• Josephine Flynn

                       
Josephine Flynn
17th November – 15th December 2007
Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 5pm


Smiling excrement shaped tinfoil, playful animations with autobiographical references and scaled up papier mache finger food all play a part in Josephine Flynn’s singular vision. Her work is concerned with what she calls the 'lower aesthetics'. Using materials such as scrunched up silver paper and hand cut photocopies she engages the art viewer through a surface naivety, encouraging them to reassess their received aesthetic vocabulary.

In her often hilarious, tightly edited cut 'n' paste videos she references historic and political icons such as George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler alongside bad jokes, sick puns, Big Macs and sex acts. Flynn even acknowledges the day to day pleasures of pissing.
 
By the very act of placing these ideas, images and objects in an art space Flynn is engaging in a discussion about art, what it can be and what it can present. The political is accompanied by the trivial. The work is entertaining but sometimes embarrassing. It’s humour fracturing our ideas of the acceptable. Images from consumer culture and banal everyday objects are used to create a carefully crafted deconstruction of the strategies and hierarchies of our communication.


Josephine Flynn was born in Leigh, Greater Manchester, in 1975. She gained an MA Fine Art from Sheffield Hallam University in 2006, & a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Leeds Metropolitan University in 1998.
Recent Shows: Axel Lapp Projects, Berlin, Germany (Solo Show), Associates Gallery, London (Solo Show).

Martin,

Josie should be referred to as Josie. Agreed? Even in a destined fat Phaidon monograph to be published years from now, they won't call her Flynn, they'll call her Josie. That seems important somehow, but I don't know why...

There's a fact and a story that always spring to mind whenever I think of Josie's work, both of which when you begin to unravel them present a path into starting to attempt to get a grasp of the way this practice manoeuvres

Fact. If I am honest, there are probably more people that don't like her work than people that do, (this isn't as harsh as it sounds, I would speculate that this practice is not meant to be liked, flattery is not being requested - we can come back to this), but in addition, I have never witnessed a spectator without a strong opinion when confronted by her work. No one just is indifferent to it.

Story. I have heard from multiple good sources that Josie struggles to make work, and as many artists she often finds herself in the situation of her sitting in her studio in front of a computer deeply troubled, watching something like an animated image of an anus shitting on the floor for example. That image offers us a telling contradiction between the humour within the work and a sort of earnest scholarly attitude to the consequence of it's making. The point is no matter a subject or vehicle, artists still have to make weighty decisions. I'd say Josie’s however are heavier than others due to the fact that she is being terribly unfashionably pioneering and in addition relatively unorthodox about her personal relation to the rest of the art world. There is of course a monstrous amount of artists claiming to be involved in an avant guard practice, but those people I think of visibly aren't lost, they seem to be in a comfortable place, surrounded by tiresome references like they were old friends. I'd pledge a bet that in comparison Josie is somewhat out there on her tod in a pretty lonely place.

Ryan

Hi Ryan

Josie has a persona in her work, does the 'Josie' you say we should call her refer to this persona? Perhaps we should call the lonesome troubled character in your story by a different name?

I'm interested in this idea of liking work, and of being liked and wanting to be liked. Martin Creed, in his performances and talks, has a schtick about wanting us to like him. Josie's work I find immediately likeable (Martin's too actually - and a lot of people don't). And yes you're right, if I didn't like it I don't know if I would think it was any good - perhaps liking it might be intrinsic to whether you think it good or not. (And of course this is not always the case, there are plenty of things I don't like that I believe to be good).

Josie understands that making art, if you're serious about it, is attention-seeking behaviour. Attention seekers don't mind if you like them or not, just as long as you notice them. A lot of artists evade this issue or have such huge egos that it never occurs to them to worry about it.  Josie is actively engaged with it. She acknowledges her relationship with the viewer, and places that at the centre of her practice, so whatever else she is dealing with is mediated by that explicitness. The viewer is not allowed to be indifferent - it is this insistence which requires not just that you consider whether the work is any good, but whether you like it.

I've met two people who are well-known to readers of the Guardian newspaper. One is Jon Ronson, who was until recently a columnist in the Saturday magazine. His column would relate stories of his domestic life from the point of view of a paranoid, self-obsessed, quite successful yet deeply insecure man who desperately wanted people to like him. I know him from years ago and, while the column was often embroidered and made into neat stories, he is very much as he paints himself. You would recognise his persona from even a brief conversation; he would be very concerned, in that moment, about your opinion of him and his work. The other is David Shrigley, who does a weekly cartoon in the same magazine. I don't really know him, but I see him about in Glasgow a bit, and I had a conversation with him not long ago. It was a very ordinary conversation about bookshops and how they might be successful. He was not a bit like his drawings, he said nothing unpredictable or cleverly-stupidly-brilliant. He wasn't bothered about whether or not I liked him or his work.

I mentioned these things to a friend, and she patiently pointed out that Jon is a journalist, but Shrigley is an artist, and artists don't have to be like their work - it's work.

M x

Martin

I don’t think artists have to be like their work. If you were to play a game of pairs matching unknown artists to unknown practices, I can't imagine it would be that difficult.

Similarly, graphic design is easier to teach than art. If you criticize an artist you are critiquing something integral to their person, their whole being and reason for being. Art is intrinsically about its maker and their experiences, yes? Where if you criticise a graphic designer, you are critiquing a sort of eloquence of visual language, an aptness to communicate economically, or a response to a client or a brief. (Actually it has once been suggested to me in a college in the States that I go easier on the students, as the college didn’t want to get a reputation as it may scare off possible fee payers.
You don't pay money to go to college to be critisised? I know, it’s a different topic.) But you would never say to an art student who just lost their sister in a car accident and was making work about that subject that their work was mawkish.

