6
The Lowdown Times
Thursday 6th June 2013
DO LOOK DOWN WE TALK WITH CHEEKY ARTIST PAHNL ABOUT STENCILS, MEMORY AND TOY SOLDIERS AHEAD OF HIS DEBUT SOLO EXHIBITION AT NOTTING HILL’S LONDON WEST BANK What’s your name? Pahnl.
freehanding it all in but I like the fact they’re tiny.
How do you pronounce that? The same way you’d say the word ‘panel’.
Yeah, why is everything always so small in your work? I always enjoyed playing with action figures and little toy soldiers in the garden when I was a kid, so maybe it comes from that.
And why call yourself that? I like comics and I sometimes see spaces in the street as panels to drop my characters into. So when’s the last time you got something up? I’m putting stickers up all the time, which is my main medium now but I’ve been focusing on this solo show since the start of the year.
Maybe I have a god complex, haha, but I just really enjoy bringing this miniature world to life. From a practical perspective, working at a relatively small scale means my stencils and stickers are easier to transport. Access is a virtue.
Selling out then? Eh, it’s a progression. It’s my first solo show and I’m giving it all I got. I’m itching to get back outside and have some fun.
What have you found the most difficult in realizing the show? Juggling all the different aspects of it like an octopus given thirty balls to juggle for six months.
There’s no contest between ‘on street’ and ‘off street’ work. The city always wins. But right now, in this moment, the show takes priority.
I mean, I designed the flyer, wrote the press release, created a short announcement video, produced an entire newspaper, promoting the show, organizing all the finanaces, organizing a new print edition or just the logistics of getting all the work from where I live in Oxford to the gallery in London is a hassle.
Tell me about the show‘s concept... I’m painting a city, which’ll be filled with my little characters and buildings, directly onto the walls of the gallery. The city will be called ‘Lowdown’. There’s other work on the first floor but the ground floor is the real focus of the show. Why? I remember reading in one book that gallery walls were white because they aim to immortalize their art, to make it untouchable. But when it comes to street art, you don’t get that permanence. It’s transient, ephemereal. I’m not saying this is a ‘street art show’ because it‘s not. It’s not on the street. I just wanted to do my best to recreate that sense of discovering something for yourself, rather than explicitly giving it to you on a canvas. I’ve always strived to make my street work acknowledge and interact with its environment and the space inside the gallery was just too interesting to not make direct use of. Does that mean people can touch Lowdown? As long as your fingers aren’t dirty, you’re welcome to have a little poke. I guess you’re painting the city with stencils? Just maybe, haha. What is it that draws you to stencils? Stencils are this thing I can spend ages designing and tinkering with on the computer and then I’m left to enjoy the visceral act of just spraying the piece. I love how pure that moment can be. I also just love a good, clean line. If my characters were larger, I might be
That’s before I’ve even gotten onto drawing the 40 metre long painted city, then printing it, cutting each and every stencil by hand and then having to paint all of it onto the gallery walls only four days before the show opens, as well as hanging the work on the first floor and documenting the process through film the whole time. It’s a nightmare that I will look back upon and chuckle at. It feels good to be alive. One man army, eh? Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of collaboration, but I like the absolute control and the fact I don’t have to rely on anyone else’s availability. And what has it been like to create an entire city from scratch? It’s not like I was starting from day zero. I’ve been painting these figures for over six years now (and generally stenciling for over a decade), so I’ve a vast library to call on. What that means is that I’ve a slew of things that I’ve already spent a lot of time on. Things that were the focal point of a canvas or street piece, like a garbage can or a power line. If I was drawing a power line for the first time for the sake of this painted city, I don’t think I’d have spent as much time on it, recognizing it as a very small element of a much larger scene. Okay but how long can you really spend on a power line? Ages! Keeping things simple, clear, understandable and, not least of all, stencilable is a tricky thing.
I’m often painting things with just one or two stencil layers to them. Minimalism, especially when my figures are rarely taller than 10cm, is a beautiful challenge. But on the whole, creating the city was easy with a back catalogue of objects and figures? You just copy and paste stuff around the place and you’re done! Go on, give it up, it’s not actually difficult. At times, I wished it was as easy as that but no, I’ve done my best to make every scene unique. I don’t think I’ve repeated many things. At most, it’s a few birds and bins that repeat around the place. And the buildings were something I had never previously tackled in my work. Figures were either on the street, where the structures were already provided, or the studio work had my characters on abstract backgrounds. I must’ve spent a good month trying to work out how to paint the buildings so that they wouldn’t look out of place in the world I had already created, whilst allowing me enough room to play around inside them and have my characters interact with. This newspaper you’re making, does it have a Page 3 girl? No. Shame. Well tell me more about it anyway... Every town or city has its own newspaper, so I thought I’d make one for Lowdown. The paper (this paper you’re reading) is full of articles relating to scenes going on in the painted city. It really adds another layer to the show. And tying into the idea of transience, the paper is another perfect medium to reinforce that idea. Unlike books, newspapers are pretty disposable and get used to wrap delicate things when you move, to line the cat’s litterbox or just to cover a nice table when a kid is messing around with paints, haha. So just like the painted city, which will only be available to see for a week whilst the show is open, the paper is a throwaway thing too. And it’s a great way to take the piss out of the media. I spent about two weeks on the newspaper, laying it out, writing it (there’s over 10,000 words) but I think it looks and feels like the real thing. I don’t like to do things by halves. It’s also a great way to interview yourself and ask the questions you want to answer. Yes. Yes, it is. So what if someone wants to buy a scene from Lowdown? There’s a bunch of frames on hand for
visitors to use and choose their favourite scene with. Once they’ve picked a scene, I paint it for them on canvas after the show ends. I like the idea of all these frames stuck around the city, showing what parts meant the most to people. I think it adds an interesting layer of interactivity to the show. It’s a little like when people cut Banksy works out of the wall. Yeah, somewhat. Although I don’t think the gallery would be happy about me cutting chunks of the wall out to give to collectors. I prefer to think of it as a physical representation of memory. We remember the moments we enjoy, those are the things that stick with us. If someone likes a scene from the painted city, they can get it painted on a canvas and it’ll sit on their wall long after the city has disappeared
and been painted over. Only people who have physically visited the show and experienced the painted city can walk away with a part of it. I absolutely love that as a metaphor for memory. Do you think people will actually go for it though? I honestly don’t have a clue and right now I’m just more concerned about getting the city painted onto the gallery walls within the space of four days...there’s a lot of fiddly detail. If people go for the frame thing, brilliant. If people don’t, they can still enjoy the painted city, the newspaper and even all of the stencils used to paint Lowdown will be on display. The physical stencils are on show? Yeah, I wanted to show the skill and