-> scroll down for transcript
I was carrying a Pentax 17 with Kodak UltraMax 400 ISO
Sebastián’s instagram is here
Sebastián wanted you to go here after listening
Gabrielle: Estamos grabando.
Sebastian: So nice to meet you.
G: Oh my god, I need to speak in English. I forgot already.
[Jingle]
G: Hello and welcome to episode #3 of the Art Dates podcast, where I, Gabrielle de la Puente, a writer from Liverpool, visit exhibitions with interesting people. In today's episode, I'm going to be visiting the Slade Degree show, the MA degree show in University College London, with the artist Sebastián Espejo. But before we get to that, let me sort of explain why I wanted to go on a date with Sebastián. It's because at the moment I'm writing a new book. My profile of being a writer is mostly to do with art criticism. But at the moment I'm writing a fiction book. It's a dark book. It's a little bit funny, a bit surreal, and I can't stop having dreams about it. So I've just got to get this thing done so I can move on with my life. But in order to finish the book, I need to go to Chile to do some research and I have never been before. So this year I got an Arts Council England project grant to spend a month there alone thinking through this stuff. And yeah, it's -- it's a funny one because like, I already feel like a month isn't going to be enough time. Like, I've got this idea in my head of the country, but it's like, Chile is also sort of a myth. It's this place where my dad's from, where my last name is from, where my granddad stayed when my nan left with the kids, and part of the research that I need to do for the book is like trying to trace that migration, make it all feel real. I'm having to hammer Chilean Spanish lessons at the moment because like everyone says, Chileans speak the hardest Spanish in the world. And like, I believe it, the country was so isolated with the Atacama Desert in the north, you know, the ice in the South, the Andes Mountains like a hard wall to the east. They were able to resist Spanish colonisation for centuries. And Oh my God, if I'm going to be there alone for a month, one, I'm going to have to start saying Andes not like a Scouse person. But two, I need to get to this level of Spanish where I can find answers to questions from people in real life that I cannot get from Googling them. So yeah, there's a lot of gaps to fill in in this research project - - and I can't ask my dad to fill those in because I haven't spoken to him since I was 13. But yeah, I think recently I realised, like, I want to know Chile, even if I don't want to know him, and I can do that and I can go there on my own and I can ask other people these questions instead. So that's what I'm planning to do over the next few months using some of these Art Date episodes. I'm going to be meeting Chilean artists and writers, and yeah, I just want to like stay in the research phase for as long as possible where I'm just going to be taking a lot of stuff in without giving too much back out -- or like, not until the book is ready anyway. And I'll use this space to kind of track what I've learned, but also share it with a predominantly UK based audience. I'm very lucky to say that this episode is supported using public funding by Arts Council England. And I, I think I want to speak to artists specifically because I want to see how they go about expressing the things that they're interested in as well, whether that ends up being a sculpture or a poem. Like how do Chilean artists go about these things? And so for that, we're starting with Sebastián Espejo, a painter currently living in London, and so with this, like, overwhelming feeling of needing to catch up on literally everything about a country, I met Sebastián at Euston straight off the train and we left for this Slade MA show so that we could get to know each other and I could get to know Chile,
*
G: See, there's standard Spanish, and then there's Chilean Spanish, and I think there's a fear that I'm, like, learning so much Chilean Spanish but I don't want to be like a caricature when I arrive. So I like, read the notes and then doubt it. I'm like, maybe I shouldn't learn that.
S: Yeah, Yeah. Those things you will just learn it by context.
G: Exactly.
S: Yeah, but I know what you mean. Even for me, sometimes it is hard to place like a very Chilean word because, you know, there's also a class definition by the way you speak, so it is also even for me as a Chilean, there's like this kind of pressure of speaking how I'm supposed to be speaking, you know, and not pretending to be from other, you know, like class.
G: Higher or lower?
S: Either, either cas they can recriminate you for being pretending to be someone else, you know that. All the dictatorship in Chile, you can see that -- the main effect for me, it was dividing people into this class system and not having any public contact with like each other. So you end up usually living in a bubble, you know. It's kind of similar to what happens with the algorithm, you know? That you have like, this resignation box and you cannot step outside that. But in Chile, you can really tell by the way people speak. Because then you can recognise the education and that tells you from where they are from. And it is not simply like a cultural thing like like here in England, you know, or in the UK where you can recognise Liverpool or Northern accent -- but you're an outsider, so you can do whatever you want.
G: Oooo, don't say that! I'm doing this like Chilean cinema course at the moment.
S: Nice.
G: And that's being part of the education like.
S: Cool, you have a very good teacher.
G: She's great. She's so good. But it's noticing like, yeah, class through language and also accent -- that in like the older, posher, generation, really high pitched voices.
S: And it seems that they are always asking a question.
G: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
S: That feels that they are completely insecure about what they are talking about.
G: Or is it the other way where it's like patronising, like they already know the answer? That's how I've read it.
S: Never thought about.
