Interview with Haroun Hayward
Haroun is a London-based artist who works primarily with acrylic, oils and oil pastels. His influences are incredibly diverse and include the cultural politics of 90’s dance music, graffiti, African and South Asian textiles, and even early Mughal miniatures. In his work, we can see an amalgamation of several different and disparate strands of thought converging in one place. Although distinct from each other, these influences are a testament to his diverse life experiences and cultural background.
Hayward received his MFA (2010) from Goldsmiths University and BA (2006) in Fine Art (Painting) from Brighton University, following an exchange stay at the Nagoya University of Arts in Japan.
Krittika catches up with Haroun during the coronavirus lockdown to talk more about his work and current state of mind.
Haroun’s home studio in East London.
I wanted to start by asking how you and your family are coping with the quarantine and what are you working on at the moment?
We are all coping well enough in the circumstances. I have elderly parents (70 & 83 yrs. old) so am anxious about their health.
I am continuing to work with oil paint, oil pastel and acrylic on board and have a few works in progress.
I've recently also started to be drawn to some post-war British abstract painting, Wyndham Lewis, The Vorticists etc and I feel that's creeping into some elements of the new works.
These are such unprecedented, strange times. I feel your pain. My parents are over seven thousand miles away, in India, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to see them next either.
Some of your inspiration is from the more social aspects of music, dancing and getting together with friends and strangers. Your work very much celebrates the warmth of these social experiences. Has the quarantine made you think about that or changed anything, now that we are all more solitary or interact in much smaller groups? Also, as this quarantine has disrupted almost everything and altered our behaviours, what's you daily routine like these days?
I have a home studio so in some ways there hasn't been a massive sea change to my daily routine. At first though, the anxiety about my parents was all consuming and in truth I found it hard to work properly...The ambient fear seemed to cloud everything.
It's still there, but I am managing to break through and get back to painting. There are moments when I feel totally free from everything, just focused on the visual plane I'm dealing with. But more often than not, that's followed by a crushing guilt, as if it's wrong somehow to feel any joy amongst this all upheaval and suffering.
Haroun’s home studio in East London.
It’s tough. I think this crisis has certainly made everything more fragile and exposed many of the deep-seated social injustices and inequalities that plague our system. All this upheaval and suffering will hopefully make us kinder and explore the possibility of change…
Did you grow up here in London? Can you describe your earliest memory as a child?
I was born in Hammersmith, taken to Pakistan a few months afterwards and was there for three years. I returned at three to live in Haringey, North London, which is where I grew up.
I went to a type of preschool called a Montessori School. My earliest memory is of the first day attending it- being in the cloakroom and putting on my slippers!
When did you decide you wanted to attend art school?
I don't really remember wanting to do anything other than make art, and then when I discovered it, skateboarding. I can’t say exactly when, but as soon as I understood that to have a life/career from making art it helps to go to art school, I was set on it.
You received a Painting Department Scholarship Award from Nagoya University of Arts in Japan in 2005. What was your experience like in Japan?
Japan was amazing and one of the best times of my life. It was fully funded with accommodation, travel and a generous stipend. We had studios in the art school for the summer term, so experienced university life. When term ended, I discovered the flat was not being used until October. With permission from my parents and a wonderful Tutor back at Brighton Uni, I stayed until October.
I had been a lover of Ukiyoe E and Shunga for some time and from them developed an affinity with many elements of Japanese culture, so the whole thing was a dream come true.
I was writing graffiti at the time and through various contacts was able to travel the country staying on strangers’ (now friends) sofas and floors, and painting with them…and a couple of times slept on a bench in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. So, I also got to experience a different side to the country that it's not always so easy to see.
Haroun at his studio in East London.
Travel sometimes changes us at a fundamental level as well doesn’t it. Later, in 2007, you also did an artist residency at the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan. How was that experience and what kind of impact did it have on your practice? Had you lived in Lahore for such an extended period before that?
My time at the NCA was also a really wonderful and formative experience... I had never been to Lahore, only Karachi, and not stayed in Pakistan for such a length of time (9 months) since I was 3 years old... Lahore is beautiful and the NCA building itself and adjoining Lahore Museum are magical places to make work in.
I stayed with an old school friend of my mum’s, who was also the head of the printmaking department at the time, so I was tapped into the life of the school. I don’t really speak Urdu but that wasn’t as much of a hindrance as it could have been, as I made some great friends who helped me out a lot, from where to eat, where to get spray paint and even beer.
For some years I had been independently studying, copying and adding elements to my work from Indian miniatures. At the time, the NCA was the only school in the world teaching the traditional techniques of miniatures, from pulping and burnishing the paper to making Miniature brushes with only a few hairs. So, in terms of understanding the fundamentals of the process it was invaluable.
Installation image from Gadfly (11 October - 30 November 2019) at indigo+madder, London
I can see some influences of that uniqueness of scale that you find in miniatures in your work, and maybe sometimes even in the way you divide your surfaces into various sections. in your current work, you use a variety of media and follow this incredible approach of layering- of patterns and even influences…
I used to do some dry point etching. I liked the zinc plates to print from as much or even more than the prints themselves. The seed of what has developed into my process was trying make a coloured version of an etching plate or something similar...
Scratching into the paint or oil pastel to create the line or mark, like one would with a zinc plate, rather than adding the line on top, a controlled randomness occurs. The resulting images tend to feel fresher and more alive than anything I would create straight from the brush or pen.
My inspiration and references are fairly wide ranging, so the addition of other elements, painted in oil and 'sculpted' in oil pastel onto the surface developed quite organically and felt right. I enjoy and feel an affinity with different visual languages. Adding different elements to the same visual plane made sense artistically, emotionally and even spiritually. There is a lot of planning and sketching involved in the creation of the work, but once the initial drawing/ carving is on the surface I try to let it guide me to a place that feels right. Often that place is nowhere near where I thought it would be.
