K J Pocock’s work is inspired by the human made environments we inhabit and play out our lives within. Dramatic events, dreams, joys and tragedies are frozen in time – their impact upon us revealed. His work will be on display at Saan1 Gallery in the Northern Quarter of Manchester for the exhibition ‘K J Pocock: About ten years…’ I’m drawn to the work as it makes me see the world from a slightly different angle. Seeing the structure of human events laid out in this way turns the drama and the emotion into a more abstracted form. Kan Cheng, the director of Saan1 Gallery, says Pocock’s work features “colourful, deconstructed architectural elements that create a strange and unique physical and mental space to be explored”.
The work encompasses themes such as power, control, hierarchy, repetition, aggression, the passage of time, transformation and contemplation. Pocock is interested in how the personal can represent the universal.
I interviewed the artist about his work and his forthcoming exhibition.
You studied architecture originally. Can you tell me how the switch to art came about?
I have made art since I was a child. So even when I was an architecture student I continued my love of art through painting, life drawing, attending private views and art lectures (we shared a building with the History of Art faculty at Cambridge) and putting on exhibitions of my own art work with friends. Art and architecture have always gone hand-in-hand for me.
How did you end up working as an artist in Manchester and how do you find it as a place to work?
I moved to Manchester many years ago. Originally from Dorset I moved first to London to find work, after graduating as an architect. I had friends though from university who lived in Manchester, so I visited them often. After renting in London for four years I also wanted to buy my own place – so I moved to Manchester as I loved the city, and it’s nightlife in particular when I was younger (!), and it was more affordable. As a place to work it’s grown for me as the visual arts in Manchester seem more active now than when I first moved here many years ago. I have no metrics for that but that’s how it feels to me.
You’re obviously fascinated by the structure of things?
Yes absolutely. That really came about from one of my great art teachers at secondary school, Mr Sharpe, who taught me to look and think about the structure of things, such as buildings and trees, when I was drawing them. Not just to look at the surface of things. That was an important lesson for me and has continued to this day. Studying architecture clearly helped with that. I am forever grateful to many of my teachers over the years.
What is it you are trying to communicate in your work? Is it different for each piece?
My work is inspired by the built and natural environment, their relationship to each other, our movement between them and my subconscious response to them. It is about interior and exterior – both for us as a person and the physical world we live and work in. So both people and buildings present an exterior face to the world whilst also having a different interior world. There are parallels between the two I think, so I use this in my art work.
So my own thoughts, dreams, memories and experiences are embodied in my work but that can be different for each piece. I am interested in the effect these different environments have on us and how we feel and respond to them – physically, psychologically, knowingly and unknowingly.
For example, I recently went back to my home county of Dorset to a place which was very special for me as a child. Someone else was with me and they felt very differently to me, since they had no connection with that place. It was their first time there. The physical exterior place is exactly the same for both of us but mentally inside we are in very different places.
What inspires you for each of your pieces?
Sometimes the inspiration and subject is about the wider built and natural environment, sometimes more personal about a special place or feeling and sometimes both together. Different personal and universal, internal and external ingredients are blended. It’s not usually one thing. I don’t try to force this but let it evolve naturally.
To me it feels like looking at the world from a slightly different angle. Is that something you are trying to convey?
Yes. As I mentioned before it’s about our subconscious response to the physical world we occupy and how each of us bring ourselves to a place with our own feelings, experiences, thoughts and memories. We all look at the world slightly differently. In my work this is my lens.
The violent and dramatic are turned into forms and solid shapes. What interests you about exploring extreme human emotions?
Most or many of us have experienced ups and downs in life with the more extreme emotions that comes with that. Without going in to detail I certainly have. I have always felt that I have made work that is personal and I am interested too in how the personal can sometimes represent the universal. In my early work the personal aspect is more direct and obvious as it featured paintings and drawings of friends and family and landscapes and townscapes of Dorset near where I grew up. Now the personal is less explicit but more implicit. I think my personal experiences and interests, anger at what is happening in some of the world and love of some of the world are embodied in my work.
‘About ten years…’ will run from Saturday 9 November 2024 to Sunday 17 November (closed Monday 11 November) from 12 to 6pm. Saan1 Gallery is located at 5 Kelvin St, Manchester M4 1ET. Free entry.
Additional images are available at the artist website: https://kjpocock.art/
