What came before Will Butterick, artist?

I went to art school in Brighton, and after that I was just doing odd jobs for some time. I was a carer for a bit during the pandemic which felt important for me to do, to get to know a world I hadn’t really ever thought about, and after that I worked for Ground Up Media with my photography. Following that, I started taking photos for BUILDHOLLYWOOD, too. It’s kind of coming full circle to put my art up on those same billboards I’ve been taking photos of, and even though this wasn’t part of my artistic process originally, I’m now re-approaching photography from the perspective of both work, and also as an artist.

Was your upbringing particularly art-driven? Do you have any figures you admire or who influenced you as you progressed through your artistic education and career?

It’s funny, I didn’t really do art at school, I suddenly became very worried that I wasn’t technically good enough, so I stopped doing it once it wasn’t compulsory. My mum would take me to the Tate Modern when we lived in London, and she always talks about their great art tours for kids. I distinctly remember being probably around five, looking up at this huge Louise Bourgeois Spider sculpture outside the building and just being terrified but also so intrigued.

I had this massive hiatus from art where I lost that child-like instinct to create until I decided to do an art foundation. I got on because I’d done a bit of photography, and the guy that interviewed me, his name was Dave, became my tutor. I remember him saying that my photography was really good, but noted that I didn’t have any paintings or drawings. He asked me, “can you draw?”, and I couldn’t lie, so I just said, “not really” (laughs). He said, “that’s fine, you’ll learn on the course”, and that was just so nice to hear. I think I gave that up at school because it was like “come on, you’re not learning quick enough”. So yeah, my mum and Dave are two great sources of encouragement and inspiration.

Are there any artists or pieces of work that feel pivotal for you?

There’s work by an artist called Mark Bradford who does these large scale collage pieces that completely envelop the room, they don’t even look like collage pieces because they’re so heavily layered and built up and pushed back and built back up. He describes them as cities like Rome, falling and being rebuilt. I went to a show of his a few years back and that was a big point for me.

Has Brighton ever inspired your work?

When I first came to Brighton I remember just walking around during my first few weeks and realising I was literally in love with this city. I had this strong, sudden overwhelm, and sort of excitement to explore and be a part of its scene and streets and culture, which quickly became a big part of what I was doing. Brighton has definitely been a big inspiration, it keeps you feeling connected to something that’s more than just you.

What are your top three favourite Brighton haunts?

Everyone will probably say this (laughs), but the pier is close to my heart in many ways. I feel like it’s always been a place where I’ve gone to have either a silly, funny time, or to have a very serious reflection. That’s where I took my girlfriend on our first date, we just walked up and down the pier whilst I said some sort of terrible history facts about it (laughs). I even found a giant picture of the West Pier before it burnt down by a bin near The Shakespeare’s Head. It’s signed on the side, and turns out it’s by an artist who happens to live a few streets over.

There’s another painting here which isn’t mine, but goes well with the question. It’s painted by my friend Ivan Blight Anderson who was on the painting course with me, he’s an incredible Cornish painter. It’s of a night at The Fiddler’s Elbow where an Irish band were playing. Everybody in the scene is a friend of Ivan’s, it’s such a great piece. The Fiddler’s Elbow can be number two.

And then the third place… I feel like I need to say something that’s not a pub (laughs). But I do love The Green Dragon which is a pub that my friend manages – it’s nice when you have one of those sorts of places which is a meeting place for everyone, a sort of community.

It feels like you went well beyond the medium of fine art painting during your BA at Brighton. Can you tell me what the process meant for you and how you approached your practice beyond the canvas?

My approach was always a bit looser to most, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to correct the perfect sort of red to look like the shade of an apple, so I went into it sort of experimenting with material and process and seeing where that led. It developed later on in the course to looking at how painting can be perceived in the expanded field, and especially, for me, the links between painting and film. So I started to experiment with moving images, especially with film itself, 16 millimetre and celluloid. I felt like creating a moving painting is just the next step up from painting, and I wanted things to be less static. People use terms like ‘movement’ and ‘gesture’ to describe paintings, but actually, as much as you want to create that feeling, it’s still ‘still’ on the wall.

