Artist Marc Quinn stamps the city’s imprint — and grime — into his paintings

Quinn tells Louise Jury about how he "literally ground the texture of the streets into the paintings" for new exhibition
“Poem to London”: Marc Quinn wore steel-toed boots to stamp out his new work (Picture: Glenn Copus)
Gelnn Copus

Artist Marc Quinn has literally stamped the grime and contours of London’s streets into his new series of paintings.

Inspired by a seaside sunrise, Quinn — one of the Young British Artists, previously known for work including a giant Kate Moss sculpture and the Fourth Plinth work featuring a pregnant disabled woman — used landscape photographs on canvas and put them through sanding and spray painting before taking them onto the streets near his Clerkenwell studio and stamping the impression of Thames Water drain covers and other debris into them.

“I literally ground the texture of the streets into the paintings,” he said. The degraded seascapes were then mounted on aluminium and pummelled and contorted even further into new painting-sculptures still retaining a hint of the original pink and orange beauty.

The artist said he loved the work of the 18th and 19th-century painters of the sublime such as Turner and Caspar David Friedrich, but added: “You can’t paint like that any more. You have to paint about the time you live in. These paintings are called The Toxic Sublime. There’s toxicity but they’re still essentially beautiful.”

He said it was curious that only a party of primary school children stopped to ask him what he was doing when he was working on the canvases on the street using special steel-toed workmen’s boots: “That tells you something about the city as well.”

He added: “I live in London, I’m a London artist. The surface of these paintings is a poem to the city. It’s a poem to London.”

The exhibition is his first in London for five years and also includes giant stainless steel sculptures of shells from the beaches that initially inspired him: “It’s really exciting to show a completely new body of work in London. It’s my home audience.”

Marc Quinn — The Toxic Sublime, at White Cube Bermondsey from July 15 to September 13.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in