G: So it's like always rhetorical questions and it makes you feel like you don't know the answer, like the right answer. It's difficult. It must be so difficult to negotiate how you actually speak. versus how you naturally feel you want to or something.
S: Yeah, yeah. That's why I was talking about like this effect of the dictatorship, because it is damaging the social fabric, you know? Yeah, because like either you are pretending something or doing like a performance.
G: Because it can be aspirational as a way to leave the social level?
S: Yeah but also it is like performative in the sense that you are speaking in that way to establish a belonging, a sense of belonging to different groups.
G: I just watched Machuca.
S: Nice. How do you find it?
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G: So I'm not like a big film person, but Machuca is -- I feel like it's going to stay with me and I think it's worth the watch whether you have an interest in Chile or not. It's this film from 2004 by Andrés Wood and it's about an elite Catholic school in Santiago. The story is inspired by real world events. This priest who worked there at the time ran a social integration project that allowed some poor kids from nearby with Indigenous backgrounds into the school for free. The film is about a friendship between like a rich student and one of these new kids and the tensions between like, the paying families who didn't want the poor kids anywhere near their children. And, you know, similar tensions between like rich kids bullying the poor kids. Very much just like a microcosm of wider Chilean society at the time, because the film is set in the run up to the 1973 coup d'etat in Chile, which -- for people new to Chilean history -- replaced the socialist government at the time for Augusto Pinochet's 17 year military dictatorship in a coup supported by the US. The dictatorship led to the torture of 10s of thousands of people and the murder of an estimated 3000 people, many of them left-wing activists and politicians, journalists, poets, famously singers to name but a few. In the film, the military takes over this Catholic school, kicks the priests out, and we see them opening fire in the local community where those new kids have come from. Yeah, it's very intense, but also, like, a view on how the coup d'etat, and that big moment in Chile, like, wasn't intense for many rich people. Like, you know, for them, it was sort of like a normal day where they didn't really need to know what was going on. The news was controlled at the time so, you know, they just got on with the lives like, like any normal day. But these kids who saw their school change and saw the disruption to the lives of the kids with Indigenous backgrounds, from their point of view, they really see the difference and also see like how they can't be mates because they're inheriting this moment in history [that] the other people have decided for them. And it's just, yeah, it's it's just like absolutely devastating. But I wanted to like, interrupt the podcast to describe the film, but also to say that the Chilean government has a website where you can watch Chilean films for free, a bit like BFI player here, but there it's called ondamedia.cl and I I highly recommend just like putting your VPN to Chile and watching some films
[camera winding sound]
G: Have you been here before?
S: No first time.
G: Ahhh, get ready. This honestly is my favourite degree show in London.
S: High expectations.
G: I feel like we've gone straight in the deep end. We've gone dictatorship, we've gone -- .
S: [laughing] Machuca
G: We need to go backwards. Why are you in England?
S: Because of love. My wife is doing a PhD.
G: Amazing.
S: I am here because of her.
G: What a nice answer.
S: So I think there's a Chilean student. .
G: Oh really? Do you know the name?
S: Claudia... Claudia?
G: Ramirez Julio? Do you know each other?
S: No, no, OK, no. So that's ground floor. Maybe we can try and find her?
G: Let's, okay, so maybe it's just this room behind...? Perfect.
[Sound of the artwork]
G: Does this feel very Chilean?
S: No, not really. No. This is mainly Mapuche.
G: Is it, OK?
S: Yeah, I'm not sure, but I think she's from the North -- Atacama -- like Atacameños? So there are like several indigenous communities in the desert, but this is completely Mapuche, so it is South of Chile. Pewen is this -- do you know the monkey puzzle tree?
G: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
S: So that's Chilean and comes it's from the Patagonia.
G: Is it?!
S: Yeah, yeah.
G: I didn't know that.
S: Yeah. So the scientific name is Araucaria araucana. So the Mapuche people were named by the Spanish, Araucanos because of this tree. This was -- or still it is like the staple food resource during winter. And it's a very, it's a sacred tree and it has piñones like little Pines. They are delicious. It's like chestnuts. You need to boil them for long and then they become like this sweet, starchy nut. So here seems to be -- so these are like the --
G: The shell?
S: Yeah, and this is one there, looks a little bit like teeth or something.
G: Yeah, it does. I really needed you as my guide for this show.
S: Sorry?
G : I needed you to be the guide for this because I wouldn't have gotten any of that detail.
S: [laughing] and what you are hearing right now is like a mouth harp, it's also very Mapuche. Mapuche are like the biggest indigenous group. There are like 2 million, so it's almost 10% and this is also like traditional Mapuche. So on the spiritual sense, Mapuche is a matriarchal society, usually.
G: OK, I didn't know that.
S: So La Machi is like the spiritual, higher, or -- how can I say, like -- the guide, you know, the spiritual guides and also the healer usually, and she will wear like all these different accessories or artefacts.
