S2, E10 - Jenny Klein

Jenny Klein is a mixed-media artist based in London, England.  She works with photography and stitch. Jenny thinks about assemblage and collage in pulling together different ideas to see how they work together.  The episode was recorded in March 2022.

Jenny's website and social media:
Website: https://jennyklein.co.uk
Insta: @jennykleinthread

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

0:01

you Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, a podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host Heather Martin, and in this episode I'm speaking with Jenny Klein, a mixed media artist based in London, England. Welcome Jenny. Thank you. It's good to be here. So tell me a little bit more about yourself and what you do as a mixed media artist. I think mixed media is the most appropriate way to describe what I do because I'm working with photography, I'm working with stitch. I think a lot about terms like assemblage and collage because although when you're looking at the work, you might not necessarily think of those words. In my head, I'm always pulling together different ideas and seeing how they fit together. And those ideas might be physical ideas like a piece of stitch on a photograph or a painting or a drawn image, but they might also be concepts that I'm thinking about in terms of text and how words and processes might fit together. For example, in the making of small books. And what sort of subject matter do you portray in your art? I think in terms of subject matter, I've realized that I'm very interested in what sound like quite big concepts. So I'm very interested in ideas of presence and of time and of location. of kind of being in a place at a certain time. And how that comes across in my work is I often think of my work, it's not the best description, but this idea of frozen moments and moments that can encapsulate a lot, moments that can encapsulate things beyond the moment. So I'm thinking about the presence, I'm thinking about where something is, and I'm also thinking about what its place. what the composition of a piece, whether that's how a body shape is balanced or whether it's how a shape is placed within a composition, what those things communicate on quite a deep level. So that's something I'm very, very interested in. And I think that my work more or less successfully, depending on the piece, kind of circles those concepts, the concept of surface. and the idea of depth within a piece, what you do to a surface and how it is disturbed or broken through or added to. So these ideas about presence and surface and time and location and the body as a location are things that are very important to me and that I think are in my mind a lot of the time, a lot of the time when I'm working. And what drives you to these things? I think... I have always had a real interest in like the bigger picture. So for example, I've always been absolutely fascinated. I'm a real space fangirl. You know, I like to watch all the programs about the Hubble telescope and you know, astronauts and that whole kind of thing about the whole universe. I can remember talking to one of my tutors on the MA and I was saying, I want to make pictures that kind of reflect how I feel about how I exist. This kind of, this notion of you're a body within a universe. And this notion of, if my art is trying to communicate something, or if I look at the people that I admire as artists, they're trying to communicate something to do with the experience, this embodied experience within the world. And you can do that on a very small level. But I think in my head, even when it looks small, I'm kind of thinking on quite a big level. And in fact, I'm doing a series of works at the moment where I've taken some old pictures that are close-ups of my body. So you can't see whose body it is. You can just see the textures on the skin. But I've made them into circles and I've called the series The Planets because there's this notion of this quite small area of skin could suddenly be at any scale when you look at it in a certain way. And so you've got, you know, a mark on the skin that could be one of the storms on Jupiter. That you lose that sense of scale as you push them to become more abstract. but they're actually very firmly rooted in a specific body. I'm not sure if this is making any sense, but these are the kinds of things that I'm thinking about, this kind of notion of what you can encapsulate and communicate by taking something that's quite personal and quite abstract, and then creating something that gives other people the opportunity to bring their thoughts and feelings and associations to it. And I think that's another place where the idea of an assemblage comes in. and the presence of the artwork, because I feel that a really important part of what I'm making is what other people bring to it. So I'm always very careful about putting too much interpretation on it, because I'm very happy for people to make of it what they will. And some people find some of the work I do quite funny, which is great. And some people find it quite disturbing, and that's also absolutely fine. And it's interesting that you say that, because I... I'm a photographer or I tend to be more into photography fields. And, you know, there is kind of, you know, I've met people who are of the ilk of, you know, really kind of giving definition and this is what it's about and everything. And other people have like just put it up and no explanation, no, you know, could be anything and let people interpret it. And I'm more on letting people interpret it, although I might give a little bit of, you know, where it was taken or something because. or a lot of what I take is kind of street scenes or places and that sort of thing. So it's interesting that you say that because it kind of ties with me. And how do you feel? I mean, have you come across that at all? Yes, and I think that if you give things