Audio/ Visual:
An Interview with Robert “3D” Del Naja
Words: Margo Fortuny
Robert Del Naja, also
known as 3D, is an award-winning musician and artist. Del Naja is famous for
cofounding the seminal band Massive Attack and for his colourful, subversive
artwork. Before Massive Attack, he was a graffiti artist in the art/hip hop
collective The Wild Bunch. As 3D, he created all of UNKLE’s album art. Del Naja
has also contributed to soundtracks including Lost Highway, Hackers, The Matrix, Snatch, and The Simpsons. Collaborating with Neil Davidge, their score for the
Hurricane Katrina documentary Trouble the
Water was nominated for an Oscar. This summer, Massive Attack is staging a
“collective hallucination” with filmmaker Adam Curtis as part of the Manchester
International Festival. EXIT phoned up the amiable Del Naja to talk about the
link between music and art, conquering doubt, and his new exhibition in London.
Who inspired
you as a young artist?
When I was
young I didn’t have a formal art education. Instead I would draw, paint,
sketch… and from the world of music I was introduced to the world of art.
A lot of the graffiti I saw at the time, including Basquiat, was influential.
Then I saw Basquiat’s collaboration with Andy Warhol. I was aware of Warhol but
never really studied his work. After Warhol’s retrospective I thought about the
work differently. Those artists had an impact on me as a designer when it came
to record sleeves and working with the idea of repetition of image.
How did punk
and hip-hop shape your work?
For us, punk was a very strong, visual, anarchic,
exciting, anti-establishment movement. It gave everyone an outlet to the angst
and rebellion that was hormonally happening inside, and regardless of whether
it had any real political meaning it gave us an opportunity to fight against
what we wanted to fight against. Then hip-hop came right after that,
again it was something that had its own sort of energy, which wasn’t passed
down from the media, television and radio. It came from vinyl; it came from
clubs, parties. It was created by the people. It had its own sense of social
network without having to be informed by conventional mass media. You know,
following punk, hip-hop was very exciting. It had the same cut-and-paste/
do-it-yourself in the garage, on record decks, on the microphone, and with
graffiti art, as punk did in the art school garage band sense. They’re very
connected. I was excited by bands like The Clash with Futura and the Sex
Pistols with Jamie Reid, Malcolm McLaren and Westwood. That was fucking super
visual.
How does
punk and hip-hop relate to what you’re doing now?
It’s
the cutting and pasting. Despite computers having the ability
to manipulate everything easily, there’s still a place for cutting things up
with scissors and moving them about. Using icons, imagery and words, and taking
them out of context, that’s the way we make music, using samplers, cutting
things up, looping things, turning small sections of songs into big songs that
have never existed with a vocal like that, and it’s the same with art. In
the studio we’ve got loads of computers and keyboards but having the decks and
being able to loop things around is still a central part of the process.
How much
does your art affect your music and vice versa?
They’re
locked in together as a marriage of convenience. The art thing is good fun and
it helps you get away from the music, so you don’t get stuck in a rut. Then you
go back to music when you realise what your limitations are as an artist. I’m
very aware of how lucky I am to be able to still work in both areas. The art is
equally informed (as music) by other things that you take on board to stimulate
you.
What else
inspires you?
Films have
always been a massive influence. Hearing and
seeing great things are inspirational. Being excited by people’s work is part
of the whole creative process.
I’ve always
been one of those people who daydreams and likes walking and looking around at
anything incidental, like a bit of rusty metal or broken glass. I find myself
fascinated by patterns and the perceptions of colours.
Current
affairs around the world are stimulating, not always in a positive sense, just
that it moves me to take action. 38 degrees and Avid are both great websites.
Though, those things aren’t artistic stimulation. That’s more about personal
responsibility as a citizen in any country.
Which
contemporary artists do you admire?
The Chapman
Brothers: they have an anarchic and beautiful sense of humour; they have a great
way of describing the past, present and future, and the mass production of art
and culture, and the cynical commercialisation of everything. They’re
brilliant. There’s another artist named Alastair Mackie; he’s a great British
sculptor. There’s an unbelievable amount of talent in the urban art world now.
Maybe it’s because graffiti art wasn’t as exposed pre-internet, people couldn’t
share things so globally. Now there are so many brilliant artists out there.
The scene has developed and gotten so creative and clever.
What are you listening to these days?
Today I listened to the new Primal Scream album; I really
enjoyed it. Great songs, great David Holmes production. It’s got a sense of the
psychedelic in a natural way. The new Knife album is good too. My favourite
song ever would be Poptones by Public Image Ltd. That’s the tune of the week.
Primal Scream is the album of the day.
How did your
upcoming exhibition at Lazarides Gallery come about?
Steve
Lazarides (the director of the gallery) has always been a big supporter of my
work. Steve and Banksy both encouraged me when I was just getting into
music and they’re the guys who pushed me to do more painting, and group shows,
and James from UNKLE asked me to do a record sleeve. When I was concentrating
on music Steve always said, “You should do a show” and I’ve always backed
away and been a bit shy about it. I did a lot of work during the Heligoland period. Many of the paintings
I originally created for the album I’ve painted over because I have a small
studio so I tend to recycle the canvases rather than keeping them
all. I decided to use the archive of work from the last 19 years or
so, everything I’ve done since Massive Attack started. I went through all these
boxes of images from back in the day before we even used computers, just cut
and paste sleeve ideas. We started scanning and printing them out. I thought
they’d be good as a series, which is what I started doing for Blue
Lines, in a kind of Pop Art sensibility, taking an image and repeating
it in different colours and turning it into something else.
A lot of album sleeves were made with metal and bits of
materials, like grass and found objects. I find that an interesting part of the
process: recycling things that have been left for dead. Combined with the
paintings, the work felt more like a show, something more complete than an
album, a new way of archiving old work. In my own way, it’s a low-fi,
low-key retrospective.
How do you
deal with self-doubt and the equivalent of writer's block?
Look, this
show is spanning nineteen years…this is the first time I’ve done it. Nineteen
years of self-doubt all in one show.
But you
overcame it!
(Laughing)
I’ve finally sorted it out: my fear of flying, my fear of spiders, and my fear
of my own one-man show.
So how do
you conquer the doubt?
I don’t
think you can. There’s always artistic doubt. Even recently, I’ve experienced
it putting together this music show for Manchester International
Festival, the project that I’m doing with Adam
Curtis. It’s an operatic musical journey with film. I’m really excited about that. Still, it can
be difficult, scary, and there’s lots of doubt in the process of creating. You
have to believe that at the end it’s interesting and exciting to people,
because you know you’re going to put everything into it.
For the Lazarides exhibition, having Steve offer me his
resources, the gallery and the print room to create this show has made it
possible. I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own. In the studio, if you work with great people
you have to believe what you’re doing and how it’s going to turn out. Massive
Attack has always been about collaborating with great people and when you get
it right it really rubs off on each other. But there’s always doubt in
everything you do, every tour, every record, every time I get back to painting…
This exhibition closes a chapter because I’ve finally
managed to archive everything and put it all in a box so I can put it
away. Lately I’ve been thinking about getting back to work and
drawing with a pencil. When I was a kid I was a really good draftsman. I
gave that up to be a graffiti artist and a designer and a musician. I feel like
I didn’t really develop the skills that I should have developed. I want to get
back to the drawing board.
Exit Magazine, Spring/Summer 2013
______________________________________
Robert Del Naja and Thom Yorke have just released their
score for the film The UK Gold. You
can listen to it here.
Massive Attack are currently collaborating with Run the
Jewels.
You can see more of Del Naja’s art here.
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