Aaron McPeake - Semi-Structured Interview Transcript January 22 2020

Interview Transcription.

Artist participant: Aaron McPeake

Interviewer: Andrea McSwan

Date: Jan 22 2020

Location: Aaron McPeake, home. Cannonbury, London

Audio recordings: R07-0006

Transcript timecode start time: [00:00:20.08]

[00:00:20.08] Interviewer: So if there's any work that you're currently working on, or previous work that you want to talk about and how you've created it?

[00:00:20.25] Aaron McPeake: There's bundles. I'm currently working on a couple of things. There's a series of rings, I've made a larger one, as you can see there's a couple of larger sets of them under there. The idea is some of these hang. This is the most recent thing I did, a couple of weeks ago in Burma. Flower Pot!

[00:00:59.29] Interviewer: You created that in Burma, a couple of weeks ago? And what's this made from?

[00:01:01.13] Aaron McPeake: It's Bell Bronze.

[00:01:04.09] Interviewer: Bell Bronze?

[00:01:07.24] Aaron McPeake: Yes, so it's the same metal that they make church bells from. (strikes pot to make it ring)

but there was a bit left over so I thought I'd make a flower pot.

[00:01:20.28] Interviewer: So that really does look like a flower pot!

[00:01:22.13] Aaron McPeake: It is a flower pot. It's copied from a flower pot (strikes pot)

[00:01:24.16] Interviewer: It's incredible, when you actually put your ear right inside it.

[00:01:30.15] Aaron McPeake: These are a series of these concentric, there's three sets. And I've also made larger ones, you might have seen them on the way up the stairs. And these again, they just ring. This is an eight inch one (taps ring).

[00:02:12.16] Aaron McPeake: So these, couple of sets that need to be...a lot of grinding and finishing and polishing to do. And then there's the bigger ones...what exactly I'm going to do with those, I'm not sure. The large ones are very heavy about 60kg

[00:02:31.20] Interviewer: So with these ones, the largest one's what about, ten inches across maybe?

[00:02:36.25] Aaron McPeake: It's eleven and bit, just over eleven.

[00:02:42.14] Interviewer: That's in diameter (handed ring to lift). Oh my word, I thought I'd be able to lift that with one hand. I can barely pick that off the...

[00:02:59.09] Aaron McPeake: So, yeah bronze is very heavy (laughing), that's the problem with it. If you imagine these all together, try these.

[00:03:07.22] Interviewer: So this is five together (lifts) oh my word!

[00:03:13.28] Aaron McPeake: And they're very small! Once, they're getting bigger, yes it's a lot of material and heavy. The idea from that, there was a piece that got shown in San Diego in America and one of these rings, it was about this size. They managed to break it. Now how you can break a ring is beyond me, because it's one of the strongest. It's like holding the egg and squashing it trick, so how they managed to break it I have no idea. Some of the audience, it was a quite a high end gallery, the San Diego Arts Institute, it's a formal gallery, but seemingly with these pieces, they decided...a lot of the punters decided to see just how hard they could hit them. It was a bit like they were in a circus

[00:04:22.10] Interviewer: Like a fun-fair?

[00:04:24.10] Aaron McPeake: Yeah. And they managed to break a ring, which is just beyond me. So, that's a problem with a lot of my work, because you have to do something to it (taps to make a ringing sound). It does encourage thuggery (laughing), so people do break things and that notion of being gentle doesn't seem to...I don't know what they're thinking. But then I don't really understand what most people think, most of the time anyway, because I think most people are really stupid (laughing) and that's not a popular thing to say

[00:05:07.17] Interviewer: (laughing)

[00:05:07.17] Aaron McPeake: Despite what they vote for.

[00:05:11.19] Interviewer: So, these are made to create different sounds?

[00:05:17.19] Aaron McPeake: Yes, these are all sonic pieces. The only problem with sound things is they have to be hung (taps ring whilst holding and dead tapping sound) they don't make any sound.

[00:05:28.21] Interviewer: So they only sort of come to life when they are free?

[00:05:34.23] Aaron McPeake: They have to be hanging freely. So that's a problem. You're used to hanging work on walls, but it needs to come from a grid or a system, or a horse, you know a saw horse. That sort of structure, or from beams.

[00:05:56.27] Interviewer: So what's the process that you use? How would you actually create these?

[00:06:00.14] Aaron McPeake: These ones I made (collects from the other side of the room). I made these ones from teak. So actually made from timber

[00:06:26.13] Interviewer: So these are like teak rings.

[00:06:29.15] Aaron McPeake: Yeah. I actually use bits...you can see that one is laminated together from various bits of scrap floorboard. But the scrap wood is the same price as the real wood.

[00:06:44.17] Interviewer: Oh really?

[00:06:49.09] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, there's no differentiation between old and new

[00:06:53.18] Interviewer: So to create a ring in wood do you need to steam it?

[00:06:55.17] Aaron McPeake: No, no. I actually cut them. So a block, created a block and then cut them out and then finished by hand and made them very slightly thicker than the bronzes, just so that the metal would pour freely and then there would be a little bit of give, to make that couple of millimetres, taking off the bumps

[00:07:30.01] Interviewer: So, you've got a wooden circle and then you pour molten bronze into that?

00:07:34.29] Aaron McPeake: Err, in this case what I did was put these into sand, which is a special...there's two ways of doing it. In the past, the wooden ring would go into a mould with either algenate or rubber and that would create a negative. Wax would get poured into the negative. Then the wax goes into ceramic investment with a cup to let the metal in and the air out. Then the wax is burned away so it leaves a space and then into that space you pour the metal. And that's the lost wax method which takes a bit of time. Then Burma, because of the way they use, what we call loam, which is clay and horse-dung and sand, it takes quite a bit of time, because you use a thin layer of clay and let it dry, then another one and let it dry and another one, let it dry. So, for speed, making the timber ones, putting them into foundry sand, which is not like beach sand; although it looks like it and feels like it all the grains are slightly different sizes so it binds together. Whereas beach sand would just crumble because all the grains are the same size. So this different size granuals of sand bind and then when you ram the sand around the mould, take the mould out and you've got space and then within into that space you pour the metal.

[00:09:16.21] Interviewer: And the pouring of the metal then doesn't disturb the shape thats in the sand, because of these different molecules?

[00:09:23.17] Aaron McPeake: Because the way the sand binds together, it's like for example you'd form a piece of clay, but unlike...the problem with clay or another ceramic is, unless it's been fired there's too much moisture in it, so if you were pouring 1050 degrees metal into water, you're going to have an explosion. So, the sand, means that the gases can escape, so there's enough space for them to. So you don't get a bang. Whereas, if you did it into plaster or into clay it would just go bang. I'm sure somebody, back in the bronze age discovered the hard way (laughter). But there's more to it than just throwing it into your space. So, that's...I mean there's a very large one on the stairwell, of these, that again I made in teak. Which was the mould for a piece I did at Battersea Arts Centre, which is a ring within a safe.

[00:10:38.06] Interviewer: Like a money safe?

[00:10:40.22] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, it's the old Battersea Arts Centre is located in what was the town hall, very close to Clapham Junction and the commission was to make a piece based on a word and a particular site within the building. And the word that I chose was integrity and the site was the safe that used to hold the rates money. Before, the local rate payers would come and pay there...and it would be chucked into the safe. And the safe's so heavy they haven't attempted to  move it but Battersea Arts Centre, because it was a town hall, it's still licenced to conduct weddings. So the idea of the ring, associated with weddings but also the safe and the bell...the ring, the large one it's about so big and 50 - 60 kilos, people can ring it. But also the notion of integrity apart from the wedding reference, was the safe, if the safe is not secure it doesn't work. If the ring is cracked, it won't ring. If the bell is cracked it won't ring. So that notion of integrity...integrity is one of those words that's changed it's meaning in the last two hundred years. You know there's a structural reference to it, but the word has become much more...for example buildings...the integrity of the structure. Whereas, now it's become associated with individual's character. So these words shift in meaning or the emphasis having a number of meanings, changes. But now people think of integrity much more about character. So I thought that was a very interesting play on both the site and the...