specific titles, I mean, I feel that you can't endlessly cop out and say, untitled, untitled. So I do, like I say, with this particular series, I've called the series, The Planets, that people can do with that what they will. So it's not really pinning them down. There's an obvious circular element to them. But beyond that, they can kind of do with a notion what they will. I made a series of work last year, which were quite large. They were very abstract and they were quite large, black, circular paintings with textures on them. And it was the kind of textures that made each one different from the other. And I was really struggling for a... title for this series because there really wasn't one that came to mind and you don't want to just call them black circle one, black circle two, or I didn't. And they were very much about black and they were about depth and they were about, you know, this kind of surface disturbance and what that did to them and shades of black and how different textures gave back different qualities of light. And that's where the interest of them came. About halfway through making this series, I was out for a walk and I went past, as you sometimes do in London, there were some horses and there were these black horses. And as I was walking past them, I could see this incredible black sheen on their coats and then the contrast with their black manes and their black tails. And so I went home and I called this series, The Horses. And again, people can make of this what they will. I know exactly why it's called The Horses and I can. I can explain it or not explain it depending on how interesting people think that is. But it's this notion that seeing that, it just kind of chimed with what I was thinking about in terms of, and the mystery of these black horses, the horses are these things that, again, it worked on different levels. A circle is incredibly familiar to us. We see them every day, but presented in a certain way. They become something universal and mysterious and emblematic and ancient. And in the same way, a horse is something we see every day. And when you're up close to them, they are mysterious and they are ancient and they are unknowable. And that all just seemed to chime very well with what I was thinking about. But of course, then I put five large black circles on the wall and they're called the horses. And some people don't even think, it's great that some people just go, oh, okay. But obviously other people are like, what? It's interesting. How did it get started with your art? How did it get into being a mixed media artist? I think the reason or how I've got to where I am now is that I've had many starts. And I think that one of the things you realize as you're going through a life where you've got an ongoing creative practice is it isn't that you start and then you just keep going until one day you stop. And I think in my life, I've had various starts. So, When I did my foundation, I did my foundation at Camberwell a long time ago. And while I was there, and even before I was there, I met a woman who's still a very, very good friend of mine and we just really hit it off and we really, she was very daring. She was one of these very daring people. I'm not really, but I would have these ideas. I would have these crazy ideas. And then she'd say, well, let's do it. Let's do it. So we would run around London in the middle of the night, graffitiing on things and putting up illegal posters. and we would go to these crazy performance clubs and do these mad performances. And so I was doing a lot of performance art and we did that for several years. And it kind of got a bit more sophisticated but that was really what I was doing. I was doing some writing, we were doing some writing together and we were doing performance art. And there were these great clubs, don't really exist anymore. There was one called the Plunge Club, which definitely dates me. Some of your listeners may remember the Plunge Club in the Vauxhall Arches. run by an extraordinary woman called Rene. And we would hire vans, put beds in the back of a van, take this bed to the performance club, get into the bed and do a performance in bed in this nightclub surrounded by all these people. Anyway, I did that for a few years. And then my partner moved to Wales. And by then I had a couple of small children and everything kind of fizzled for a little while. I was doing quite a lot of writing. I was working in theater. I was getting some things on in small theaters. And then there was another fizzle. And I think... That's what happens is you kind of have these periods of time and you're quite busy and you're quite creative and then it kind of goes away again. And then I'd kind of not done anything for a little, I'd had one of those kind of periods where I've always known a lot of artists. I was still helping people put exhibitions on and talking about art constantly. I wasn't really making much of my own. And then I just started making presents for people. You know, you have that creative urge. And I was just making little stone pieces and presents and drawings and things. and somebody saw them and said, can I put them in my open house? They did an open house and gave me a room in this open house and I sold everything. And there's nothing like selling everything to make you think, oh, maybe I should get going again. And so that kind of brought me into the phase I'm in now, which has been, you know, probably, I don't know, the last sort of seven or eight years within which I've done my MA and also brought together now all those elements from all those years. You can see the performance in my photographs. You can see the text in the books that I make. You can see the stitch in many of the things that I do, the interest in abstraction, which has always been there. And I feel that through these several starts, through these several phases, and these moments of not making art for a few years in which you