Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
of running his business, he talks hopefully about the
future. There is the Pirelli calendar that he’s working
on with the photographer Nick Knight, a long-time
collaborator, and which, despite being “a bit cheesy”,
has kept his interest. A project he’s working on for the
software company Adobe and its Photoshop packaging
neatly ties in his attraction to recycling and to reflecting
contemporary ways of living. In 1998, he started to experiment
with the Wave filter on Photoshop and found
that he could produce stunning digital paintings with
all kinds of imagery, starting with New Order covers.
“What’s interesting when we make the Waste Paintings
is that we don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s
fascinating. We did one last week and it was mindboggling.
We did it for the Adobe project. If I could work a
computer, I’d show it to you! It’s beautiful. Print it out
it’s done.”
Saville has spent years agonising over a context or
concept in which to place his many boxes of notebooks
full of thoughts, sketches and ideas. “I was interested in
the industrial estate, the country estate different ways
BUY Peter Saville books online from and
of understanding the word estate. It led me to ‘Estate
of’. I though, shit, if I retire or die what will someone
do with all of this stuff that I haven’t been able to work
out? They’ll put it all together and they’ll catalogue it,
and flog it. I thought, well why don’t I?”
It would appear to have opened up possibilities for
the graphic designer to move forward with his work
and at last untie himself from those abusive client
relationships. “A few years ago I was giving myself a
hard time about not being an artist because what is it
that I do regardless of other things? And then I realised
oh, I do this [the notebooks]. I’d done the work. I’d
been filling notebooks for 10 years about the things I
ought to do preparatory notes. I’d done the work, but
I’d never thought about it as writing it.”
This is the big project, after all the hassle with clients
and the financial frustrations and worries of his
studio work, that he wants to do next, with himself
as client: “I’ve learnt not to leave this kind of thing
to chance.”
[This article previously appeared in Icon magazine] �
427
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z