Joanne Robertson
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The art world is culturally diverse, an ever changing multi disciplinary field attracting all kinds of attention and is rich both in terms of talent as well as the huge financial input from collectors and multinational corporations. Women are integral to diversity within the arts, now balancing a traditionally male dominated sphere both in music and visual art. While discussing this with Joanne Robertson, a highly talented artist and singer-songwriter based in Stoke Newington, she pointed out that the movement for equality between the sexes isn’t complete and told me that women artists are usually paid less per painting than their male counterparts.
Joanne is an artist and musician originally from Blackpool. She is a professional artist who makes her living from her creativity, she lives and works in London now, having studied at the Glasgow School of Art and completing her MA at the world renowned Slade School of Fine Art in London. She comes from a working class northern background, her mother instilled in her a stoical sense of get up and go, due in part to her medical background. Her father served in Bosnia during the Balkan conflict as a peacekeeper, called up to serve as a member of the Territorial Army.
Our first topic of discussion is the sometimes bitchy nature of the art world and Joanne doesn’t want to say too much, except that people can react badly to feisty young women. She moves on fluidly to discuss her career and interests in an engaging manner. Joanne is successful and full of interesting information and ideas, I wanted to get an insight into her life.
Success seems to be within the grasp of those artists who stand out from the crowd with individual style and who also maintain a consistently high quality output, however as always for artists the financial rewards are fickle. Joanne has a creative buzz around her that you can sense from the way she can hold and guide a conversation, her fingers drumming the table top, the ability to focus on small details and an occasional tendency to slip away on a tangent, particularly when talking about her musical passion. Throughout the conversation the musical knowledge she has is eclectic and sometimes obscure to me.
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“Great Changes Since I’ve Been Born”
It is this creativity and devotion to art that has allowed Joanne to live largely from the proceeds of the art she creates and sells, also gaining her the attention of Britain’s most famous contemporary female artist Tracy Emin. This kind of attention is well deserved and uplifting for a hard working artist, Joanne said that she feels Tracy is one of the few people she has met who really ‘gets’ what her work is about and Emin enthusiastically bought a painting titled ‘Great Change Since I’ve Been Born’, now residing in Emin’s studio. Emin suggested that Robertson’s work could appear to be ‘stupid’ in a provocative way, angering people because they have to challenge this idea to understand her unconventional art.
Emin wrote an article about in the Independent (06/6/09), saying that Joanne ‘has the courage to just walk away at a point when the painting is most alive. Her works have an edge and a complexity but there is nothing cynical in them… You can see that she knows her art history and she uses it to her advantage.” Plaudits like this from respected artists are hard to come by. Another very talented artistand writer, Martin Creed has been an important supporter and friend to Joanne, and has employed her to work in his studios.
Richard Greer, a British collector buys her work and she has had recent shows in London, and soon will have work displayed in Paris. Greer bought one painting Joanne described for me, depicting Kurt Cobain’s baby collaged onto black canvas with elemments such as an earing piercing the canvas and a seaweed like effect, creating an underwater feeling to a piece that directly referencesmusic and celebrity.
Joanne says she has moved more strictly to painting recently, utilising bamboo sticks and making collages with clothes, putting text into her paintings and all with her strong figurative style. The paintings I saw were partly abstract, organic and rich in colour, there were no bold lines but a blend of colours that evoked flesh and physical energy being released. One picture shows a kneeling female form in the nude brought together with a strong blend of warm colours, while the painting was clear and somehow bold Joanne’s style in this painting leaves something to the imagination by holding back on details. Joanne says her style has changed a lot over the last couple of years, and some of the work she did in the past was ’dark and depressed’, creepy and coming from a time when she was self-destructive.
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“Bee”
When we start discussing her music Joanne begins by saying how important learning more about music is for her, learning more is the way to bypass the commercial pop that dominates the radio. The process of learning through art and music is an almost endless resource, so why do so many bands stick to a preset formula?
Joanne believes that strong creativity comes through taking risks and that many people will not naturally take this approach, it is not encouraged through education and while good art is inimitable many people will try to imitate what is successful. Joanne speculates that the music industry is avoiding artists who will rebel, that way the industry can control their artists. While non-conformity is definitely an important concept for many artists it is threatening to the establishment and risky for the money men.
‘I like old music’ she says, and later stating that much poetry in popular modern music is often awful, I have to agree. Musically Jo wants to stay ‘underground’ and consciously avoids releasing music that will fit into the commercial sphere, ‘I believe you can write a song and it has nothing to do with genres and making money… If it’s powerful enough it will transcend money and everything’, she says. After finishing at the Slade Joanne has managed to solely survive by selling her art. Recently she has realised she wants to be a painter ‘who does cool band stuff’, that way she can concentrate on painting and continue to vent her performing energies into her musical career.