[00:12:58.18] Interviewer: The activity?

[00:13:01.01] Aaron McPeake: Yeah the purpose of what they're up to. And also I'm a bit of...to be honest making these, there's an easier way I could have done it, which could have just gone to a car parts outfit and they could have made these in pvc overnight, which would have been a lot cheaper and a lot faster and a lot less painful, because some of these broke. But I love playing with wood

[00:13:37.01] Interviewer: Presumably there's a texture, that's very subtle in the bronze because of the wood. And if it was pvc maybe...?

[00:13:46.16] Aaron McPeake: Hmmm...the pvc would actually be better, would be more accurate, because these bits, these little gouges, little bits of filler fell out, but I kind of like those flaws. Because I don't see very much I don't do things in a very highly polished standard sophisticated way. There's a point when I'm finishing something...I mean this flower pot came out the mould and as you can see it's still got it's screw and I haven't touched it, except to give it a bit of a rub with sandpaper and left it exactly how it came out. So I kind of celebrate the flaws!

[00:14:39.13] Interviewer: Yeah, absolutely, that's almost what I was thinking, you know the wood gives something.

[00:14:44.10] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, if I made these in a kind of industrial way they would look like Alessi or some of that Italian stainless steel mass produced and I like the notion that everything is slightly different. For example these...I make lots of bowls, but even if I use the same pattern they're never the same. So these have been polished up a bit, but again nothing near foundry sort of standards. These are, well I've got the pattern, but it's kind of based on a Burmese gong design (strikes bell shaped gong)

[00:15:48.02] Interviewer: Wow (moves recorder) would you be able to hit that again?

[00:15:48.16] Aaron McPeake: Was that too close?

[00:15:55.07] Interviewer:  Maybe.

(stikes again) incredible. So that looks almost like a bell silhouette but with erm, sort of oriental, Asian?

[00:16:21.14] Aaron McPeake: Yeah it's a traditional shape they use (strikes a different gong) so although that's exactly the same pattern, same shape, comes from the same mould, I've got the timber mould somewhere, because of the thickness difference it makes a completely different sound (strikes).

[00:16:56.14] Interviewer: So where you've hit it and it's spinning almost like a swing, I remember doing that on a swing. So the thicker the bronze, the higher...

[00:17:02.07] Aaron McPeake: The thicker, the higher the note, all things being equal. So although there all identical pattern, because of the thickness difference they sound completely different.

[00:17:18.16] Interviewer: That's interesting. I would have thought the thinner the higher the pitch, I don't know why.

[00:17:30.14] Aaron McPeake: These are very small singing bowls. So they're identical (strikes the bowls) So although again the pattern's identical (strikes bowls and runs wooden pestle around the rims)

[00:17:47.04] Interviewer: So you're just running the wood around the rim. So that one's slightly thicker

[00:17:55.16] Aaron McPeake: But quite a bit higher. So they're identical and from the same mould and again I do that with...these are identical (strikes more bowls)

[00:18:30.06] Interviewer: I can actually feel that through the floor

[00:18:31.19] Aaron McPeake: But there's not much difference in weight if you put one in one hand and they're almost

[00:18:35.23] Interviewer: (holding bowls) Ooh yeah, I wouldn't be able to tell

[00:18:37.11] Aaron McPeake: They're considerably different in sound.

[00:18:39.26] Interviewer: So the one in my right hand is slightly thicker

[00:18:45.19] Aaron McPeake: Slightly thicker, but it doesn't take much to...when it gets bigger a few percentage points makes a massive difference. The smaller things the difference needs to be bigger.

[00:18:58.29] Interviewer: So is that the radius that you're talking about?

[00:19:01.17] Aaron McPeake: No, the radius is identical it's just the thickness. They're from the same mould. So I deliberately never make anything the same, so although they look the same....in fact I had an exhibition with Sally (Booth) a couple of years ago and the title was 'same same but different' and in my case she had a load of wall work and observational drawings and I had pairs of bells with gongs, I'd need photographs to remember what I'd put in there but it was pairs of things, that were identical looking but when people struck them they sounded very different. So there was that notion of same, but not the same. But there is a problem with this. As I say, some things have been broken. In San Diego a piece got broken, in Chelsea a piece got broken and Bristol a ceramic bell got broken. Again it was just about people seeing how hard can I hit this? I don't understand quite what goes on in that brain, but also people aren't used to touching things, certainly not hitting things, as in being presented with an art object. Not used to it. In Camden Arts Centre there's a piece in a tree, which is about sixty kilos but it's a flat gong, leaf shape. And it's thick enough, about three quarters of an inch thick and the clapper that is provided is soft, so it's heavy and leather, so people can bash away at it and kids love to. But I think that would be quite difficult to destroy, it's just too heavy. But in a gallery situation people aren't used to being offered that opportunity to touch things, never mind hit them. It's a bit problematic, so they need some schooling before they encounter things to some extent, if they're going to break them.

[00:21:52.00] Interviewer: So do you have anyone who will then assist you, in say pouring the molten bronze?

[00:21:59.13] Aaron McPeake: Oh yeah, I always work with someone. I mean, occasionally I've done pours on my own, but I wouldn't be inclined to, which is to say that I would pick up a smaller pot which would ususally...small pot...one person pours about fifteen kilo pot which is only maybe less than a foot high. But normally it's a two person operation, so I'm always doing it with people or when I'm in Burma they do it, so I'm just sitting and eating biscuits and drinking tea (laughing) because that's much more a working class persuit and because I'm paying them and they would insist on doing it. So yes, I do have help in doing that. Also, I don't have my own foundry so I'm always using someone elses service, so they're being paid in some fashion. Although I often do it with them, occasionally I just give things over and they just pour them, you know they'd be doing, maybe...one of the foundary's I use is commercial industrial and they make tuned hand bells. Hand bell orchestra? So I just give them two items which they do as part of their...they've got thirty or fourty pieces on the go, pouring , so they just stick those on the end and pour into the sand or whatever type of mould they've got. This is a ceramic one which is a spare. So in there is a policeman's hat type bell and the wax has been burned out. So this is where the metal would pour in and this is where the air comes out

[00:24:26.20] Interviewer: ok

[00:24:27.01] Aaron McPeake: Because you're displacing the space. When you pour the metal in, the air has to go somewhere. If the air doesn't go, then you end up with a bubble and and a big hole where the metal can't go. So when that cools down you just smash this ceramic away.

[00:24:47.19] Interviewer: ok, so that's just the ceramic mould that hasn't yet been used?

[00:24:53.08] Aaron McPeake: It hasn't been poured. I just kept it as a...

[00:24:57.07] Interviewer: And that texture, the bobbly texture, is that from the sand?

[00:25:01.09] Aaron McPeake: No, that's a different...ceramic and sand are different things. That bobbly texture is from an agregrate within the ceramic which is little pieces of basically broken delft, to basically make it stronger, to bind it. Like they would to  heavy duty concrete, there'll be a binding agent in there, like little pebbles that give it strength. Otherwise if that was just plaster, clay or ceramic that would just smash as soon as you put the metal in, the pressure would blow it apart.

