Sean Williams

ALT OPEN UP 2025. STEPHEN CARLEY. Ribcage Studio. This has been my studio for close to 20 years now. It’s warm in summer. And baltic in winter. It suits my eclectic practise. The space is divided into two sections. One for ‘dirty / messy / moving about’ processes (painting, construction, drawing, performative work). One for sound recording, photography and digital editing. I like the strange ambience here. The sounds from outside - children playing in gardens, dogs barking, traffic sounds. The sounds from adjoining spaces, machinery, radios, music, conversation… This is the ‘White Noise’ I need to be able to work in. Nothing specific enough to distract, possibly just enough to react against.

ALT There are some constructed paintings on the walls. These are very all current or made in the last couple of years. I like to borrow the term ‘combine’ from the artist Robert Rauschenberg to help contextualise the work. These pieces are relatively small scale. I often work on pieces that stretch the whole width of the studio. One of these pieces is currently in the RSA (Royal Scottish Academy) Open in Edinburgh. You can pick up a postcard of that image in the studio, by the way! There are also screens in the studio which are showcasing examples of my work with film. These are all specifically ‘performance for camera’. Again, these are all very recent pieces of work. They are purposely very ‘tongue in cheek’. Some of these films have been recently screened at Showroom Cinema in Sheffield over the past year as part of ‘Showroom Shorts’ run by South Yorkshire Filmmakers Network. Last year I was runner up in their ‘2 weeks 2 make it’ pop video competition.

ALT If you would like to see more of my work go to www.stephencarley.co.uk Painting, constructions, drawing, film, photography, performance. Via the website you will find links to Vimeo and Bandcamp with an extensive back catalogue of experimental film and music. Let’s finish on a quote. Always a good thing in my book. I’m an admirer of the work of John Hoyland. incidentally, he was my external assessor in 1984 at Chelsea School of Art when I was an MA student. So here is John and his take on being an artist; “When one is young and has experienced a good deal of rejection, you want to show everyone how tough you are. Later you want to show how clever you are. Later still, you want to see how far you can push yourself. And finally, you don’t give a f**k about anything, you just want to howl at the moon.”