The difference is I feel I could critique Josies work without feeling awkward, not that critiquing her practice is not critique her as a person, I think it is... but in a funny way, she’s asking for it. When did you first see Josie’s work?

Below is a bit from Russel Herrons blog about Josie’s show in London, have a read, I think its quite telling

Even before Ryan Gander says, 'That's the artist, over there,' and points to a girl dressed in a red tracksuit top, who's been laughing her head off with her mates since I came in, I knew it had to be her. She's big, loud, and has a dirty laugh which bursts out her mouth like a drunk falling through a pub door. She's brilliant.
It makes me laugh just being near her. She's down from Leeds and she's brought her mates with her and they're all having a laugh too. The gallery looks a total mess, though, like a gang of asbo friendly kids had been let in with a load of paper nicked from a nearby primary school. There are huge blob-like photocopies of what may be turds, genitals, bananas or just shapes, with big stupid smiles and dumb eyes stuck on them. There's some crappy silver foil sculptures, there's - wait a minute, what is all this stuff? Let's ask Josephine to talk us through it. 'Well, I like tin foil, don't I?' she gurgles. I point at things. 'What's that?' I ask. 'It's a croissant, isn't it, on it's side. You probably can't see that. It looks shit, doesn't it? No one thinks it looks like a croissant.'
'And those teeth at the back of the gallery?' I say, pointing to a scrappily stuck together laser copy of someone's teeth. 'Put teeth in Google and that's the first image that comes up,' she says and pulls out another big, thick laugh. 'I was a bit scared about it tonight, you know. I thought people were gonna come down and say this is a right pile of wank, isn't it? What is this shit? Anyway,' she continues, 'this is me mate Katie, she's come down today.' 'Hello, Katie,' I say and take her photo. 'Fuckin' look at that. You look good there,' she says to Katie when I show her the photo. Then we all laugh together for a bit.
I take Josephine's photo too. She obviously doesn't enjoy this and pulls a face. That's her at the top. It may be one of the best photos I've ever taken of an artist.
Anyway, I don't think anyone here thinks this is a pile of wank. I overhear at least two people use the phrase 'breath of fresh air' in relation to the show. More like a fucking tornado, though, I think. She has filled the gallery with work that just makes me smile. It's awesome. It's a show of pure energy and of a deep interest in what it means to be an artist. I haven't seen anything like this for years. It makes me think of the stuff Sarah Lucas did at the start. That enormous energy that blasted through everything she did. There's a slightly different motor behind this tonight, but no less fierce and powerful.
Later I am talking to Ryan and he mentions an earlier work she's done, where she bandaged her hands for her graduation ceremony. And suddenly, it clicks. This is another work I've loved, but had never connected the names. And now I do. If you don't know that work, there's a picture of it here. At the end of her course, on graduation day, she bandaged her hands and kept them like that for the ceremony and the photograph. It's a shocking, hilarious, angry, passionate, sophisticated, clever and stupid piece of work, that doesn't sit easily into any real genre. But what a work.
And if you too want to join the Josephine Flynn Fan Club you would do well to check out the interview that Ryan does with her here and some of her videos here.
In fact, the interviews that Ryan and Rebecca Mmmmmmmm have been recording with the artists in this gallery are all excellent. Honest, genuine, revealing.
Associates is finding an incredibly rich seam for their programme. It's an important little space.
It's just a shame that tonight's show was such a pile of wank...

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I first saw Josie's work when you put it in 'Now Then Now Then' the ground-breaking show at the International 3. It was the bandaged hands photo, which is her most famous work because is was in New Contemporaries, and usually the starting point for any discussion of her practice, and might be seen as her signature work except visually it doesn't look like her other work. But it does represent what we've been saying about putting herself, or a representation of herself, into her work, and demanding a response. And maybe using vulnerability as a weapon.

I like Russel Herron's Sarah Lucas comparison, I do remember going to the shop on Bethnal Green Road she did with Tracey Emin in 1993, and seeing all this stuff they were throwing at the (art) world to see what would stick. Some of it was definitely a pile of wank - but in a good way. It was different times of course, but it is perhaps useful to look at Josie in this context (or maybe even tradition). What they were doing there was using this particular project as a space for where anything goes, there were no considerations of gallery presentation. This was  strength and a weakness. At the time you couldn't really discern a trademark formal style in either of their works, but Sarah Lucas already had work in the Saatchi collection, and when they each did 'proper' shows at White Cube everything was carefully presented and appropriately commodified.

Josie doesn't need to do that- she doesn't need that kind of privileged space to show work with that kind of freedom and energy - she can do it in her proper gallery shows. I loved what she did at Axel Lapp's gallery in Berlin - putting her cardboard computer on the desk along from his, by a seat with a drawing of 'Axel's Lapp'. Not many artists would invite visitors to sit on a picture of the gallerist's cock. It was very stupid and childish, and you have to be very sure of the tone you're creating to get away with that. That comes from what you said about the seriousness of thought that lies behind the work. It is that combination of constant self-doubt but doing it anyway because really you know it is good, and because you just can't help it. Self-critique perhaps - yes you can critique her work because she has already thought of everything that might be wrong with it, and all those wrong things are what is good about it.

 Martin



M

I think you might be right,

R

Email correspondence between Ryan Gander and Martin Vincent commissioned by The International 3 on the occasion of the exhibition Josephine Flynn 17th November 2007 - 15th December 2007