Flights of fancy: A three-way conversation between Natalie Bradbury, Laura Hopkinson and Darren Nixon

‘How it started / How it’s going’ is an exhibition of new work by artists Darren Nixon and Laura Hopkinson, developed in dialogue with the Fourdrinier writer Natalie Bradbury. This experimental project has provided an opportunity for all three participants to work in new ways. Prior to 2020, both Nixon and Hopkinson worked primarily in video. Unable to access their studios during lockdown, they turned to materials immediately to hand and created work on paper for the first time. Hopkinson created a series of witty, text-based drawings, inspired by product reviews on Amazon. Nixon amassed hundreds of collages, playfully juxtaposing found and newly created images. Over the course of 2021, these images have travelled backwards and forwards between the trio as electronic file transfers, forming the basis of a playful three-way collaboration and conversation; the results will be presented at PAPER Gallery (3 July-7 August). This interview is the first part of a two-part conversation between Bradbury and the artists, discussing the ways in which their collaboration has fostered a sense of fun and connection. Part two will be published in August.

Natalie: I know that you two were really excited about working with each other. What draws you to each other's work?

Laura: I admired Darren's work even before I knew him, from seeing his work and shows. I was like, ‘there's something about this guy that I want to work with at some point.’ Before I'd spoken to Darren, it was very much an aesthetic interest, because that was all I really saw. I didn't know too much about his processes, it was very much ‘I am drawn to this visually and I want my stuff to be a part of this stuff somehow, one day’.

Darren: A part of it was definitely you, and the pieces where you started to perform to the camera, because I can't do that. The way that you address the camera, I still can’t do, I don't have it in me. I admire that you address the relationship between yourself and the screen quite directly. In your work over the past couple of years, there's been a really lovely confidence in not being like the work around you, which is so much easier said than done. Your work is so decidedly at odds with the work most people are putting into shows, in a really nice way. When I first met you, on a trip to Blackpool, I was even more interested. I remember saying that meeting you felt like meeting the internet and you said that that was one of the nicest compliments you've ever had. It was like meeting a person that I’d only really seen from a distance and on a screen, but you maintained so much of what I'd seen on the screen in real life. Your presence is very screen-like.

Laura: I’m just a character of myself in real life.

Darren: You’ve created quite a distinctive silhouette. If there was group of people at an opening and the room was quite dim, you would immediately know who you were. It’s almost like someone has really deliberately created that. You also allow humour into your work, and although it's got some overlaps with contemporary art humour, it doesn't strive in the same way. It’s not trying really hard to be more or to suggest other things. There’s confidence in knowing that the thing that you're presenting is the meaning, it's just all there, and you don't need to put that art gap in the middle of it to suggest that there's more that's out of reach or that you're not clever enough to get. To have the confidence in putting your work out in that way is something I really like.

Laura: What I enjoyed about you is similar. When I met you, it felt like we were of the same mindset. It felt like: ‘I don't really care what anyone else thinks: this is what I've made, I've done it because I wanted to, and you know this is my thing and I'm not really bothered about pleasing you all, either in this conversation or with my work.’ I remember thinking ‘he’s genuine’. There are some people that you just don't click with in the art scene and you’re not really sure if they are real or not. I think that mindset is what will make this show work quite well.

We’ve spoken positively about each other enough now. 

Natalie: As well as admiring each other’s work, you've got a shared sense of humour.

Darren: We both find each other quite funny, but I don't think we are funny. I think that's a very dangerous combination; when two people who aren't that funny find each other hilarious. If it was just me and Laura working, we would allow ourselves to pursue our absolutely silliest ambitions and it could get very silly very, very quickly. It's definitely not not silly, but I feel like someone has stood there quietly, overlooking things, and making me slightly more conscious of what it looks like.

Laura: We might have gone a bit too far from the restraints of PAPER Gallery. You could have come to the opening of the show, and thought ‘hang on, the space is empty … Wait, is that a two-centimetre rocket with a miniature replica of Darren and Laura in it with a note saying “to see this exhibition please get your next flight to Mars”,’ and that would have been it.

Natalie: What has been the effect of adding me, as a third person, into the mix?

Darren: It’s an extra element over the top which adds something that neither of us could put in, or expect, so I think that's going to be really interesting to see.

Laura: The more freedom that Natalie's putting in towards the project excites me. When I was making the poster, in my head I was thinking: ‘Then Natalie will come out of her shell; this is what the project has done. Natalie doesn't care, Natalie free-writes now guys, she doesn't mind not having a solid written plan.’

Darren: Your way of working is still very, very different to both of ours. We're both pretty quick-working, and whatever happens, happens, to some extent. That's not how you work, so we've had to shift because of that, but it’s been really useful. That's been a benefit to where things have gone.

At the end of this you're going to end up being one of those Japanese artists who just turns up with a massive brush and tub of ink and sees whatever the hell happens.

