and find that it’s really connected to something else I’m interested in. staple of the street riot, an upturned, burning van – which in turn led
I didn’t know Crowley was a mountain climber as well as an occultist, the artist to consider the use of different kinds of noise in experimental
for instance. I was drawn to him because he gave mysticism a very music. An arrangement of speakers made loose reference to the
strong visual identity; he saw himself as an artist, not just a magician. noise intoner machines of Italian Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, but
It’s the same with the bands I’m interested in, like Current 93, Death somewhere between prop and contemplative object, this remained
in June… these industrial bands from the early 1980s. I’m interested in enigmatic.
what they did because it’s so 360 degrees in a way, they really didn’t A highly stylised spectacle such as this reveals a complicated
just make music. For them as well, the visual aspect was an important relationship between the spheres of art and politics. On the one hand,
part of the whole project.” political protest and civil unrest give rise to sensational events and
Though he admits to feeling suspicious of their iconography, images with obvious appeal to the artist. On the other, when these
Patane has often quoted these defiantly uneasy-listening bands, which pictures are edited and confined to the gallery, and coveted by a
he has been into since his teenage years. The whip-hand motif used by contemporary art world, their power is altered, the subject matter in one
1980s ‘apocalyptic folk’ icons Death in June featured as a small part of sense becoming ignoble by its transformation into artworld bibelots.
Kollapsing New People (2006), an installation that orbited around ideas Through various distortions and constrictions, Patane dramatises
of protest and resistance, shown at Maureen Paley Gallery last year. Its this complication. “Obviously I wouldn’t use images that I didn’t find
starting point was an image of a plainclothes policeman during the 1981 attractive in some way,” he says. “I’m not setting out to be political.
Brixton riot, a photograph that struck Patane as “almost a bit sexy, you I think it would be a mistake for me to say that. There’s a mixture of me
know, he’s fashionable, with leather jacket and tight jeans. I don’t deny researching what images mean and my attraction to them.
that sometimes the attraction is pretty straightforward.” Connected to “I’m interested in the failure of dissent – I find something quite
this were images of rioting – including an enlarged photograph of that romantic about it, quite beautiful,” he says. The jumping-off point of his
Seb Patane.indd 62 2/11/07 14:06:56
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