Interview with

Ben Frost is to art, what Chomsky is to politics, so will he ever come in from the cold?

Your recent show “crapitalism” opened the same day as the stock market crashed, were your prayers answered?
It was a pretty crazy coincidence – maybe there will be an economic crisis every time I have an exhibition in London. I read somewhere that everytime AC/DC release a new album there is some world catastrophe – so it’s quite probable that the band members are actually members of the world bank, though this is difficult to prove.

D*Faces’ exhibition APOPcalypse opened a week after mine at Black Rat Press and it’s interesting how artwork can be quite prophetic in its exploration of whats happening in the world.

Has the current economic crisis had any effect on your sales?
I’m not really so concerned with sales of my work – for me it’s more about creating dialogues and meeting people and exchanging ideas. I think the current economic crisis is a reminder to us all that we shouldn’t all be expecting to be millionaires and that there are more important things to think about. It’s difficult as an artist I think when it comes to selling artwork, especially when an art dealer becomes involved and it becomes a situation of compromise to achieve individual agendas.

As long as I can earn enough money to get me on to the next exhibition and to pay all my costs, then that’s all I’m really after.

Can you explain to us the ideas behind the “Simpsons Sex Tape” (explicit content) from the “crapitalism” show?
Just after I finished painting it, a friend of mine came around to the studio with his 13 year old cousin. After about a minute looking at the painting the young boy turned to my friend and said ”˜Cool .. it’s Homer Simpson.’

This illustrates, I think, how sometimes we find it difficult to see what is right in front of our faces – or perhaps we experience some kind of ”˜selective’ perception on the surface, but subliminally there is something else being communicated behind the façade.

Advertising works in this way, and is essentially all ”˜smoke and mirrors.’ The products being explained are never really as interesting, sexy or glamorous as the promotions suggest . If advertisers knew they could sell more Simpsons merchandise by capturing the pubescent market with subliminal images of graphic sex acts – I think they would.

You were involved in the show “kounter Kulture” recently with artists of a similar ilk, is there less pressure when you are showing with peers who have similar styles?

Kounter Kulture in London was really cool. It was in a series of rooms about half the size of a football field and there were lots of great artists exhibiting like Copyright, Pure Evil, Eine, Nathan James, David White, Hush, and Dan Baldwin. There were a lot of art fairs opening around the same time Kounter Kulture was on – October is a really amazing time for art in London.

There’s always less pressure when you’re in a group show, but at the same time it’s a positive experience to be able to see how your own work fits into the context of other artists and the scene as it is.

You have been known to use Mickey Mouse in your works, did you find it at all interesting That Hamas used its own militant Mickey on HamasTV mouse to urge Palestinian children to fight Israel?
Mickey Mouse is the anti-christ, so it’s no surprise that he spends time in the middle east starting trouble. Spongebob Squarepants is the new Mickey Mouse. Pikachu was a contender for a few years, but Spongebob’s big stupid grin is now so prevalant that Chinese astronauts are actually planning space missions in a secret attempt to paint his face on the moon.

Noam Chomsky is quoted as saying “All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume” does that resonate with your ideology?
Noam Chomsky is great. This quote reminds me of the ”˜political petitions’ people send around on social networking sites like Facebook. They are so ridiculous and pointless, somehow making participants feel as if they are doing something by clicking on an online button. Some of the causes range from the usual ”˜Stop the War in Iraq’ to the hard hitting ”˜Make Batman Prime Minister’.

I think it was Noam Chomsky who also remarked that protests are ineffective, because waving a few banners around and signing petitions are abstract and that the only real alternative to change is rioting – that even dictatorships are forced to do something when the people are throwing rocks and setting cars on fire.

I think this is one of the reasons street art has flourished in the last few years. The act of actually going out and putting up messages in the public eye without consent helps send a message to the rest of the population that it’s OK to speak out – instead of clicking online Facebook petitions.

 
What do you make of some of the brilliant artwork Obama used for his campaign, such as the illustrated change posters?
We were talking about this in the studio just the other day. Shepherd Fairey made the ”˜HOPE/CHANGE’ posters for the Obama campaign, and we were discussing the rise of Banksy and the relevance of these two contemporary artists. Banksy seems to be the biggest artist in the world today, but Fairey has ingrained himself so deeply into the visual world community that surely his posters played a big part in voter turn out in some sectors of the community. I think his work has always been at the forefront of the contemporary movement and it should be applauded when it can influence people’s viewpoints and political perspectives on such a large and important scale.

Though they do look a little bit like ads for PEPSI.

Finally if people cant attend the shows, where can they view your latest work online?
www.benfrostisdead.com
www.nowallsgallery.com
www.stupidkrap.com

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