I was playing around with a lot of video based work, and coming to terms with the fact that there wasn’t going to be a degree show where things would be seen physically, so I thought it would be fun to play with that. When we’re seeing the whole show and body of work through a screen, it becomes another sort of window between the physical and the digital. I sort of ran away with that idea asking myself questions – why am I making physical work when anybody who’s going to see it will see it through a screen? That just led me to make very weird videos instead of paintings (laughs), but it felt like the right thing to do.

In your pieces What I Saw Before The Darkness and The Cold Majesty of the Numb, you employ some pretty haunting soundtracks. Is sound design something you want to explore more of?

Those were soundtracks that I made on my computer at the time of editing, it’s not something I’m technically versed in, I didn’t really study it, but finding that you can load up software and press around on keys and create something really sparked something in my brain. I realised that this idea of painting doesn’t have to be in a silent room, and it’s something I definitely want to explore more in the future, particularly in video work.

How would you describe your practice or archive?

I’d describe it as a sporadic mix of trying to work out things in my head, but visually. Once that started to happen, I started making pieces that respond to the last, so it’s just almost a conversation with myself out loud, which I think a lot of artists are doing.

Has contemporary digital culture influenced your practice? Do you feel like instagram and social media channels have creeped into your work?

As someone who loves art, 99% of the art that I learn about and see is usually through a phone screen, which obviously affects the way that I think about promoting and producing my own art, because I know that 99% of my own art will be seen by somebody else through a phone screen too. It’s very rare that somebody’s going to actually see a video piece run on 16 millimetre on a projector in person. Or to see a painting in the flesh, even if it’s in a show. To be honest, most people will just see the photos of the show. Some people feel quite strongly about making an image that’s ‘pure’ to how it will be seen online, but then I’m like, if you’ve got that tool, you may as well fuck with it.

How did the partnership with YOUR SPACE OR MINE and BUILDHOLLYWOOD come about?

I had been taking photographs of billboards for BUILDHOLLYWOOD for a few months so the team got to know my work quite well. I remember coming home and checking my emails and reading something like “we hope you’ve enjoyed photographing these last few months…” And when I read that, I thought they were going to say they’d found someone else or something (laughs), but I read on, and it was actually, “would you be interested in putting some art on our billboards?”. Which was such a great full circle moment.

Can you tell me about the work we’ll be seeing in the city?

They’re fairly layered pieces that I’ve created in response to all the billboards I’ve been documenting. They’re quite small pieces, no bigger than an A4 piece of paper – I thought it’d be quite playful to make something quite small and then put it up to a larger scale. They’re a response to these sort of images I have of empty billboards, or of billboards filled with the remnants of the stuff before that has been left. That’s always been an interesting technique that tends to run throughout my work, this layering and then tearing down.

There’s a piece, and I can’t remember the artist, or the show, or the place, but I really loved it. All he did for the piece was to take a sander to the walls of the gallery and in very small specific spots, sanded it back so you could see all the different layers of the walls, and all the different shows that had been there. It felt like an archeology, commenting on those sort of layers that exist in these void places. I’m really interested in that.

How does it feel to have billboards of your work on Brighton’s streets?

I’ve been in a couple of art shows since graduating, but having work on these billboards is a different feeling – the shows are behind a closed door in a certain space, but this is outside for anyone to see. It’s definitely something I want to think about going forward, in terms of showing and presenting art and putting it in a space where anyone and everyone can access it.

What’s coming next for Will Butterick?

A lot of things will be in response to this project, but I’m also quite intrigued to create more work based off of video again. I’m also very interested in pigment dye transfer, where you can basically take an image and transfer the pigment into a canvas, but it bleeds in so it looks like a painting. You can take any image from your phone or from a camera or whatever it may be, so that may well be next.