do other things, this has brought me to the place I am now. where I can say, as we said earlier, it's mixed media, but I can say that in a way which, whilst it might not always look incredibly coherent from the outside, I feel that the more I make now, the more coherent it is, because I'm now drawing on processes and themes that I've been looking at from different angles for a long time. So they've kind of found their place in my work. And I found a way to express them, which feels, I don't know, more coherent, more mature maybe, more thought through. So it sounds like there's been a thread throughout sort of your life when you're creating art and even when you're not, that's kind of come together a little bit at the moment. Yes, yes, I think so. I hope so. What motivates you? So you've talked about, you've always had the creative bug, but are there other motivations for you to create things? I think that this feeling inside you of being creative, I think that is a very, very strong force in a lot of people. And I was one of those children who made things. I was one of those children, you know, whether it was sewing, you know, whether it was making, I don't know, doll's furniture out of concourse, I don't know. I've always been somebody who looks at a piece of paper and doesn't want to put it in the bin because I think, oh, I could tear that up and I could make something, or I could, oh, I could stick that on. So my whole life, I've always been somebody who has made things, you know, whether it's just somebody's birthday card or whether it's a big painting, there is something in me that looks at the world around me and finds it very hard to ever throw anything away or always looking at things and going, what could I do with that? What could I make with that? And I can't explain that. I just know that I have it and lots of people I do know have it. And... if I don't make anything for a long period of time. I mean, at one point I decided that I wasn't going to be an artist and I was just going to stop. And I think after two or three years, I was literally eating the furniture. I just had to make things again. I couldn't stop. And I think that urge to express yourself by making things, I don't know, I don't know. I think that everybody, very, the vast majority of people want to be heard in some way. And it's a question of how you choose to do that. or how you're able to do that. Not everybody is able to do that. But I know people who express themselves through being, I don't know, amazing teachers or amazing lawyers or amazing academics. I think that there are many, many ways to express yourself. I don't know, it sounds a bit naff, doesn't it, saying express yourself? I'm not putting this very well. I just know that for me, there has always been something about the physicality of making things. and of looking at the materials of the world around me and wanting to just stick my fingers in them and recreate them in some way. And I'm sure that is to do with this kind of need to express something which nothing else can express. I feel that if I get a painting right, if I put a circle in the right place on a piece of paper, I feel that I'm saying more about myself than anything I can actually say. But why that is, I don't know. And how much of yourself is in your art? I think there's two ways of looking at that. Obviously, sometimes I'm literally taking photographs of myself. I'm not doing that to create photos of myself. It's just, I'm always there. I work quite quickly. And particularly during the pandemic, not a lot of other people were around. So I've got a lot of ideas for taking photographs for the people, but it just, for fairly obvious reasons actually recently, it hasn't happened. So I am literally there in my work sometimes, but that is not the point of it at all. I think that I'm completely there in my work. So if I've got a piece of artwork and a wall and somebody's looking at it, I don't feel, I mean, people want you to talk about their work and I get that and it's lovely to do a podcast like this. And I listen to podcasts and I read what other artists say, but I am very, very happy for my work to speak. for itself and I'm very happy. I don't know what the word is, whether it's, I don't know but I feel like I'm communicating everything that I could communicate through the work. And what I put on top of that in terms of explanation or talking about it, if that adds to it for people that's great, but I'm not filling the need, you know to put lots of texts next to my work or labels or all that kind of stuff. Who or what influences you? I think in terms of influence, and I think again, this is to do with having sort of come to a point in the last sort of five to eight years of feeling more confident about what I'm actually doing. But certainly when I started out, when I was doing my foundation course when I was younger, the artists who were particularly interesting to me were people like Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman, who were just becoming known. in the UK at that time. And I was really blown away by the fact that you could make work with text, which is what I was already doing, but it was seeing other people doing it on this amazing scale. So they were very, they were people who have always been in my head and just really, yeah, I just remember seeing all their work for the first time and just thinking, this is fantastic and this is amazing. And this is something I can really relate to. And also when I was starting out, around the time I was doing all that performance you know, those years, those sort of younger years, those first years, was that people like Sarah Lucas and Tracy Emin were becoming known. I mean, I saw Tracy Emin's tent in that show at the Southlander Gallery. And again, I was like, wow, somebody's using sewing in their work, amazing. So people like that at that moment were really important for me because they showed me that