Along with all the street art and graffiti that we love to endlessly cover, there are then those artists who don’t fit the usual mold, that we love just as much.

Artists such as Stephen Ives, with his incredibly detailed customised toys come sculptures – made from the mutated and bonded parts of the discarded, unwanted, new, old and found playthings, are in a popular position these days – their works able to easily traverse genres. More so, however, artists such as he and their creations are often able to subliminally touch upon our inner psyches – to which everyone, no matter the type of art, or even their degree of love for art, can easily identify and respond to with a myriad of emotions. Who can not see, for example, an image of Winnie the Pooh, all decked out in religious attire, and not wonder at the symbology contained within such a visage?

Stephen Ives does new things,  and consistently allows his work to follow a modernistic, urban influenced bent, continuously breathing a splurge of transformed consumeristic creativity into the blood stream of this thing we call art.

Its for all those reasons, and more, that Invurt approached Stephen on the eve of his latest show at No Vacancy – TOY, to get the low down on his work and to get an  insight into the ideas and themes he works within when putting together his creations – and did we mention that his sculptures are just really cool? So, read on, and enjoy rummaging around in Stephens Ives unequivocally metamorphosised toybox  …

Could you give us a little bit about  how you came to be involved in tinkering with custom created toys?

I spent the first twelve years of my life in southern England, a fair percentage of that time seems to have been spent surrounded by a huge pile of Lego, I had a great range of toys, dolls, puppets, action men, cars, unisex dressups, and lots of tree climbing and mucking about in the country side (my parents gave me and my brother an awesome childhood), but Lego was my favorite, with it I could make anything I wanted or add onto what I already had. As a teenager I got into making model planes and tanks… badly I might add, but with enthusiasm.

One day in my late twentys, several years into rediscovering my art i made a sculpture as a sort of cathartic release to a dud romantic situation and realised it felt really smooth and easy. That’s kinda the roots, you always come back to your roots…. And Lego, everything is Lego.

What most draws you to the assemblage of new creatures and entities based on toy parts?

The ease, the playfulness, the ability to create something tangible out of what to most is a mass of chaos.

How about the initial processes to your work – we’ve seen both 2d drawing and images, as well as your 3D sculptures – do most of your sculptures start out as ideas on paper, or is it more of an organic construct that develops as the pieces are produced?

Most ideas come as full ideas, images or ‘thought forms’- a kind of mix of image and emotion or feeling, if that makes sense. I always use sketchbooks to keep records of stuff as I have so many ideas and things on the go at one time.  Sometimes I just dive in on a piece and it makes itself, other times I get further glimpses of the final work over a series of months and then build it. Drawing is extremely important as it creates direct flow from inner self to outer form, but ideas generally come to me when I least expect it, (shower, toilet, early in the morning at work…) I have good trust with my creative side, we work well together, no barriers.

Where do you get the inspiration for materials from, and the materials themselves? Do you have any specific toys that you find yourself going back to and deconstructing or reconstructing? What are some of your favourite toys, and why do you have an affinity with them?

I use lots of materials but toys are the most convenient, again a spin off from Lego and models. Originally it all started with a series of plastic Pooh bear figures that McDonalds was flogging off, I kept finding them in discount toy bins, then friends kept giving me bits they found, the original Pooh Wars series started with them, good plastic, iconic image, good to work with.

The use of plastic model kits came when I lived in Denmark, I had nothing, no tools, no materials, so I used the most convenient things to hand, cheap clay, scrap, discount shop junk (very few op shops in Copenhagen). There was a brilliant model shop near by and I bought a couple of kits and basically treated it like Lego. Grew from there. I also just find stuff, one if my favourites in the show has a great hubcap as the backing that I got from a mechanic round the corner, he had a wall of them, I have piles of bones that come from farms or meals, stuff I pick up off the road…

I have a thing about tanks, the symbology of inner and outer, protective shells, cutaways, delicate innards, the infinite rolling and paving of the tracks. Pooh is great as are virgin Marys, iconic and corruptible, loaded with imagery and contradiction. Dolls are also great.
But these things constantly change and morph.

We’ve seen a fair element of almost “Steam punk” in some of your work, what is it about this genre, if that is the case, that helps add to your work?

Yeah I like Steam Punk, I did Burning Man a couple of years back (going this year too) and it really came out in my costume.
My dad was a train fan back when trains were worth looking at, ie. steam powered. As a kid I got a fairly good education into the workings and got dragged around all the steam engine and static engine sites that England can offer, me and dad also used to make Lego models of the gear and piston variety, I just love that genre. Circuitry and electronics leave me cold, I need to be able to see the nuts and bolts.

In regards to my work it enables me to create the illusion of reality, you can see that something does something, the lever, the gear, they connect, they clearly do things, therefore the sculpture must have a purpose or inner life. This helps to create the spell of belief that draws the audience in.

On a conceptual level the bolts and gears of Steam Punk frequently represent the intellect, mind or the machinations of mankind, just as the armor of a tank with it’s rivets represents skin or the barrier between consciousness and the subconscious.

Where else do you derive your ideas from? What literature, sculpture, ideas or artists do you try to channel, if you do, when you sit down and begin construction on a new piece?

Firstly I wouldn’t say I try to channel any artists or style when I work but I’m certainly a fan of many and they all get thrown into the hyper-Lego pile of my mind and churned around.

