Francis Upritchard (b. 1976) and Martino Gamper (b. 1971) are wife and husband. Upritchard works largely with figurative sculpture, made in diverse materials including natural rubber, ceramics, glass and textiles. Martino Gamper is one of the most innovative designers of his generation, known for making furniture using discarded materials, as well as interior spaces. I have known them for over 15 years, and the two came to stay with us in Nagano in November 2024. I sat down with them in my study to talk about art, their work and the climate and ecological crisis.
I was most impressed by their deep and thoughtful perspectives on climate issues, which are never blatant or didactic. We must all live and work in a highly contradictory and complex system. There is no ‘pure’ or ‘correct’ way of living or working that can be totally detached from ecological destruction or fossil fuel structures. My conversation with Francis and Martino was a reminder how we must each be active thinking agents first and foremost. Thinking deeply and sharing ideas with each other, so that we can find the least destructive ways of working in the art world. Their thinking leads to concise and meaningful actions in the way they work and live. We can all learn a great deal from this.
Roger McDonald (RM): Can you share your current awareness or thoughts are about the climate and bio-diversity crisis?
Francis Upritchard (FU): I think it's terrifying. And one thing I do to soothe myself is to try and think about the world in a very long-term way. So that’s maybe why I work with dinosaurs quite a lot. Thinking that this world has had major climate events in the past, maybe not self-inflicted like this particular one, but being aware that there have been major climate events before. Maybe in this very long view of things, it’s okay if there's a big wipeout like what has happened before. It’s one way that I sometimes think about these issues, because I think otherwise it's just so terrifying, so horrifying what we're doing.
Martino Gamper (MG): I think from the 1960s and 70s a new kind of awareness about the earth emerged, and the effects of changing climate and pollution started to be seen and felt. And from those times there was always a kind of a worst-case scenario that the world is going to end. And I think that hasn't come true, because the world is not ending. But we as a society are perhaps declining, our civilization is certainly facing major challenges, especially animals and plants. But in a way for the earth, it's a continuous change, just accelerated over the past 100 years. What has happened over spans of millions of years seems to be accelerating now. So it's terrifying, yes, and we are the makers of it, and the bearers, you know, on both sides.
But I think it depends on who we are trying to ‘save’? Is it the planet as such, or is it us humans, because we think in very short time spans, like a person’s life in a matter of years, months or days. What about a species perspective? Perhaps our species will be lost, as millions of other species will be lost, but there is also a constant mutation. There may be new species emerging.
RM: So you're both talking about taking a longer-term view, while at the same time feeling a very real immediate sense of crisis.
MG: I feel it's not necessarily helpful to think that you're going to die, and everything around you is going to die. I don't think that is a strategy that's going to help people, because a lot of people say like, yeah, it's not going to happen, it didn't happen. So we just continue acting as if everything was ‘normal’. But clearly things are impacting our lives every day, more and more all across the globe. So I think, yes, we have to change. We should have changed. We will have to change. And maybe we can't save the world as we know it. It's a very romantic thought that we can save the world. The world has not been the same as what we think it was, because the world 150 years ago was a very different world. So I guess it's about how can we change our own life.
RM: Are you trying to be pragmatic?
MG: I’m trying to be pragmatic, yes, because I feel like I can't take the world on my shoulders.
RM: Because we're in the world, we are part of everything going on.
FU: We’re in it, and I don’t think that politicians can necessarily change the world, even though we think they have the power. Some of them probably have a great deal more power than us, but then most of them don’t really act responsibly.
RM: How do you get information about climate issues?
FU: Actually, the most information we ever got was going to New Zealand and experiencing five cyclones. That was real information, undeniable, physical information. Two years ago, these huge cyclones hit the Great Barrier Island in Northern New Zealand where we have a house. There had not been a storm of that ferocity since the 1980s, and back then it was just a single storm. We experienced five major cyclones in a row. And this was unprecedented.
RM: Do you talk with other artists or art world people about these issues? Is it like a conversation topic?
FU: Maybe less in the art world. I think in the art world, everyone's really scared of being called a hypocrite. And I think this is a really wrong and unhelpful way of looking at things. Some people would point at you and say that you're a hypocrite because you made a sculpture in bronze and suddenly you are a hypocrite. I think that many people in the art world right now are quite scared about this. And maybe that's why I read a lot of science fiction too. Because it takes it to the next logical steps or illogical steps.
RM: Any particular author's that you like?
FU: Octavia Butler is a huge favorite. I have loved her work for a long time. I also like N.K. Jemisin and Anne Leckie.
RM: Are there ways that, being in our current predicament has impacted your work directly? You mentioned that the art world was quite a fragile kind of place.
