Studio Visit: Richard Butlin

The Sydney artist takes flight in a new bird-themed show at PIERMARQ*

By Belinda Aucott-christie 01/08/2024

For Richard Butlin birds are air-borne witnesses to the human condition—subjects rich in symbolism and allegory.

In “Dense Nest,” his first solo show in years, which opens tonight at Piermarq in Surry Hills, he is showing a series of figurative bird paintings alongside his popular abstract sculptures.

Butlin is a Sydney-based artist who primarily works with discarded objects, up-cycling materials and used installation equipment to create beautiful assemblages.

He studied Philosophy and Visual Arts at Australian National University, graduating in 2007 with Honours in Ceramics. Yet for the last eight years he has worked alongside artists by running Total Hang, his successful art installation business. This has helped him gain insight and experience within the art world, whilst honing his own creative practice.

Requiring great care and precision in his installation work, he finds relief in the freedom of his own practice. And by assembling the detritus of his everyday—crates and packing material, hanging wires and frames—Butlin draws on technical and representational methods to derive his own visual language.

We paid a studio visit to Butlin to ask him about his new show.

Tell us about the title ‘Dense Nest’ and the symbolism of birds and nests?

My first solo show, when I was still at uni 15 years ago, was an exhibition of bird photography. I’ve explored and experienced much since then, so it’s time to lay down the bower of my work for people to see.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your practice? How did you get into art making?

I’m a dad, an artist, an art installer and a consulting art handler. These days I make, install and consult. I have been a carpenter, an art storage specialist, I have worked at major public galleries and I have curated and produced group exhibitions in Sydney and Canberra. So I live and breathe art at the physical level.

What’s your process for creating these works?

I graduated with honours in ceramics, though these days I mostly work in steel, timber and paint. I assemble, weld, cut, sand, spray, splash and pour.

How does your art installation work inform your creative practice?

Handling and installing other artist’s work informs my process in the same way a gallery visit would. The major difference between viewing art in a gallery or on a wall in a home is the physical interaction I get through handling. It’s about intimate care. Having so much care in my art installation work also, somehow, gives me freedom to be careless sometimes in my own practice.

You use text in your works—do these words have any significance?

Words help signify and I use them as layers, or contextual shortcuts, in my work. I first started using them in my art after some difficult times, when it was easier and less painful to write a word then to say it or act it out. The superficiality of a word sometimes grants access, too.

Where do you get the objects you assemble? Are they found, manufactured, recycled?

I sculpt with the old furniture of paintings, improper, or inadequate hanging wires, frames etc. I have a sculpture at home which is made from the strings and wires, from a mix of Whitely, Nolan, Blackman, Olsen, and Boyd Paintings. I often use these old bits and pieces, I give them care and love, and build scaffolding and housing to protect or frame their assembled forms. These forms are usually abstract in nature, but often take cues from dance, from shadow and light.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

From nature, the way it lets light through the cracks, the way birds perch and parade, from clouds and current affairs, from the refuse and rust of city life, and from my family. Some of my favourite artists include Frank and Margel Hinder, Robert Klippel, Rosalie Gascoigne, Ian Fairweather and Jean-Michel Basquiat, I love graffiti but I also love Velasquez! The conversations I have with artists and art people I work with day to day, the ones whose thinking I see and experience first-hand are often my greatest inspiration.

What does a regular day in your studio look like? Do you listen to music? A podcast?

I work on many pieces at any one moment, my process is one of disassembly, discovery and reimagining. I paint and assemble ideas most nights during the quiet hours. I listen to copious amounts of music, podcasts, and the occasional audiobook.

I love birds, the calculating indifference with which they see the human world. I think they act as the perfect flighty witnesses to our efforts, they’re beautiful, they’re terrible. Birds are nature’s invitation to ponder, they are precious and full of meaning in allegory and art, all of which is here if you want to find it, in this dense nest.

‘Dense Nest’ runs through August 25 at Piermarq. 23 Foster St, Surry Hills

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