Britain held its breath at the thought of his work, the public are torn
and builders think of him as a new Casanova. So who is the man behind the mould? Here, Jamie McCartney lets us in on the joke.
and builders think of him as a new Casanova. So who is the man behind the mould? Here, Jamie McCartney lets us in on the joke.
“This is apparently meant to fit in someone’s bum!’ he laughs waving around a customised dildo, with a boyish grin on his face. “But…” he says as he pushes aside the curtain into his workshop “I had to find a whole new casting process for this one!” unveiling what looks like a solid concrete traffic bollard. The customer, who has ordered through his webpage, “was very specific about the dimensions” says Jamie, “I really wanna meet the guy, it could be interesting!”
Brighton’s thriving alternative spirit makes it both unsurprising and a little shocking to find Jamie McCartney’s personal studio full of nude to rude body castings. “It’s a great place to be,” says Jamie “you meet some really great people and some weird ones. One guy came in and wanted to buy his girlfriend a dildo filled with Palma Violet sweets. I get some funny requests.” Jamie speaks through his laughter, contagious to the people around him. Characteristically darting off to find something else entertaining, he calls “This one’s really cool! The whole family came in and spoke about what they wanted… something to symbolise their family, to go on the mantelpiece, instead of just a sculpture or an ornament. Then we all came up with the idea of interlacing their hands and everybody was like this… and doing this…” he giggles, whilst looking as if he is trying to turn himself upside down on the spot, “and practising with their hands in a bucket, because once you’re in the mould you only have a few seconds to get into the right position. Work is really fun!”
His simple, black, leather bound portfolio is speckled with plaster, camouflaged alongside the many art books on the shelf. “He doesn’t take himself too seriously,” says his personal assistant Sarah Thomas “but his work is everything to him. In fact, it’s so much a part of him that plaster is on every piece of clothing he has!” Jamie learnt most of his techniques through his own work experience on feature films, including ‘Black Hawk Down’ and ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. “Jackie Chan is a great guy”, he says with that same boyish grin, as he comes across a photo of the two laughing into the lens. Completing an experimental art degree has encouraged Jamie to find his own form of art expression. “I have an aim, but I explore different avenues…It opens doors”.
It is just this attitude that surrounds Jamie with the attention he is so blasé about attracting. His recent venture ‘Design A Vagina’ is bound up in controversy from all over the globe, but it is exactly this taboo he aims to get rid of. “When I was doing ‘Spice of Life’, I found women had insecurities too, like men do. I think porn has given people misconceptions of normal and so I designed this, to show that there isn’t one”. Design A Vagina will eventually consist of 5 panels containing 40 genital casts from all different women. Shrugging off bad media, and wiping his brow, he says “I have read stories about my work. I even had a guy in here the other day from a paper – he completely missed the point and totally slammed me. He wasted my time. The volunteers that took part will be my strongest defenders. I own an art gallery.”
Jamie faced his biggest emotional challenge yet this year, with the loss of his father to prostate cancer. Though a hard time for them both, Jamie made two casts of his fathers face. One before, and one following his death. ‘After’ was made out of tar “because that was just a reflection of how I was feeling at the time. I went into the morgue and… it was a very weird experience.” Jamie lets out a sigh, and then, holding up both the moulds side by side, he chuckles “Wow, uhm, I’ve never really seen them like this before.”
Jamie’s work has bewildered the world, he has been praised for creating ‘emotionally loaded objects with immense power’ but is more than enthusiastic to step up to the call and model himself, having had “a full body cast…” he says with a cheeky wink “I was forty dead people in Troy, they kept replicating me! I bumped into a guy who swore he knew me from somewhere, but I’d never met him before. And then he realised, he actually came over to me laughing. Turns out he has my head on his shelf at home - he’d stolen it from the set. That was a weird day!”
On a Saturday lunchtime Jamie has deadlines looming over him for the following week. He searches for his glasses, sits and looks out to the pier with his hands on his head, almost singing “I’m so busy, I have so much to do”. Sticky notes are dotted around everywhere, even his mirror has a note written in lipstick and there are brown paper bags ripped and pinned up as reminders, amongst random body casting scraps. He has two mobile phones on the side that keep adding to the music “That’s my PA working overtime! She’s always leaving me messages. I am so forgetful.”
“Jamie was always an alternative guy” says good friend and client Dave Poole. “We went to Westminster school together. He was a non-conformist, and he had this creative spark and a kind of flare that you couldn’t miss. It was fantastic. I read about him and saw he was doing really well, doing casts of body parts… and other things too! So I gave him a call and he invited the whole family down. It was great fun, and definitely a very emotional experience. He has managed to capture an exact copy and a sense of permanence; it’s the value of the past and present.” Jamie grew up with his mother and sister who both work in the artistic industry “I was into all that hippie stuff, I had peace signs all over my clothes”. He describes his house now as “very boho” and when asked about his own family, he laughs “do I have kids? Not that I know of!”
