The Wick - Interview Artist and Curator Nicky Carter The Wick - Interview Artist and Curator Nicky Carter
Monday Muse

Interview Artist and Curator Nicky Carter

Interview
Nicky Carter
21 June 2021
Interview
Nicky Carter
21 June 2021
For more than 20 years Nicky Carter has been collaborating with her husband and fellow artist, Rob. Their highly coveted work can be found in the collections of Elton John and the Beckhams, the V&A in London, Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands and, most recently, their move into robotics currently welcomes visitors at London’s Van Gogh Alive exhibition.

Carter is also the director of art and longest-serving member of staff at London’s legendary The Groucho Club. After joining the bar team after studying at Goldsmiths, she was invited to start one of the most impressive collections of contemporary British art. In exchange for lifetime memberships, she convinced contemporaries including Damien Hirst and Mark Quinn to donate pieces to the members’ club. In recognition of her work, a new space, The Carter Room, has recently been named in her honour and will see pieces by Philip Colbert, Chris Levine and Helen Beard adorn its walls. Carter looks forward to dancing on its tables soon. Until then, she’s everything you could want in a Monday Muse below.

THE WICK:   Talk us through your typical Monday. 

Nicky Carter :   It would start with a run or walk around Hyde Park, which we are lucky enough to live next to. It would then be split between our ‘working’ studio in Acton and our viewing space on Bathurst Street, London.

Over the last three years we have been working with KUKA and a team of cutting-edge software programmers to teach a robot to paint in a style we created. We have been very busy executing commissioned portraits over lockdown and we are continuing to push the boundaries of this new medium with the introduction of painting in colour. We have also acquired another robot to paint with light in complete darkness, which we are filming at the moment.

We opened our viewing space RN at 5A in 2017; we are open to the public and welcome collectors and friends daily. Some artists wouldn’t like inviting people into their creative space, but we really enjoy studio visits and events creating a platform for our work to be discussed.

TW:   What has the past year taught you?

NC:   Life doesn’t always go to plan. It has made me really value my friendships and it has been wonderful for Rob and me to spend so much time with our two daughters who are now 21 and 19. We have been very lucky to be able to continue working in London throughout lockdown.

Our ‘Dark Factory Portraits’ exhibition, of portraits painted by the robot, launched at Ben Brown Fine Arts on 11 February 2020 and closed four weeks later due to Covid-19. However, in many ways it became the ideal project during the pandemic, as we were able to continue operations, remotely behind closed doors, taking private commissions for the robot to paint. The genesis for these portraits is simply a photograph, colour or black and white, physical or digital. Collectors were afforded the time to go through albums with a sense of nostalgia, selecting their favourite image to be painted by our robot while they watched from home as the portrait evolved in real time via a webcam.

We have also been blown away by artists’ ability to adapt and their resilience, in particular friends of ours working with the Artist Support Pledge, the brainchild of artist Matthew Burrows.

TW:   Your art feels very hopeful, focused on the possibilities of colour and light. What role do you think art has played during the pandemic?

NC:   I think art has been a beacon of hope. Artists have always worked alone and this hasn’t changed, but the lack of social interaction has been a problem. Social media has been a big part of sharing ideas and catching up, which is positive. Art materials have been in short supply as so many people have taken up making art. The benefits of making art in whatever form are huge.

TW:   You have collaborated with your husband for over two decades. What form does that collaboration take?

NC:   I studied Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths and Rob comes from a photographic background. When we started working together in 1998 we combined all our practices, so our work is always a hybrid of media. We are particularly interested in using cutting-edge technology whether it be 3D printing, CGI and, more recently, robotics. Artists have always used the tools at their disposal, so it seems very natural for us to embrace the future while always having an eye on the past. We are constantly bouncing ideas off each other; our ideas are continually being refined. This feels like a very instinctive process for us and is hard to define, as it is totally unconscious. We feel very lucky to have one another.

We both share an interest in light, form and colour and have a very similar aesthetic. We can both go to an exhibition and come out having weirdly liked the same pieces.

“We believe the use of robotics and AI is soon to become another accepted language within the realm of art.”

Nicky Carter

TW:   The past year has seen an increasing integration between art and technology. How do you think this might influence your future work?

NC:   We always consider the boundaries between the traditional and the contemporary and the analogue and the digital. AI was a very natural progression for us. The mediums that we work in, whether it be photograms, CGI or 3D printing are driven by the desire to harness new technology, or reference historical processes, in a manner that wouldn’t have been previously possible.

Throughout history technological advances have changed the way artists work and we believe the use of robotics and AI is soon to become another accepted language within the realm of art. We are proud to be the first to paint with a robot in this way and look forward to seeing how other artists employ AI and robotics in their work.

AI and machine learning will have a huge impact on the future of art and the working world in ways that we cannot begin to dream or imagine yet. We are not sure where the road will lead us yet, which makes the journey all the more exciting. However, we don’t believe robots will outsmart the human mind but more work in tandem together.

TW:   What do you think are the challenges facing artists today?

NC:   The pandemic has not helped friends’ mental health, which has worried us throughout. Museums are in survival mode and many smaller galleries have had to shut. It is finding a network of support that is of paramount importance. Loneliness is a big factor, so it is more important than ever to work within a community. It has been a huge challenge for many to keep going and have the strength to move forward over the last year or so.

TW:   What projects do you have coming up?

NC:   We are so delighted that our first colour robot painting is currently on show at Van Gogh Alive in Kensington Gardens. Our rendition of Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers (1888) is one of our favourite paintings residing in The National Gallery, London and our transcription was completed by more than 40 hours of continuous painting with our robot. We are now working with our robot to execute six identical Van Gogh Sunflowers paintings and are busy working on new pieces at the studio for upcoming art fairs and exhibitions.

TW:   Who is your ultimate Monday Muse?

NC:   This is a very hard question. I have so many female icons. I think Georgia O’Keeffe would be my choice. I dream of going to her museum in New Mexico.

TW:   Desert island quarantine: what book, album and artwork do you take with you?

NC:   The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger would be the book or L’Étranger by Albert Camus – both were profoundly important to me. Ambrosius Bosschaert’s Vase with Flowers in a Window, 1618 from the Dutch Golden Age, as that painting changed our lives. Music would be Lost Horizons by Lemon Jelly with the odd cheeky Dolly Parton drop would be perfect.

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