Will Sweeney // Subterraneans
28.11.07 - Thomas Jeppe - art, feature article
Photos by Thomas Jeppe
Illustrator, musician, cosmic outsider, Will Sweeney is showing his artwork from the new Architecture in Helsinki album and singles in his new show “Subterraneans” at The Narrows from this Friday the 30th of November. For a concise overview of his career to date, check roughly a third of the way down the page here. For a scintillating interview with Will himself, illustriously punctuated with images, see below.
Thomas Jeppe: You have a show coming up at The Narrows. What’s it about?
Will Sweeney: I’ve been working with the local band Architecture in Helsinki (AIH) since the beginning of this year, and I’ve done their most recent LP cover, and artwork for two of their singles as well, and basically they invited me out here, because it’s been quite a good collaboration, it’s been quite a creative process. Quite different from the usual sort of music process of doing someone’s record cover.
TJ: So did they actually invite you to do the show?
WS: Yeah well the manager kind of came up with the idea, Bernadette, she contacted me and had the notions of doing something, and the guy who runs the narrows is a good friend of Cameron, the front man of AIH, and it kind of came together simultaneously with different people being interested in doing it. And I’ve wanted to come here for ages. I’d heard so much about it from Ben (Sansbury), Lizzie (Finn), Ferg (Purcell), all those people. And obviously, because of Misha and Shauna (P.A.M.).
TJ: Are you going to be showing stuff other than the work for the album?
WS: It’s focussing mainly on the AIH stuff, it’s quite a modest show really. It comes off the back of a show I just finished in Tokyo, which I’ve been working towards for most of the year. That was quite a big event. The timing wasn’t perfect to come here, but we decided to go ahead anyway. It’s good for AIH because they start an Australian tour this week, so it makes sense in terms of promotion. But it was a bit of a push really to do this show. I don’t want to say it’s compromised, because I don’t think it is. I think it’s quite nice for the people who are into the band to see the process behind the artwork. But it’s not something that represents everything I do. I don’t want to say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in exhibitions.
TJ: So you consider it as a show with a specific purpose, rather than a solo show…
WS: Yeah, it’s not really saying ‘this is my world, step inside…’ This show is more specifically about the creative process of working with Cameron from AIH and those other boys.
TJ: Did you work with them closely on the visuals for it?
WS: We talked all the way through it, (Cameron)’s a really interesting guy, he went to art school, I think he specialised in photography, and I think he has a really big hand in everything they do, visually.
TJ: Some of their clips have been incredible.
WS: Yeah, some of them are really good. I’m really wary these days of working with bands and musicians because I’ve had lots of horrible experiences of working through record companies and management. It just gets really convoluted, it’s really common that you take this job on, you think it’s going to be great, and then everybody has an opinion. It’s like too many cooks. It’s really difficult. When AIH first approached me, I was a bit ‘hmmm’, because the manager Bernadette is a friend of a guy at my agency, and I didn’t know how it was going to pan out at all, and there wasn’t that much money floating around for it, and I thought ‘hmm, not that keen to be honest’. They didn’t grab me as a band. Then they sent me the new stuff, and I started speaking to Cameron, and this guy seemed pretty cool actually. He’s really keen in a genuine way. A lot of the time, you get a manager in a band approach you and say ‘oh yeah, we’re touting you as one of the illustrators, you’ve made it we’d like you to do the artwork, we love your work’, this kind of thing, and then you do something for the test and you never hear back from them. It’s not very sincere. That’s quite common. But with Cameron it was really direct and he genuinely was into my stuff and knew it, and it was like ‘oh wow, this is amazing, someone’s actually bothering to do this’.
TJ: That’s a pretty different sort of approach, but still they’re not independent, they’re under a bigger label right?
WS: They’ve got weird deals all over the world, but they’re big in America, and I think they have one deal going on in Australia, one deal going on elsewhere…
TJ: So it means they’ve got creative control.
WS: Yeah. They seem to have pretty cool people working for them, and they’re genuinely nice people, and they do it for the right reasons, they’re not ‘yeah let’s make it big’ or whatever, they don’t give a shit.
TJ: Well it’s brilliant they got you on board.
WS: It’s good it panned out like that. The only drawback is that they’re touring all the time; communication is quite slow sometimes.
TJ: I guess they give you the freedom to do what you like…
WS: I was allowed to do what I like, Cameron never set any boundaries for this, apart from… I can’t remember… ‘Don’t make it too science fiction’ or something like that. It was a good meeting of music and visuals. I think it works well. It pushed my stuff in another direction which I didn’t expect it to go in. It wasn’t like me saying ‘right I’ve got this look for you guys, I know exactly what you need…’ You know, I learnt a lot from it.
TJ: So you didn’t know exactly what they needed.
WS: No, not at all.
TJ: I guess you couldn’t. I haven’t heard the whole new album, but I’ve heard a few bits of it…
WS: It’s a bizarre album,
TJ: The aesthetic that could do it… I don’t know, I guess your style makes sense for it, in a way.
WS: I think so. I mean it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, the album, but I like it. For an album to make pictures from, it’s great. There’s loads of weird textual things, it seems like colourful music, if that makes sense.
Image from “Subterraneans” flyer, downloadable from The Narrows.
The exhibition is open until the 15th of December 2007 AD.
