Sunday
Oct042009
NUIT BLANCHE 2009: MATTHEW VAREY INTERVIEW
Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 9:31AM | Erika Szabo 
With Nuit Blanche having come and gone, Toronto's fourth annual contemporary art festival once again provided Torontonians (and beyond) works by some of Canada's most talented artists. Building on the success of years past, the all-night festival (Oct. 3, 6:55 pm to sunrise) continued its interactive art projects and unique concepts. Among more than 400 artists and art collectives, the driving force behind Nuit Blanche, SHARP OBJEX had the opportunity to interview a few of these creative talents. I had the pleasure of interviewing Toronto-based artist, Matthew Varey, you can visit his website here.
Matthew Varey Modern Documentation Series Landscape Backlit Transparency in Custom Light Box 2009SHARP OBJEX: What influenced you to become an artist?Matthew Varey: I grew up making things. Stories, model airplanes, Lego cities, damns in rivers, drawings and paintings. At one point I had to choose between art and writing and athletics, and I thought that I would keep the writing for myself, continue to compete with revised ambitions and focus my more public self on the creation of physical things. This was as I was figuring out what to do for university. I had an experience towards the end of high school in which a friend, who was older and exhibiting, helped me to create my first large and politically aware painting by bringing over stretched canvasses and a box of oil paint, my first artwork I suppose. It was a transitional experience for me, it secured my future in art. My family supported my decision and I entered a visual arts program. I found success there and began showing right away, both on my own and eventually with a group I formed, and I loved it. I still do.
SO: What is it that predominantly fuels you to create?
MV: My desire to not fail at this. My desire to create. My desire to lose myself in my work. My need for sanity, which I find when I am working. My desire to chart a progress of sorts. My desire to become good at something. My desire to have a life that has been dedicated to something of real value, something human and necessary and significant. My need to play, to interact and engage with the world. My need to tell a story that will be listened to.
SO: Do you have any mentors?
MV: Gary Dault is a very important person in my life. Shelli Cassidy has been very influential. Art work itself is a mentor of sorts, and in some way, then, the artists whose work I study.
Matthew Varey Modern Documentatin Series 25 Backlit Transparency in Custom Light Box 2009SO: What are you trying to say with your art?MV: I am attempting to connect with the grand story of human experience, attempting to find a way to say something meaningful and personal in such a way that it is accessible to humanity and links myself to my audience and us all to our entire story to date. I am saying "we are not alone, the hurt is worthwhile, joy is a worthwhile goal, remember who we are, we have the ability to transcend out individual pasts and create a valuable future."
SO: Is this your first time at Nuit Blanche or are you a returning artist?
MV: This is my first time at Nuit Blanche as an exhibitor, though I have attended each year to date. As well, students I teach are exhibiting for the first time at Board of Directors gallery, at 1080 Queen Street West. they produced work in 2.5 weeks. It is really quite remarkable. The show is stunning.
Matthew Varey Modern Documentation 41 Backlit Transparency in Custom Light Box 2009SO: Can you tell us about your featured exhibition at Nuit Blanche?MV: I began taking these photographs when I was in Greece more than ten years ago, and proceeded to work on the series in other European countries, then in Canada and the US. There is something fascinating to me about the world of the television image. It is intense and complex, and we are missing so much of it. It is a model that I find runs true for most events in life, details and the significance of beauty diluted by the obvious, and I felt that was a shame and began capturing these impossible moments, impossible in their beauty and intensity, which completes the metaphor. Television is banal, until we look closer, then it is also one of our most amazing creations. We are offered the opportunity to discover the adventure of this reality at any time, and it goes, for the most part, unnoticed. That makes me sad. I want to appreciate surface and detail and complexity, so I take these images and focus on them. The medium works brilliantly to convey the wonder of this world. At least it used to with the old technology behind the first versions of this series - I am depending on digital printing technologies to deliver an equally effective viewing experience for the first time. The documentation aspect is an impossible chore - attempting to hang on to the trillions of these succulent moments as they traipse by unmarked by consciousness. I take them and release them in an art context for further examination by a broader audience. I hope you find them as haunting and intriguing and inspiring as I do.
SO: Have you experimented with photography in the past?
MV: I have used photographs in art works for more than 20 years. Photographs appeared as part of my painting vocabulary for a long time, and I have had photos printed in magazines and books as well. Taking photographs has been a very important activity in my life, and I have exhibited photographs in Greece, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, Miami, Vancouver, Hamilton, Edmonton, etc. I am engaged in an art making practice that consumes media of all kinds, and they are all important to me in a very visceral and psychological way.
Matthew Varey Modern Documentation Series 52 Backlit Transparency in Custom Light Box 2009SO: Why did you decide to use photography for Nuit Blanche 2009?MV: I was suggested to the people involved in the Art Gallery of Ontario Art Rental and Sales Gallery as some one who made back lit photographs, and they approached me specifically with the photos in mind. I have been thrilled to work in this media again, and am doubly excited to be engaged with Nuit Blanche.
SO: How would you describe your creative process?
MV: I am a voracious consumer of imagery and idea. I am passionate about materials, with a personal and emotional connection to a huge variety of products and manufacturers. I attempt to work in series that engage in the larger issues using imagery that is both personal to me and relatable to a much wider audience. I look for symbols and ideas that are integrated into or adaptable to the ongoing saga of human history and human experience, then attempt through a near constant engagement with making things to fashion something of value, something of worth from all of my concerns. I am prolific, and learn through doing, analyzing, and adapting. I understand the desired impact of the things I make, and work towards that through constant adjustments in the studio.
SO: What current projects are you working on?
MV: I have a series of sculptures that I am very excited about, and am working on a new series of paintings as well. Over the past three years I have developed a specific and personal language of imagery and story telling that I am now refining. I am working towards more public gallery exhibitions, in the attempt to have environments that will house sculptural installation with personal and historic impact.
SO: What advice would you give budding artists?
MV: Find out what is important to you through whatever approach you need to take to understand why you are creating. Get to know everyone in the community.
SO: What areas do you think are still ripe for exploring within the arts? Is there any new territory?
MV: I think art and politics and art as influence on social progress is possible. Not art as decoration outside a new condominium. Or art as decoration hanging from the ceiling of conference centers. Artists and art as part of the thinking and shaping and making of our future. Artists are sometimes capable of extraordinary insight, which needs to be part of governmental decision making and in efforts to understand what it is we are doing to ourselves, and why we are doing to ourselves what we are doing to ourselves.
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