processes that I was interested in using but wasn't particularly using because I wasn't sure how to, that it was just fine. put text in your work, put sewing in your work. And that was a real help to me. Tracy Emin has been very interesting because as she's developed, as I say, I was aware of her very early work. And then obviously she's somebody who's become incredibly famous. And she's just somebody who's always been there for me. I kind of dipped in and out of her work over the years. And the fact that she will move between media and that she will use her personal experiences in a way that I'm not, but this notion of thinking through what you're trying to communicate. I find her work very interesting and I find her as a person very interesting. And I just feel like she's been on a journey and I've been witness to it just because of the contemporaneity of it. And there are also artists who I just absolutely love. I don't know if you know an artist called Gata Brotescu. She's my absolute favorite artist of all time. And she is, I think she's extraordinary. She died very recently. and had just very recently been taken up by Hauser and Wirth in her very last years, but she is somebody who's done photography, she's done sculpture, she's done collage, she's done everything. And just the most fantastic artist. And again, was somebody who, there was a fantastic show of hers called The Studio at the Camden Art Center. Don't know when it was, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, I'm not sure. And I'd already bought a book of hers, but this was like the opportunity to see her work in the flesh. And it was this notion of you're moving from a room with collage in to a room with drawings in to a room with photographs in to a room with films in. And I, again, it's this notion of looking for the way to think about how you are embodied, how you are living in the world. People like Susan Hiller, people like Zoe Leonard, people like Agnes Martin. who is making these abstract paintings, but they are unabashedly emotional. They are unabashedly trying to express a feeling or an emotion. These women are people I think about all the time. And in a slightly different way, although to me it is very related, I'm a huge fan of contemporary dance. And so again, I followed and often been lucky enough to see work by people like Pina Bausch and a Theresa de Kier Smacker. You know, even people like Marina Abramovic, who seems to go in and out of style, but as a body of work over years, I just find the approach of these women who will move from one thing to another, thinking about how to say what they're trying to say, which always seems to me to be about both an expression of how they are feeling, but the importance of the connection with the viewer or the audience. So people like that, I find. incredibly inspiring and you know that I look at their work a lot. One thing I'd like to pick up with you is it sounded like early in your career when you're doing the performance art it sounded collaborative so you're working with somebody. Have you worked collaboratively more recently in your artwork? The first thing I'd say is that I absolutely couldn't do any of the work that I do without you know my own support network. without the people around me who we talk about things, we support each other, we help each other out. So I think in that sense, I was lucky enough to have a reasonably good one and then doing the MA has kind of exploded that. And I just think that as an artist or a creative person, I mean, as a human being really, that you need those people who help you move forward, who you help and they help you. So I think in a general sense, it's a collaborative process for me just making art there isn't a piece that you're not having a conversation about or thinking about. But more specifically, when I was on my MA, I met a woman called Erika Trotzig and we have collaborated a lot since then. We don't make specific pieces of work together. And our work to some people doesn't really look much like each other's, but we just found very quickly that we were interested in the same things, the same themes and that... working together was very easy and showing together felt very, I don't know, obvious and productive that our ideas bounced off each other. And I would say that I definitely have a good collaboration with Erika. And as a result, we have shown together three times and we are about to have another show together. So we have a show, the two of us opening in April. So we did a show last summer, which was a show that we organised and brought seven other artists in and got some Arts Council funding for. But we sort of came up with a theme and we produced that show together at the Safe House in June of last year, which was fantastic experience. But this April, we're opening a two-person show, which is just the two of us. And we are both working in mixed media, but Erica is much more sculptural than I am. My work tends to be... 2D, two and a half D, I always call it, but it's more towards the 2D. And Erica's is definitely more towards the 3D. But the interest in process, in pulling materials together, and this notion of combining abstraction with notions about bodies and the body is something that we both really talk to each other about and understand each other's process. And that's been incredibly important because if you find the right people to collaborate with, it just enriches your work. very, very much. And also it helps you, you know, edit, it helps you not just be looking at it by yourself. So I think that collaboration is, I think it's vital, absolutely vital on different levels. It doesn't mean that you're always doing it. Sometimes you have to go, no, this is the piece of work I'm making and I'm making it. But to have those networks and communities and groups, feedback groups that you're dipping in and out of is essential, I think. And as an artist, what challenges have you faced? I