HONEST POETICS: The Sound & Vision of Richie Culver

Finding renown for his sardonic text-based paintings, the Hull-born artist and musician has spent the best part of the past ten years dedicating his artistic sensibility to extending wry comments on contemporary culture wrapped up in English sarcasm, delivered powerfully through statements on canvas and his eponymous musical output. Under the veneer of humour, however, sits the London-based artist’s honest poetics. Striking for their vulnerability, Culver’s paintings encapsulate the zeitgeist, repackaging phrases, comments, and one-liners synonymous with the ever-changing cultural landscape of the modern day, stripping them to their essence and examining the fragility of contemporary masculinity and digital alienation in a bid to lead by example, and how to be a better father, husband, and son.

Culver’s audio work shirks this humorous layer, however, setting his East Yorkshire drawl against experimental electronic compositions that bivouac somewhere between Throbbing Gristle and sound pollution of a nearby rave. Arresting and potent, Culver’s musical output places speech front and centre, twisting his painting practice on its head with lengthier poetry that offers an autobiographical foray into the darker sides of Culver’s creative practice.

Sitting down with Richie Culver at his studio in Northwest London, UrlfreezeShops spoke to the artist and Participant Records co-founder about showing vulnerability through his work, and the importance of working as if it is your last day on earth.

Your fine art practice features a specific sense of humour, wrapped up in relatable, often confessional statements, whereas, in my opinion, your musical projects offer an atmosphere and perspective that remains tethered to a seriousness of tone. Do you see these two strands of your creative practice as different ways of processing the same subject matter?

It’s interesting that you’ve flagged that, as I’m aware of it. Certainly, within my visual work, it’s instantly recognisable. You read it, and you either relate to it or you don’t. Usually there are darker layers within it, with whatever the subject is, but often the first reaction people have is to connect it with some sort of humour, whether that’s English sarcasm, or a comment on whatever that subject might be. When I first started making music again, this time round, it was important for me to do it autobiographically, to tell my story sonically in a more old school fashion. As with any artist, the goal is to get everything to fit under one umbrella and make sense. I’m going to slowly start to strip the text away from my paintings – the thing that I suppose I’ve become known for. The text will always be there, but I’ll start to abstract it more, make the viewer work slightly harder than just a straight up, conceptual, reduced, minimalistic text on canvas, that sometimes takes ten seconds to create. I’d like to be more of a painter. At that point, I believe that my music will make more sense within the whole universe that I work under in my head.

With your recent speech-less release on Jordanian record label Drowned by Locals “Alive in the living room” and recent comments that you’ve made about wanting to move away from your text-based paintings, you seem to be interested in pursuing a move away from the written, and spoken word, utilising disembodied and twisted vocals in your music and obscured, unintelligible text in some of your paintings at your recent show in Vienna’s Galerie Kandlhofer. What opportunities does this move offer you?

It's an interesting question, and something that I think about 24/7. Sometimes I look at the artists that I like and I question whether I should be creating work in a similar way. How do I make the bridge and then cross it to get to another way of working? My work is so familiar to me now. When I made the "Born Died" painting, it felt like that was the end of this sort of work for me, that I’d said everything in one painting. There was a feeling of defeating the end of level boss to complete the game. I remember thinking “I really think I’m done”, in regard to text. It’s interesting, because speaking about an abstract painting is completely different to speaking about a text based piece, especially a legible one, where you can actually read it. You’re splitting your audience in half straight away, as they either relate or they don’t. Whereas when you approach an abstract painting, where things aren’t instantly recognisable or legible, more is revealed over time through different gestures. This is what I want to move towards, but still the text will be there, just obscured. With regards to my music and sound work, that is something where my spoken word and poetry will always present. I’m comfortable with it and I still have plenty to say.

Were you first interested in pursuing art or music as a creative practice?

My interest in music came first, and art came much further down the line. It’s interesting how underground culture finds you. I was instantly drawn to it, it was something that I wanted to be a part of, whether that be on the dance-floor, or as a promoter. It was that classic feeling – that sense of worth, that sense of being a part of something. I was at afterparties in the outskirts of Hull in the late ‘90s, after I’d left school, where I really got a lot of my early art education. I was meeting students who weren’t from Hull, who were partying at these club nights, and we’d all end up at their student accommodation afterwards. I was working in a caravan factory at the time, meeting people from different parts of the country and the world, really, who brought with them their knowledge and things that they were into. I remember seeing a Nan Goldin book on the table at one of these afterparties, and that was the first time that I was struck by art. I hadn’t thought about painting, or photography or anything art-related at that point. I was just into DJs, and rave flyers. I’d crossed the bridge from being into football to underground culture. It’s like when you wear something for the first time, and you change your uniform, you feel a bit like you need to change parts of yourself to be a part of something new. With the Nan Goldin book, I saw her photography and I related to it, I knew people who were like the people in the book. I remember asking the questions, somewhat naively, “is this a viable career path?” So, I went and bought a disposable camera and started taking photos. It didn’t last for very long, but the seed was planted. You could make a career out of this.