[00:25:42.04] Interviewer: right

[00:25:46.03] Aaron McPeake: Again, the sound thing. People assume 'oh you make sound work because you can't see, as a replacement for vision'. It's nothing to do with that at all. My thing with sound is more about, people don't listen. I noticed that as a kid. I grew up in the countryside and by the sea and I was always amazed that other children and adults to a greater extent, wouldn't be aware of sounds of birds or sounds of different trees. Sounds you know that I could hear coming towards a tree. If I was going exploring in a new place or a new field I'd know what the tree was by the sound of it.

[00:26:49.07] Interviewer: How could you work out what kind of tree it was by the sound?

[00:26:52.12] Aaron McPeake: Well, for example a willow tree sounds completely different to an ash tree in the summer. Because the leaves are a really long strand of leaves, so they make much more of a...

[00:27:08.21] Interviewer: Like a swish?

[00:27:09.28] Aaron McPeake: Yes, but without the shhhh, less of the shhhh and more of the whhhhhh.

[00:27:15.21] Interviewer: ok

[00:27:17.23] Aaron McPeake: Whereas an ash tree would be hiiihhhhhhh with the leaves shaking. A fir would or pine tree would make a 'cihhhhhhh' with the going through the needles. So they all sound really different and I'm just saying this to you now

but I can see you kind of going 'oh of course'. But people don't consider it. So not listening is a really big deal for me. And it's not just men who don't listen. We're not trained to listen. Conservatoire musicians, mechanical engineers they have to listen. You know the old wheel tappers on the railways, they heard the fractures in the wheel by tap, tap, tap with a hammer. A mechanical engineer will know if the machine is about to break, or something wrong with it by listening. And the aneasthetists, well I would hope so, they're paying attention to what's going on. But apart from that, people aren't trained to listen. And in art and design it's all visual. Nowadays some architects have been taking on board acoustic properties, and of course in cathedrals and mosques and synagogues and temples, that acoustic notion has been, you know creating that big reverb sound of a catherdral. And then the music was then written, you know Gregorian...

[00:29:22.20] Interviewer: Gregorian chant

[00:29:28.05] Aaron McPeake: That method of singing was created in response to the architecture, or which came first the chicken or the egg, but I would imagine that. If you think about that in caves as well, in New Grange in Ireland...it's not a cave it's a bronze age cairn and standing stones, but the one theory of the pattern and the carving in the rock, that there's a zig-zag line and quite a few anthropologists and archeologists have come up with the idea that this was a drawing of the sound of the dust. So the dust would be shaking when they beat drums or hit...made sound. So they were drawing the sound. But in current sort of...certainly not in design it's a visual thing It's about looking at things are.. representing things because of the visual qualities

[00:30:48.01] Interviewer: Which is only one dimension?

[00:30:49.04] Aaron McPeake: Which is only one bit. I mean taste and smell are tricky but maybe sommeliers and chefs they can talk amongst themselves, we don't understand what they're talking about because they have all these err...again, in different languages they use different metaphors. I mean if you read some of the bumpff on wine labels they're talking about what fruits and what tannins, so there is a language for it but for something that's so ubiquitous I don't listen to music very often. Because it's too much noise. Every shop you go into people are walking around playing music but they're not conscious of what the sound is. So these objects (strikes gong) they kind of invite you to focus on what's happening and by virtue of you making...you generating your own encounter

[00:32:11.14] Interviewer: It's like the start of a meditation

[00:32:19.06] Aaron McPeake: Yes, you could say that. But in terms of engaging with the piece (strikes objects) it's your action and it's up to you to respond by listening to what you've done. Some of them have themes. You know a lot of these...well ok the rings may have a bit of...well I don't know about the flower pot that was fun (laughing), I'm old enough to remember Bill and Ben. Some of them use the same method as I use to make paintings. (collects objects). So this...this one's a bit heavy...

[00:33:22.05] Interviewer: Wow. This is almost like an A4 sheet of paper, that weighs...well it's not paper. So this is bronze?

[00:33:30.17] Aaron McPeake: Yes. Now this type of bronze has got a lot of tin in it. It's about twenty percent tin and eighty percent copper, or thereabouts. The tin's hungry for oxygen, when it's molten, so it's trying to oxidise and that's what happened. So if you poured ordinary silicone bronze, which they use for statues, you would just have a quite simple, very slightly oxidized finish, but this you've got all these frieze lines and craters and dark bits and different colours and that's when the metal's cooling, it's trying to grab oxygen. So what I did there and there's a whole series of them and some of them are quite big; these are topographical images of Iceland.

[00:34:32.13] Interviewer: Oh, I was just thinking the look like they've been taken from space

[00:34:36.29] Aaron McPeake: Yes. You've got a volcanic landscape and I found a google earth photograph, I can dig it out and show you, and I was looking at Iceland on google earth and I went 'I can do that', 'I can make these' so although every one is unique and again, these are paintings that you can....(strikes one of the metal plates)

[00:35:13.19] Interviewer:  So that's what the topography of Iceland sounds like in bronze? (laughter)

[00:35:16.25] Aaron McPeake: Well that one, there are lots of them (gets more)

[00:35:27.07] Interviewer: So that pattern, with all the relief texture and what looks like a crater...

[00:35:31.07] Aaron McPeake: That one's much blacker

[00:35:31.07] Interviewer: So that's hanging on wire (strikes). Wow, the relief on that, the texture. So that actually represents something on google earth?

[00:35:50.27] Aaron McPeake: Yes

[00:35:48.11] Interviewer: This is Iceland as welll?

[00:35:49.11] Aaron McPeake: Yeah these are all volcanic landscapes. I mean they're random. They're not...smaller ones. We don't know what's going to happen, but we've got a sense of pattern. And those patterns correspond very nicely to satelite photographs of volcanoes.

[00:36:15.15] Interviewer: So how do you turn a photograph into a 3D texture?

[00:36:19.21] Aaron McPeake: You don't. Basically that is a space in the sand, or a mould, and you pour the metal in and once you've got to the level you walk away. The metal freezes and creates those things naturally. I do put sand on them to stop them, I mean this one's very black, these are very very black. This one less so and this one less so, so I've probably thrown some sand or charcoal on the top to stop the oxygen getting to it. So it can get a slightly different...

[00:37:04.25] Interviewer: Oh I see, so the photographs of Iceland are the inspiration?

[00:37:06.19] Aaron McPeake: Yes, they're not...I can't make those. Well I could make them, could attempt to but it would be very very time consuming. So the natural freezing of the bronze is identical to the freezing of the lava, but on a much smaller scale. These are I think the first one I showed you, represented I think about six kilometres.

[00:37:38.12] Interviewer: ok, yep scale, yes.

[00:37:42.04] Aaron McPeake: So the scale, of six kilometres of molten lava and squashed down to an A4 sheet and some of them are A2 bigger ones.

[00:38:01.24] Interviewer:  Yes I was looking at some of your photos on your website where there's molten bronze being poured into the shape of a bell

[00:38:10.22] Aaron McPeake: That's those

[00:38:14.11] Interviewer: Ok, and just the contrast. I love it. I remember seeing the 2012 Olympics where they were replicating creating the rings I think in Sheffield, the Olympic rings and it was all very theatrical but I loved that contrast of the bright orange and then darkness?

[00:38:33.09] Aaron McPeake: The molten...there is something very magical about it...there's a couple of videos on the website of the pourings. Pouring at night is spectacular because the crucible is actually illuminating, when it's lifted out of the pot with molten metal, will light up the area.

[00:38:58.15] Interviewer: And if you were doing that in Burma, would you be doing that outside?