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G: Sebastián suggested that I try and visit a Mapuche community when I go to Chile, I think because he knows that I'm going to be travelling through the southern region. My granddad was born in Calbuco and Mapuche people live across that area. I'm not familiar with every detail of my family tree. I do know that there are some Mapuche last names in there, but it's like, yeah, I'm not really going with that in mind. And I think, you know, Sebastian said to me, you know, trying to visit with that in mind can be an act of exotification for some people. But if it happens, it happens. It's something where I really feel the distance between me and that country because I'm here, I'm recording this in England. Like, I asked Sebastian if Claudia's work felt very Chilean to him, and he said no, no, no, it's Mapuche. Like there's a distinction between Chilean and Mapuche that I'm still getting my head around because it's a dynamic I've never lived with before being from England. But I suppose, you know, I'm going to Chile with this interest in trying to understand who my granddad was and, you know, if that comes into it, then that comes into it.
*
G: Do you know what I've, it's really nice to be in London because I've spent like the last 2-3 weeks maybe, yeah, two weeks reading letters. Basically about 3 weeks ago, I went to see my auntie, Chilean auntie. She gave me like a suitcase full of documents from my Nan, who was English and had moved over to Chile, had two kids and then moved back. Mi abuelo stayed alone. So there are there are three years of letters that he sent to her in Spanish, but she, my auntie, had never read them.
S: But they were still together, or I mean?
G: Well, the story I always got told was that he was very old. He was in his 60s when he had kids, which is old. And there was a there was like a 20 year age difference between them. And the story I got told was that he got sick and he was like, listen, I'm probably going to die soon. I think you should move back to England with the kids because, you know, once I'm gone, you're not going to have any support, you're not going to have any income. You should go now.
S: And what year?
G: This is 1965. So she moves with the kids and then -- that's all I got told.
S: That was the official story.
G: That was the official story, yeah. But those kids, my dad and my auntie, grew up in England, and then forgot Spanish, assimilated. My auntie was telling me like, she remembers being on the bus and feeling really, like, embarrassed to speak Spanish so she just didn't speak and eventually it just went, yeah, but these letters are in Spanish and no one had read them ever. And I'm reading them now and that story I got told, not the official story. In the 1st letter he says, like, you know, I'm glad you've arrived safely. I think three more months and I'll be with you. I just need to sort out some business deals and then I'll be over there. And I'm like, what happened in those three months that meant he couldn't go there? But I haven't read to the end yet.
S: Wow.
G: And I don't want to because it's weird, like I've never met this man and now I'm starting to get sad that he died. I'm trying to translate them for my auntie so she gets to read them, but he's writing them on a typewriter.
S: Ah, nice. OK, so there's no problem.
G: He cannot spell. And also like he uses a lot of like sayings from the South and like from --
S: Calbuco, yeah.
G: From the South but also El Campo and I'm like, wait, what does this mean? Yeah, he always says in the letters, 'I'm sending you some money for peregil y chicha.'
S: Chicha, yeah.
G: And I'm like, why does he keep saying this, I'm like, did my nan love parsley? But it I found out like, I was reading this blog about old Chilean stuff and basically it's a saying that like if you've got money for the little things in life, like the things that don't cost much or add a lot of flavour, you can call them herbs. Las yerbas. Peregil.
S: yeah, yeah, yeah, makes sense.
G: And there's sometimes albahaca (basil), like he mentions it all the time. So there's all these like hurdles to reading --
S: beautiful
G: -- what he's trying to say.
S: But what he was doing, he was working..?
G: He worked in like, import and export stuff. So like there's there's these lines about getting musical instruments in for Los Carabineros (the police).
S: OK? [laughing]
G: I'm like, what? Like getting musical instruments in and, and machinery for like, you know, food carts and stuff.
S: OK wow, but this must be must have been like Puerto Mont or another city?
G: Santiago.
S: Oh, really?
G: Sí. At that point, he was in Santiago
S: Wow.
G: Alone. I don't know. It's such a -- I'm like, I wish I was an actual investigator --
S: Yeah
G: because I've got this archive.
S: During the 60s? You know, 65...
G: He talks about Frei, Presidente Frei.
S: So it's the first year of Presidente Frei and we --
G: he hates them, and he's like, they're not Catholics, they're Communists.
S: Oh, yeah, yeah. So probably he was right-wing.
G: I think so, which I hate. I'm like, Oh my God.
S: Yeah, well, of course. Well, but we cannot judge people from the past with our standards, you know, like --
G: 100% -- that part of, of the process of reading the letters is like the number one most difficult part of it because like there's a part -- oh I hate it, but there's a part where he's like writing in a letter to my auntie, who's Margarita or Tolito. And he's like, you know, I'm so excited for you, Tolito. I want you, when you're in school in England, I want you to read, I want you to write. I want you to do everything the teachers say because -- and I make sure you don't forget Spanish, you know, make sure you know Spanish and I want you to learn English because then you will be a superior race.
S: Wow
G: Con Verde -- sangre verde [with green blood]
S: What? Green?
G: which apparently is like an affinity to the police and like government and stuff?
S: So the police in Chile, it's green, like they dress green. So yeah, yeah, the uniform.