When I left Hull, I felt like I had to get to London. It was the place to go, but it felt like it was a million miles away. I don’t think I’d ever been at that point. So, I went to Leeds first, and I started working in fashion retail for various brands, such as Vivienne Westwood and Paul Smith. I remember composition and curation on the shop floor and marrying that with the compositions and the colour palettes that I’d seen in photographs. That came naturally to me in photography. I had a natural way with the camera, I’d like to say without patting myself on the back. I’m the sort of person who’ll get the right shot on the iPhone the first time. Maybe my partner would disagree with that. Working in retail, I was just taking in information. I didn’t realise it at the time, but there is so much that I have taken from that time that has come into my music and art process. Stood on the shop floor, curating it, and taking real pride in it. Finger spaces between the hangers. Folding clothes. I didn’t go to art school; I didn’t think about it at the time. It was really just about being able to afford to live. But now, in hindsight, I learnt a lot from working retail on the shop floor. I’d love to say that it was all from working in the factory, and maybe subconsciously some of the factory work I did influenced parts of my music in an industrial sense, but in a basic aesthetic way it was photography and fashion. I struggle to say that, for some reason.

I remember moving to Leeds, and anyone who was doing something that I was interested in or was someone who I gravitated towards was working in retail in one way or another. That was as close as I could get to being connected to the nocturnal activities that I enjoyed, in the day. All we spoke about was where we were going that weekend, how we were going to get there etc. It was a continuation of a feeling that I had from rave culture, or underground dance culture at that time, but in the daytime. It was like this breadcrumb trail that I was naturally following that connected me to creativity. It was very important for my own growth as a young man in my early twenties to do something that was meaningful to me, and that would eventually let me be able to work for myself. One of the first things my mum says to me when I go home is “are you still doing all the art stuff? Are you still doing the decks?” Because I’ve only recently done my Master’s Degree at the Royal College of Art, I’ve had that mindset of this not being a job and that it could easily be taken away. Which can still happen of course, if your work doesn’t sell. It’s always around the corner, having to go back to doing a job that eats me up inside.

There is a vulnerability to your music – its commentary on class and contemporary culture seems more visceral and, in a way, more melancholic. Why is it important for you to showcase a sense of vulnerability through your work?

As a man with three children, two boys, and we’re living in the world that we’re living in – a male dominated world – it’s important that I can show vulnerability and honesty through my work in the same way that I look at my children and tell them that I love them. There’s nothing more powerful for me than a man looking at another man and telling them that they love them. If you peel back the layers in my work, then there is always some kind of honesty behind it all, which is coming from the layers within me. It’s like the "I Like Pain" painting – it can be laughed at instantly, and disregarded as some sort of emo statement, but what form of creativity isn’t connected to pain in some way? Especially when you look at the grander scheme of popular culture, love songs or paintings. I make my better work when it’s coming from a place of insecurity, fear and a place of the unknown. Of course, the top of the tree is heartbreak. I’m not in that place now, and I haven’t been there in a long time, so I guess I have to go searching for it. At first glance, people may disregard it as a nonsensical or funny sentence, but I just want to be honest and talk about things that people don’t necessarily want to admit or talk about.

You’ve spoken a lot about your past experiences and how they have impacted your work – how have your current circumstances and experiences affected what your work is concerned with?

If "I was born by the sea" was about being trapped in a really small seaside town in the North of England, and leaving, as well as primarily addiction, then "Scream If You Don’t Exist" is a follow on from that, in that it centres on phone addiction. That same amount of stress and struggle that I went through in my hometown growing up, the classic one of trying to leave your home town. How can I speak about that in a contemporary way? I’m coming up to ten years sober, and my life is completely different now, but I’ve found my phone to be a really hazardous part of my life. I have a rule where I give my partner my phone on a Friday night and I get it back on a Monday morning, and I can feel my head go back into its normal shape, shall we say, to the point where I almost don’t want my phone back, but there’s another part of me that can’t wait to get it back. I’m aware that it’s part and parcel of my process, a lot of my music is created with my phone and I take all of my photographs using it, too, it’s such an important part of life and something that we cannot get away from, but I can definitely connect to addiction in the same way. Of course, a phone can’t be compared to the devastation that substances and alcohol can bring to someone’s life, but I’m aware of how it’s a comfort. So, I’ve tried to bring that idea into my sonic world. Especially with the title, "Scream If You Don’t Exist".

