Thinkspace is proud to present Trash Talk featuring new works by internationally renowned artists and street interventionists, Jaune, from Belgium, and Slinkachu, from the UK. Both critically acclaimed artists work on an atypical miniaturist scale, especially given the monumental standard demanded of public art in the deafening context of the city. Jaune and Slinkachu both challenge this paradigm of scale while incorporating the city’s refuse and garbage into their imagery as materials and themes.
In anticipation of Trash Talk, our interview with Jaune discusses his collaboration with Slinkachu, the role of artists in society, and what the perfect day outside of the studio would look like.
SH: Is there a particular piece in this exhibition you feel really challenged you? If so, why and what makes you proud of this piece.
JU: Actually not one piece in particular but the whole exhibition as I always try to bring my work one step further, so it’s an all-new generation of works, I followed the same way I started to build for the previous shows but trying to change what I “disliked”. Like my stencils, my pieces are multi-layered but I always had the problem that the final result was quite heavy (visually) to make everything hold together, but this time, without taking out that multi layer effect, I could get to a visual light result, which obviously is really satisfying for me
SH: How do you approach starting a new body of work? Walk us through the process of a piece from conception to completion.
JU: All my stencils are cut at the same scale, which makes every character, element or whatever able to be combined with any other one to create each time a new story made of the same element. A bit like when we speak, we use a limited range of vocabulary, only the position of the word in the sentence and how we accord them together make a new story.
So my challenge is to make something new and fresh with something I already used. Then I only need to create few new stencils, I don’t only create those stencil but an almost limitless number of possible new stories by combining with all the previous stencils.
SH: What excites you about your work / creative process?
JU: New projects, new places, new people!
The very roots of my work were born in Brussels, full of what we could call a kind of Belgian spirit: humour with self-derision and a bit of stupid nonsense. I was really curious to discover if that point which seems to me really local could work as well in other places with people that don’t specifically know this kind of work.
SH: What frustrates you about your work / the creative process?
JU: Not many things actually, as I’m the only architect of my work, I try to make it only pleasant to me, trying to turn any difficulties or problem into a challenge to grow or a new adventure, any bad situation has a bright side!
The only point that could bother me seriously is when people use my work to promote themselves, without asking me any permission, what for them is a cool stuff to use, for me it’s a life’ work, then I’m really protective to it.
SH: What has the collaborative process been like with Slinkachu / Jaune?
JU: A game! To me, it has been like a game! Inspiration, ideas, and creativity is my/our daily job if I can say it that way, create new projects, new ideas have really become a natural process, then making some work with an other artist, so an other universe, is like to open a door to on a new world. After that it’s like a ping pong game, one throw an idea, the other come back with his vision, which leads to a direction none of us could have reach alone, it’s really exciting.
SH: Speaking of collaboration, if you could collaborate with any artists (from any art form ie: movies, music, dance etc.) dead or alive who would it be and what would you create?
JU: There are so many artist I would like to collaborate with, actually I have desires to make common work with almost every artist I ever met on festival or on different project, but I can choose who I want, just to keep my humorous direction, I would have loved collaborating with Leonardo Da Vinci, first of all, because I would have left a huge impact on humanity, but mostly because the Mona Lisa would have been funnier with 3 fluo mini guys in the background trying to achieve a pointless job or a bunch of little workers drawn in his codex represented as trying to build his prototype of helicopter, it would just have been fun
SH: If your body of work inspired an ice cream flavor, what would it be called and what are the ingredients?
JU: That’s a tricky question, I’m painting some bin men… I think an ice cream tasting like garbage doesn’t have a big chance to be liked…
My characters are often drinking beers, but I don’t think that an ice cream tasting like beer would be that amazing either, so I guess it would probably taste like a frozen cocktail and it would obviously have 2 fluorescent colours.
SH: What do you think the role of artists is in society? How does other artwork inform how you move through life?
JU: I don’t think artists have a specific role as we are all singular personalities trying to express something, mostly something deeply personal. And as anyone is free to interpret any artwork following his own vision, it seems complicated to me to imagine artist with a defined role in this multi-directional society, the only point I believe each artist can bring is a different and creative point of view on a situation, which can allow the viewer to make a step back and have a different perspective on what is expressed by the artist, to get out of a daily routine in a way.
SH: What would a perfect day outside of the studio look like for you?
JU: There are 2 possibilities, outside of the studio but still with my stencils: then it would be on a festival in a sunny place, with other artists, having fun doodling some mini dudes everywhere I can.
If it is without my stencils, then it would be probably still in a sunny place, in the middle of nowhere, making a bbq with friends, just chilling!
SH: If you got to live in any movie or book for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or one of the characters?
JU: There’s a lot of movie universes I’d like to live in, but they are all pretty dangerous, so I guess living in an anime would be way safer… so I would probably live in the world of Kung Fu Panda for 3 reasons: Kung fu, noodles and humour!