‘I can do my paintings and you can come and see me perform’ she says, and this seems entirely feasible. Putting the energy into music is one way that Joanne feels she can be part of a wider culture. Performing to small select audiences is something that will be coming up in the future, as Joanne feels that performing to large audiences is stressful and not as fun as smaller intimate events. Recording music and releasing it is one of the future priorities for Joanne, to develop her music and defy convention, but continuing her prolific painting career seems to be what excites her more than being a well known singer.
At this stage her years of artistic development have led to Joanne feeling that ‘finally my painting is really, genuinely mine’. Hard work and plenty of mistakes is what makes an artist individual, and has allowed Joanne to find a point in her art that is fulfilling. Going out to have fun isn’t as satisfying or important for Joanne as it once was maybe, but she admits she still goes out a lot.
The art scene itself is not what is truly inspiring, it is the art itself that is the inspiration and Joanne feels that because of this, in order not to alienate her audience she avoids being part of a wider scene that attaches its own meaning to artists and their work. Feminism is important to Joanne, she feels that many men now don’t feel the need to look beyond their masculinity and explore feminism, which is a big mistake when much feminist writing and art has come from men. Feminism is massively important in society and as part of art history and it is obvious that there is a strong femininity to Joanne’s painting.
Joanne thinks that an interconnected community of artists and musicians exists more overtly in the USA outside of the commercialized industry, whereas here the ties seem to be less strong. ‘If you look at history so many cool bands were doing art as well… it’s DIY’, this is an interesting point, explaining how the endorsement of art institutions is much less important than the reactions of her friends and peers.
If everybody loves your work, Joanne says, then there must be a problem. Battling with your past work, growing to dislike previous styles and spending time on a piece are important issues for this multi faceted artist. Previous periods of anger and emotional lows in recent years have led her to produce dark and ‘depressed’ art, and what she describes as ‘graphic art’ using strong lines, and this has changed now to become more organic and colourful. The art she produces is becoming more care free, representing an inner dream world closer to her internal conscious where she is working through her feelings by painting and writing poetry. ‘In the art world people with money are investing in ideas, institutions are investing in ideas’ she says, describing her fascination with how money affects people’s lives and their ways of working, money makes things easier in some ways and can instil an inertia that counteracts creative productivity. The current recession is a scary time for the creative community.
Joanne Performing at the ICAx
Joanne seems to be able to network with a number of important people in the music and art worlds. Touring in America and Europe performing her music has been a fun experience and led to Joanne meeting with lots of interesting characters including Cat Power and working with the highly experimental band Jackie O Motherfucker. Joanne currently has an album out now titled The Lighter, which has received very mixed reviews and it seems people either love it or hate it. The crossover between her art and music is in part a discovery of thinking about live performance and the difficulty of repeating or recreating the creative act, with painting referencing music as a way of, ‘almost talking to someone who might understand, creating a character or atmosphere that makes more sense visually, instead of feeling angry at how dysfunctional I felt (as a performer)’. The music she wants to make she describes as strange and emotional, by seeking to make music with lyrics and instrumentation feeding into each other instead of writing lyrics separately from the musical process. David Cunningham, of The Flying Lizards fame is Joanne’s music producer, she has had advice from others to go more commercial, but she isn’t so interested in the money at this stage.
Poetry she says, is what ties her artistic endeavours together, and through poetry she co-wrote two books with US music critic Byron Coley who worked extensively with Sonic Youth, one called ‘apesma’ and ‘unicorns versus mermaids’, where the two assumed the identities of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath during the time of Hughes affair. Her prolific and varied artistic endeavours continue and Sweet and Sound will keep track of what is happening with Joanne in the future. When we discuss London and all its intricacies it becomes clear that it is not the be-all end-all metropolis of artistic opportunity that some think of. Joanne doesn’t want to live in London indefinitely, she sees herself living in the country and we discuss the future, sustainable living and the possibility of keeping chickens (a recent trend taking off around the UK). Joanne is fairly keen on getting some chickens and making her own scrambled eggs.
With the recent death of Michael Jackson still resonating through the media, finishing the interview we looked through a picture timeline of MJ photos, documenting the amazing changes in appearance he underwent in his epic career. Somewhere near the middle Joanne points out the pictures where he was looking ‘hot’. Over time artists and their art can change drastically, with so much varied output Joanne may well have a metamorphosis of her own.
Words by Mark Thomas, Photos by Joanne Robertson
myspace.com/jorobertsonblood39n39feathers
