For his upcoming exhibition at the Aubin Gallery, British artist
Piers Secunda, has created a chilling series of relief paintings
cast from moulds of Taliban bullet holes. We met up with Piers to
discuss his tireless exploration into paint as a 3 dimensional
medium and the art of documentation.
What's the story behind the work?
I extracted moulds of Taliban bullet holes from the perimeter
wall of a very controversial security firm in Kabul, what the firm
does exactly isn't entirely known but it's obviously something that
the Taliban doesn't like because they opened fire. It's sobering to
be confronted with this work when you know that people died in the
process of the bullet holes being made.
How did you get clearance to visit the
site?
The Kabul Press association had it cleared with the government
which I thought was a bit extreme and unnecessary, I thought I'd
just go along take some casts and if there were any problems I'd
leave. That's not the case at all; when there are Taliban attacks
happening everyone becomes very suspicious of people tampering with
their property so we had Kabul chief of police and rubber stamped
documentation to protect us.
How do you think the Taliban would feel about you making
art out of their bullet holes?
They'd probably be pissed off that they weren't making anything
from it; I can't imagine why they would think about it any other
way.
Do you have plans to take this project
further?
This project started with a visit to China in 2009 and while I
was there I managed to get the Chinese army to shoot some paint for
me; they didn't know what they were doing it for and if they had I
think they would have refused. Now there is an offer on the table
to have a Jamaican cocaine kingpin machine gun some paint.
What drew you to this subject matter?
I have been building imagery from terrorism into a modernist
context for 6 years. I'm not making political statements, I'm
making records of human experience and I've come to accept that
this stuff happens throughout the world all the time so I document
it.
What drew you to use paint as your sole
medium?
Everything I make is made entirely from paint, down to the bolts
and brackets the work hangs from. For a long time I've been
exploring what paint can do on it's own, the intention is to
relieve it of it's 2D restraint and deal with it sculpturally.