Laura: It’s always beneficial to have someone working with you who does work in a different way because it makes you see what you're doing from a different perspective. 

Leading on from that, I am curious about how you felt about working with me and Darren?

Darren: You’re asking my questions. That’s so rude. Let me put that better. Natalie, what have you come into this process hoping for and how have things been different to what you expected? 

Natalie: I came in hoping to build a relationship with an artist and to get to know them over time. Similarly to Laura, I had admired your work, Darren, for a really long time. A show that really stands out is ‘Launch Pad’ at Castlefield Gallery (2015), where the work was really imposing in the space. And when I went to see the Salford University Art Collection store, where all the artworks are kept, I was really interested in Darren’s work the Intern (2016), which was designed to fit into the collection in the store. It wasn't just an artwork that was in a collection but it thought about itself quite literally: how it would fit itself into that context. The way you spoke about Laura's work, and your real enthusiasm for it, was also quite exciting for me.

Darren: Has there been anything surprising about working together or anything that you will take away from it?

Natalie: I'm not sure about surprising, but the complete openness has been challenging. Anything goes: you’re so open to anything. That’s what’s been most different to my normal way of working.

Laura: I wonder how different it would have been if all these meetings had been in person rather than over Zoom. How do you think it would have panned out and what would our show have been like if we had not been working in this restricted way?

Natalie: I wonder whether we would have done more going out and meeting in different spaces. Darren, when we met at the start of the project you were going out and putting bits of wood that you'd painted into different sites and seeing how your work changed in different contexts, which I found really interesting. If we’d still been able to meet in person, I'd have probably suggested we meet up somewhere and see how we respond to the place and what happens

Laura: Everyone could take turns just sending each other co-ordinates: meet at that spot with a packed lunch and enough liquids depending on where we are, and then just sit on rocks and chat for hours.

Darren: Or maybe go to far-flung places but then still meet on Zoom. I could go and sit outside your place, Laura, and you could come and sit outside mine.

Laura: It would have been interesting. My way of working and even the mindset of what I make has shifted drastically in the past 14 months. I used to work in a routine, whereas now I feel very much in a flux of play, where I really, really care even less and maybe that's because I've not been going to shows or seeing anyone from the art world, so I feel increasingly less observed by anyone and I've not shown anything. The work I make is just because, rather than for a purpose. This has been my only work with a purpose for a long while, so I'm actually rather grateful because it's completely shifted everything.

Natalie: The paper plane, which you made from print-outs of the collages Darren sent us, feels emblematic of this whole process and everything we’ve been doing together. To me, it suggests a flight of fancy: whatever you start with, you take it and it goes off somewhere completely else.

Laura: It was something that I'd had in my mind for so long. I wanted to make a giant paper plane and I never knew why and never really thought to do it because I hadn’t got a reason to. That state of playing, and just doing whatever, made me think ‘let's just make the plane’, and when Darren sent over his collages I thought ‘let's use that’. It was all very spontaneous. But now I feel like I’m going to have to iron the tails because it's been it’s been perched for a while.

Natalie: Darren, how does it feel to have your work turned into a plane?

Darren: There’s a nice disrespect towards the original work. I like the idea of making something out of the original materials and treating them as pieces of paper. The collages are just material to make something else.

Laura: I feel like we're just going to end up just making a paper plane out of every piece we bring and it will become a room filled with paper planes.

When the show is over, I might actually try and fly the paper plane off a hilltop as my character Spikey Blancmange. That character was born out of the very start of lockdown when I had nothing from my studio here. I just literally had black pens and white paper and glue sticks. Darren’s idea of making work just using the stuff that you had is exactly like the birth of Spikey Blancmange. I thought: ‘I have a black pen, I have a Pritt stick, I have white paper. Let's glue the paper together to make a bigger piece of paper, let's draw a smile on it and stick it on my head because this is all I have to make stuff with right now.’ It would be very fitting to have Spikey Blancmange standing at the top of a really tall hill and running and throwing and watching it fly. 

Darren: Can I suggest that Spikey Blancmange borrows a pilot's outfit? Do you know any pilots around your size?

Laura: I’ll see what contacts I've got.

Darren: The White Cliffs of Dover would be good, but I'm almost certain if you did that on the White Cliffs of Dover, you’d get a fine.

Laura: Maybe it needs to be bigger than me just throwing this: maybe I need to do a full-on documentary and we screen it as the sequel to our show and people can come and watch the flight of the paper aeroplane. 

Read Natalie Bradbury’s interview with Darren Nixon for the Fourdrinier here. https://www.thefourdrinier.com/darren-nixon-painting-and-collaboration

Read Laura Harris’ interview with Laura Hopkinson for the Fourdrinier here.https://www.thefourdrinier.com/laura-hopkinson-puppets-in-lockdown