Retrospective: Richard Bolam at 50

Wargames, 1999

I saw the documentary “E. P. Sculptor” (Murray Grigor, 1987), probably in 1988(?) when it was broadcast on TV. It was a life-changing moment, and I struggled for years to make work that I felt had fallen far enough from that tree.

The “Wargames” series is my Paolozzi period and was definitely breakthrough work, although it took another 10 years for it to come out. These collages are made from spoiled prints of other minimalist work. As they were a already spoilt, it freed me from the anxiety of preciousness, although it was a product of that anal retentiveness that made me keep all the spoiled prints

I made 18 of them in 1999 and I think I might make some more.

I had a substantial period of minimalism in the 1990s and used to inkjet print hundreds of images. I soon learned how to refill ink cartridges with bottled inks and this made it slow and laborious, but affordable.

Whereas Paolozzi used available popular images, I set myself the rule of only using my own work and not “appropriatingʼ anything. I have very mixed feelings about appropriation art, although some of the work I have found most influential has been made with found or “stolen” images.

The advent of creative commons has confused the issue, rather than clarifying it. I prefer to use other peopleʼs images legally if possible, but I will use them without permission in some circumstances. This set of rules could not exactly be called a code, theyʼre more guidelines, but I am normally quite clear in my own head if it is ok to appropriate.

Rather like Paolozzi buying war-damaged books in the 1940ʼs, much of my art education was through buying secondhand books, often those withdrawn from the local library. However, the fundamental difference is that where people of Paolozziʼs era were image-starved, as an adult I am definitely over-stimulated with information overload.

“Art Without Boundaries 1950 - 70”, 1972 Thames & Hudson, Gerald Woods, Philip Thompson, John Williams,

Whilst this book was not a radical influence, it represents a significantly receptive time in my life when I was soaking up influences, and one spread in particular made me think about my own work.

I immediately found Peter Schmidtʼs work appealing because of the cartoonish nature, but what really struck me was the torn paper collages. I recognised a way to let go of the preciousness of the object. By this time I owned and computer, scanner and inkjet printer and could reproduce and re-use images in the way I had seen Paolozzi do with colour photocopiers. Whilst I can also acknowledge the influence of Robert Rauschenberg, he was not nearly as significant to me.

Wargames is a non-linear war story, where each image is an episode in an unnamed conflict, without perceptible sides. An every-war.

Richard Bolam, October 2012http://richardbolamat50.wordpress.com

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