In terms of layering influences, you explore themes of art history, personal narratives, shared cultural expressions and even textile history in your work. It is an interesting mix and the experiences that you bring together are quite diverse- from acid house to South Asian and African textiles. This diversity is quite intriguing and, I imagine, not quite so easy to unpack?
To an extent it's almost impossible to totally unlock how and why some things speak to you and why others don't. I was drawn to certain subcultures from quite early on. Hair Rock (Guns n Roses, Poison, Ugly Kid Joe etc) from the age of 9, from that it was Hardcore and Thrash metal like Pantera and Sepultura. Around the age of 11/12 yrs., I discovered skateboarding and hip hop... Middle to late teenagerhood I was raving and there was electronic music. Then in early 20's, I painted a lot of graffiti and was consumed by that.
During that whole time growing up my mum was collecting textiles from everywhere, Victorian English and American, Turkish, Afghan, Indo-Persian and African (mainly West), the house was filled with them. So, I grew up with a lot of different influences.
Amphora, fantazia, 2018, oil pastel, acrylic on plywood panel, 28 x 36 cm
Can you talk about how you were introduced to electronic music and raving? What do you make of its legacy and what did it mean to you when you were growing up?
The first electronic music I listened to properly was drum and bass. The Pirate Radio stations where really prevalent back then and it was in the ether so was played a lot ...
I first discovered Acid House and Techno (mainly Detroit stuff) through the cassette tapes I would nick from my elder sister's room. Growing up, we never thought of it as 'culture'. Just enjoying the music with friends and partying together with other like-minded people. Only much later did I ever consider it in those sociological/anthropological terms.
The whole 'Save House Culture' thing was and is about preserving its underground, counter-culture status. I do feel some sadness about how commercialised and branded elements of the 'culture' have become because it seems totally against the original ethos of the 'free party'.
Having said that when I do occasionally go out, once you get past all the branding and security, on some level the spirit is still there. People having fun with friends and likeminded people, dancing to music that speaks to them.
Also, the underground parties are still about if you look hard enough.
Haroun’s mum Raffi with her textile collection.
You mentioned earlier that you grew up with a large collection of textiles that your mum put together. The influence of textiles in your work is very evident. The rich tactile quality of your surfaces really contrasts against the stark, flat backgrounds. There was someone who visited Gadfly and insisted that one of the sections in your work was embroidered. She just wasn’t ready to accept that it was oil pastel!
When you're young you don't always appreciate or understand what's around you... I was never totally blind to them; my mum wouldn't have allowed me to be haha...
But only in later years did I realise how amazing they are and what an incredible resource it is. I’ve felt increasingly drawn to textiles and pattern as I've grown up. So, the influence of them on my life/work has been immense.
In Gadfly, you showed works alongside Delhi-based UBIK. Although your works are different at many levels, they have in common, a resistance to classification in terms of themes and, perhaps, even mediums. You both also explore subcultures, questioning exclusion and belonging. In a way, you are suggesting new ways of association through what inspires you and your unique personal histories. How was the experience and did it change the way you look at your own work?
It was great. It was interesting to see how the works played off each other in the space and created a new dialogue that neither me or UBIK could have foreseen.
As soon as you see your work next to someone else’s something new emerges. It can be a refreshing change from the monovision that develops after months of only looking and thinking about your own work and how that operates in a space.
(L) Dance planet, ecstasy (night-time version); 2019; oil, oil pastel, gesso on plywood panel; 91 x 61 cm. (R) Dance planet, ecstasy; 2019; oil, oil pastel, gesso on plywood panel; 91 x 61 cm.
You create and display in pairs and often arrange painted sections in a repetitive manner. You have mentioned that you channel the repetition inherent in acid house, which can also be quite meditative and spiritual. There is that sense of losing oneself in rave culture- and you have alluded to the universality of this through your references to Egyptian and Greco-Roman references…
The more I think about it, the simpler and more fundamental it seems... Before the Greeks, probably back to ancient prehistory we've understood the power of repetition, and pattern and rhythm to invoke a sense of transcendence and escapism...
By creating patterns and repetition with variation I want to invoke something of that and even more simply, create something that feels good...To make and to look at.
Another thing I wanted to discuss is how your works play with themes of light and darkness, a kind of dualism. I may be imagining things, but these to me also reflect emotional states or clashes of light and darkness within us. Some strands of electronic music can be described as having a kind of industrial, gothic darkness to them, also in terms of the emotional depths they take us to.
On another layer, you also seem to be cultivating a lot of movement and restless energy in your work and that emotional quality is very compelling. Your works make me think of tough emotional states but also hope and optimism in times of fear.
I love that you feel that from looking at my work. I don’t even want to speak to that too directly. I think it’s really important, especially with painting, so create a space or an environment that can allow the viewer to feel their way through it on their own... Of course, through the visual language, the title, the statements etc. you give the viewer some direction, but I am huge believer in allowing the viewer to find their own way through the work.
Before the work in Gadfly was made, I had been through a lot of turmoil in my personal life and had actually stopped painting for almost three years. That something of the light and the dark (metaphorically) crept in there makes sense, but it was not a conscious allusion. An unbridled optimism and clinging to it, has gotten me through a lot and kept me at an even keel in the face of difficult situations so I am pleased you feel something of that in my work.
As a younger artist I would have felt embarrassed to say that a major tenant of making art for me, is to derive joy from its process of creation and that my work can maybe give some joy to someone else who looks at it… It's stupidly simple but fundamental for me...Freeing myself from a lot of the angst I felt about making a painting in the past, led me to making work I'm much happier with.
Thanks Haroun!