Process Driven

Carpenter-turned-artist Taslim Martin moves between disciplines and materials, ranging from painting and sculpture to furniture. Teleri Lloyd-Jones wonders if this is why his studio is such a mess.

Taslim Martin’s studio is one of the most wonderfully messy places I’ve ever been (a statement with added gravitas for those who know me). In a double-height room in a converted Victorian school in North London, every surface overspills with things. Two very large metal sculptures take up most of the space, but look closer and you spot models, moulds, a shopping trolley full of off-cuts, an old poster of Eames chairs, as well as a scatter of phone numbers jotted straight onto the walls. An old maths teacher of mine once explained (and excused) my own untidiness as a symptom of creativity: by Mr Neuth’s logic, Taslim Martin is very creative indeed.

And he is. His practice has covered a dizzying array of materials and objects, from ceramic seating to painting, from street furniture to portraiture. Just 10 minutes with him and showing takes over from talking; a piece of plasticine and a knife must be found. He is a self-confessed process freak.

This has been a busy year, with work showing in South Africa and New York; the two large sculptures in his studio are meant for London, more specifically the Horniman Museum and Brixton. But the day we meet he’s just returned from hanging his Disparate Nature show in Rochdale. Part of a nationwide multi-artist series, The Shape of Things, Martin’s exhibition is partnered with textile artist Tanvi Kant’s. True to its name, Disparate Nature reflects the breadth of Martin’s interests, with sculptures, furniture designs, paintings and installations all made from clay, wood, wax, plaster and cast iron – Martin returning again and again in conversation to the phrase ‘one craft into another’.

The process freak has chosen sledging for the main installation. This method extrudes plaster through a wooden profile, to make a continuous shape (think cornicing). Martin enjoys experimenting with or ‘misdirecting’ a method, and after many attempts created a curved sledged form to act as a brick; in combination with multiples of itself it creates a sweeping helix, which could continue indefinitely. This form is the ‘blank canvas’ onto which marks and symbols provided by exhibition visitors will be stamped. At regular intervals, Martin will visit Rochdale to select the marks and print them onto the surface of the helix, adding new sections when needed. So how precise do modular form and mould have to be? How tricky is the geometry? Surely this is an ideal job for digital technology? Martin first explains the budget, then expands: ‘I really like the deliciously low-tech aspect… It’s not venting my eccentricity, it’s saying “You don’t need all that stuff, these are the old ways…” You look at something and think, “Blimey, how was that made, how did you do that?” But the reality is that people have been doing this for centuries. And it was much more difficult – if you think of a beautiful old mediaeval castle, the circular towers, the stone staircase which would often have a hand rail carved into the wall – it’s the same process, same ingenuity! Same sort of geometry, centuries ago.’

This is his second career, after 13 years in carpentry and joinery. Drawn to rational problem solving, the young Martin enjoyed his time at the joiners shop: ‘The old boys spent a lot of time working things out, they would say, “It’s not the cockups, it’s how you get over them. Sit back, have a cup of tea and think about things.”’ Executing architects’ plans, seeing flaws and rectifying them, Martin is adamant about the value and ingenuity of individual craftspeople: ‘There’s this notion that craftspeople are automata or Frankenstein’s monster,’ he continues, ‘as if they need thousands of volts of electricity and to hear their master’s voice before they can be galvanised into action, to do the bidding of a real creative force. I’ve never really liked that.’ During the recession in the early 90s, he realised that better carpenters than him were out of work. ‘I thought if I’m going to be on a budget I might as well do what I really want to do. So I went to art school, and I haven’t really recovered financially since.’ At its heart, the change was a search for creative freedom.

Martin’s approach sees no boundary in era or material; it’s an almost egalitarian questioning of why and how certain traditions exist. In Rochdale, for example, he’s showing the same sculpture in iron, clay and wax, to investigate conventions of hierarchy in material; he also presents portrait busts in, unexpectedly, cast iron. While he remembers fondly a tutor from his degree in Cardiff who had been making salt-glazed teapots for 20 years, his own appetite for adaptation seems unending: such defined, restrained practice is anathema to him. ‘My tutor’s was a very singular pursuit. There are collectors who only collect porcelain; the word “ceramics” means nothing to them, “Oh that’s very nice, but it’s not porcelain.” Or they only buy silver. I think this pigeonholing is a hallmark of craft – but these are the same hard-earned skills. Yet the materials you use for something mean it will viewed and sold in different ways.’

The main focus of The Shape of Things is to make new craftwork which, says project director David Kay, ‘explores the distinctive contribution artists make to influence or reflect national identity, the intercultural nature of British society and its connection with global cultures.’ Martin is British-born with a St Lucian mother and a Nigerian father, so multiculturalism and national identity runs throughout his work – but it’s by no means its core. Africa ’95 at the Royal Academy ‘knocked my socks off,’ he says. Then during his masters at the Royal College of Art, when his main preoccupation was ceramic furniture, he was awarded the Paolozzi Travel Scholarship. Heading to West Africa he studied both historical and contemporary art, meeting and talking to curators and artists. This revealed the one-dimensionality of his experience of African art in Britain. ‘A lot of what we think constitutes African Art in the great collections of the big Western museums has a really heavy ethnographic curatorial hand on it from the legacy, the history… The big museums, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A to some extent, part of their being is about cultural capital, it’s about presenting what they do in the best light – they’re not really in the game of shining a spotlight on a questionable past of some of the acquisitions. There is this tension. Any time I engage with the British Museum there is this tension, and you do need to find a way of negotiating around that.’ His relationship with the British Museum began in 2005 when they purchased Secret Dovetail, a metal stool made by Martin for the Crafts Council’s Mixed Belongings exhibition. It has recently been placed on display in the Africa Gallery. ‘When I saw it in there I was a little bit emotional, I was moved,’ he recalls. ‘You have all these beautiful artefacts which I’ve loved for years, and then there’s my work in the same case – It’s quite a thing, it really is.’