FU: I try to be very careful. For example, if I make work in New Zealand I try to keep that work there, and not to try to fly things unnecessarily around the world. Or if it has to come from one end of the world to the other, try to send it by boat. So there's art shipping and transportation. And as you know, my gallerist Kate MacGarry is one of the founders of the Gallery Climate Coalition in London. The other thing is that now I only work six months of the year making art works. So I'm producing less, and that's in a very particular and conscious effort to try and produce less.
RM: Really? So you've made a decision to produce for a limited amount of time?
FU: Yeah. Because I'm a very prolific person. And I'm working with materials which are actually very climate neutral. But still, if I want it to last longer, I get works cast in bronze, which is not climate neutral at all. I think deeply about these issues, and I only cast things in bronze if I know that it's being sold, so I don’t pre-produce work and store it. I basically I make works in rubber, and if someone can say, yeah, I want that one, then I cast that in bronze.
RM: Do you work like this in big chunks, literally six months of working and then six months off?
FU: More in two chunks. So I go to New Zealand, be a gardener and stuff like that, come back and then work for three months.Then I go to Italy for a bit and come back again. I don’t make big works during the time off, maybe I work on watercolors or work with a potter.
RM: That’s very interesting. I've never come across any artists who limit and work within a time restraint. How about you, Martino?
MG: Yeah, I think there's a big misunderstanding that my work is about recycling or re-using or up-cycling. I think that it wasn't really fully about this, it was one part of it for sure. Well, I always loved fixing things. I always love seeing value in objects that maybe have broken or been discarded. I just like to use what's around me.
RM: So I think, actually, Martino, a kind of re-use might be a deep motivation for you.
MG: But this sort of idea of like, oh, I'm going to do an upcycling project, is different to what I do. Because the motive was, I was in London, I could see these discarded chairs on the streets and I saw some value there. So in this sense, maybe it was true up-cycling, at a deeper level. But then I think that up-cycling is the wrong word, because its about changing value or making value. A lot of my work is about value and value systems.
So we see value in something, and by changing it, by transforming it, it gathers a different kind of value. And it’s not that you have to use gold or shiny materials to make something with value. I also really believe that objects that have a higher value than its intrinsic material value, will actually also last longer. So in this way it may be more sustainable because people will hold on to it and care about objects. If you make a table, let's say, and it's custom-made for someone, it's very elitist on one level. It's a one-off, but at the same time, this table will probably last much longer than the table that you buy at IKEA.
RM: Also, your stool called The Arnold Circus Stool (Arnold Circus neighborhood is one of East London’s oldest social housing schemes), is made of plastic and you looked into using recycled material, but then you realized that actually it seems like more sense to use plastic. Can you explain your thinking here?
MG: Yeah, so, you know, I made a plastic stool back in 2005, The Arnold Circus Stool, but it wasn't designed as a product, it was originally designed for an urban regeneration project. The Friends of the Arnold Circle used them, and then it gradually became a product. But I realized, you know, obviously, that I made a plastic stool. What the hell am I doing? I started looking into it deeper, and began to get information from people who understand plastics and who understand the impact of plastic. And I realized that plastic is clearly an issue. The problem is how we use plastic. Plastic is a fantastic material.
You know, we all think that recycling a glass bottle is going to save the world. But glass has five times more energy consumption than plastic. Plastic is made from petrochemicals and that's the bad side of it. But once it's made into plastic, if you use it in the right way, it can be very durable and it can also be recycled again.
The problem is that most plastic is full of impurities. So what I'm saying is that I looked into it and thought about the issues. The stool was made in 2005 and it's 20 years ago now. I know that the stool can last outdoors for at least 25 years, without really discoloring, without losing its integrity. It is made from a high quality polyethylene, the same as used in water tanks and water buoys. So it's actually made to last. So if I can create a product that lasts for 20 years, maybe another 20, maybe 40, 50 years, who knows? I've hopefully activated the best way of using 2.3 kilograms of plastic. If the stool was made from wood, it would have probably rotted by now. And ceramic would have been heavy and probably broken and cost far more. So I think we have to look at things in a more holistic way. Its really easy to simply say that plastic is bad, wood is good etc. But it all depends on what you made out of materials, and how it is used and valued.
RM: At the root of it, it seems like with this stool, it's made in such a way that you want to care for it for more than three years or something.
MG: Yes, the stool forces it on you, too, because it's not breaking and is a good design. It's still just like you bought it last week, even after ten years. I guess the formal quality is key too, and that's difficult to define what the formal quality is, but I do think that good shape, good design has got a sustainable idea behind it that might be continuously appreciated. And this is very different to a fashion item that looks good for one day and the next day everyone has forgotten about it and gone onto the next thing.