G: See, I don't like this, but the like, superior race thing. I was like trying not to like get too down about it, but then my teacher was like, again, think about who this is. It's like a man from Calbuco who, basically, he grew up in an orphanage.
S: Wow, self-made man.
G: Yeah. Self-made man, yeah, Who moves to Santiago In the 60s and then marries an English woman and has two kids, yeah, which for him must have felt social climbing.
S: Yeah, of course. Upbringing. Yeah.
G: And then to send those kids to England to study, even though when they came here they had no money. And that's what a lot of the contents of the letters are about, like the fact that he sent them without money and he's so sorry. But yeah, that like superior race thing made me feel so uncomfortable.
S: Yeah, it's so interesting.
G: And at the same time, I sort of understand it because he just is trying to do what he could.
S: He was trying to do the best.
G: Yeah, but I don't like it! I don't like it! And I think like if he was alive, we would have had fights.
[laughing]
S: of course.
G: 100%. Yeah.
S: And Frei was the 1st president that did like the first redistribution of land. So he did like the first reforma agraria, which is mainly, you know, because in South America, all South American countries, they, you can really describe them using like oligarchy as a way of understanding how a handful of families are the owners of everything. You know, there was an English saying that I don't remember who said this, but that Chile is not a country, but a Country Club.
G: Oh, I don't like that.
S: So probably if he or his family or he was like from the South, probably he was in contact with more powerful families that owned land and they lost that land because of Frei. And before that, we had -- Yeah, I don't remember -- but there was a process of like trying to industrialize Chile. But after that there was also like a lot of US influence, so there was like a blacklist during the government of González Videla was like this blacklist of communists.
G: Of what?
S: Communists. So they were prosecuted. So I can really understand his positionality, you know, like in both cases.
G: So do I. And I don't like it!
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G: Ay, so maybe you can see a bit about where my head's at now in terms of this research. You know, part of the reason I want to do art dates is because I want to hear like, what is obsessing other people, what they've been obsessed with in the past, why that thing? And I ended up speaking to Sebastián about what happened when he was a student, seeing as we were in a degree show. And yeah, maybe from this point on in the podcast, like everything Sebastián will go on to say about painting, it really made me just want to put the letters back in the drawer. Let me be a painter instead.
*
G: Oh, you can lie down.
S: Wow
G: let me lie down. What was your degree show like?
S: So it was it was a long time ago. I only have a BFA, so this happened 13 years ago and it was a painting show and the topic was mainly the architecture from the 70s from the West Coast of the US.
G: Oh, Why?
S: It's weird, yeah, but I was trying to -- so I was using this archive of images from the most recently built buildings. LA, California. It is kind of futuristic architecture, a little bit like aircraft, like spacecraft, something, you know, with that kind of feeling, and so I used this archive of for us old images, but back then it was like the the image for the future. So it is this idea of this imagined future from the 60s, but that never like really happened and it looks old already. So my process of painting using those references was also working with a lot of layers, a lot of oil, like very tacky and heavy surface work. So they felt like heavy and dark. So I was using that as contradiction or in opposition to this initial idea of having something new that looks like the future. Like what did you study?
G: I did fine art. I used to be a painter. So my, yeah, my degree show was 10 years ago, but [laughing] I didn't paint for the degree show, I made a video telling the story of something that happened to me when I was a kid with my sister. When we were little. We both remember looking through the window and a bumblebee pulling tongues at us, which couldn't have happened. And it was like seeing a cartoon in real life. You know those like Bugs Bunny films where like he's in real life films, like he's being edited in. It was like that.
S: Like, what was that movie, Space Jam.
G: Space Jam, yeah it was like that but we both remembered it happening.
S: Wow, amazing.
G: And we still do. So that was what the film was.
S: Amazing.Yeah, yeah. And because of that it's like -- if you make a painting of that, it loses everything.
G: Exactly. I actually really like that type of art where it feels like gossip. It's like let me tell you about this thing that happened. I always thought painting was my favorite --
S: Medium?
G: Form, yeah, medium, until I like, started to hear those stories about like 'such and such did this performance and they sold snowballs on the streets of New York' I know someone who studied here and they swallowed a pearl -- una perla -- as their degree show piece.
S: Wow, for this year?
G: This is years ago. This is like maybe like 12, 15 years ago, but you know, like those little things? I don't know why I'm just finding like -- like I want to collect them.
S: Yeah, You know what it reminds, reminds me of a Chilean artist called Martín La Roche. He lives in Amsterdam and he's an amazing artist. I totally recommend like his work. And he has these, he has like 28 museums. He owns 28 museums.
G: What? [laughing]
S: Because he each of those museums are a hat and inside of the hat he has like little objects that were given from real artists for like donations for the museum. So he will do a performance like taking off his hat and telling you the story of each object and it is amazing. And he took that from a modernist French artist, I think, that he was like joking about like opening a museum on his own hat.
G: OK, wow. See, that's what I like. I used to have -- I've still got an auntie who whenever she calls before she says hello, she goes 'any news, any goss?' and I feel like it's become part of me to like -- I'm like hunting for like, cahwín [gossip].
