FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

LONDON - THROUGH THICK & THIN

Hey guess what London people? The bloated beast that was The Frieze has now been and gone. Instead of mourning the loss of "London's only relevant art fair" (I actually heard someone say that outside The Electricity Showrooms the other night) rejoice and go see some actually exciting, young and relevant artists at an exciting, young and relevant exhibition. Thick & Thin are a new young artist agency who will be exhibiting the work of the artists they represent every three months at The Mother Gallery on Redchurch Street. One of those excting young and talented artists that we were banging on about just up there is Elliot Young, a twenty-six year old fine artist and daughter of two divorced rival tattoo artists. She loves Florence and Hans Bellmer and her work engages with human curiosity and contains lots of vaginas.

Advertisement

Vice: Hi Elliot. So what makes you so special?
Elliot Young: I studied for a BA in Fine Art Printmaking, then moved to London and studied at the Prince's Drawing school in Shoreditch. As I worked on my BA I became quite conceptual, and I suppose a little bit contrived. I thought I was a social theorist than a kind of real-life artist, because for a time the aesthetics were sort of gone and I was just more about concepts. But it was a very efficient period, we were working 12 hour days. It was very back to basics and I got really into researching all the old masters. I was in and out of galleries, and the British Museum, and took a trip to Florence which is a very decadent place. I highly recommend it.

What happened after all the old masters and decadence?
When I left I was marrying things I'd learnt on my BA with my new found gauge of aesthetics. That got me interested in rendering. I went to a Hans Bellmer show in Whitechapel and started looking at these renderings of scenes of debauchery and I must have been standing in front of them for about seven minutes at a time. That doesn't sound like much, but really it's not very often that that happens, especially when you're used to strolling through galleries. I tend to feel quite violated in galleries but I was just mesmerized by these drawings. It wasn't until after I'd been stood there for ages that I realised what it was illustrating: a Marquis de Sade illustration from Juliette which is basically pornography. That contradiction of the rendering being so beautiful and how it kind of distils the image was pretty powerful.

Advertisement

So you went from being inspired by decadence to being inspired by debauchery?
I guess. I set about making art with that concept very apparent yes. There's this way of drawing what are basically cartoons, where you take the drawings, place them on the wall and then you sort of pin prick outside the image and chalk over the top. I started making drawings using this technique, but using just the pricks on the paper. It leaves these embossed, sort of penetrative marks. I was using all of this really dirty porn I'd found on the internet, just stuff that wasn't easy on the eye and then thinking: what could go with these gross images? Via the mark making, it diluted the images and made them become quite feminine and light-sensitive. They also involved the viewer in the image. I love that idea of viewer involvement. At one point I put the images in these boxes, because simple human inquisitive nature will make anyone peer in to see what's inside. There was this old guy, maybe seventy, on his hands and knees crawling into the box and all of a sudden he's like: "Oh my God! it's a vagina!". That got everyone taking turns, crawling up on their hands and knees to look at this vagina in a box.

What initially made you think: "Hmm, I want to draw stuff?"
I've got this sort of colourful background. My parents are tattoo artists. My mother was a lawyer and she's a pagan and she's got a monkey. So from an early age I was surrounded by interesting stuff and I've been tattooing for years as well.

But you don't have any tattoos. My mum told me never to get an tattoo from someone with no tattoos. It's like getting your teeth checked by a dentist with no teeth.
I've got this little one on my wrist but it was more like I was rebelling by not having them.

The area your show is taking place in tomorrow is saturated with people who "show work" and attend openings night after night. Do you find it hard to really distinguish yourself in that kind of environment? It would make me want to go do stuff in a stone cabin in the Lake District.
Yeah everybody's pretty 'expressive', but then there's still trains of fashion and art. There's always a fad and effectively you have to avoid getting caught up in that fad otherwise you'll burn out and without your niche you'll just implode. Fads kind of inverse on themselves and that's it.

Did you actually grow up in London?
No, I grew up in Norfolk. My parents were from Hackney though and my grandparents actually met around the corner from here. When I was studying at the drawing school my grandparents took me to see the place where they had their first kiss.