ArtReview:
What are your earliest memories of art?
‘The audience is
Karin Mamma Andersson:
I think that art has been a part of my life since I was very young,
never there when
but at that time I did not see it as art. To ‘read’ pictures has
always come naturally to me, maybe because written language
was not as easily accessible. For that reason I don’t remember
I am working. And
my earliest art memory.
AR: Do you think we are defined by these? That we always return
everyone may
to them?
KMA: Our earliest memories? I think that, for a child, time seems to
feel free to
pass much slower than for an adult, but it also passes much
more emphatically; every new experience is a journey in itself,
where all our senses are wide open – to sounds, smells and
understand the
visual impressions. As an adult you protect yourself, you are
not receptive to all experiences, and that is of course a cause of
great grief and great loss. Therefore I think that every human,
paintings as they
from time to time, longs for regression back to the open and
innocent childhood and the possibility to live and experience.
Our memories become our capital.
want to’
AR: I was very surprised to read that a perception of class has had
an impact on the way you feel about being an artist, largely, KMA: The movies became my eye to the world, how everything works
I suppose, because I think of class as being a uniquely British in distant places and a long time ago. A twelve-year-old can
preoccupation. How do you think a ‘working class’ background misinterpret quite a lot but still be able to apprehend things.
and ethic has filtered into your work?
AR: You’ve not been terribly complimentary about your art
KMA: The question is very complex. Of course my background education, saying that you learned most of what you know
marinates my work, but how that becomes visual or not maybe from museums and books. Does this explain their prevalence
you can see and describe better than I can. in your work?
AR: Was there a sense of guilt, do you think, about doing something KMA: I don’t know. Without art school it would have been much more
creative, for example? difficult to become an artist, for sure. I was an art student for ten
years, but the artists I have worshipped have usually only been
KMA: To work with culture is very far from what is working class. possible to reach through books.
My parents were outspoken about how they did not have the
right keys needed for this unreadable cultural jungle, and I had a AR: You had your first child as well during your time at art school,
certain anxiety about how the artworld functions. When I was a and your work is often thought of in terms of its reference to
young art student I used to feel a certain guilt about not having childhood. But again your attitude seems ambivalent. Some
a proper education and a job with a steady income. of the paintings – I’m thinking of Modern Dance [2000] – seem
to document the liberating, perhaps strangely hypnotic effect
AR: Was it because you came from the ‘unsophisticated’ countryside? of art on young souls. In other paintings – Study Kit, for example
Perhaps you could say a bit about the prevalence of landscape – art, or its teaching, can seem quite oppressive. Is this a
in your work: it’s a constant, but doesn’t seem very comforting. fair assessment?
KMA: I am not trying to create a beautiful painting; I am looking for KMA: I am no longer interested in childhood per se, but I used to
the soul of the landscape. be when I had young children at home and I was referring to
them and to myself as a child. I want art to be a liberating force.
AR: Does a sense of being on both the inside and outside endure? For the pioneers it is usually something liberating, but when
it comes to the followers of a certain -ism, then it is usually
KMA: To be an artist for me is to have an interest in intellectual the contrary.
questions whether you belong to a cultural elite or not.
AR: The meeting of art and the landscape does not always seem to
AR: You’ve said that joining a film club at the age of twelve was denote happy consequences – especially in paintings like The
of great importance to you. Was it the realisation that another Blank Memories Always Open From the South. Is there a kind of
world existed that was so important? wariness about the power and effect of art on the public?
Mamma Andersson.indd 4 3/8/07 12:55:17
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