S: Well, doing the podcast is a little bit of that.
G: Exactly.
S: Yeah, totally. How nice. Yeah. I was thinking about it because that also makes you more like attentive, like to what people are talking -- and also you are looking for that -- and that, of course, must mean that your life is more like connected to people you know, in a very like, genuine way. It's not just because of the pleasure of the gossip.
G: No, no, no, no. Yeah. For her, I think it was just like, that's what she lived off. She needed it every day. She needed like a hit.
S: Yeah, it gives you something. I remember that because my dad is now, like so much, into neuroscience. He's a psychiatrist.
G: Ah yeah, yeah.
S: He told me once that the biggest proportion of our memory and our capacity of conceptualisation and everything has to do with gossip.
G: Does it?! What? Why? On a like an evolutionary level, why?
S: Well, yeah, because we are part of these very complex societal, complex systems. We need to know what the other are thinking about us and what they are talking about each other in order to survive.
G: See, I don't feel like I do it for the survival. I do it for like the whimsy. Interesting.
S: But yeah, I mean it makes sense, no?
G: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it definitely does.
S: Seems that also having like these white parts of the eye, you know that I don't know how they are called, even in Spanish I don't --
G: Sclera?
S: Sclera, yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, there is like almost none other mammal has those parts in the eye visible. You know, they are all like, black, pupil and iris. Keeping visible those parts of the eye, it was also something related to to society -- to know where the other people were were looking at, you know, because it is very interesting because at the same time you are more vulnerable because others can really see if you are looking or not. But on the other hand you can pay attention like collectively and you can know if someone is paying attention to you or if it is looking to something else you know so.
G: Every so often I see the white of my cat's eye and it's like she becomes a human for a second.
S: Oh yeah? [laughing]
G: I always remember it like whoa, she's got them. Oh my God, I've never thought about that. Very rare, there's an expression.
S: But when she's like, very, very excited?
G: Yeah, and it like reveals something and you're like --
S: It's like the bumblebee for a moment.
G: Exactly!! It's like the bumblebee! Oh my God, that's so true. I want to -- let me take a picture while I'm -- I'll take a picture of the whites of your eyes.
S: Yeah, I guess so I'm going to look up.
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G: If you want to see the whites of Sebastián's eyes, head to artdates.co.uk. I'm taking a film camera with me on all of these dates because, because I want to! And yeah, I'm uploading all of the pictures onto that website along with the transcription if you'd rather read than listen. I'll say again, just because I think it's very kind, Take It Easy Lab in Leeds have agreed to develop all of these film photos for Art Dates for free. So along with that, they've given a code for listeners if you want to send film off to get developed and they'll post back prints but also digital scans. You can get 10% off with ARTDATE10.
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G: I didn't do much research on your practice before I came, but I did listen to one podcast interview you did on YouTube. There's like a video of you.
S: Ah okay, yeah, a long time ago.
G: 2023, but the first part of it, she says, you know, for you, what is painting? Or like, what do you get from it? And you talk about how it's a way to show like, what you're paying attention to.
S: Yeah, but you know, this can feel to me like finding an old written notebook and like not feeling that you are the same anymore. You know, I really like that. And now I even tried to push that in the process of painting -- to paint to a limit where you are contradicting your initial intent. So within the process, the painting becomes something alienated or so much different from you, you know?
G: What are you doing to alienate it?
S: So I have like several different tricks. One is that I paint, I don't know, around 20 paintings at the same time. So when I am back to the number one, I almost forgot what I was trying to do or maybe I would -- so the painting reaches a certain point and then I will cover almost everything with a semi translucent layer. So then I will go back or just dialogue with that precedent, you know with that information.
G: And try and like figure it out again.
S: Yeah, or to push into a different direction. And the third one that I can remember right now is like, just throw in different references to the same painting as if the painting was just or is just a surface where you can incorporate like different images, fragments, references over time. So yeah, from the starting point, you, I cannot really, really tell what is going to happen. Makes me feel so good because it gives me a sense of freedom always, you know, because I can -- yeah.
G: Wow. When you talk about it feeling good, I thought, Oh my God, that must be so scary.
S: Yeah.
G: like when I write a text, I try and like not speak to anyone else. I try and not bring any other references in. I try and do it as fast as possible so I don't forget what I'm trying to do. So the idea that I would like leave it, do 20 other texts, come back, put something over the top of it, make the font really faint and be like, wait, what was I trying to say? That sounds horrible. Why does that feel good? That's my worst nightmare.
[laughing]
S: Yeah.
G: Why does it feel good?
S: It is trying to perceive this abyss, and this can sound a little bit like mystical or it has something to do with spirituality, I think. It's trying to feel that like the limits or the boundaries of your own self. Or I'm trying to push a little bit, or trying to at least for a moment have contact with something that is unknown. But it is also part of you, you know? So it is like taking a drug or something, you know, and having like a trip being like in contact with an angle or an aspect of you that you were not aware of. And that that is very scary. But at the same time, it is so exciting because it like breaks the limits of your notion of self a bit. And that makes your work more about something related to the unknown or something bigger than you. So it's not about you anymore. And I really like that -- that feeling because it gives you, at least for me, it gives me the a sense of purpose or something like that, that you are related to something bigger.
