After party at The Birdcage, 80 Columbia Road, London, E2 7QB, from 21.00.

 

Click here for images of The Laughter Paradox the Stella Capes show

 

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An interview between Stella Capes & Rebecca May Marston, 20th September, 2006


RMM: Ok. Hmmm. How are you?
SC: Fine thanks.
RMM: Um, shall we just… Let’s just start with the first question Ryan asked Matthew.
SC: Why?
RMM: I don’t know. Just because… of continuity.
SC: Ok.
RMM: When was the last time you were in the studio?
SC: I work at home, so just this morning.
RMM: Why do you work at home?
SC: Um, because I don’t really need a studio. I do a lot of work on the computer and for the sort of sculptural stuff I do where I need the space I’ve actually learnt to be quite organised. I like it, I like it a lot. It takes the pressure
off sitting in a studio and worrying about stuff. I much prefer working at home. But it’s to do with being skint originally.
RMM: What’s the… you know how you said before that the title of the video work you’ve done is quite cryptic…
SC: I did say it was cryptic. But it’s just that unless people have knowledge of the area, they’re not going to know what it means.
RMM: What is the title?
SC: From Ravenser Odd.
RMM: Ok, so what is it? What does it mean?
SC: It refers to the location, a 3 1/2 mile peninsula on the Humber Estuary. It’s quite an unusual geological landform. The reason it exists is to do with the eroding coastline to the North, which has a history of lost towns and villages
that have fallen off the edge. Erm… the coastline erodes about two metres per year and all of that shifting debris goes south to form what’s now called Spurn Point.
RMM: ’Spurn Point’. So the name Ravenser Odd?
SC: Well the landform has a lifespan of 250 years. Every 250 years the sea erodes the whole peninsula, wipes it away, along with the villages that form on the end
of it. It’s got quite a strange history. Like, I think there were hermits who
lived on it. I don’t think any community has actually realised the consequences
of what ends up happening to the land until quite recently. So their communities are destroyed and they only live there a certain amount of generations, then they all flee back inland. Erm… the name, Ravenser Odd, which is the title of the film, was the landform before last.
RMM: Why did you title it with a previous name?
SC: Well, I wanted to draw attention to the place that was there before. Just bringing in that aspect of time really, about things changing. And also about the possibility of where all this matter came from – you know, the objects placed on the beach. Because, I mean, it wasn’t necessarily intended for the objects to appear swept up from a lost town or village or something, but it was important
that there was at least the potential of it.
RMM: They’re odd things to be swept up…
SC: Yeah, I got interested in the place, and then when I had this idea for burying this man – which was actually to do with something completely different – which
was to do with this idea that if you bury someone upright from the neck-down then they’re not able to laugh. It’s to do with you’re diaphragm not being able to collapse under the pressure. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter.
RMM: Does the laughing come from the gramophone?
SC: Yes, it’s a twenties laughing record. It was a bizarre trend in the twenties and thirties to have them at parties… perhaps to make it seem like you had more friends or something.
RMM: And you know the kind of dirge-like music is that coming form the gramophone as well? Are they laughing in response to it?
SC: Well yeah, on these laughing records the laughter is usually set around somebody not being able to do something. Which is one of the reasons I became interested in it in the first place because a lot of my work tends to look at elements of failure.
RMM: Why do you make work that looks at failure?
SC: I think it’s a particularly timely and relevant aspect of the human condition… alongside it being something that I empathise strongly with… Well… There’s just something very honest about it.
RMM: Um… let’s do some last questions now. How was art school?
SC: Royal College I loved. I think the thing about Royal College, or any college, it so depends on the department you’re in and when you’re there etc…
RMM: And which department were you in?
SC: Painting. I really think my year was quite unusual because most people stopped painting – they all re-assessed their work and began again.
RMM: Were you exclusively making painting when you applied to that department, because now your practice is… I don’t want to say multi-disciplinary… but you work with totally different media now.
SC: Say it. Yeah. Well a month into the Royal College I threw all my work away,
and decided to throw all my ideas away, and everything I’d done before. Like, conceptually and physically, and… yeah, I remember I was with Rose Finn-Kelcey, my tutor at the time, and we marched my paintings out the door and chucked them in
the skip.
RMM: That’s sounds so ‘art school’ Stella. Were you scared to throw it all away
and try to start without your previous ideas?
Sc: Not scared, no, because I was in the best environment to take a risk… A bit daunted maybe and a bit lost at times but it was exciting ‘cause I got to play about with video cameras and fireworks. It was brilliant actually because I was then sat in my studio going “what the fuck am I going to do?” And… you’re sitting there going – and this is very art school as well – going “what do artists do?” Well, you think of a thing and then, you sort of make it into something more interesting or something? Is that what…? Yeah it was weird.
RM: Can you really ‘start over’, afresh?
SC: I’m not sure now. Like you said, it’s very 'art school'. I was determined to turn myself into the sort of artist I wanted to be before I left college. I think it’s good to constantly re-assess what you're doing to make sure it’s still you though.
RMM: And what was the last show you saw?
SC: The last show I saw. Sorry, I’m really rubbish with memory questions. Well… I went to the ICA one, Surprise Surprise. I thought it was really weak. I think it was potentially interesting – the concept – because of the idea that artists might suddenly make this bit of work that’s out of character… But I don’t actually think that many artists do.
RMM: What’s your relationship, in general, to seeing other artists work and seeing exhibitions? Do you do a lot of it?
SC: Yeah I do. I don’t go to many openings. That’s my problem.
RMM: Well that’s not a problem is it.
SC: It is. Going to openings is ‘everything’.
RMM: No, come on, it’s not. No. That’s rubbish. Surely artists who have integrity don’t whore their arses around openings night after night.
SC: Yeah but the whole point of openings is that you go to openings and you get pissed with somebody who’s going to curate a show, blah, blah, blah… ’I think it’s such a fundamental part of how the art world works, and I hate that. And that’s
why I don’t go. I can’t stand it.
RMM: That’s so mercenary though. There are other ways of doing it.
SC: What are the alternatives?
RMM: I don’t know exactly because I think the alternative is going back to that antiquated idea of the artist sitting in their studio waiting to be found…
SC: Doesn’t happen. Sorry, you’ve uprooted something that gets me really annoyed.
RMM: Sorry. Ok. We should probably… this is 29 minutes and the last one was 20 minutes and it took me hours. Is there anything else you want to say? Shall we
just leave it at that then?
(00:29:49)


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Stella Capes was born in Sheffield in 1978. She gained an MA Fine Art Painting from Royal College of Art, London, in 2003, and a BA(Hons)Fine Art Painting from the University of Brighton in 2000. In 2005 Stella had a solo show at The International 3, Manchester, and was awarded the Byam Shaw School of Art/Cocheme Fellowship.