RM: It sounds like both of you are deeply thinking about each step of the production process and the materials. I think this leads to a question I had, which was what role can makers have in the broader climate conversation?
MG: I mean, you sort of hinted at it there in that we are not going to save the world. It's not like loudly claiming that we are doing so and so, but we are doing it in some more subtle way. Like you say, we can be part of the conversation. Come up with ideas, try out ideas and perhaps share with people the ideas we think are wrong or at least more harmful.
RM: And do you feel, as exhibiting artists and designers that you have a kind of public responsibility? You have these public platforms in museum shows or exhibitions, or maybe you're interviewed in a magazine or something.
FU: For example, on the Louisiana Museum Channel, I definitely talked about this. I can't save the whole world, but, you know, even though I'm saying I can’t, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try or do what I can.
MG: I also think it's not just about the materials or the process or the transportation issues, but about the life you live. I think this starts with thinking about who you choose to work with and what these people do? How do you work alone and with assistants and staff? Granted this might not be such a big thing, but it’s also simple. For example, no one's buying plastic samples, no one's going to the supermarket and buying something full of processed chemicals. We try to eat healthy food, so we are not going to fall asleep at three o'clock in the afternoon because we don’t consume the most processed foods. These things might have an impact and they might inspire something. So I guess it's, again, thinking in more holistic ways. In a similar way, solutions are also varied. And I think if you can live a life that is more holistic, I think you probably reach more people, because you are not being so hard-core and didactic about living in a climate-conscious way. There is not only one ‘pure’ or right way.
RM: Would there be certain ethical lines that you cannot cross in your work? Say for instance that a big fossil fuel company wanted to sponsor an exhibition of yours. Would that be something that would really trouble you?
FU: I’d definitely think about it deeply. But then I also have another thought at the same time. I haven't thought my way through this yet, but just as an idea do we not want to just rip as much money out of these huge corporations as possible? Because they're making massive amounts of money and it's going somewhere. So why not funnel it into something might be more interesting or critical? I get the feeling the contemporary art world is full of those contradictions all the time. It's full of them, and everyone pretends it's black and white and it's not.
RM: And there's no ‘clean’ money, really is there?
FU: Oh, I think very little. It's very difficult anyway and requires careful consideration.
MG: There is a limit, yes. In the studio we talk about these things sometimes. Until now it never became a really big issue. Reflecting back now there might be one or two people that I've sold to before that I wouldn't sell to now.
RM: We mentioned science fiction before but any kind of artwork or design work from the past or present, artists or designers that really inspire you regarding ecological issues and viewpoints that you go back to?
FU: Well, I always love the more subtle end of the land art movement. Not the big, dig out the earth kind of art. I prefer the artists that aren't making work in a didactic way that the message is a direct part of the work.
RM: Artists like Hamish Fulton or Roger Ackling perhaps?
FU: Yes. The more poetic end of the spectrum.
MG: For me, one of my teachers, Enzo Mari is important. He started in the 1960s, and made perhaps five or six hundred different products over his career. Each work really questioned how it was made, what the crafts person making it in the factory was doing etc. He made furniture that you could make at home, using very simple auto-production methods. He was a true visionary and a communist. And of course there are people like Buckminster Fuller or JB Blunk.
RM: You both work with many kinds and scale of institutions. In your experience, how has climate come up in conversations with curators and gallerists? Is it a concern that is on the table from the beginning?
FU: Not really. It's something I bring up. In my experience it is not something that is brought up by curators.
MG: Yes, I agree. Often curators are the one’s saying, oh, we'll just build a wall etc. And I would be saying, no we’re not building a wall! Why would we build a wall that we're going to take down again? I think there's very little thinking about that.
FU: I have noticed that museums are doing longer cycles, so they're doing less exhibitions in a year, but this can also be a reflection of tight finances. But it also happens to be more ecological.
RM: I think what you're saying is really important. That artists are bringing these issues to the table and this is a really powerful thing that you can do.
MG: And maybe most artists don't bring it to the table. Perhaps they're just like, oh, I want to do this in my own way. But you know, the few that do have a more holistic sensibility, they can really change how things are done in museums.
RM: Francis, what has it been like working with a very climate conscious gallerist like Kate MacGarry in London? From talking with her my impression is that she is also very pragmatic and does not force issues onto artists.
FU: Yes, Kate is very informed and takes a lot of care when talking with artists. She might introduce ecological ideas and suggestions, provide us with information about packaging or shipping. Just this kind of information is so useful and important. It’s also about knowledge, and talking and thinking.
RM: Francis and Martino, that was a good conversation, and I am grateful for your time and insights. Thanks.
