If you have spent much time in Brisbane chances are you have seen an artwork by Simon Degroot. Whether it is one of his painted traffic signal boxes, murals or gallery works Degroot has made his mark on Brisbane with his vibrant, bold and graphic style.
Degroot is known for his various large-scale abstract murals spotted throughout Brisbane’s urban landscape. Some of his recent murals include: Changing Lanes Festival Cairns (2015), ‘The Pillars Project’ Southbank (2014), ‘After Image’ Hilton, Brisbane (2014) and ‘Floating in a New Sky’ Shaun Lockyer Architects, Brisbane (2014). With a career spanning over a decade, he has also established an envious exhibition profile, including his current solo online exhibition, Hard Graphics, at SGAR from 16 March to 7 May 2016.
Through his inventive painterly language Degroot interrogates existing images: disassembling, reassembling, abstracting and fragmenting to create new works. His exploration of two-dimensional representations of space recall flat screen technologies and incorporate formal devices employed by these technologies to represent space in contemporary painting.
With such an interesting thesis behind his practice I am overjoyed that Simon agreed to be profiled for Cult GC and I hope that you will find his work as striking as I do.
What drew you to art and painting in particular?
I discovered at an early age that I had a particular interest and capacity for copying and that drawing and painting was a good way to communicate. I observed and copied everyday childhood images of the sort that appear in cartoons, computers, magazines and art reproductions. I painted these shapes as a way to interrogate existing forms and as a way to talk back to the world. I observed and made drawings of things and later used these drawings to make paintings, arranging individual elements on the canvas to tell a visual story. In this way, my early drawings and paintings were not about exact copying but were more about a process of translation. Painting became a way for me to engage particular image details from the world in order to build new images.
Do you find that your experience as a commercial printer informs your artistic practice?
When I first started painting I very quickly became interested in how images are made using colour and shape. This is partly why I became involved in commercial printing, to learn more about the printed images that we all experience everyday. There is a relationship to commercial printing my painting practice as an inclination toward the copy is reflected in my experiences as a commercial printer focusing on flour-colour image reproduction, colour matching, design details and the mechanics or craft of image making.
You have completed mural work, signal box paintings and works on canvas. Your visual language is so graphic and bold, do you feel constrained by gallery works or do you appreciate their intimacy?
Working both in and outside the studio is an important part of my practice. I am interested in how particular abstract shapes work, how they can be repeated in paintings that appear in exhibitions and also how they can operate on a larger scale. This kind of variation of scale is also important because it reflects a larger engagement with visual culture where similar shapes appear in architecture, advertising design, and product logos. These shapes are both ephemeral and contingent in contemporary visual culture. I am interested in how painting can arrest these shapes and use them to build new work in the studio and in the larger environment.
Can you tell me a bit about your artistic process?
I use the language of painting to translate particularly fast shapes from the world into my work using abstraction. For example, I observe and draw shapes that I see in the world. I then make them into digital vector files in order to play with composition and scale using painting and computer techniques. I then translate these shapes back into the handmade and contemporary painting. I am interested in how this working strategy of translation into abstraction can be used to build and compose new work while simultaneously acknowledge the work of others and the art of the past.
I am interested in the structural qualities of your imagery: the choice of shapes and how they are layered upon each other, are you inspired by architecture and your built environment?
I think architecture and the built environment is a good metaphor for painting, especially the urban spaces of the city where shiny new skyscrapers are juxtaposed alongside old historical buildings. To me, these carpentered environments suggest ways and spaces where the practice of painting can develop.
As a PhD candidate, your research investigates the shape in contemporary abstraction. A recent artwork from your doctoral thesis research, Indirect Response, recalls the Modernist history of black monochromatic painting, such as the work of Kazimir Malevich or Ad Reinhardt. The idea of the black monochrome was presented in their art as a culmination and termination of the representational capability of art. Why are you trying to distil painting to its emotional essence? You have previously depicted representational form, do you foresee a return?
I started my PhD research to try and understand something specific that I can identify when looking at abstract painting. That is, to try and figure out why some shapes can feel familiar in contemporary abstraction even when we haven’t seen them before. This, combined with interests of the copy, the mechanics of the printed image, the craft of painting and, art historical imagery are directed in my research toward understanding something in contemporary painting that is like a visual ‘translation’.
These ideas inform my black painting from the exhibition Indirect Response at The Griffith University Postgraduate Gallery. Before exploring this work it worth noting that at the time I was thinking how abstract shapes that look the same don’t always share the same meaning. Yves-Alain Bois makes this point by comparing Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Black Square (1915) with Ellsworth Kelly’s Black Square (1953) explaining that while they share a visual affinity, they are entirely unrelated from a genetic point of view. Bois diagnoses this as a case of pseudomorphosis, a term used by Erwin Panofsky to describe two analogous or identical forms that are entirely unrelated in their genesis. As this example demonstrates, comparison of art historical formal similarities is complex and prone to confusion.
While my mostly black painting does seem to recall a Modernist history and shares something of a visual affinity, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is related to a history of black monochromes. Looking more closely, the work is actually a layering of several translucent overlapping black shapes. This work is more closely aligned with representation as the painted shapes can be identified and are like photocopies of their coloured antecedents from other paintings.
What can we expect next from Simon Degroot?
As I work in the studio I find that painting shares many things with ephemeral screen based images. Contemporary painting is responding to the screen by transforming the fast and flighty into the secure and considered. Although, painting too is transformed by this process as it enters a larger network and image economy via its likeness as a screen based image. This is where my research is exploring ways to engage and extend connections, and employ methods of translation to create new work.
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Feature image: Simon Degroot, Purple Additions, oil on canvas, 61 x 76cm.
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