“Scream If You Don’t Exist”, your latest full-length release, just dropped last week. Existential yet paradoxical by design, the album’s title and promotional images offer a comment on social media’s continued creeping prevalence throughout all aspects of modern life and the negative impact that it has, but also reflects on the positives that can be gleaned when we reflect on this impact and choose a different method of engagement. How does your own relationship with social media impact your creative outlook?

The positives definitely outweigh the negatives, but being sober, every day I wake up and deal with things head on, there’s no joint on a night to soothe whatever has been happening. I’m hypersensitive to my own relationship with social media. Everybody has this half-life thing now of scrolling and talking at the same time. Watching a film but scrolling on your phone. After taking my phone away at the weekend, I’m finding so many ideas are popping into my head – titles for pieces etc. It feels like my brain is firing to this other level of my own personal process. I have an exhibition coming up in January at Carlos/Ishikawa in London, where I’m doing a physical version of the promotional videos for "Scream If You Don’t Exist", where I’m getting child actors to fill the gallery space in darkness with hoods up, illuminated by the phone screen. As I have kids, already I can see how it is impacting them. My oldest kid, his impression of being cool is standing up against the wall with his hood up miming scrolling on his phone, instead of the classic images of cool that James Dean with a cigarette or Johnny Cash used to epitomise. It’s the rebel on his phone now.

This LP feels like your most expansive, and ambitious, musical project to date. How did your creative process around this project differ to previous approaches?

The majority of that record was done during in Lockdown in Porto, actually. My process is almost like I have a terminal illness, and I’m trying to get as much done as possible. I’ve almost forgotten about the process as I’m already onto the Quiet Husband project that is coming out next year, as this one is done now and made so long ago. Because I was coming off the back of "I was born by the sea", about a small seaside town in the North of England, and my northern delivery, on this morbid abstract record, it felt like I had to continue this DIY sound that it was made of, but I wanted to bring in some collaborations. I’d already worked with Blackhaine, who is probably one of my favourite lyricists in this country, so I was thinking about who I could work with in this world that my work sits in, but from across the pond. Billy Woods and Moor Mother just popped up, for different reasons. Both, in my eyes, are living icons, so I reached out and it took a while, but we eventually got to it. I knew that because of their minds and what they talk about, coming from an American standpoint, that it would fit. Growing up being obsessed with America, it felt like having two American artists of such renown on my little project hailing from Hull was an achievement. I turned into a bit of a child, or fanboy. They both smashed it out of the park.

I read that you don’t typically make a lot of work, that what you share is what you’ve created – there isn’t a big stash of paintings or compositions that you’re sitting on, for example. I know that a lot of artists and musicians spend a great deal of time deliberating on when a work is finished – how do you delineate that cut off point?

Because my works primarily take very little time, I should have time to make more, but of course family duties often take precedent. I’m trying to get into a different way of working now, now that I’m in this new studio. It’s like the Drowned by Locals piece, I did that in one take, almost like a live performance on my own that I recorded. The concept came after. I was aware that I had "Scream If You Don’t Exist" coming, and because I held DBL in such high regard as a label, I really wanted to give them something special and slightly different to what I usually do. The concept of sleep paralysis came throughout the process, which was something that I’ve suffered with, and still do occasionally. Trying to force the words out or trying to get away from whatever is hovering around the bed and you can’t move, or even shout for help. The title, "Alive in the living room", which was a nod to sleep paralysis, being back at my parent’s house having failed in London or Leeds, going back to start again. There was nothing more depressing that having sleep paralysis on your parent’s sofa. It’s a real heavy place, with the North Sea just across the road. When I didn’t put vocals on that piece, it became something more for a gallery or a museum. Coming from that world, it’s familiar. It felt like the perfect release for that label. My music practice is very performative, in the same way that my text-based paintings are. They’re minimal, it ends when it ends, and when it ends that’s exactly where it should have ended because there is something inside me that’s stopped, and that process is over. Could I have then gone back to it and added more or added vocals? Probably. But I have an inner rule within me that says when I stop, the piece stops, and that was how it was supposed to be. Again, when it comes to vocals and lyrics, if I stutter, I’ll re-do it, but production and my paintings, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Within production I have this freedom – it’s performative and instant. That was that moment captured, it’s almost like photography. That was it, so I’ll live with it.