Jamie quickly pops outside and chats to the builders below, the same builders that tantalise people on entering the studio. It’s raining but it doesn’t stop Jamie from involving himself in a bit of banter. As he comes back inside, he is laughing still: “Do you know you have a whole load of bell ends in the background of that photo?!”
Brighton’s thriving alternative spirit makes it both unsurprising and a little shocking to find Jamie McCartney’s personal studio full of nude to rude body castings. “It’s a great place to be,” says Jamie “you meet some really great people and some weird ones. One guy came in and wanted to buy his girlfriend a dildo filled with Palma Violet sweets. I get some funny requests.” Jamie speaks through his laughter, contagious to the people around him. Characteristically darting off to find something else entertaining, he calls “This one’s really cool! The whole family came in and spoke about what they wanted… something to symbolise their family, to go on the mantelpiece, instead of just a sculpture or an ornament. Then we all came up with the idea of interlacing their hands and everybody was like this… and doing this…” he giggles, whilst looking as if he is trying to turn himself upside down on the spot, “and practising with their hands in a bucket, because once you’re in the mould you only have a few seconds to get into the right position. Work is really fun!”
His simple, black, leather bound portfolio is speckled with plaster, camouflaged alongside the many art books on the shelf. “He doesn’t take himself too seriously,” says his personal assistant Sarah Thomas “but his work is everything to him. In fact, it’s so much a part of him that plaster is on every piece of clothing he has!” Jamie learnt most of his techniques through his own work experience on feature films, including ‘Black Hawk Down’ and ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. “Jackie Chan is a great guy”, he says with that same boyish grin, as he comes across a photo of the two laughing into the lens. Completing an experimental art degree has encouraged Jamie to find his own form of art expression. “I have an aim, but I explore different avenues…It opens doors”.
It is just this attitude that surrounds Jamie with the attention he is so blasé about attracting. His recent venture ‘Design A Vagina’ is bound up in controversy from all over the globe, but it is exactly this taboo he aims to get rid of. “When I was doing ‘Spice of Life’, I found women had insecurities too, like men do. I think porn has given people misconceptions of normal and so I designed this, to show that there isn’t one”. Design A Vagina will eventually consist of 5 panels containing 40 genital casts from all different women. Shrugging off bad media, and wiping his brow, he says “I have read stories about my work. I even had a guy in here the other day from a paper – he completely missed the point and totally slammed me. He wasted my time. The volunteers that took part will be my strongest defenders. I own an art gallery.”
Jamie faced his biggest emotional challenge yet this year, with the loss of his father to prostate cancer. Though a hard time for them both, Jamie made two casts of his fathers face. One before, and one following his death. ‘After’ was made out of tar “because that was just a reflection of how I was feeling at the time. I went into the morgue and… it was a very weird experience.” Jamie lets out a sigh, and then, holding up both the moulds side by side, he chuckles “Wow, uhm, I’ve never really seen them like this before.”
Jamie’s work has bewildered the world, he has been praised for creating ‘emotionally loaded objects with immense power’ but is more than enthusiastic to step up to the call and model himself, having had “a full body cast…” he says with a cheeky wink “I was forty dead people in Troy, they kept replicating me! I bumped into a guy who swore he knew me from somewhere, but I’d never met him before. And then he realised, he actually came over to me laughing. Turns out he has my head on his shelf at home - he’d stolen it from the set. That was a weird day!”
On a Saturday lunchtime Jamie has deadlines looming over him for the following week. He searches for his glasses, sits and looks out to the pier with his hands on his head, almost singing “I’m so busy, I have so much to do”. Sticky notes are dotted around everywhere, even his mirror has a note written in lipstick and there are brown paper bags ripped and pinned up as reminders, amongst random body casting scraps. He has two mobile phones on the side that keep adding to the music “That’s my PA working overtime! She’s always leaving me messages. I am so forgetful.”
“Jamie was always an alternative guy” says good friend and client Dave Poole. “We went to Westminster school together. He was a non-conformist, and he had this creative spark and a kind of flare that you couldn’t miss. It was fantastic. I read about him and saw he was doing really well, doing casts of body parts… and other things too! So I gave him a call and he invited the whole family down. It was great fun, and definitely a very emotional experience. He has managed to capture an exact copy and a sense of permanence; it’s the value of the past and present.” Jamie grew up with his mother and sister who both work in the artistic industry “I was into all that hippie stuff, I had peace signs all over my clothes”. He describes his house now as “very boho” and when asked about his own family, he laughs “do I have kids? Not that I know of!”
Jamie quickly pops outside and chats to the builders below, the same builders that tantalise people on entering the studio. It’s raining but it doesn’t stop Jamie from involving himself in a bit of banter. As he comes back inside, he is laughing still: “Do you know you have a whole load of bell ends in the background of that photo?!”
No comments:
Post a Comment