[00:39:02.05] Aaron McPeake: Yeah

[00:39:02.27] Interviewer: Wow, and is there a reason why you would go to Burma?

[00:39:06.01] Aaron McPeake: i don't like Christmas and I don't like that time of year. It's dark and miserable and everybody's...yeah and I don't consume and I don't buy Christmas cards and Christmas presents, so it's a way of escaping that and a way of being in thirty something degrees and low humidity and the gorgeous food and making things (laughter). Err...so that's why my reason for going there. And I know that people I work with, who I've known for years, so that it's really useful escape. But the lava (brings a piece of rock) this is bit of lava from Iceland

[00:40:04.09] Interviewer: Cor, it's really black. We went to Iceland a couple of years ago and got some tiny little pieces, but they weren't as dark. Oh wow, that's in...

[00:40:16.11] Aaron McPeake: That's in Aluminium. I made them in bronze as well, so there's a set of rocks (unwrapping) or there's bells.

[00:40:25.03] Interviewer: So you've taken a mould from this piece of rock and then cast it in aluminum?

[00:40:30.22] Aaron McPeake: A series of them. The bronze ones have got a little hole in...

[00:40:46.20] Interviewer: So how long have you been working in metal?

[00:40:48.22] Aaron McPeake: Err...I've always made stuff in metal but in terms in casting aluminium or bronze, it's only been about fourteen to fifteen years. But before that I used to make things with sheets of welding (collects objects) see this is them in bronze. My notion is that there is a little hole in the top, that's for the string.

[00:41:37.22] Interviewer: So these would hang freely as well?

[00:41:41.24] Aaron McPeake: They hang together as a little...(strikes to make a sound)

[00:41:46.14] Interviewer: Wow, they really make a different sound when they're free. And these literally look like rock.

[00:41:53.12] Aaron McPeake: They are the same castings as the alumium. The same moulds. I made the aluminium ones, I just had an opportunity to so I thought I would have a go at that.

[00:42:11.29] Interviewer: I love that. Just thinking about the trees and the different sounds they make and at this thickness at this size, this is a piece of volcanic rock and if you turn it into a cast...

[00:42:23.00] Aaron McPeake: It's a bell!

[00:42:24.03] Interviewer: That's how it sounds. So with your, just going back to when you were talking about being a child and listening to the trees, so your visual impairment, have you had that since you were a child?

[00:42:39.18] Aaron McPeake: No. I had really perfect vision until I was about...it started in my early twenties. And it's...the illness I have it's not a disease it's a syndrome. They don't know what it is but it's been around for a couple of thousand years, Hiippocrates wrote about it. It's an inflammatory disease some people...there are many different symptoms that people suffer. Skin problems, inflamtion, oesteoarthritis it can be in the brain in some cases which isn't very good. In my case it was the eyes. Basically what happened was that the eye swells up, like with arthritis you get this inflamation. But in the case of the eye if you think of my vision as perfect, I used to be able to read the newspaper on the train of the person opposite, their paper. Now I don't see, I see fingers when they're held up. I can't see your face now but I'm making eye-contact so it makes you feel a bit more....then I'm being a bit more civilised and polite. One eye started to go and then the treatment that's given...well, thirty five years of steriods in my case. And steriods cause problems, bone density problems but they also cause cateracts, then you get cateract surgery then you have an imunu response, an inflamed response so the sort of....it;s a feedback loop of the side effects which create a problem which creates another side effect which creates a problem. But in my case it's the retina, rather than anything optical. Cateracts were a side effect, but if you imagine that the retina is a red disk of blood vessels and nerves and rods and cones, and if you imagine there's a smooth disk, like in a shiny photography and if you were to get that photograph and crumple it and then put it in water, to make it swell up. So even if you dried it out and ironed it you'd never get those cracks and crinkles, they never go. Also once it's gone it's gone. But that's effectively what's happened to both eyes. And, I've lost what I was anwering....I've just gone off there (laughter).

[00:45:29.06] Interviewer: (laughing) sorry I was totally immersed and went into it as well! So did you lose colour?

[00:45:37.03] Aaron McPeake: Well I've still got a pet cateract in my right eye, because it's not worth removing, because the nerves behind it are dead. So if close one eye and close the other, although everything's distorted one of them's slightly yellowy, like the old tobbacco ceiling pub, slightly tea stained and the blues are much much reduced. So it's sort of an interesting thing, it's an interesting thing to have two different colour perceptions in two different eyes. And also the thing with losing eye sight, there's a think called Charles Bonet syndrome whereby, and alot of people I interviewed for my thesis experienced it and a few of them really enjoyed it, as did I. Bonet's Syndrome is where the brain is not receiving the optical data that it's expecting. So it's been used to getting this flood of information and as your acuity drops that data that's getting to the brain is much reduced. So what the brain does is it starts making stuff up. So you have these hallucinations, some people find it terribly disturbing. The hallucinations would usually at night-time or low level, sometimes in the day, but more pronounced at night. But then you would have the same hallucination whether your eyes were open or closed. So the hallucination was there and I found that, and Sargy Mann who was one of my subjects, we found that really interesting and quite fun and not disturbing at all, even though sometimes the images would become unpleasant. So I think if you have that sensibility you're going to find that fun, rather than terribly disturbing. But the business of...as a kid listening err...(becomes silent)...I am aware here of the train coming in...

[00:48:16.27] Interviewer: Yeah, I could hear that then...

[00:48:18.04] Aaron McPeake: ...and the traffic. We don't have any wind today so there's no clacking of branches and then there's the work people on the sight. So you can discern alot, especially where you live because you know all the sounds. And some people's footsteps you go 'oh that's my neighbour, oh right, she's in a bad mood' (laughter) you can tell that and people can get it with immediate family but if you think about it or if you concentrate on it, you can really discern alot of what's going on. And you don't need to be able to speak, you know if you're in a different country and you can't speak the language you can pick up on the atmosphere of what's going on. You know, excitement, anxiety, boredom, irritation, those things all kind of permeate through in very subtle ways and not necessarily just through speech, but also by the way people move and again it's not something you necessarily need to look at to discern. But you can hear by people's footsteps or by how they move a chair out of the way. It tells a lot about the mood and their dispostion at that time. But also because, for example, I don't know you well enough, I havent' seen you stand, walk or move, so I'd never recognise you if I met you somewhere, unless you....which is sometimes quite useful (laughter). It's up to others to come to speak to me. But a way that, and I noticed a lot of people with low vision say the same thing, you can recognise people at incredible distances and people go 'how can you see that? You can't see that far!' but you just see a shape and I call it gait.

[00:50:27.12] Interviewer: That's the word Sally used. I was just going to say 'gait', she used that word an awful lot

[00:50:31.23] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, gait is how we identify things. And gait, if you know people well, and occasionally it did backfire on me once when I went and touched someone on the shoulder and it was not the woman I thought it was, but they moved in exactly the same way. I'm not quite sure how to describe it because it's so incredibly complicated. I was thinking about trying to study it. I used to work in theatre in opera and ballet for years and years and thinking about dancers, even dancers will have a certain face, that that's enforced smile? I can tell dancers by their face 'oh you're a dancer!' or a classically trained one because they're in pain but they're smiling, but they're in pain. So they have a particular facial gait, if you like, but even two that are identical in height and they're trained to move in identical ways, but as soon as they come off stage, and stop being that...

[00:52:02.04] Interviewer: At ease?

