(Translated from Norwegian)
The artist duo MSR FCJ is exhibiting at Galleri Golsa, drawing elements from drawing, comics, and self-publishing into their larger works and paintings. They speak with Zarina Saidova about how their artistic journey began with comics.
Last fall, I interviewed Danish artist Allan Haverholm about un-comics and his desire to expand the field by seeking inspiration from other areas such as art, architecture, and music. Now, I’ve spoken with Mike S. Redmond and Faye Coral from MSR FCJ, who draw inspiration from comics and incorporate the aesthetics of self-publishing into their artistic practice.
One ordinary Wednesday evening, I was scrolling through Instagram and was almost shocked when I saw that Galleri Golsa was going to exhibit the works of the British artist duo MSR FCJ, whom I’ve followed on Instagram for a long time and am a big fan of. In the exhibition – titled “Happy to have your head” – we see paintings and a wall of pocket-sized drawings titled Drawing Wall. Mike and Faye have backgrounds in drawing, comics, and self-publishing and bring elements from these into their larger works and paintings. They start a conversation between themselves in sketchbooks with characters, shapes, and texts, which are later transferred to canvas. In the process, the unfinished and quick elements are valued and nurtured. Mistakes, marks, and quick strokes are preserved, making the images feel alive and echoing.
After seeing the exhibition, I was left with many questions, so I decided to contact Mike and Faye. The interview was conducted over email.
You’ve been working together since 2006, with self-publishing and comics as your starting point. How has your artistic partnership developed since your first projects together?
“Yes, we’ve been working together for nearly 20 years now, and our work continues to evolve. In terms of process, we initially focused heavily on drawing intuitively together. We would continue each other’s lines like in a point-to-point drawing, often working over each other’s strokes as one unit. It was more like a game we used to play to pass the time. We then self-published our drawings as comics, concert posters, or zines as a way to share and archive our work. About five or six years ago, we started making large-scale paintings. The process is more physical and time-consuming, but we approach it in the same way we always have – intuitively and experimentally, excited to see what comes out on the other side.”
What role do the experiences from self-publishing and the zine community play in your work?
“It gave us the belief that we can create things the way we want to. Initially, working with large-scale paintings on canvas was overwhelming. There were so many restrictions: tools, costs, deciding the size of the piece before even making it, stretching and priming the canvas, and so on. Instead, we looked to the DIY lo-fi elements from our background by working with simple materials in an intuitive and experimental way. The canvas is like paper; we work on both sides, and the work isn’t precious. We are heavily inspired by the visual structures in our zines, which flow into our larger works. We like to juxtapose separate parts of paintings like pages in a zine. We often work in series, and these works tell a loose story in the same way we would when creating a zine or comic. We use comic structures, such as text, panels, and recurring motifs or characters in our larger works, as a way to play with composition, narrative, movement, and time. We enjoy making a flyer or zine to set the mood for an exhibition. Drawings are at the core of everything we create.”
What aspects of lo-fi aesthetics attract you?
“There’s a guy with a boat in the movie *Jaws* who has a paper hat, and we often refer to that. It’s just an old, worn-out hat, but it has so much personality and sets a mood, in a way. If we could describe it, we’d talk about it more, but instead, we just like to embrace the paper hat elements in our work. Some disjointed words or a sketch can mean everything to some and nothing to others.”
Are there specific techniques or materials from your zine days that you find especially influential or important in your practice today?
“We love photocopiers. The quality of photocopied drawings strongly influences the quality of our lines and the way we make marks in our paintings. They seem like a dying breed today; photocopiers used to be in most small shops in the UK and cost as little as 5 pence per copy. The quality of the photocopied image is something we’ve always loved, and that aesthetic has definitely crept into our paintings. The copiers leave behind a charm and contribute to the aesthetic and fleeting nature; nothing is too clean or too polished. We’ve been making drawings, zines, and posters for a long time, and the techniques we’ve learned have been transferred into the way we paint. We often cut things up, move them around, and sew them back together – lots of layers, almost like making digital collages in Photoshop – and we erase paint with white or beige like correction fluid. We’ve found ways to create large images in the same way we would make smaller drawings.”
