Lucien Anderson
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Interview by Slugtown
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Published in July 2025
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Lucien Anderson is an artist living and working in Newcastle upon Tyne. We talk about his debut exhibition, Brief Candle, Splendid Torch, on view at Slugtown until August 2025. Working across wall-based sculpture and installation, the show is concerned with the fundamentals of human survival, solitary outposts and brief moments of camaraderie.
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Brief Candle, Splendid Torch (installation view), Slugtown, Newcastle, 2025
All of your work is heavy-laden with narrative, and in your exhibition Brief Candle, Splendid Torch you make direct reference to your interests in storytelling and ideas around the endeavour. Can you elaborate on where these interests come from originally?
The works in this show reference outposts, points of shelter and nourishment. I think my interest here starts with accounts of adventure, and an interest in life’s fundamentals. The image of someone trudging across a foreboding landscape and seeking shelter in a tired old bothy - warming their bones by the fire — that’s soaked in narrative, romance and ideas of endeavour.
Dan Richards describes these places as “ascetic creative crucibles”. I find in these outposts the fog clears, it’s easier to tell stories here. These places hold time still, their inhabitants slowed down, their needs basic, their routines becoming ritual. Some of these places are haunted.
Storytelling is central to the human experience, it’s a means of survival, of building relationships and of course - entertainment. I’ve always been drawn to film - the cinematic, the romantic, but also cinematic techniques - frames, miniatures and sets.
I do think it’s partly the allegorical potential of objects that drives me to make work.
I’m drawn to objects which seem to illustrate a situation whilst providing a means to navigate it. This illustrative aspect can be quite direct - decorative wood burners enamelled with landscape scenes, or with ancient, fire raking prayers cast into their faces. Alternatively, it can be imbued within an object where form follows function, and the form describes the problem and it’s solution. Have you ever seen those mountain climbing cog railways, or a 50 year old brass poker hung by a bothy fireplace?
Studio materials
Generally the things I make have their roots somewhere in the everyday (for someone, somewhere). My works often start out as replicas, mock-ups or interpretations of some vernacular, evocative object. From here the works can start to develop more organically.
As with an artefact, the narrative within my work is fragmented. I hope these gaps offer a way into the work, and leave room for different interpretations and responses. I don’t want my works to be a bunch of answers to questions nobody is asking.
I talk a lot about scale, not just physical scale, but scale in terms of ‘the endeavour’. It’s good to see effort exerted, things heaved and tussled with. Outside of art, I’ve always been drawn to examples of local, often individual resilience - tinkering and problem solving, often in a ramshackle yet refreshingly unbureaucratic, highly successful way.
I find there is a strange timelessness to your works. They span different tenses; past, present and future. Stories and lessons from the past, combine with your own experiences in the present day, and operate as warnings to humanity’s future. Is that timelessness intentional?
Yes it’s all intentional, and I’ve tried to lean into that timelessness with these works. They are about time. The wall mounted constructions and the organ flues all carry their own histories in the marks, the dust and the fingerprints. The candles which burn during the show are a direct indicator of time passing, the melted wax becomes a record. The wall mounted constructions have a domestic feel to them, I spent a while looking at wall mounted clocks when I was developing these works - I’d like to explore this format further.
It’s important that I make the works, and that they are clearly crafted. But it’s equally important that they carry a tenuous authenticity and a sense of a previous life. They’re like artefacts. I’d quite like my works to appear found, encouraging people to wonder where they came from, and what their purpose was.
Regarding the subject of the wall mounted works, three perspectives of the same scenario are presented to you in a totem construction. The scene comes at you all at once, there’s no chronology within each of these works.
The Atomic Priests, as part of Brief Candle, Splendid Torch, Slugtown, Newcastle, 2025
Your material choice is very particular to your practice. Can you explain about your decision to use second-hand materials as much as you are able to. And what this decision gives you as an artist, and if it limits you at all?
I hoard hard. I don’t think there’s any new material used in this show. I’ve become quite good at selecting and collecting materials over the years, and knowing what will come in use – eventually. When I do get rid of a material I generally regret it.
A huge amount of pleasure is derived from making, but it’s equally satisfying when you stumble upon an object out there that’s doing what you’re trying to do, better. Sometimes my work is labouring over something, mitred edges, glue, brads, sand, paint. Other times it’s as simple as picking something up and putting it down somewhere else. That’s what’s happened in this show - I feel like the organ flues are mocking me.