[00:52:03.12] Aaron McPeake: And they're at..yeah...at ease, then they become...I can't tell who's who when they're on stage, even when I could see...not all, but in some cases. But as soon as they come off you go 'oh that's Becky and that's so and so and that's Elspeth and that's...because of that absolute individual movement. So you have these sort of robotic, incredibly drilled people looking so identical, then stopping that and then they become absolutely unique individuals that are easily spotted. So gait is so complicated and there are so many elements to it, so to write about it I thought 'oooffff that's erm, that's a lot' and I'm also at a slight disadvantage because I can't see very well (laughter). So I use gait to identify people that I know very well, or in some cases you can tell if...you can judge people's moods, you know people that you don't know, by how they move. It's making slight assumptions but in the main you tend to be right. That person's aggressive, that person's angry, that person's very upset and that person's completely and utterly distraught...you know, but they might not be sobbing but you can tell by the way they're moving that something's up. So, yeah, that's identifying things but in terms of the sound, you can apply those, if you think about for example, the ash and the willow tree that we were talking about earlier, you know the way the wind...a swirling wind, you know in the summer you have these swirling vortices floating about, so it's not a constant breeze. So from nothing you've got this 'wwrrrrrrrr', this swirl, so that in way describes a lot about...if you couldn't see anything at all and you heard that sound, I could picture the scene and colour it in. Which then takes us to another point about, you know the ancient greek notion that everything in the universe eminates from the eye, the eye sends these beams out and generates everything in the universe. And in some ways that's true if you think about neuro science discoveries about what the brain's doing. So when you look at a painting or a screen or a tablet or computer, you don't actually see it all, you're only seeing bits of it and your brain is colouring in the rest. So you're not actually...if you think of the pixels available which is pretty....eyes are very high resolution if they work, erm, the amount of processing you have to do, to...you know that's not what's happening when you look at a painting or you look at the screen, you're picking up bits of it. So, even when reading a word, you're picking up on the shape. You're not actually looking at every curve and every upright and every circle. So we're making it up and that's why when we go back to look at a painting again and again and again, when you get to...really...you know something you really fall in love with. The first one I fell in love with was Bonnard, The Bowl of Milk' erm...and I looked at it for years. And still go back and look at it when it's hanging. It's Tate owned.

[00:56:47.17] Interviewer: What was it about it that you loved? Or love?

[00:56:52.00] Aaron McPeake: I think it was...because I would have been young in my teens, er it started out about the light and I think it was painted in the Cote d'Azur, erm Cadacess (?). So we have this beautiful young woman who's slightly mysterious inside, you know inside that sort of French villa with the light streaming through, so you had a sense of the heat of the outside and the coolness of the inside, the way the European, especially the mediterranean...and also she's mysterious.

[00:58:07.28] Interviewer: We are just looking at it on your tablet

[00:58:10.22] Aaron McPeake: It's not a very good version. So you have that sort of heat of the Cote d'Azur outside, a coolness inside, her face, there's a back light, although there's a bit of reflection from inside the room. But anyway, after looking at this painting for years I'd still find things in it. So I'd spend hours and hours and hours and then I realised that actually I'd been looking at this thing for years and many many many many hours just looking at the painting and scanning it, looking at the bit and I would still pick up on new things that are in there. So after spending you know, I don't know, say two hours a year, so there's seventy hours just looking at this painting and I think that's an underestimate, erm...I still haven't seen it. So we're making it up. We take these generalised notions of there's a figure, she's in a purple dress, she's got a arm, she's holding this. They're very basic, structural notations of what we're looking at. And having had really good acuity, I mean like super, much much better than most people before, to not have it, I'm really aware that I've always been colouring in. Just because I was able to look across the table and be able to read a very tiny piece of print that someone was looking at, which I couldn't do now, even with a magnifyer if it was in my hand. I was still colouring in the world. So I had occasional access to these really fine details, but in the main of colouring it in, of filling it in, it's not real, it's generated by me based on things or experiences I've had. So everyone's view of the world does follow that greek notion of eminating from the eye, we're making it up. I find it interesting as well because, what are you making up? Someone else is going to have a totally different view of the world than I do. That's nothing to do with my vision. It's about having these, amassed this data base of visual memory, their data base will be very different. So people living in different environments, so yeah...Glasgow and Toulouse are very different light...

[01:01:28.25] Interviewer: Yep

[01:01:29.18] Aaron McPeake: Very different colours so that data base west of Ireland and east coast, again totally different colours, regimes, totally different, you don't necessarily even need to go that far to have a different experience and consequently a different library. I'm lucky enough to have travelled a lot all around the world and seen all these bonkers, beautiful, ridiculous things which has given me a vocabulary that's no longer as fantastical as it would have been. The only thing that I can say is that I don't think I will every get over the Himalayas and I now know what they meant by the sublime. When you...because I went there last year for a bucket list thing...erm...arrived quite high above four thousand, three thousand metres and then woke up the next morning and there was this seven and a half thousand metre peak, just outside the window. Overwhelming, but I was too terrified to cry (laughter).

[01:02:55.04] Interviewer: And could sense the scale of it?

[01:02:57.25] Aaron McPeake: Err...because another thing I do, I memorize maps, I'm a bit geeky. I memorize maps before I go somewhere. So, if like  I'm going to Melbourne I'll learn the maps, I'll learn where certain things are in relation to each other, because I can't see street signs. I can photograph them and get a telescope out, erm...but I count blocks so I deliberarately find out where I'm going and what I'm up against. With the case of the Hymalayas, I'd looked at the maps and I knew what the elevations were and I knew where I was going to be. Although I arrived in the dark and then woke up at six in the morning,  or five thirty in the morning (draws breath), there's a seven and half thousand metre peak, but I know that's ten kilometres away but you're still doing that (cranes neck). Erm...yeah, so that overwhelming sense of, that saying about some things are no longer exotic, but there are certain things that are so...I mean certain waterfalls that I can think of and the glaciers in Iceland, those things that are always going to be absolutely overwhelming. But other things that would have looked super exotic, you know certain architectures, are no longer now that they are familiar...but if you think about what it must have been like, if you lived on you know, in the fens in the east of England or in Scotland and then you came into the city into a cathedral with glass windows and the paintings and the statues, that must have been just mind blowing. You know, absolutely, if you lived in a rock, like a thatched building full of smoke and no windows, err... and suddenly presented with this...and probably not very smooth edges anywhere unless you were very rich and so those sort of experiences...and again, in a cathedral it wouldn't have just been visual. It was you know the scent, the incence, you know Elizabeth I, kept that, the church of England hung on to a lot of those things, the frocks, the incence, the candles and the music, so that was all kind of..Cromwell  was into music. So alot of these things...multisensory, sort of overwhelming things and for us now, unless it's staged very well, because we're confronted with so much stuff, for example Piccadilly Circus, I don't know if you've been there at all?

[01:06:17.26] Interviewer: Hmm..Hmm

[01:06:17.24] Aaron McPeake: But I think Piccadilly Circus thirty years ago, thirty five years ago, the light levels, you know Piccadilly Circus is dazzling. You come out of the underground and it's just like 'my God, the brightness'...err...compared to what it was. So all of those things erm...and auditory, cars, traffic, there's nowhere quiet

[01:06:48.02] Interviewer: No. There's no stillness

[01:06:50.04] Aaron McPeake: And the birds since the nineteen sixites, there's a Professor Leonard, John Leonard, who's a sound recordist and sound designer, listening to recordings from the nineteen sixties that have...what the microphone levels were, you know what all the things were saying, means that birds are now singing twice as loud, which may have something to do with their demise, because they're competing against roads. So in the nineteen sixties there was about, I don't know, ten percent of the traffic that we have now. So those sounds didn't exist, aircraft, everyone commented well not everyone but many people commented when the Icelandic Eldfell, oh not the Eldfell I can't remember the name of that volcano and there was no air traffic.

