ARTIST INTERVIEW: Amy gough & Joe WATSON PRICE
Every month at Strange Brew, we invite artists to take over our main room wall. Kicking off our program is Amy Gough and Joe Watson Price with their collaborative piece ‘LUXURY PORTAL’, bringing us a surreal, cheeky and playful backdrop for the venue where you can get lost in a landscape of weird and wonderful characters and creatures that exist somewhere between a medieval playground and a vision of a distant future fantasy.
Our in house artist Sadie has jumped headfirst into the portal to chat with Joe and Amy and see what makes them tick…
LUXURY PORTAL, 2022 - AMY GOUGH & JOE WATSON PRICE
SO FIRST OF ALL… WHO ARE YA?
AMY: I mainly work in moving image/3D animation, sound and drawing. My work usually involves weaving narratives/myths around disparate and mundane objects, locations and creatures. There is a focus on technology, absurdity and how we resolve gaps in knowledge/information. I also make zines and paintings at the moment.
JOE: I’m an Illustrator who lives and works here in Bristol. I like to make cartoons that have a surreal/ dreamlike quality and am inspired by TV, music and pop culture. I’ve spent the last few years making comics and producing editorial illustrations for The Bristol Cable.
What inspired you for this commission?
AMY: I guess it was inspired at least in part by the circumstances of last year, chaotic and mixed feelings around the pandemic and re-entering the world…all this inevitably trickled into the end product, but we wanted to have fun with it and this is what came out. Also Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.
JOE: We were definitely inspired by medieval art, and wanted to make something busy and chaotic like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I wanted to incorporate a Sci-Fi feel and have characters zapping in and out of the scene through portals.
What's your process when collaborating with other artists?
AMY: It depends what I’m working on but for this project we did everything remotely. We talked rough ideas then sent drawings back and forth as we did them, taking it in turns rearranging and working on the composition.
JOE: I really like collaborating with like minded artists and find combining styles an exciting process. I think the best way is to not be too precious, to exchange lots of drawings/ ideas and to keep things experimental.
QUICK FIRE ROUND!
Describe your art as a smell
AMY: Crude oil/organic mulch/party poppers
JOE: Petrol and lucozade
Deep ocean or deep space?
AMY: Deep ocean atm, good geysers… and aliens…
JOE: Deep space
AMY GOUGH ORGANIC STORAGE ZINE 2020.
If you could collaborate with anyone/anything who/what would it be?
AMY: I have a pet axolotl who stars in my work a lot but I wouldn’t mind if it was more reciprocal.
JOE: Amy Gough!
If you weren’t an artist what else would you be doing?
AMY: Something in biology
JOE: There is a part of me that still believes I’ll play for England and be the next David Beckham.
WEBBYRUG, JOE WATSON-PRICE
Where do your ideas come from?
AMY: Walking around the neighbourhood, wherever that is at the time/otherwise the news/documentaries
JOE: My own experiences and people I see and meet in daily life. I like looking at vintage cartoons, reality TV and old paintings of crowd scenes.
Will robots ever replace artists?
AMY: Hopefully we can continue to collaborate before it gets nasty, but yes probably…
JOE: If they do, I’m imagining that the artists get to swap and do the robot jobs (the world would crumble).
Amy and Joe’s mural we be up until April and you can also purchase a copy of their zine ‘Luxury Portal’ which features scenes from the mural wall, along with other prints from Amy and Joe in store or from our online zine shop.
LUXURY PORTAL ZINE - AMY GOUGH AND JOE WATSON PRICE