist groups, how did that come about?
I’m from a political background as my art family are very political so I’ve been around it for a long time. I don’t want to be known as a political artist but I think the chickens are coming home to roost. There are some causes I feel very strongly about and I feel comfortable enough in my art to start applying that to subjects greater than myself. The Stik men started out as very personal images or emotive and they transfer the human story really well on a political platform. Many political issues are extremely complex and very dry, so it’s hard to say what’s going on in simple terms. But to create a little image that says this is the situation in Bhopal or in the Niyamgiri Hills or in Hackney Wick and Temple Mills, brings it to a different audience because I don’t read political newspapers. I’m not even into reading. I’m a visual person and there’s a lot of people like that who are missing out on understanding the core issues of what’s going on in the world. A lot of these causes are out there and need to be brought to life in a different way.
Tell us a little about the banner you’re painting today.
This is for the people of the Niyamgiri Hills who are being removed from their land by a London based mining company called Vedanta. It’s a mountain range in India and this particular mountain has been their home for millennia. It’s their mother, it’s their god, it’s their land and it’s their keeper. Vedanta plan to blow the top of the mountain off and extract bauxite from it. It’s been described as a real live Avatar situation, the idea that the mountain itself is a resource that Vedanta want to turn into aluminum. That’s why I used the silver paint on the banner - the aluminum mountain and it highlights cost and value and conflicting interests. It’s all very complex and someone from the tribe is speaking on behalf of Vedanta so they are putting a lot of pressure on the people. There’s a lot of foul play going on and manipulation as the company is trying to make it as complex as possible but it’s actually really clear cut. There’s been a lot of development already happening in the area and the first thing to be effected is the water supply which is contaminated by the Vedanta factory. If you search online you’ll find a really nice film presented by Joanna Lumley that really gets to the heart of the matter. You see children staring into the camera saying ‘no one will take our mountain’ and I look at them and think - I believe you mate. But in the face of bulldozers, corporations and large work forces these people need our help and support. The banner is being hung outside The Institute of Civil Engineers as part of a demonstration there. Survival International will be there plus some other political activist groups.
You are probably London’s most prolific poster paster, what’s your motivation?
Is that right?! My motivation really hasn’t changed from my tags, throwies, stickers or paste ups; it’s all about just getting up! Simple. No hidden agenda, no hidden messages. I just prefer now using this medium to get up. I personally find it a bit more sophisticated than the stuff I used to do.
Why did you choose the poster format?
They were a natural extension from the stickers that I started to really enjoy putting up in the early days. I like working graphically and this seems to be the cheapest and most effective way of doing it on a variety of scales! I really like how they tie in with the bill posters ubiquitous with the decaying urban environment. They look better when they’re ripped or dirty and start looking like part of their surroundings. Screen printing or laser copying gives you the chance to repeat the same image again and again in that Warhol/commercial/ magazine kind of way. I also like to hand paint them, so again this format affords me the time to take time painting them and then bang them up real quick!
What and who influences your work?
I look a lot at pop art, graphic design and graffiti so I think those influences are always quite apparent in my work. I think as an artist you consciously or subconsciously get inspired by all artists you come across. New ideas will come when you discover something new. For me it might be a technique, a layout, a colourscheme or whatever. Recently I’ve been looking a lot at Stuart Cumberland and Peter Blake. Maybe that’ll come out somehow or sometime in my work! It’s nice to kind of teach yourself new things.
Do you live in fear of arrest?
I don’t think you can let that bother you too much or you’ll never get off your arse and do anything! I just have to learn from past mistakes when I have been caught or whatever.
Street, warehouse or Gallery?
Street always first. You’re always going to lose something when you take it out of its original context. Saying that; I don’t think my work necessarily relies on being on the street to look its best; like say; some of Banksy or Eine’s work. I like it being on the street though. It’s a natural extension of being on the street, or at one with the street as a skater, which I was for many years.
