Black Pudding: an interview with Richard Gasper

Black Pudding: an interview with Richard Gasper

26 July, 2012
by: Spoonfed Arts Team

As Richard Gasper prepares for his first solo exhibition at the new Vitrine gallery on Bermondsey Street, David Katz talks offal-loving bankers, giant food and warped consumer desires.

Take a trip to St John Bar and Restaurant, the trendy offal-Mecca in Farringdon which serves ‘devilled kidneys’ and ‘calf’s livers’ to cash-rich Square- Mile-types eager to lap up the trendy ‘nose-to-tail’ lifestyle is a curious consumption shift.

Tucking into the unwanted and obscure entrails of an animal was, once-upon-a-time, a thoroughly cost-efficient habit for the British working classes. Is it all one big ironic joke that some of the city ‘s most affluent denizens love to tickle their tongues with tripe? Who knows, but London-based artist Richard Gasper  is certainly interested in the shifting nature of consumer ideals or as he puts it, “a subversive situation”.

We’re sitting in the artist’s dusty Clapton studio, part of a former tram- shed on the edge of Hackney where Gasper is putting the final touches to his forthcoming exhibition, set to show at Vitrine gallery’s new space in Bermondsey Street mid-September. From hollowed-out coconuts recast in clear resin to dodecahedron egg-like resin lamps painted in Faberge hues, these are just some of the works which form a provocative yet seductive narrative to Black Pudding, the title of his upcoming exhibition. And Gasper certainly isn’t inhibited about the focus of his work which he calls a comment on “warped consumer desires and distorted aspirations.”

 While bankers are being hauled up by select committees left, right and centre, Gasper’s work isn’t meant to be a punitive splash of cold water on their faces. There’s something a little mischievous at work as he explains the reasoning behind the name of his exhibition. “I personally think it speaks of a desire for something a little wicked, sexual, foodie. A black pudding sounds kind of off or wrong and twisted,” he elaborates.

As he plans to display large black and white digital vinyl prints of lobsters imprisoned by the camera’s glare and photographs of “stylized” and “grotesque” fish taken on insomnia-driven visits to Billingsgate market, it’s clear food as a commodity amuses Gasper. “I was looking at Sainsbury’s (in Bermondsey) and you’ve got these big digital vinyl prints of food, that most supermarkets have outside. And I’m interested in that kind of ridiculous sense where a baguette becomes enormous and it almost starts to take on the presence of three humans.”



Its part and parcel of Gasper’s working technique to correspond, he says, food with a “bodily” notion which gives it a note of “sexual perversity.” His Untitled photograph from his 2010, “The Captain is out to lunch and the sailors have taken over the ship” showed broken coconuts in violent disarray which he says is linked to cracked heads and genitalia.

“It’s very important that, when you look at those images, that on one level they’re very stylized, slick and glossy, and I’ve often had them printed on Kodak metallic, for that slightly metallic look, they’ve got that slick side of things, but at the same time, there’s a contradiction where they’re raw and cut-up.

While art was always on a list of possible career-options, his father being a painter and sculptor, Gasper did have dabble in the world of haute- gastronomy which partly explains his interest in food. He once worked as a cheesemonger at Borough market and also weighed up the chance to become a professional chef. “I worked a bit in some of the London kitchens and didn’t enjoy that whole hierarchical system.” Instead, he graduated from the Slade in 2005, followed by an MA from the RCA before taking up the Sainsbury Scholarship in painting and sculpture at the British School of Rome between 2010 and 2011. It was here that he ran into Alys Williams, director of Vitrine Gallery who subsequently invited to put his first solo exhibition.

With Gasper’s interest in food and consumption, how aware is he of the view that art could just be considered another commodity – gawked at and purchased because of trendy lifestyle needs? “I don’t deny the fact that artists are now making money - no artist ever started out to try and make money - you’d be like mad, you know cause it’s just impossibly hard. But, at the higher end of things, artists have to admit or accept that they’re basically making like luxury, high-end goods for really rich collectors. It’s almost like handbag shopping and you know, and there’s  really weird thing about that, and I think you have to accept that and play with it.”

Of course, reality, as Gasper quite rightly observes, is far from utopian. “But not many artists are fortunate enough to get into the position where there art is being bought, by rich collectors.” One thing’s for sure, we’ll be seeing more of Gasper in the future.

‘Black Pudding’ at Vitrine gallery on Bermondsey Street,  takes place between 15 September and 18 October. Email info@vitrinegallery.co.uk

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Spoonfed Arts Team