Artists? Here’s a few: Gaudi, Dali, Brett Whitely, Kris Kuksi, Phil Hale, Rodin, the Chapmann brothers, Heinrich Kley, Francois Schuiten, Hayao Miyazaki, Milk, Jean Giraud (Moebius), Alexander Calder, to name a few
Other influences include baroque work, Japanese wood cuts, pataphysics, European comic art, sci fi, history in general, communist propaganda art, kitsch…

I read a lot, a disparate mix of history, fiction and biographies.

Working with sculptural elements, you must probably
have a pretty interesting workspace – can you describe to us your studio and how it is set up?

Hahaha, organised chaos. I have this work station with a swivel chair and benches on three sides – kinda like Kirk on the Enterprise. There’s a pile of tools, drills and blades, lots of angle poise lamps and dozens of small containers with vaguely sorted bits in them; wheels, gears, wire, metal scrap, round things, long things, flat things. There are also larger containers and draws with plastic figure bits, model bits, clockwork, doll bits, plastic panels, action figures…. scattered in and amongst this are dolls, toys, figurines, cars, model kits, brushes, sprays, pencils, paints. There is order, but it’s terribly confusing to the untrained eye. At the moment, pre show chaos definitely has the upper hand, crap everywhere and the floors the bin. 

I also have a separate bench for airbrushing and detailing as well as a wall for stretching canvas on.

As a backdrop to all this is the “wonderwall” of postcards, clippings, photos, posters, junk and crap covering the walls all juggled with shelves full of toys and skulls. It’s quite a sight, drives my studio mate, Kat, mad.

Can you tell us a bit more about the last show we saw from you, at ADCO:VENUE in Copenhagen in which you purported a battle between Pooh Bear and the Honey Bees? – as well as your other international exposure?

The Pooh show came about as a result of two things, firstly ADCO:VENUE sold all the work they were meant to be keeping for my show later in the year and secondly I had a glut of Pooh figurines.
On one level it was very whimsical, but on a deeper level it was about toy merchandising and the huge business cross franchising now is. What if Pooh suddenly lost his popularity? His audience grows up, what do Disney do? Remarket him! How? Standard choices are violence or sex, the later was a little weird (and yes I did go there) so violence it was. I created a fictitious story in which Christopher Robin grows up, creating a break between himself and the eternally toy Pooh, a bit of Freud, add a touch of WW2 imagery and some help from Brechts “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” and the Pooh Wars saga was born.

I’m planning another Pooh show – but it’ll be in Melbourne this time. I’m slowly collecting more figurines (please if you are reading this and have any hard plastic Pooh bear figures, my need is greater than yours, the more I can get the sooner the show). There is a Pooh piece in the TOY show, pretty epic in scale, and kinda Ramboish.

I was included in a couple of group shows in London as well as bits of my work getting taken to art fairs in Paris, Brussels and New York.
Denmark has been the kick off point for Europe with some fantastic help from VENUE and great collectors like Christian Stadil of Hummel Sport and Lars Christian Brask.

At present Europe is still quite due to the recession, hence why I’m doing such a big show here.

Since then, what have you been working on, or has most of your effort been put towards this upcoming show?

Yeah it’s pretty much all been about this show. I spent the first couple of months of last year playing with my painting  and through a couple of serendipitous occurrences and a complete balls up I came up with the mixed media look that features on several of the pieces in TOY. I also have to mention my studio mate Kat who has contributed so much to how I’m working now, not least of which is the switch back to acrylics.

In terms of your upcoming show “Toy” at No Vacancy, are you running with any themes or is it more of a showcase of what you have been working on? Tell us a bit more about the exhibition itself and what you’ll be doing.

Well yes it is a show case but it’s also a continuation of the major themes from the Pooh show. After the gritty realistic look of that show I felt like a change, I had a yen for two-pac finishes and plasticisation, it was also a challenge to up my skill levels, something I think is very important for an artist.

So yes there are the themes of mass marketing and franchise toy manufacture, but it’s also a bit of a trip down memory lane with references to classic toys from my childhood reworked for today. Some of it of course is pure whimsy, just had to be done.
Here are a few glimpses; cars, Mr Potato Head reworked, the Virgin Mary (tweaked a bit), jet planes, war, Bob the Builder, an infomercial video done in collaboration with Yandell Walton, pimped Lego, Tom and Jerry, football (soccer), Swiss army knife/ iPhone, Action Man, Barbie, Kali the Indian destructor/ creator goddess, Gangsters, a pantomime horse, skulls…

That’s to get you started.

After this current show, what would you like to tackle next? Are there any other shows in the pipeline, or any gestating projects that you’d really like to get stuck into?

Oh Jesus don’t get me started – I came up with about three or four shows I could do as break aways from this one, I’d like to work more on my painting, sit in a cafe for a week or so and doodle… then there are the backlog of other sculptures and ideas. Once a year I go through my sketchbooks and tag pages of stuff that I forgot about or didn’t understand at the time it came out, there’s heaps. Even full time as an artist (which is what I’m aiming for) I wouldn’t get through it all. Then there are the REALLY big projects, there’s one that is a sculpture about 100 metres long, and 10 thick, a couple of huge kinetic pieces, even a series of performance works.

I think I’m going to bang out a drawing show quite quickly, something based on Japanese woodblock prints.

I’ve no idea what’s happening in Europe as yet, so maybe I’ll post some of those exhibition ideas on Facebook and take a vote on the next theme…. bet you it’s Pooh.

Stephen Ives exhibition TOY opens tonight at No Vacancy Gallery.