[01:07:55.01] Interviewer: Oh yeah...

[01:07:55.14] Aaron McPeake: So people were standing in Highbury Park just between here and the station and going 'oh, I can hear the train', you know the underground train which you never hear, because there's always twenty something aircraft above your head in London. But people were really shocked by this abscence, which meant that they could hear something that they'd never heard before. They could hear the underground train going underneath Highbury Fields. So it needs something really dramatic to make people think about it.

[01:08:34.02] Interviewer: So what were you aware of, when you woke up that morning at the Himalayas? What can you remember?

[01:08:38.11] Aaron McPeake: Err...well it was very quiet. There was nothing much moving around. It was the light. It was a bit like when you're a kid and, even though when I was a kid there were curtains drawn, erm...and when it snowed you knew it was snowing

[01:09:02.19] Interviewer: yes

[01:09:02.29] Aaron McPeake: But the quality of the light coming just through the cracks in the curtains, or through the diffused, not even direct light, diffused light from the side of the curtains coming up, you know, left and right hand sides, so there'd be these pools of different, and you knew it'd snowed in the night

[01:09:22.17] Interviewer: (laughing) yes, I totally know exactly what you mean!

[01:09:26.09] Aaron McPeake: Jamma's are off in no time and then you're 'yay!'. But there was a similarly, there was just an odd light coming in and it was a reflection from this seven and a half thousand metre monster. I'll show you a picture of the window, to give you a sense of it. But I knew something was up and I was a bit, slightly ooh a spooky sense, err...and then turning to look at it was just completely shocking (finding picture of the window).

[01:10:28.14] Interviewer: So this is a window in like a base camp type thing?

[01:10:30.18] Aaron McPeake: No it was in just a tea-house, in a town (finding picture on tablet) Oh yes (shows picture)

[01:11:05.07] Interviewer: ok

[01:11:05.12] Aaron McPeake: So, there's this monster and is that the window? Can you see the window frame?

[01:11:10.10] Interviewer: I can't see it. Oh yes, I can see the window frame. So the two...oh there. Yes, I can see the window frame now. So it's dark either side

and then just looking through to this enormous mountain in the distance. And the clouds are coming half way down it.

[01:11:36.23] Aaron McPeake: Well they come and go in seconds. You look at it and then take another picture. Yes, so within a few seconds it's totally different.

[01:11:54.16] Interviewer: Hmm...hmm. Wow. Yes, that struck me the first time I went up to Scotland and my husband

took me up to Glen Shee, for a drive, and that was in late November, so there was snow, or it had snowed, and just driving there and he said 'we'll just stop the car and pull over' and I found it a physical shock...

[01:12:19.04] Aaron McPeake: hmmm

[01:12:19.28] Interviewer:  Once the engine was off, at the silence. I had never heard silence before (laughing) at all. And all there were, were telegraph poles with whilstling telegraph wires, that was it!

[01:12:34.12] Aaron McPeake: Yeah

And it was strange, it was almost a claustrophobic 'whoa', where am I? Where am I actually in this environment? Quite incredible. And he was used to it!

[01:12:47.24] Aaron McPeake: Yeah! And erm..you know, you talked about the silence. And I'd say that there wasn't, because there's also the telegraph poles, there would have been...you would have heard water dripping or moving in some way. And, err...I'm thinking of crows in the distance. You know, there would have been certain animal sounds aswell, even up at that you know, absolute barren nothingness. But I think what shocks people is the abscence of what they're expecting.

[01:13:30.28] Interviewer: Yeah...

[01:13:31.24] Aaron McPeake: So it's the aircraft, the traffic

[01:13:33.18] Interviewer: Man-made..

[01:13:34.13] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, human generated sounds. But if you really had a good listen...also I'm going deaf as well which is great fun. Well going deaf in one ear, so I'm more acutely aware of it, or of trying to hang on or enjoy what's there. But if you really focused on that moment of...when you said there was this silence, but there wasn't a silence because you talked about telegraph poles. Again, what happens to people in that situation, they're sort of overwhelmed by their expectations being overturned and shifted. But, there's actually a lot going on in a very subtle way, but that's not comparable to what you're missing.

[01:14:37.22] Interviewer: Yeah. It's the first time I'd ever experienced it. And I think it revealed it to me, how familiar the man-made environment was to me. That I would then consider natural. Then this was..and also the landscape was it. I was secondary to the landscape. I couldn't influence it, it was huge. And timeless, it wasn't affected by anything else that was going on, or opinions, or any of that. It was just well...the landscape, I was part of it. Rather than it being part of anything...

[01:15:13.25] Aaron McPeake: And also there's this sense, I'm finding that, I mean I'm very lucky growing up where I did, by the sea in the countryside. It was only half an hour walk and we were up on the Antrim Plateau. Which is a bit like that. Not quite as bigger scale but it's barren, empty, but there's something that's familiar. So for someone who's always lived in a city, and you dump them there, it's shocking. But you also get a sense of scale of perspective, well not a great perspective, but a little sense of how small you are. Like that mountain, I knew it was seven and a half thousand metres, therefore it was four and a half thousand metres higher than where I was. So it was four and a half kilometres from where I was to the top, but I was ten kilometres away from it, but I was still craning my neck to look up at it. I was just this tiny little, think about some of these rocky ridges, you think...but at that scale a human is probably

[01:16:47.13] Interviewer: invisible...

[01:16:49.07] Aaron McPeake: couldn't even be seen, they're that small. You know some of these ridges will be hundreds and hundreds of metres so it would be like a pin prick, if that...(looking at photos)...oh, that's nice. It's a kind of reassuring thing.

[01:17:08.23] Interviewer: So when you were saying you don't really listen to music, is that sort of generally, or when you're working?

[01:17:15.05] Aaron McPeake: Generally, ok, when people come in I maybe occasionally put things on as a background, but err...I love music, I mean I go to concerts, not rock and roll ones, they're too dark and too overwhelming, but I go to classical things or I go to the opera occasionally, but that's more about sitting and listening to something, rather than it just being on.

[01:17:49.13] Interviewer: Hmm...almost this purposeful, when you ring the bowl or the bell and then you tune in and listen to it

[01:17:55.22] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, listen to it. So I call that active listening erm...but it's a bit like active looking, making that effort to look at something and think about it and then look at again and think about it and look at it again. And listening to stuff is...(long pause)  it's, how do I put it, a friend was asking me 'can you send me some music', I'm a bit wobbly. So I picked a few things that I knew, like Schumann and Brahms and bit of Mozart piano, and I hadn't heard those particular versions, you know those renditions those musicians doing it. So I listened to it, so, even if you know a piece of music, certain musicians bring a something new to it. And you go 'oh bloody hell, oh yeah' something they've done that's different. I'm not musically talented enough to explain what it is, but if someone does something...you can play the same piece of music, exactly the same concerto or quartet or whatever and it'll be really different, even though the notes are almost....

[01:19:37.06] Interviewer: That's interesting...

[01:19:37.17] Aaron McPeake: But there's a certain quality to things. This celebrate the flaws that we were talking about earlier, apart from it possibly being an excuse to be lazy, but there is a point I get to where I can't see it anymore, so I need someone else to come to go 'no there's a machine mark' or 'there's a trace or a mark', when I stop be able to..when I stop being bothered by it...but as a consequence things that I make don't sound right. I could make these all sound much more beautiful and in tune and make them, you know change the dimensions slightly or I could make more of an effort to make them more like instruments, but then I like it that they're a little bit screwed up.

