Artist Interview: Epi

We’ve recently collaborated with British conceptual artist Epi on an exclusive new print series, 'Thoroughly Modern Matisse', an intricate series of 5 limited editioned silkscreen prints. Available exclusively here from Friday 26th May at 2pm BST.

In this interview we talked with Epi about his career, movements that inspire him, his creative process and background. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his responses weren’t quite what we were looking for.......

Dovehouse Studios: How would you describe your artistic style?

Epi: I suppose the one word that best characterises my work would be “drivel”.

Dovehouse Studios: Could you tell us a bit about your artistic training - have you always been an artist?

Epi: I believe one is born an artist. Even as a toddler, my parents were convinced I would go on to become a Surrealist painter- my first word was ‘Dada’. I’m told I was considered something of an infant artistic prodigy- at nursery I completed a series of crayon on paper works that were strikingly reminiscent of the work of Cy Twombly, an artist whom I had long admired, even as a one year old. Over time I progressed from crayon on paper to paint on canvas, but essentially all of my pieces still look like a child has done them.

Dovehouse Studios: How do you formulate your creative process? What steps go into creating ‘an Epi’?

Epi: I like to channel deeply personal emotion and memory from my private life into all of my work. In this new print release, for example, the ‘Horni Matisse’ print- Matisse’s nude woman modified to appear as if her legs are open- is based on a true story. The woman it depicts was actually a seventy-year-old matron who worked at my school, but hey ho, we’ve all done crazy stuff when we were younger. And the dove print with the crosshairs, Les Oiseaux- that actually happened. I inadvertently clipped a dove’s wing when pheasant shooting last season. Art imitating life…..

Dovehouse Studios: You’ve been described first and foremost as a conceptual artist – is this something you agree with?

Epi: No, I wouldn’t. I would describe myself first and foremost as a chancer, a ne’er-do-well, a scoundrel, a reprobate and a moron. 

Dovehouse Studios: How do you think your time spent in Paris has influenced your creative practise?

Epi: I smoke far too much and shrug a lot. That’s a direct result of living in France for years.

Dovehouse Studios: Your work seems to oscillate from being very high brow to very low brow. What inspirations do you take from when formulating your work?

Epi: I like to think that I mine the lexicon of the academic canon and reconstitute it into an easily-assimilable, seemingly low-brow form. But in reality I’m just pretending to be cleverer than I really am in a pathetic attempt to get intellectual adulation. 

Dovehouse Studios: Your overall body of work pokes fun at the contemporary art world, whose participants are ironically the very people you rely upon to exist. How do you feel about that? 

Epi: Well given my opinion on the majority of most people I've met so far in the art world then it doesn’t really worry me. If this art gig crashes and burns, I’ll probably go off and pursue my primary passion, which is interpretative dance. The problem I have there is that there's just less money in it than flogging contemporary art.

Dovehouse Studios: How would you describe your studio practise?

Epi: Extremely hazardous and a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Dovehouse Studios: The work you have created for this release, ‘Thoroughly Modern Matisse’ seems to balance art history with modern day observationalism. What is the story behind the work?

Epi: I had set out to create a print series that required almost no effort. It dawned on me that by using existing works by Henri Matisse- his famous blue cut-outs- I could just rearrange them in such a way that would sufficiently alter their meaning and intention, but that would have transformed them enough to ensure that the Henri Matisse estate couldn’t sue me for intellectual property infringement. I got the bloke who sweeps my chimney every winter to screen print them in his kitchen for fifty quid a free set of Artist Proofs, and to be fair to him he did a great job on it. Meanwhile, I went to Alton Towers and had a blast whilst he did all the work. 

Dropping 26th May 2023, 2pm BST

 

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