Interview by Rose Arnold ● Photos by Yen Nguyen
Claire Driscoll, artist, illustrator, designer and co-owner of art space Work Room Four has had an eclectic, multi-disciplinary artistic background which shapes the way she works today. On graduating from a fashion degree her graduate collection was picked up by leading UK high street retailer Topman. Claire went on to collaborate with different designers, including Six Eight Seven Six doing pattern cutting. She then made a move into film and costume, including a six month stint making armour for Oliver Stone directed film, Alexander. For a number of years Claire juggled different types of projects; working in both costumes and fashion, lecturing, running a small leather wallet business as well as some personal art and illustration projects.
Since moving to Hanoi with her family three years ago she has worked at both Raffles and the London School of Fashion, has done illustrations for various publications and created artwork, shown at venues around Hanoi, including being exhibited at Manzi.
&: How do you go about creating art?
Claire Driscoll: I collect everything I like, be it a magazine, a book, a bag or even photographs. I keep boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff and I start to see how they fit together, what they lend themselves to, tonally and depth-wise. Almost in a meditation way where you put things together and don’t really know what you’re doing but it’s definitely right that it goes there, or wrong that it goes there. It’s instinctive.
I think because I’ve got a design background, and design and fashion and things like that are such an execution of constant refinement. It’s very easy to be dismissive of so much in the world of design because sometimes it is very clear how something could be better, because of the finish, because of the proportions, because of the structure. And not all of those things apply to art. Because art is a personal response to something. So I have to allow the more organic process that comes from my own personal response and try to control it less as my background pushes me to, no, do it better, no, do it better. It should be allowed to evolve more naturally. And it doesn’t have to be perfect, or it have to be so finished. It doesn’t have to be finished in the same way.
&: How does being in Hanoi affect your work?
Claire Driscoll: I’ve been a little bit afraid to do something that is about Hanoi. I don’t want it to be cheesy, I don’t want it to be contrived. I don’t want it to be something that is an obvious response.
There’s so much stuff that I love here, that I’ll take away with me because ‘there’ it’s rare but here it’s common. I don’t want to produce a response that’s common, I want to produce a response that’s rarer, so I’m afraid because it’s so hard. I feel in my head that it can’t be the common response of traffic and birdcages and pho stalls. I suppose in my head I’m struggling with the appropriateness of what I produce. One of my main endeavours is to make it be something that gives a fresh eye on something in Hanoi.
And there’s different things you can or can’t do here. In the UK I’d have access to something like a photocopier that you could just do what you want with, so here it is very much, the lady won’t just let me go nuts on the photocopier for hours. She’s thoroughly unimpressed with me trying to enlarge and reduce things! So, I think due to some of the natures of restraints, not being able to get things printed in certain ways, not having as much control as you would. It’s informed a different process.
&: Do limitations help you in any way?
Claire Driscoll: It does make you think around a thing. And I’ve had to source some interesting things, I’ve found interesting paper, interesting brushes, which then inform the process that I would never have found at home. So, like giant squeegees that you use to wash big windows here which are really cheap, you can drag paint out with those which is an interesting process.
&: What are you working on at the moment?
Claire Driscoll: Something fashion based but not fashion, a sculpture, an installation. I want to make something, physically make a garment, and then treat the garment. I really love, like say Hussein Chalayan did all of his dresses when he buried the dresses in the garden and they rusted and decayed. I like that concept of taking something that is precious, that’s fashion to maybe not destroy it but to have a response to it that is a reflection of Hanoi. I have in my mind what I want to do but I don’t want to say because I’m not sure. But I have in my head a garment and a treatment that I want to apply to give it a certain feeling.
A lot of my previous work has been about form and content as opposed to an emotional response. I haven’t worked so much to think about the viewer’s response, it’s been purely selfish. So I haven’t been thinking about what I want the viewer to gain from it, I’ve only been thinking about how I benefit, how I see these things. So I think the departure now, with some things I want to make, I want to think about making the viewer feel a certain way. However that may be. To let go of some of my own feelings about what I may be making and try and provoke a response out of people.
&: How are you working on that?
Claire Driscoll: To try and be less controlled, to use more mediums with a margin of error in them. To use more ink and paint, and things I have less control over. And less rulers.
Print available for sale from the artist