What role does text play in your work and paintings?
“We see the paintings as our brochures, but blown up in size like billboards. The text is an integral part of the work’s narrative. For the most part, it’s intuitive; we write in our respective notebooks and pick apart notes from each other and splice them back together. The text also functions as part of the image, to fill a background or add some energy to the work, like scribbles in a sketchbook or a crumpled drawing with a forgotten thought written on it. Sometimes, the thoughts are written on impulse, but once combined with an image, they gain a greater meaning. It’s very satisfying how the texts mostly fall naturally into place this way with our images. It’s very loose and experimental, but it’s like there’s a subconscious or automatic connection, and when it fits, it fits. In comics, the text is part of the image whether you want to read it or not. We make titles in the same way, and that’s usually how we finish a painting. Sometimes, the text is the answer to the image.”
Can you tell us about the title of the exhibition “Happy to have your head”?
“This phrase was written on one of the drawings on The Drawing Wall. It was a phrase to describe the drawing and nothing more. But when we were asked to do the exhibition, it just stood out and somehow gained more meaning. The title is a kind of love declaration to each other, that we are happy to have each other’s heads.”
Drawing Wall feels like the heart of the exhibition – or shall we say the “head”? It felt like being with you while you work, hearing and seeing the conversation take place between you. Is the “head” a place you work toward in the process?
“The drawings are the starting point of everything we do, so we wanted the wall to be the heart of the exhibition. We’re glad that’s clear, but it’s also a secret heart, one that you stumble upon. We had been watching a lot of *The X-Files* when we started thinking about this exhibition, and we kept talking about Mulder’s office and his bulletin board, how things are haphazardly pinned to remind that they are still important. There’s something discarded about our drawings, and they mostly go unseen today, but they are at the core of our work, and it made sense to show them this way. We really wish we could exhibit our drawings more. We see them as a kind of key to the paintings. Our collaboration is like a continuous creative battle. We work intuitively into each other’s pieces by defacing, rearranging, adding, erasing, and splicing each other’s images, thus creating a middle world that we call the ‘head.’ And within the ‘head,’ there are small moments in time and space that emerge as if only one person had created them. We are constantly trying to find those moments where we can’t tell where one of us ended and the other began.”
We’ve talked about *The X-Files* before too. Are there any other series you’re watching right now that inspire you to reflect on your work?
“We love watching movies and collecting DVDs, but it’s like opening Pandora’s box. For our exhibitions and zines, we like to have a short blurb or tagline on a DVD. Right now, we’re only watching *The X-Files*, and it’s funny how nothing ever gets resolved. ‘The truth is out there.’”
Your books *Dreaming of Worms Again* and *Bubbling Pitch* are both experimental comics. What do you think about playing with non-linear storytelling and comic structures like panels, bubbles, and so on?
“For us, there’s maybe some ownership in the ambiguity, that it’s personal, our secret language. We have our individual working styles – Mike is a bit more graphic, Faye is a bit more abstract – and we usually don’t discuss what we’re going to make; we just make it. The elements form organically in a tug-of-war between what each of us wants to get out of the image, and this drives the experimentation in the work. We’re not interested in being too direct or clean or finished; it’s important that the images remain open to interpretation. Our comics mean something entirely different to each of us. The abstraction in our work is crucial to it. In our eyes, the work can continue to change and gain new meanings. We really enjoy playing with frames around images in our paintings. A frame gives a sense of place. And when we place two frames next to each other, it creates a place with time. And if the images mimic or repeat each other, it creates a place with time that moves. It’s a format we’re drawn to; it helps us synchronize a narrative to the image, bringing our paintings even closer to the feel of our smaller works.”
Are you also working on individual projects alongside your collaboration?
“Most of what we do today feeds into our joint work, but if we had Bernard’s Watch, we’d probably find time for it.”
The exhibition at Galleri Golsa is on until April 20.
