Long Range Studio Visit

In this long range studio visit Brendan Sullivan and Joe O’Rourke discuss their time at PADA and how they both took inspiration from the history of the area and also the material artifacts and detritus that surround the studios. They also talk about their relationship to drawing and how they both return to this simplest of medium as a point of departure.

Joe O’Rourke: So Brendan, how did you find your time at PADA?

Brendan Sullivan: Hi Joe, I’ve stammered at knowing how to honestly sum it up, my time at PADA was wonderful, probably the best thing I’ve done for my studio practice (and mental health) in a long time. It was actually my first proper residency and I really relished the time in the studio and in Barreiro, usually the last to leave the studio late nights (hanging with Vinny, RIP). 

How was the time for you? How long was your residency? 

JO: It was my first residency too and I was there for one month, which flew by! Sad to hear about Vinny too. Similarly, I really relished the experience, it felt like all the right ingredients were there for making work- plenty of space (physical and mental), time, and inspiration in both the location and the people around me. I found the history of the old workforce really interesting and how the remnants of this past existed in the landscape today.

I enjoyed looking through your work. I see elements of surrealism, cinema/ theatre/ stages/ props in there, which I find intriguing. I also like the area you seem to be working in, between painting and sculpture.  Did you find the residency influenced/ changed your ideas and/or processes?

BS: Ah thanks, I’d say you’re pretty spot on with picking up those cues to cinema/ theater/ stages - I similarly like how that area between painting and sculpture shows up in your work. I also feel a real kinship to the smaller black and white sketches, they are really great. 

I definitely felt some real pull / change / influence from so many aspects of the area, but probably the most humorously direct was how much grids started popping up in a lot of pieces, no doubt an influence of the tiled buildings, the grided enclosure over the little interior outdoor space in our cottage (what would you call that lil area? A patio maybe?) and the areas where a sidewalk grid gives way to some wild growth. A felt drawn to those moments that are so beautifully available all around the industrial park - the traces of structure / history / industry contrasted by and mixing with (or contrasting) the natural / living / wild nature. 

In an even more direct way, I used a lot of found material from around the industrial park in Barreiro in the work I made at PADA, which was not unheard of in my process before but I really leaned into with the help of the big beautiful dumpsters of the industrial park. I was inspired by a lot of what I found taking the shopping carts around and climbing into those dumpsters, but it also helped further inform something I’d always been into with my work but never felt intentional, using/reclaiming discarded materials to make my work, things with their own inherent histories and wear, and in effect buying less stuff.  

Also, worth mentioning I used gravel from the street outside the studio, rocks, resin and the old iron pellets from the former industrial zone in several pieces - “Rock Garden I” & Rock Garden II (Red grid)”, which both live at PADA now, for they were far too heavy to mail home. 

Did you feel any direct correlations / influences / changes to your practice from the time, the place, the people? (I know, a broad question)

BS: Ah I love that little detail for the “The Night Comes On”, really nice piece! I would definitely say there has been an effect on my work, and how I think about my work, since PADA. The body of work I made at the residency was quite a step into larger scale for the first time in a long time, in a funny way it has allowed me to work on smaller scale works on paper, with the thought of it building towards some larger scale pieces that live in the sculpture-meets-painting space. 

The time at PADA helped me solidify the idea that it really is all coming from the drawings, the sculptures are an extension of the drawings, a way of drawing in the space. Same with the shadow projection pieces. 

I’ve not done much collaborative work as of late, it’s a mode I do enjoy but I get pretty project specific. Actually, a good friend and talented artist, Tommy Coleman, and I used to have a collaborate project where we passed back and forth images digitally and set the limitation that we could only work on them on our phones or what we could do within Instagram (at the time). That all lived in an Instagram account we called APP GALLERY, a lil tongue in cheek but it was fun (RIP). 

Also, I’ve similarly done some album art for friends, a logo for a Baltimore restaurant and working on an animation piece for a friend’s music now. Circling back a bit - do you find that most of the work starts with drawing for you or do you approach the paintings differently? 

JO: No I would say for me I draw and paint for slightly different reasons but I don’t see one as coming first. Drawing can often be for a time when I have less energy, or want to work sat down, or have more limitations (and expectations, as I mentioned earlier). 

My big paintings rarely begin from a drawing, normally just a mood or feeling, and then I like to work everything out about how to show this in the process of painting it. The painting often begins with the feeling of needing to release something. After an initial splurge, sometimes they are done. But usually (for better or worse) they get worked into, back and forth over several months. Sometimes this clouds over their initial freshness, and other times I think it can make the painting more weighty, dense and hopefully interesting.

Do you ever find that your drawings are more successful than your sculptures, or feel more fresh? Have you seen the sculptor Ron Nagle’s drawings? I think you’d enjoy them, and to me they resonate more than his sculptures- although I can’t really judge sculptures I’ve not seen in real life!

Do you have any exhibitions coming up?

BS: I feel similar about paintings myself, usually comes more from a feeling of wanting the tactile activity of it all, moving paint around, where as the sculptures that often incorporate paintings into them tend to feel like three dimensional sketches at times. Anyone who has come into any studio I have had at any point can probably attest to the fact that everything is super precariously set up, on the verge of falling over or falling apart. All comes from that feeling of wanting to set something up enough to “get it on its feet” - the hard part comes in the finalizing phase. This was another way that PADA really helped my studio progression, the fact that there was an exhibition at the end of each month meant I had to nail down some decisions. 

I hadn’t seen any of Ron Nagle’s drawings till just now, I am into them, makes me think similarly of how much I enjoy Erwin Wurm’s drawings.  

Unfortunately I don't have anything nailed down yet in terms of exhibitions coming up, but I do have a few exciting prospects / pitches on the horizon - proposing a 2 person show with Miranda Javid, a talented artist and animator / friend, at a local gallery up here in Kingston New York, as well as a potential installation in an abandoned store-front turned artist project space in NYC. The main exciting thing on the horizon is a return to PADA this coming summer for 3 weeks in the new live/work space they are starting up. I am into the symmetry of that within this conversation, started with PADA and will end there haha. 

How about yourself, any exhibitions on the horizon? I’ve been enjoying seeing the new work from the most recent shows! 

JO: That precariousness of the work you mention, the suggestion of something on the brink of falling over or apart, must be what led me to suggest at the start of this conversation that your work has a theatrical or cinematic quality. I find your sculptures quite helpful to look at actually, as my own work is beginning to suggest to me that it wants to break away from the flat surface of a wall. 

I do like those Erwin Wurm drawings you mention, a similar unsettling and satirifcal absurdist vibe to David Byrne’s dingbat drawings.

They sound like great plans, I think your work would really suit collaborating with an animator. I have an exhibition coming up in October at CBS Gallery in Liverpool, quite a small space so I plan to create an immersive experience. Ah! I’m very jealous about returning to PADA and excited to see what work you make there. I think I will have to return myself in the near future!