Ryan Orme

Ryan Orme’s work is often about place, people and collective systems. At the time of this interview, in Autumn 2019, he recently landed in Hong Kong where, amongst the chaos of protests to oppose a legislation to extradite those convicted of crimes to mainland China and Taiwan he’s participating in a residency with HKBU.

How is Hong Kong?

It’s incredible, beautiful and jungly but also really intense. There’s so much going on–so much life packed into a small place. I've never been anywhere as densely populated as this, I’m staying on the 29th floor of an apartment building which feels crazy to me but is normal here. Hard to imagine what London would be like if it had an extra 25 stories built on top of it. It's kind of overwhelming but I also love the feeling of scale; the immensity of things.

It’s a funny time here though with all the protests, Im staying in Mong Kok so have been bang in the middle of it. It’s a time of flux and quite a few people I’ve spoken to seem quite depressed about the future for Hong Kong. As an outsider I can’t help seeing it in relation to the dissatisfaction and divides felt back home, and that we’re seeing more globally (Chile, Spain, US etc…) If there was any correlation I wonder if its linked by a failing of imagination, old ideas, old systems; communism, capitalism, (totalitarianism?!) no longer working for people like they used to.

The protests have been going on for over 5 months and don’t show much sign of abating. It’s complicated but essentially its about the impending change of governance. A lot of people are very worried about what life will be like under Chinese rule, especially young people who really don’t identify as being Chinese. I think the protesters see it as a fight for democracy. Many people are extremely angry with how the government has responded to it all, police brutality has been a major focus of the most recent protests.

The protests had a sense of routine about them for a while, everything in the city stopped for a day, clashes took place and then everything went back to normal the next day. But things have really escalated, and the situation has taken on a wilder, more violent form, which I don’t support. I think the violence undermines the message. It’s all really complicated though, and I don’t fully understand it to be honest. The protesters can seem quite nativist to me, sometimes citing the same concerns as Brexiters (to do with immigrants etc) which is hard to square away with the more leftist concerns. There's an economic angle to the protests too, to do with wealth disparity and I don't really understand how capitalism, communism and mainland china all fit into that. I really hope they find a resolution, but it’s hard to see it happening right now.

The Other side of Nothing (1)

Do these themes already play a part in your work?

I think a lot about how cities function and I’m into macro stuff generally, so in a way- sure. At the moment I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between opposition and togetherness. Teams galvanising over their mutual opponents. I’m exploring this through some new paintings at the moment.

What’s your work about and what kinds of techniques do you use? 

In general sense it is about the relationship between our internal landscapes and the world around us. I use art-making as away of understanding things, so I think the specific subject tends to move with me, in away it is also about that inquiry for me. I do have recurrent themes though, usually focused around human experience and place. I use a quite a wide range of different techniques, from metal working  to painting. That being said, I really love drawing and mark making- I think that’s the thread that runs through all of it, a kind of language based on gestures; an attempt to communicate different feelings and intentions through marks.

Tell us about The Wire

Ha, well in the past I’ve jokingly said it’s my favourite artwork, I’m not sure  I mean it but it is a bit of a masterpiece. To me it’s a portrait of power and corruption , and how they manifest in the world. The ambition of it is incredible. I always liked things which take on both the micro and the macro, the big things alongside the day to day. It’s funny and sad and insightful and entertaining.

How do you play with materials and space?

I’ve  always liked the potential offered by lots of space, where you can take the work if you don’t  have that limitation. I wanted my degree show piece to almost become a place in its own right, an environment that you could navigate through. Im interested in the city landscape, its sense of layering  and all the strange in-between spaces. I felt like this was something I could explore experientially with sculpture, something spacial in a way I couldn't with a 2d image. One of the things you notice in a city is an accumulation of time and human touch. For this piece particularly I was interested in using materials that embedded that sense of time.

Your work has a lot of delicacy and fragility within it. Is this messaging intentional or just our interpretation?

Yeah, there is something about precariousness that runs through my work, often shown materially but I think also in tone, maybe it’s a personality thing that just gets picked up in different ways. The paintings for example have a lightness I’d say, thin cloth and not much paint but they also have a bitter sweet feel about them.

Ryan Orme, Wrong Tower, 2019. Steel, cement, pigment and crushed stone.

Why do you choose the materials you do to make your work?   

Usually a few reasons but to start with its just curiosity- which I think is one of the best drivers for making art. I think it's important to enjoy making the work, I get that through exploring new materials and processes, so I tend to move through sets of materials periodically. I think a lot about what an object makes me feel, what it emotes. I like making objects that have a sense of time embedded in them, or perhaps that evidence a sense of care. I was really into brittle materials for a while, how they might make you think about states of change.

Which artists do you admire and why?

There’s lots of people whose work I admire, especially if it teaches me something new. Like Laure Provost who’s film in Venice was so good it gave me goosebumps even though i went in thinking it would be gimmicky and I wouldn't like it.

I love Chris Offili’s Blue Rider series, they are some of my favourite paintings- they convey so much feeling. But if you mean the actual artist- for me it's always the people that are defiantly true to themselves in spite of everything. William Blake or Louise Bourgeois were those kind of characters. I've always admired my friend Alice Theobald for her courage to speak out about things.  Another friend Joel Wylie for having always been quietly, unwaveringly himself. David Noonan for his work and the generosity he shows to other artists. Emma Heart and Graham Gussin for being engaged, insightful tutors. Jean Phillipe Dordolo for his work ethic. My friends, the list could go on..

Tell us about the work you made during the ceramics course this year

That was a lot of fun. It was a residency at Rochester Square ceramic workshop, over in Camden. It's a really great place; the best people and a beautiful garden. Its somewhere that brings together loads of interesting people from different walks of life.

I'm not a ceramicist by any stretch, so saw it more as an opportunity to step outside of myself and play around. Also, I’d literally just finished at the slade so wasn’t really in the mood to be too serious about things. I made some collaborative sculptures with Kazuki Nashinga which we showed in the garden there. In some ways the project was an exercise in being open to what comes and trying to extend the limits of our own imaginative frameworks by working together.

We also ran some workshops where I provided clay components (about like lego or mechano), and groups of children and adults had to problem solve how to make structures out of them. I guess it was about cooperation and problem solving. It was really interesting to see how different individuals found roles within a team and had different approaches to making and distinct ways of thinking.