Barefoot Blandy - A Conversation with Artist David Blandy

The initial years after graduation can often be a black hole for artists struggling to find their voice amidst the uproar of competition. Not so for David Blandy. Since graduating from the Slade in 2003 he has wooed audiences and critics alike with his honest, slightly eccentric genre of video art. Here he talks to Hannah Vaughan about his work, the constant search for soul and running barefoot through the Lake District.

Sitting outside a gastro pub in leafy North London, David Blandy looks every bit the aspiring artist. Complete with pub cat, Blandy’s choice of location is the perfect fusion of understated cool and quirky individuality, a description that could well be leveled at the artist himself. Stepping into the limelight after his inclusion in Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries, an exhibition showcasing the UK’s new talent as part of the Liverpool Biennial, Blandy has achieved a remarkable amount in the two years since his MA graduation from the Slade.

Slightly awkward in his demeanour, Blandy appears as if he has just stepped out of one of his video pieces. With long hair falling over his eyes as he turns away from me to speak he could never be accused of having let his undeniable success go to his head. ’I always feel uncomfortable giving talks because I feel like what right do I have to tell you about what I am doing? I guess I have that English self-depreciating sort of streak.’

Having studied first at Chelsea and then at the Slade, Blandy is a video/performance artist who often features in his own work. Focusing on the slippage between reality and fantasy, Blandy’s art addresses notions of identity and the construction of the self, concerns that are interwoven with an endearing level of poignancy and humour that ensure his works’ appeal to a wide audience. ‘To a large extent my work is diaristic in that I just try and make work about what I’m thinking at the moment, something that communicates with people. I like playing with the area between popular culture and art. You can have an art space and an entertainment space and I often find I get as much enlightenment on my path in the world from the entertainment side of things as I do from the art side.’

Playing in a band since the age of fifteen, Blandy’s musical interest has been a formative part of his oeuvre, the acclaimed Passages of Soul series making reference to the artist’s preferred musical genres. Lip-syncing to soul and hip-hop records in a dead-pan style as he films himself either walking through the London Underground, (From the Underground, 2001) or sat in his apartment (Hollow Bones, 2002; What is Soul? 2002), Blandy questions the authenticity of his own identification with the black experience. The most famous of the trilogy, and the artist’s 2004 entry into Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries, What is Soul? arose from a chance discovery. ‘I came across this tune that had been sampled quite a lot of times, Is It Because I’m Black by Syl Johnson, and I just thought this tune is amazing! It’s my favourite tune in the entire world and yet I’m white. What’s going on there? Really that piece is a question. Is it possible for me to love something that I am completely alienated from? It’s a song about frustration at the world and feeling that nothing is going for you and you can’t quite work out why. That’s how I felt at the time so I related to it, but then the chorus keeps telling me, you’re not supposed to relate to this. All my work comes from questions about myself. It’s about the way music can take you out of where you are, its social realism, but also putting in that element of fantasy that is actually my own voice. A lot of my work seems to be based around that slippage between fantasy and reality.’

This concern has been apparent in Blandy’s work since his first inclusion in Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries back in 1999 with The Ring and is a theme that has continued through to his present work. After gaining an artist’s residency with Grizedale Arts in 2004, Blandy discovered his alter ego, The Barefoot Lone Pilgrim, a character that was borne out of his personal practice of Kung Fu back home in London and his enforced isolation in the Lake District. ‘I had this suit knocking about and I was doing this residency at Grizedale Arts, it was kind of twenty-one days straight, semi-isolated in the country and quite a lot of my days were spent by myself. I was going a bit stir crazy so I just put the suit on and went for a barefoot run in the countryside, as you do, and thought, maybe this is a bit weird or maybe it’s the start of something and then it managed to turn into something that made sense to me somehow.’

Under the guise of the Barefoot Lone Pilgrim, Blandy has travelled as far as America and Japan in search of soul. Documented in film, his performances take him to the sites of soul music where, dressed in full Shaolin uniform and carrying a portable record player, Blandy blasts out the tunes that made the area famous. ‘There are moments when you think, this is just perfect, like playing the Wu Tang track, Cream (cash rules everything around me) on the Staten Island Ferry. There’s a real romance in the song when you see the Statue of Liberty going past along with all the grime and industrial stuff. It adds an extra element to it, it somehow brings the songs down to earth, which is amazing.’

Blandy is hoping to return to Japan again soon. ‘I went last year and I just loved it. It’s just so many of the things that I adore - the cinema, the computer games. It’s just such an amazing culture.’ When asked what he will do there Blandy is vague. ‘There’s a cave I’d like to look for, this cave that a computer designer fell into when he was a child that inspired all of his Mario and Zelda games and I want to see this cave as the birth of video games!’

Back in Britain Blandy’s success is leading him into new areas of work. Approached by ArtAngel, an organisation renowned for enabling artist’s projects around the world, Blandy has been working as a creative collaborator to initiate artistic projects amongst groups of young people often overlooked by conventional education or outreach work. Producing Radio Nights and Ya Get Me? (2003), a documentary film on underground street language, Blandy worked with the Avenues Youth Project in Westminster, a group who he will soon be taking up to the Lake District to work on further collaborative ventures. ‘It’s where Grizedale Arts are based but it was also a place of fantasy for me when I was growing up. We’d go there for a couple of rainy weeks in the summer. There is great romance in being in a cagoule!’

Exhibiting in Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries twice, first in 1999 with The Ring and again in 2004 where he showed What is Soul? Blandy made the most of the opportunities open to him as a recent graduate. ‘It’s an open submission. If you’re in your final year of your degree or you’re doing an MA you’re eligible to apply.’ The exhibition certainly pushed Blandy into the limelight, although the rewards were never instant. ‘It’s really weird with art. You can be in a show and often it will take almost a year before someone will contact you because they’ve been thinking it over. You might be in their in-list, then out and you don’t know any of this is going on when suddenly they’ll ring you up and say, “oh, we’d like you to do this show in so and so” and you kind of go, “oh, yes please!” because you’d be stupid if you were an artist and you said no.’

A quick glance at Blandy’s website attests to the artist’s growing success. Highlighting shows and commissions both internationally and across the UK, Blandy seems to be gaining the recognition he deserves. Yet despite his achievements the initial years after graduating were often daunting. ‘When I left my BA I was working in a video-game shop for two years and there were points when I thought, I’m never going to do art again. Fortunately people were coming up to me and giving me occasional shows and I kept thinking about stuff and making odd pieces of work. Going back to college has been key in my career, that and having the length of time where I’ve been exhibiting since the BA up until now. It’s just keeping your name out there. Unfortunately you have very little control over that as an artist. You have to try and say yes to everything, as much as you can, even if you think that it seems outside of what is possible.’

A complete list of the artist’s projects can be found at www.davidblandy.co.uk