think for me, and as I'm sitting here talking to you, you know, it doesn't sound like it because you're interviewing me as an artist and I'm replying to you, I'm talking to you about my work. But I think confidence is a huge issue. The kind of the world is full of art. Who needs to see my art? Questions that you ask yourself. The questions about is it good enough? I think all of those questions, is this is this doing what I want it to do? I think that That's just a very, very common issue for a lot of people. And I think I'm as susceptible to it as anybody else. I think that when I'm kind of going for it and I'm confident and I'm happy with what I'm doing, then I'm just getting on with it. And I think we all have moments like that, don't we? When we feel like I'm doing the right thing and I know what I'm doing and I'm just gonna get on with it and I'm not going to be disturbed. I'm not gonna answer the phone. I'm not gonna have a cup of coffee and this work is great. And I'm really glad that I'm having an exhibition. And then you have moments when you just go, What am I doing? Is this good enough? Is anybody going to... So I feel that my biggest challenge all along has been confidence, because that confidence allows you to prioritise what you're doing. And I think that it's very easy not to prioritise your creativity and go, well, actually, I don't know, there's something else that I need to do, which will have a more tangible result in the short term. So maybe I should do that instead. And as I said, now looking back, I... do give myself a bit of credit for, even though I have had the moments, whether it's been months or years when it's felt everything's a bit flat and it's not really happening, I have always in the end got back up again and got on with it again. And every time I've done that, I've had all those previous experiences to feed into what I'm doing. So I think the challenge of just confidence, because the confidence... then leads to the other things. It leads to the energy and it leads to the willpower and it leads to the prioritization and it leads to the conversations. You know, having the confidence even to approach people in galleries and say, I've seen your work, I really like it. I make myself do that and I don't find it easy but that has led to some great conversations and I've never regretted doing it, but yeah. It's not because I'm like this super confident person who wants to talk to everybody. It's just that, again, over time, I've realised that you are gonna get at least a polite answer and that, as I said, getting to know people, building those networks, sharing ideas, that's another thing that always helps you step forward. I think confidence, as you say, it's a challenge for many artists. Even the ones who seem to come across as confident, I think deep down. often feel a bit wobbly or a bit, oh, is it good enough? Yeah. So what's next? So most immediately next, I am doing this show with Erica, which is in a gallery called One Paved Court in Richmond, and that opens on the 28th of April. So we're just finishing off what we're, our plans. We kind of know what we're doing. And that is a show where we will be showing sculpture and photography and mixed media pieces. What we're thinking about is the way that specifically our work explores experiences and memories and sensations that are accumulated either by bodies or by objects. This idea of a surface that accumulates experience or an object that accumulates experience and how that can be expressed. That's something that we're both really interested. So that's going to be a strong theme in the show. So I'm going to be showing some of these new these new pieces, the planets I'm going to be showing. among other pieces, and Erica's showing new sculptural pieces. There's some group shows coming up, so I've got a piece, there's an organisation called We Are Sweetheart. I've got a piece in a group show that they're doing in May, and I've got a drawing in a group show. So I've got a few things coming up in April, May time, and the main thing being this exhibition with Erica. And I'm also doing a residency in the summer, which I'm really interested in, because it's a chance to think about location. in terms of landscape and location, rather than the body as location. So location in parts of slightly more conventional form. So that will be really interesting to actually go to a place and be in a new place and think about the physicality of that place. And it's a landscape with a lot of abstraction in the landscape. Landscape always does, but this is particularly kind of what you would call a graphic landscape because it's on the coast and there's a lot of very flat. vertical planes that I'm very interested in exploring. Yeah, so a few things coming up, which is great. Thank you, Jenny. It's been really interesting speaking with you. Thank you, Heather. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to this episode with Jenny. I hope you enjoyed it. More information about Jenny, as well as the podcast, can be found in the podcast notes. If you're able to, please rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Lisa Price, who's an abstract painter using natural pigments and is based in London, England. Here's a clip of her conversation. So I'm an abstract painter. I actually create all my own paints myself. So I started out initially by making inks from plant materials, but I wanted to make sure that my work has longevity in its colour and the way that it's made. So I started to move gradually towards making paints from rocks and earth. So when I was out, especially during lockdown, when we were doing our sort of little walks that we were able to do, I started to collect some materials just in around London, processing them by crushing them into a powder, and then I mull them and use a binder to create the watercolours that I used to paint. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode with Lisa.