Studio materials
There are so many objects in the world already, I try to use what’s already in circulation. I’ll take a chair, for instance, and turn it into something more useful, like an artwork.
The choice of material governs the construction methods used, and the overall aesthetic of a work. I’m striving for something that feels authentic, used, perhaps domestic - so I’ll try to use materials which have had a previous life, pieces of old furniture, reclaimed picture frames and other wooden ephemera. I’m particularly fond of old plywood - there’s a quality to it that can’t be matched with the stuff at timber yards these days. There’s history embedded in used material - it’s always imperfect and I embrace that. Old furniture has such an evocative smell. I think it’s important to impose parameters on yourself, it forces you to be more inventive, it leads you in unexpected directions and in theory it saves you money too.
Generally I’ll start with a tatty piece of furniture. If I’m lucky it’s a nice hardwood, sometimes it’s veneered, most of the time it’s beat up. It’s a satisfying process - starting with something awkward and irregular, machining it into useable boards, and then machining it further into something new. You can never fully shake off it’s history and I’m not really interested in doing so - I try to tease that back out of it. I want the works to be convincing.
I don’t think going out and buying exactly what you need to fabricate an object is the way to make interesting work. I like creating problems for myself, overcomplicating things and learning as I do so. All the joinery, all the methods of construction are self taught and I still very much consider myself an amateur in all fields. I nearly lost my left thumb preparing for this show.
I hear you callin' baby but you ain't getting me, as part of Brief Candle, Splendid Torch, Slugtown, Newcastle, 2025
I hear you callin' baby but you ain't getting me (detail), as part of Brief Candle, Splendid Torch, Slugtown, Newcastle, 2025
Across all the works you make, objects and elements are very carefully crafted and put together. However, it seems like to try to avoid any elements of trickery, or anything extraneous that needn’t be there. Is this the case? How important is this idea in your practice?
I try to make things well. And I’m always striving to develop my understanding of the materials I use. The works are carefully crafted, but I try to fight the instinct to be a perfectionist - I’ve really tried in this show to shake that off - to experiment and allow things to veer off in unfamiliar directions.
I’ve always been interested in prototypes, so often, in engineering, architecture, design, things are mocked up in wood first - this has always excited me - there’s a satisfying economy to these objects but there’s also an accessibility to them - you look at a wooden Concorde cockpit and think “yeah, I could probably make that”. Shakers would make their wood burner designs initially from wood, as forms, to then be cast in iron. It’s a bit of a chocolate frying pan scenario.
Brief Candle, Splendid Torch (installation view), Slugtown, Newcastle, 2025
Whilst I agree that there’s nothing extraneous - I try to cut the fat, I’m conflicted when it comes to the issue of artifice. Yes there’s an honesty to the works, they’re very clearly hand made and imperfect, their surfaces are marred, scuffed, dinged, repaired, dinged again. But I’m not sure if I’m getting better at woodwork, or if I’m just getting better at hiding my sins. After all, aren’t joiners just illusionists - making something seem so seamless, permanent - as though it always has, and always will, be. I thought about this as I took a crowbar to Lady Masham’s bespoke kitchen a few months back.
I would argue that there is an element of trickery to my work, beyond imposing material parameters I do also give myself rules to abide by. I don’t always stick to them, mind. I try to never show end grain, particularly sheet material end grains - I feel that this maintains an illusion of substance, of weight, objects feel whole and well rounded. There are moments in these new works when I do reveal end grain, but it’s never plywood, and I’ve made a conscious decision to do so. I impose purist rules on myself and then ultimately I’ll break them. Perhaps I’m a masochist — a pedant and a pervert, in woodworking terms.
There’s a fair amount of artifice - the works are made up of replicas, miniatures and maquettes - they riff off cinematic methods, allude to stage sets and the theatrical. A couple of years back I spent some time in rural Italy. I witnessed a house fire, got frisked by the carabinieri and watched a medieval parade dating back as far as 1985. And so since then I’ve always tried to embellish work with decorative elements too. I try to inject a bit of theatre into the works. There’s an ongoing breaking and rebuilding of the 4th wall.
Lucien Anderson in his studio
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lucienanderson.com
︎ @lucien__anderson
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If you like this why not read our interview with Anika Ahuja.
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