Interview: Graham Dolphin

Graham Dolphin: Rock, 2010. Installation view.

The suicide letters you have made drawings of for this show are they fictitious?

Yes some of them are…

What gave you the idea to start with this concept in the first place?

I guess it’s the way most artists work. It’s just gradual progression from certain things I was doing before. I was using ready-made objects posters, photos and stuff like that. I wanted to shift away from that a bit and I thought the scale could change. So I changed the idea of the ready-made into just a thought, an image of something that already existed and then I could do my own thing on top of that.

So these suicide notes, final notes are based on rumours. Some of them are very faithful to the exact notes this one is very faithful to the exact Virginia Woolf note. I mean there are copies of it available online. It is also based on a scene in the film The Hours where the actress Nicole Kidman writes it. It’s kept in the British library, I haven’t seen it in the flesh but …

Then there is one by Mark Linkous an American singer and songwriter who shot himself in March this year but there’s no record of him leaving a note. I tried to think of someone who is a songwriter, someone who used lyrics and words throughout his whole career, on what he might have written. It’s an adaptation of one of his songs that is also a cover version so the real lyrics are: “There’s a heaven and there are stars” instead of “no heaven” and “no stars” so that one is totally imagined.

The other ones are Alexander McQueen and Hunter S. Thompson which are based on reports and fans that have argued about the significance of them. Then there is another one here; I don’t know how to pronounce his name but he was a Danish singer and songwriter Eik Skaløe? That one is based on an exact copy of the note that he left on the border of Pakistan and India. He left it in his backpack. That was quite a nice find because that was obviously linked to this place here, plus he fit exactly that kind of person who had a quick, chaotic and creative existence but burned out really quickly.

So that is partly what interests you about these people?

Yes, none of these people feel very real to me. I have an idea of who they are but that is always through a meditative source or through other people writing or talking about them. These other works are more about the fans that have left their mark on Marc Bolan or Bob Marley - they are about the action not the thing.

Graham Dolphin: Tree, 2010. Variable dimensions. Sycamore tree, metal, wood, plastic, paper, firt, material, foil, artificial flowers, flowers, insects, marker pen, biro, felt-tip. NB. Recreation of Marc Bolan's car crash site, Barnes, England.

Graham Dolphin: Tree (detail), 2010. Graham Dolphin: Tree (detail), 2010.

There are a lot of dead rock stars. I mean sometimes they rise to even higher fame because of their tragic deaths right?

Yeah… they are huge icons now. The route that led on to this was a show I did in London in May. It started this kind of process the remaking of existing objects that fans had used as tribute sites. There is a bench very near to where Kurt Cobain lived and shot himself that fans go to in Seattle and leave their marks on. And I recreated it as kind of a replica of that bench. I never go to the actual place. I still want that distance and I like the fact that they are all just created from a few images that the fans have. I think if I go to the places I would have a direct experience, which would interfere with my making of them because they are obviously very tragic sites. This tree here is where fans pay tribute to Marc Bolan, it is in West London where he crashed his car into it - his girlfriend was driving. It has become a huge sign for people to go to.

Is this the way it looks today or is it your version of it?

Yeah it’s my version. I got people to take photographs for me of it, so a lot of them are identical or exact replicas of some of the tributes and other ones are made up. The tree itself has probably less life, things decay over time - it’s quite a busy road, so this is like an amplified version of the real thing. The tree is from Denmark just down the road actually. It’s the same type of tree it’s a sycamore; very important otherwise the bark would be wrong. The original tree is probably a little bit bigger, maybe older.

When was this?

He died in ’77. He was huge in England from the band T-rex. He is someone I didn’t really know that much about. I just had an idea of who he was. I never listened to the music particularly. I got really into this thing about what people would leave. It wasn’t enough to go to the place to pay your respects you had to leave something to say you’d been. A mark of that thing. The naivety of the things that people had left fascinated me. Like the photo shop images that they left and the techniques were quite you know touching. I mean coming from my stand point as an artist where I over-think every mark I make where obviously it’s very considered and careful. In this case people just do their thing very intuitively on the spot so I got really in to that. The same with these marks on the door, I got very fascinated by the fact that they would make a very permanent mark they don’t care about typography or anything but it makes a great image.

And what is this door?

It’s Freddie Mercury’s house in London and it’s quite an unassuming door, there’s a big walled garden and this is the backdoor to his house. It’s in Kensington it has become a quite big site for people to go to.

Graham Dolphin: Rock, 2010. 100 x 115 x 55 cm. Polysytrene, concrete, plaster, paint, ink, marker pen, graphite, glue, varnish, wood, dirt. NB. Recreation of Gram Parsons' failed cremation site, Cap Rock, Joshua Tree National Park, USA.

But he didn’t commit suicide did he?

No, he died of AIDS so it’s not just about suicides but also this phenomenon of the fans making a tribute to these people who died young-ish. It makes them more iconic. If he had carried on making work until he was eighty or whatever people would have kind of forgotten about him.

What is it exactly that fascinates you about these tributes or actions carried out by the fans?

They are very close to religious experiences somehow. The fact that they want to visit somewhere that has an aura of these people which could be passed on to them or somehow get closer to the idea or the myth of that person. By remaking these things in plaster in an art way does that aura still exist or does it get lost between these two things? It’s about the distance between the audience and the performer and that space in between the two where you are always separate. Although you can be a huge fan of Freddie Mercury or whatever there’s always that separation thing; you only get to know him through the music he makes.

A lot of people think that these pieces are quite morbid as they’re about death. I don’t think of them in that way, they’re not fun but they’re just silly. And there are lots of references in art like Landscape Art and Land Art.

What about the suicide notes are they more provocative to people?

Yeah they’re more direct I think. Because they are obviously not to do with the fans. They are about the actual people. Particularly when they are copied identically. The way I have drawn them you see the edges of them so you see them more as objects on paper. This hopefully twists them so they’re not pretending to be the actual letters they are just drawings of the thing; an idea of the thing. They hold so many layers of emotional charge. Formally, I think they work in terms of the refinement of the mark compared to the messiness of these other fairly random objects.

Graham Dolphin: Rock, 2010. Installation view.

It really makes you aware of the fact that these people have thought about it in a way, right?

Yes I am surprised when people don’t, if you are going to go through with killing yourself - why not leave a few words?

This one is by Alexander McQueen, did he actually leave a note?

Yes, but we don’t know what it said other than his family I imagine. The only thing that they read out at the inquest were the last two lines… “Please look after my dogs” there’s obviously a lot more which we will never know. I did Kurt Cobain’s letter as well. He so knew what he was doing. His handwriting is very careful, it is really meticulously written out it has this kind of pretend blasé-ness about it. He is certainly aware that people would analyze it and ponder over it - he clearly builds up his own myth. It’s quite long actually and it’s addressed to his childhood imaginary friend.

I suppose we crave to know why someone would do this kind of act. I don’t think it’s morbid but I find it very interesting this whole idea. I’d find it more annoying if art didn’t also deal with death. I think you can’t avoid it really.

Thank you.

Graham Dolphin: Rock, 2010. Installation view.