G: Wow. I suppose it works because as well, you're often painting like a physical object outside of yourself. But so much of what I write about is going more inwards. So maybe it doesn't apply so much and that's why it sounds terrifying. But if I was to write portraits of somebody else or places or it would make more sense.
S: yeah, probably with poetry, yeah. And to find something new.
G: that's what you're trying to do. It makes sense. Wow. Have you ever been like a painting tutor? Have you ever done any teaching?
S: Yeah, yeah. I always I try always to have at least one or two students.
G: Really? Oh, that's so chic.
S: And last year I had -- this is very funny, this is kind of gossip -- last year I had I had a student from the US but she is first generation from Korean parents and she was like -- she was a mastermind undercover spy from the CIA.
[laughing]
G: What?? Did she just come out and say I'm a spy.
S: No, I did a little bit of research about her, but then during the process of teaching and doing the workshops together, it was all like by Zoom because she lives in the US [laughing] and she was telling me a little bit about it. And it's so -- she's like the sweetest, amazing student. But knowing that is so weird because you know, the CIA also was part of the coup d'etat in Chile and in so many other places. So she was involved in Iraq, she was involved in Vietnam. She was like -- she must have like blood on her hands, you know?
G: So what does a Korean spy paint? What did she paint?
S: Still life.
[laughing]
S: No, but she's amazing.
G: It's not where I thought this conversation was going to go.
[camera sound]
G: Can we can we go up this part?
S: I think so, yeah.
G: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
S: So these rooms are used as studios.
G: I assume so.
S: Yeah, it's the only explanation, right?
G: It must be. Part of the reason I wanted to bring you is because there's often very good paintings, very big as well.
S: Yeah, whenever I go to a show or a museum, I'm always just looking at the paintings.
G: Honestly same.
S: Yeah, my partner is like, she's trying to look everything, you know, like all other stuff.
G: Because that's polite. Yeah. I like this behind you. Oh my God, It's Charmander.
S: So flat.
G: It is, isn't it?
S: That one is amazing. I really like these.
G: I really like these pantings.
S: Wow.
G: I love the tiny bit of blue between them, the screen.
S: Beautiful, beautiful.
G: Taking a picture of you taking a picture of that.
S: and the warmth of everything.
G: Very warm palette.
S: With the blue --
G: but then the chair just being so like, no details.
S: Yeah, so flat. But it's good.
G: I feel like if I was painting this I would try and make that chair be so perfect, but that is so much better.
S: It's better, yeah.
G: It's so much better. Are these yours? Oh my God, they're so good.
S: So good. Like very smart solutions, like pictorially beautiful.
G: Have you got like a card or something?
L: All my cards ran out.
G: No, you're too popular!
L: I have my Instagram.
S: My favorite so far.
*
G: The artist we are raving about in this part of the podcast is Lakshya Bhargava, who was our favorite at that point and then still our favourite by the end of it. I got to have that nice feeling of us both having the same favourite thing by pure chance. Yeah. I really recommend looking him up. His Instagram is @rookie_artist_17.
*
G: You said you go to the studio in the mornings. Do you feel like you've got a good structure?
S: Yeah, totally. Too much maybe because it's every day like from Sunday to Sunday, so.
G: Every day. do you have a day off?
S: No, never.
G: Do you need it?
S: No, no, it's just pure pleasure. But I think like regarding my like partner and family and life, yeah, I really need to consider spending, I don't know, like the mornings during the weekends with her and with our dog, you know, and people.
G: Yeah. It's hard, isn't it? I'm like this writing. And yeah, I need to be -- I need to come away, yeah, and be in the real world.
S: Exactly.
G: Be a bit more social.
S: Yeah, well, you are here.
G: Yeah, no. So are you. Yeah, we are healing.
S: Yeah, this one is interesting. I went to see Alvaro Barrington show at Emalin. He has a very similar aesthetic like with this kind of dry paintings -- he has like this --
G: I quite like that dryness, I know what you mean.
S: You can really feel that the canvas is soaking.
G: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
S: And then you have this on top, the green that is like floating or pushing forward.
G: Do you, do you ever get that abstract in your work?
S: Sometimes in the process, yes.
G: But it never ends up.
S: Yeah, it's not the ending point, but there are like segments or fragments of my paintings that are very abstract and what is funny that is -- usually if I don't tell people what the reference is, they cannot see. Like, for example, if there's a drawing, like a very thin drawing that is almost disappearing on the background, it feels completely abstract. But as soon as I describe the reference, there's no turning back to see the abstract.
G: The trick is gone.
S: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like this -- it's a very weird process of -- have you ever tried to listen someone talking in English and trying to go abstract?
G: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I still get it with Chilean, but yeah, when it's in your own language and you like, let go a bit. I think I know what you mean.