[01:20:35.09] Interviewer: Hmm...mmm

[01:20:40.20] Aaron McPeake: They're not quite right (moves objects and strikes them).

[01:20:58.04] Interviewer: It's rich

[01:20:58.19] Aaron McPeake: It's ringing but it's out of tune and that 'bohbohbohbop' that is out of tune. (strikes others). Again completely out of tune. I should use a thinner piece of string (strikes)

[01:21:31.09] Interviewer: Yeah there's a few notes in that

[01:21:34.19] Aaron McPeake: But that 'wohwohwoh' that's it out of tune, it's the waves that are bashing into each other, creating that. But I like that, because it's not what people expect (strikes more)....ooh that's out of tune 'wohwohwohwoh'.

[01:22:05.11] Interviewer: So I'm just thinking about crystal glasses when they're pinged

[01:22:10.09] Aaron McPeake: (strikes a vase...ringing sound) That's crystal.

[01:22:20.08] Interviewer: I can hear that resonating, that sound. So that's a crystal vase?

[01:22:23.13] Aaron McPeake: Yep. I made that years ago.

[01:22:26.25] Interviewer: You made it?

[01:22:27.14] Aaron McPeake: Yeah... (gets more crystal glasses and pings them) these are made about the same time. But again all of them different, whereas if they were mass produced or blown into a mould then they would all be the same.

[01:23:17.28] Interviewer: Did you make those?

[01:23:19.05] Aaron McPeake: I made them with someone who's a much better glass blower than I am. And I used to make vases and some of the plates that are up...

[01:23:27.05] Interviewer: Oh right, that's on my bucket list...glass blowing. It's interesting just when you were talking about musicians playing the same music, I was then thinking about when you were talking about dancers, so when they're doing the same dance, you can't differentiate their gait on stage of who they are, until they come off and they're out of that. And yet with music, maybe five musicians playing the same piece of music, there is an individuality...

[01:23:58.09] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, I mean I think it's slightly different for principal ballerinas and principal males dance, because they've got licence to do something, you know they are more recognisable, but in terms of the core they're there to do that and that's their remit

[01:24:25.17] Interviewer: Well that's wonderful, facscinating

[01:24:28.28] Aaron McPeake: But I'm kind of greedy for making things the wood of this table and the benches you're sitting on. I love glass and film-making and, I don't know if you've had a look, there's probably too many of them on the website to torture yourself with, but also painting, lately. I've been making paintings with a Royal Academician, Stephen Farthing, who when I finished my PhD, we were in the pub and I just submitted it I think. And he said 'oh, would you like to paint?' and I went 'well there's no point, I can't, you know, I used to years ago' and he said 'but would you want to?', I went 'well yes, but that's a stupid question because I can't'. He said 'well, I tell you what, what would you say if I paint the paintings you want to paint. So you tell me what to do and I'll do it?' and I thought 'wow, this is a big cheese, RA, err...chair of the exhibitions committee there. So we did about twenty paintings, twenty four. And it started out that I would describe the scene in real detail, incredible detail. And it was, I hadn't...because he said 'ok, see you on Tuesday morning at ten and I thought sh**, this is a Friday evening and we'd had a few bottles of red and I was thinking 'what am I going to do', I didn't have the feintest idea, because I can get, sort of use his time to experiment you know.

[01:26:20.29] Interviewer: hmm, mmm

[01:26:21.05] Aaron McPeake: Er, that's just not going to happen, he's going to get bored of it in a day. So the thing is, what are their thoughts err...I have them, some other people have them, other people don't. Some have them on very particular things, but I kind of have, I call them eidetic memories and those are the things from childhood up to the present day. Err...anyway I'll tell you this bit before...I'll tell you what I learned. But anyway I thought, right I've got these eidetic memories so I'm going to use them. The idea is that when those memories, I would describe as, 'when your auntie is to the left of your mother, there's a basket in front of your mother' the picture always stays the same and your grandmother and your grandfather sitting on a chair, and so and so, and the dog's on the floor, whatever. But that memory is always kind of like a burned image and I've got lots of these from.....I'll show you some pictures if you like, they're on the stairwell. And hopefully they're going to get shown, I've got a curator who's gunning to get them exhibited. So I had these lists of memories, images that I could rely on. So I could go back to them, redescribe, redescribe and it wouldn't change and I knew that this isn't going to change and I can be confident and he's not going to get irritated, because I would be telling him something slightly different to what I was telling him the previous Tuesday. So we did these, we did about seven or eight of them and one of the pictures, we got to the point and also I was pushing my luck to find out a bit about his sensibility, you know, what he would like and what he wouldn't like or what irritated him. And there was one of the images was when I was probably about nine or ten years old and there was a, I'm not sure of the picture but we were in a hedge with a bag of sweets, looking at this woman who must have been maybe twenty years old who was topless sunbathing, in the garden. So these kids sitting in the hedge eating sweets and he didn't like this. It was nothing to do with the subject it was something to do with the picture, you know it was comical but...anyway, he walked away and said 'give me a brush' and said 'ok, there you see how I'm doing the hedges, the hedge detail, you crack on there'. So he stood back and I was doing what he showed me to do and I finished the whole thing, not realising. So, from that point he said 'right Ill start them and you finish them, so that's what got me into...so the rest of the paintings thereafter I actually composed the overall and he would clean them up, but not to the point where it looked....didn't want his style to come into it. So they were very much my pictures, but with his expertise. But he didn't bring his painting style to it. And then I revisited something (gets painting) So this is one I did, most recent... I've got to do a second one because he's given me a free hit at the Royal Academy summer show entrance. So this is a misty morning in my friend's house in Essex in the countryside. Now the thing is that that's...in some ways although that's a direct representation of the...I don't have the picture, the original thing that I got it from...maybe I do, somewhere...but in some ways that, for those that were there that morning, that's kind of not bad. I showed them that picture and they went 'oh, yeah, yeah, yeah...I remember that misty morning'. But then in a lot of ways, that's kind of similar to what I see.

[01:31:37.12] Interviewer: ok

[01:31:37.29] Aaron McPeake: So there's a mishy-mushy bit...erm...so I want to do some more in that vein.

[01:31:49.28] Interviewer: Yes, Sally was showing me some stuff of hers that was almost like white noise static. She said that was kind of what she could see. So she'd photographed glass bottles that were backlit by sunshine, but in front of those was a dark blue blind and she could still see the shapes of these bottles through the blind, photographed it and then blew it up, the scale so large that the blue blind almost become grey and like static, like you get on an old TV set. And I was saying...that reminds me of it, because there's a kind of static speckle to the mist, on the trees and I was saying to her that, when I was about five, I used to have these dreams, of this static and the noise that went with it and it was very claustrophobic, quite close to my vision and then it would go and that would be in the end of the dream. Similar

[01:32:45.11] Aaron McPeake: Yeah the thing that's annoying me at the minute there's a friend who...I've got lots of artist friends, but there's only some of them who I could answer the question that I'm asking. Err...about a particular quality to what they're looking at. So, erm and I don't think she's very well at the minute, so that's a bit of a problem. So other people can give me, kind of, some extent  objective but mostly subjective views on something, whereas some people that you really know...it's a bit like that err, not necessarily...when you're talking intimate stuff with a friend, you're not asking for advice but you're sensing reassurance that either you can agree or disagree about something yeah..erm...so if it's a disagreement it's not conflict...it's just "erm, I don't think you should go out with that bloke, frankly, because I know some things and they're not very wholesome." So, whereas if they pitched it in a certain way saying "I can tell you blah, blah, blah" then you're going to have a different response. Whereas if it's said in a ways it's knowing, oh how can I put this, acknowledging that they're aware of all the nuances that you're concened about

[01:34:45.03] Interviewer: hmm mmm

[01:34:45.26] Aaron McPeake: And then they deliver that, whether its in agreement or disagreement it doesn't matter. It's just like "oh yeah, you get it". So I can ask other painters or other artists about this, but I'm not going to get the answers that I want. Because it's only this particular individual who can tell me and can take a number of things on board that concern me.