S: Yeah, to just feel the noise, the sounds.
G: The shape of it.
S: Yeah, but it's very difficult to exercise once you know the language. It's the same with visuals, I think, once you recognise something, yeah, it's very difficult to trick your mind.
*
G: We carried on meandering around the degree show like we were literally there for hours. That degree show is so big. Sebastian spoke about, you know, how sometimes when he's travelling back to Chile, he will take some paintings in his luggage and I realised that must be another form of alienation in his process to work on the same painting in different places. You know, I only ever think of like writing or sketchbooks as being like these mobile things, but I just love this image of the paintings being part of that too. We also saw Noemi Conan's work. This is a painter whose work I've been obsessed with for like a while now. In the show we got to see these canvases all linked together of people and chainlink fences and loads of cats and and then this huge image of a cat smoking while it's sat on the back of a horse. Like just like the ciggy coming out of its mouth and this big S-shaped smoke trail above. I would have bought that painting there and then if I had the money. I literally took like a terrible film photo of the cat smoking on the back of the horse as like my own postcard souvenir. You know like when you leave like a museum gift shop.
*
S: So I'm just back from a trip to Korea and Japan, and I had a show in Seoul and I've been like, doing a bit of research about like classic Korean painting, landscape painting. And there's this school called Korean True Vision Landscape Painting, which sounds like, I don't know --
G: True vision.
S: Sounds a little bit like high tech. No, Yeah. But it's a very traditional way of like interpreting the role of a painter as someone that needs to be -- It's a really romantic way of understanding, as far as I know -- someone that needs to be in front of the subject matter and needs to be like affected by it. And then he or she will paint that scene, but not necessarily representing -- it is not photographic and it is not like describing -- not even close to Japanese traditional paintings or even Chinese. It is a completely different way of brush stroke, brushwork, you know? So there is something that I really like about this school and it is the use of patterns in the brush marking, you know, in the brushwork? So they will describe the textures of of the forest just by repeating the same pattern. So overall it gives you like this impression of something very flat, but then you can like put your nose on -- touch with your nose the -- well, in this case, the book, and see all these little patterns. And I really like this double position of the viewer, someone that can see the whole as something as a landscape, and then get closer and see something like a pattern or just like little marks. So I've been working like a new body of work, using as a background and making reference to this school of Korean painting, so they are mainly landscapes, but I've been using this pattern-making with very old brushes so it's gives you like a texture of something, I don't know, like, yeah, like a very particular texture, like that resembles of a forest or something do.
G: Do you feel like it's going well?
S: Yeah, it's going very well. So on top of that, like initial reference to those landscapes, I am using something that I bought in Japan as well that is called 'Gofun' and it is like a mixture of crushed seashells mixed with rabbit skin glue. So it is like a white pigment but it's semi translucent.
G: Wow. Has it got like a shimmer?
S: Not really. It's very opaque, but I was using marble dust on my previous paintings. So this feels like a -- something similar but different at the same time. So I used that as a layer in between. So I've been painting now, for example, today I painted on top of this dried layer of crushed seashell with rabbit skin glue and it feels like so exquisite because when it dries it is like very porous, so absorbs and behaves almost like a paper. So I can go again with another layer of this brush marking.
G: I feel like when I used to paint, I would have found that very frustrating. I would want, yeah -- I would feel like it was taking the paint away from me, like give me it back [laughing]
S: No, but this again is like one of my processes of -- you try to do a mark, but then the response of the surface changes your intention. So it's again trying to alienate. Alienate? Alienate myself. So yeah, I often paint on wooden boards, unprimed wooden boards. So they would absorb --
G: That's hard! Oh my God.
S: Yeah. So that's what I'm up to. But it's been fun and I've been growing on size.
G: It seems that you mostly do small, on the smaller side.
S: Yeah.
G: But I suppose if you want that trick of like something close up and something far away, it's better if it's bigger.
S: Exactly.
G: Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
*
G: As we carried on, Sebastián told me about a Chilean book club he's been part of in London, and he said that they've been reading a lot of Argentinian writers like Mariana Enriquez, Samanta Shweblin, And he also recommended Chilean filmmaker Maitel Alberdi's documentaries so I need to look them up after I finish this work.
[camera sound]
S: And I always think that if you are like truly talented or gifted, or if it is like very easy, for example, for you to paint, you are not going to become like a very good painter because you need that struggle, you know, to push, like to keep pushing, to keep doing.
G: Yeah, I do I feel like I see something similar with that actually -- and maybe I'm thinking about it because we're here -- were like the students who are like really good often get signed by a gallery and then make the same thing for a few years and then just stop.
S: Yeah.
G: It's so sad.
S: Yeah, no, but it's true. Yeah, totally.
G: It's so odd.
S: Yeah, but if you have been like struggling with the process --
G: -- then you just carry on struggling and you always are moving forward.
S: Exactly, and discovering new things.