[01:35:15.14] Interviewer: yeah

[01:35:15.14] Aaron McPeake: That only certain people can do that, members of family or friends in particular, erm partners of whatever, it's only they who can answer that question

[01:35:26.01] Interviewer: yeah

[01:35:27.22] Aaron McPeake: So that's a problem. So I don't know if this is a beginning of a series of crap or there's something in it. I'm going to find out.

[01:35:41.17] Interviewer: Brilliant. I've loved hearing and touching all these things (objects). That's wonderful

[01:35:49.16] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, there's a lot... I need to, erm...because I've got about three quarters of a ton (laughing) around the....

[01:35:57.03] Interviewer: Yeah literally!

[01:35:57.00] Aaron McPeake: But yeah there's a lot of objects...the start of the bronze thing (gets brass object). There was a series of these that started

[01:36:38.03] Interviewer: Oh yes, I've seen those. That's the one with the perforated holes

[01:36:40.04] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, that's my late partner's, breast cancer radiation err...so it was just the holes

[01:36:52.08] Interviewer: Oh I see

[01:36:52.08] Aaron McPeake: Of the plates...for radiotherapy (strikes it - ringing sound). I think it's got a patient number somewhere

[01:37:16.13] Interviewer: So is that a cast of...

[01:37:18.21] Aaron McPeake: A cast of the acrylic mold that they made. And I think she put the patient number on there somewhere.

[01:37:30.00] Interviewer: So that's how the actual mask, for want of a better word, would have looked?

[01:37:35.29] Aaron McPeake: Yes, that's exactly how it would have looked, only it was clear plastic. Oh there, it's got the number..

[01:37:41.17] Interviewer: Wow

[01:37:43.02] Aaron McPeake: embossed in the side of it. She did that, and put the number in. And this is my mother's painting pallette (strikes it - makes a ringing sound). So these were the first couple of dozen objects, where things from social history, kind of objects. There's one of a little wellington boot that I buried as a little kid...err, frying pans, wooden spoons (gets objects).

[01:38:36.22] Interviewer: Oh wow, bronze wooden spoon

[01:38:36.25] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, well it rings (collects string)

[01:38:45.27] Interviewer: Yeah so if I'm holding it my hand (holds spoon) and I tap it, there's nothing

[01:38:48.28] Interviewer: But...thread, maybe I can get that (winds thread around spoon)

[01:39:08.16] Interviewer: That just looks exactly like a wooden spoon

[01:39:29.23] Aaron McPeake: (spends time winding string around spoon handle) sorry about this

[01:39:46.24] Interviewer: It's alright

[01:39:47.07] Aaron McPeake:...I'm determined...shoe laces. I think this is one of the first things I did (strikes it - ringing sound)

[01:40:07.07] Interviewer: It just transforms it doesn't it? Suspending it from a piece of string

[01:40:11.14] Aaron McPeake: Yes it's dead (?)...it's still going (ringing sound) That will ring for about a minute.

[01:40:31.08] Interviewer: wow. Brilliant.

[01:40:37.14] Aaron McPeake: (strikes object loudly)

[01:40:37.20] Interviewer: ooh (taken by surprise - laughter)

[01:40:38.12] Aaron McPeake: So these objects, they have meaning. There's a lot of meaning attached to them, sort of, I mean al lot of it's very sentimental and err, it's a bit cathartic. Because my friend, Derek, who brought me the first, brought me this one from Burma, he brought this twenty years ago. But he passed away at the end of January, my mother passed away at the end of March and then my partner got diagnosed at the end of April. So it was a bit of a mad time, your bezzie mate, your mother and then your...so it was all a bit....ughhh....so this stuff was kind of quite cathartic to play with. You know to be making things and bits from childhood and then I started on the Iceland stuff around the same time. So I'm really fond of these pieces, not necessarily because I think of them as being that accomplished or beautiful. But when they hang together there's a story and for me, if other people look at it and go 'oh yeah, they're objects from personal history' but for me they mean a lot more than that.

[01:42:10.01] Interviewer: There's a real depth to them

[01:42:11.05] Aaron McPeake: They're loaded with stuff. You could say it's a bit indulgent but it was better that than giving up

[01:42:18.07] Interviewer: Absolutely

[01:42:20.22] Aaron McPeake: So, I continued with...one of my supervisors, Hayley Newman, she said 'do not...don't take a year out, because you'll...you know, there's so much happening that you'll not going to get back into it. You'll never finish it and keep going. So that was a good piece of advice. Also having had busyness - see you can run away from stuff....you can run away and make yourself busy in work, even making things or writing or reading or...you can kind of get yourself out of the ugly stuff for a little bit of time. Also I found that PhD work, especially if I had a deadline, my house was never so clean and tidy (laughter)

[01:43:22.05] Interviewer: (laughter) yeah

[01:43:22.22] Aaron McPeake: I just turned into a very gay man at the time

[01:43:25.08] Interviewer: (laughter)

[01:43:26.28] Aaron McPeake: The place was spotless. You could eat your dinner off the floor. So that displacement activity, you know like 'oh I must clean the house. I must do more laundry, I must do more laundry, I must clean the house, I must..' Err yeah, so that was a really useful tool. That's important. What I'm going to try and do this year, apart from these paintings that I'm doing with Farthing, get those shown, is to try and get...is to have a...effectively a concert, with using all of these. So I've got a couple of hundred you know ringing objects and if I could have it somewhere like a cathedral. There's a Spanish artist called Llorens Barba (?) and he's maybe late sixties, seventies now, but he is the bell muscian, you know he goes to cities and he designs sort of concerts using all of the bells in the cities from the churches, but also works on a macro level  you know working on things like these (strikes gong) he can make these objects tell a story so that's one plan. Another plan is to do something, because I used to work in theatre,

is to have a, again using all of these few hundred pieces, see there's a piece of work, these are gongs, that's the western wall and that's the Harrish Mecca

[01:45:36.15] Interviewer: So these are like bronze discs but with a texture picture, like a relief

[01:45:42.04] Aaron McPeake: Yeah, so they're religious reliefs. That's Christopher, this is Thomas A Beckett, that's the Hindu trident and that the Buddist whale, so the idea is to have these played as cues for...

[01:46:04.11] Interviewer: wow, they're so heavy

[01:46:06.22] Aaron McPeake: yeah. It's a tiny little thing. But the idea was to have a singing from each of the religious traditions to erm...to sort of separate the movements of playing the pieces. But I would only work with, the really...I mean Llorens is the absolute perfect person to do it with. If I can get the funding to do that, err...but yeah, it would need to be a very accomplished muscisian to work with. You could have a sonic dialogue with using these things. It says something rather than being a big ding-ding drum kit. So it needs to be a bit more than that. But there are a lot, as you can see.

[01:47:02.07] Interviewer: Yeah, it's everywhere! I was just looking round at all the different things hanging. Well that's been brilliant. It's really given me a flavour of everything and brilliant descriptions.

[01:47:14.18] Aaron McPeake: I've probably just talked your legs off

[01:47:15.08] Interviewer: Not at all. Well, it's certainly gone over an hour, which I'm fine with but aware from your time point of view, it's nearly one, so that was about an hour and forty five! Oh, one hour forty seven, twenty eight, there we go!