*
G: And I think when we were on the third floor of the building, we bumped back into more work by Claudia, the Chilean artist whose work we'd seen at the beginning with the monkey puzzle tree. It was a filing cabinet full of dirt, and there were more shells, I think, inside. Yeah, we noticed that it was like work without the indigenous elements and spoke about how difficult it can be to show work like that when it's taken so far out of context. You know, different country, degree show, that kind of thing.
And that's especially when, like, students, artists, are working without curators, which usually works to bridge the gap. I was lucky because Sebastian could bridge some of that gap for me, but like, it's hard to know what other people took from it.
And yeah, we spoke loads about Chile, the different places I'm going to be going. And yeah, bit about like the difficulties in this notorious language too --
G: ... except when I was in school, but with Spain standard Spanish. And then I, I never knew until recently that there was like so many Spanishes and it has driven me insane because genuinely, there's only so much space inside the brain -- for me, it feels like, I don't know if that's true -- and I accidentally have taken up so much of like the memory with the wrong words. [laughing] I am so annoyed. I feel so cheated.
S: No, but I know what you mean. But I think that you can -- if you put more and more and more, it's easier.
G: Do you think? Oh, I don't know, I hope so.
S: But have you heard about like these techniques to memorize? Like the Giordano Bruno mnemotecnia, the techniques to remember? This was very important during the medieval period here in Europe because people, normal people wouldn't know how to write, so you need to -- the exercise consists on imagining a table full of different objects, but objects that you can remember well. You know, but very specific at the same time. So then you can associate for each object on that table something that you want to remember
G: Okay, yeah.
S: So you have like a parallel system and when you are remembering that table full of objects, you are capable of remembering this other -- I don't know -- like verses.
G: So it doubles.
S: Yeah, if you double the effort [laughing] so if you know like a word in Spanish from Spain and then also in Chilean Spanish, and then on top of that, you can even try to relate that with an object.
G: Yeah, Yeah. OK, OK. That's interesting. Sometimes -- I don't do that, but I like try and animate the word. So like freeeennaaaarrrrr. Do you know what I mean? [frenar means to slow down.] OK, or like esmalte. So in my head, whenever it's like -- esmalte, esmalte, like it's going on to the nails. [Esmalte is nail varnish or enamel and as I said it, I like mimicked painting my nails.]
S: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's good.
G: Yeah, that's helped. That's been helpful.
--
G: But I do feel like there's only so far I can go with, like, making my own sign language off to be this bridge between Chilean and English. Oh God, my head is so full. And then I'd like an actual test of the language because as we were on our way out, we bumped into the artist whose work we've been seeing all over the building.
S: Oh, another?
G: Isn't this just the end? No. No, I think this is the exit.
S: Hola.
C: Hola, ¿cómo estás?
S: Bien. No te conozco pero yo soy chileno y -- bueno trabajo, sí.
C: ¿Sí? ¿Habías visto mi trabajo?
G: ¿Claudia?
--
And basically, Sebastián was asking about Claudia's family and she told us about their migration within Chile. She also spoke to us about how Pewen, the monkey puzzle tree, is still spoken about using the colonial name for it, Araucaria Araucana, instead of its original native name; and how language is part of colonisation and so it can be part of decolonisation too.
-- Entendí casi todo pero no todo --
[I understood almost everything, but not everything]
The sirens were loud back on Euston Rd. as we walked to Diwana Bhel Poori House for lunch, so I'll repeat what we spoke about because it is actually sort of unbearable listening back to the audio. Yeah, I think Sebastián spoke to me about his time doing Turps. It's an art school in London with an artist-led painting programme, and he described like how the very first group crit changed his entire practice because it was one of those crits where the person whose work is being looked at is not allowed to speak.But he said, like the effect of that was that he went from doing a painting and one sitting to this really slowed down current practice he has where he's not really sure when a painting is going to end. And I stopped recording and we switched to Spanish and we had lunch while I told him about the book that I'm writing, which I'll get into on a different episode. But also this sense that every conversation I'm going to have will open things back up, and that the trip to Chile is going to do that even more. And what if I never know when the writing is going to end, the same way that Sebastián isn't sure about his paintings. And you know, I thought, like, maybe there's something about that that actually feels quite good. To end, I asked Sebastián where he wanted to send people when this episode was over, and it was to the song by Fecundo Cabral called No Soy de Aquí Ni Soy de Allá which means I'm not from here, but I'm not from there either, and I'm going to link that on the page with the transcription and photos on artdates.co.uk. Thank you for listening to this episode with Sebastián Espejo, and I'll see you in episode 4.
*
G: Diwana Bhel Poori House. Perfect. OK, I will stop the recording. Goodbye everyone, goodbye.
S: How long was that?
G: Don't know.
S: Like a couple of hours at least.
[jingle]
*
some links:
> one more time, Sebastian’s instagram because you should see his paintings
> the website to watch chilean films for free: ondamedia.cl
> a link to Claudia Ramirez Julio’s profile on the Slade website
> the painter we both loved in the show! Lakshya Bhargava
> Noemi Conan’s paintings ie. cats smoking and so on
and finally, the song Sebastián mentions at the very end of the episode: