Crack

Wasted talent pisses everyone off. Like leaving a tap on, or the brain slowly wasting away with a spliff on the couch; it represents disappointment, laziness and regret.

Then there is Aurelia Lange. Representing the other end of the spectrum with gusto, there are rarely enough hours in the day for a 25-year-old girl who fills her time to the brim. She exclaims: “I think that’s the problem. I just want to do too much.”

Within weeks of moving to Bristol, Aurelia had immersed herself in Bristolian culture and lifestyle. Through working with people like The Cube Cinema, she placed herself in the right places to re-invigorate her work after moving to Bristol from Cheltenham. Crack found her at a house party where everyone knew her name. The girl had comparatively been here five minutes. Little beads of green jealousy dripped from Crack’s forehead.

Enigmatic, enthusiastic beyond belief, but also critical and outspoken, Aurelia is a great template for a person not just an artist. It just happens that her work is as grabbing as her personality. Crack’s time with Aurelia is long, but we aren’t doing the talking. Questions are few and far between, but responses are as detailed and as thoughtful as the work she produces.



Was Brighton a huge influence on you having attended university there?

“Brighton’s amazing and I miss it, but it’s more a case of missing university life. I did stay there for a bit after graduating but it felt a bit empty. Brighton is an amazing city and one you could live in at any time during your life; it’s not just a student town. It’s really good for culture and people. There definitely wasn’t a shortage of things to do and it was so close to London, so I went there quite a bit. Everyone was just so liberal there. Everyone’s had a year out because they’ve had to do foundation, which I think is a really good thing. Most people have also had gap years. I couldn’t stand going to university straight from school. That year out I had doing foundation made me realise what I wanted to do at university. If I had made that decision at 18 I wouldn’t have really done the right degree. “

So was immersing yourself in your course where you found your artistic feet?

“Our illustration course at Brighton was really broad. It only had 30 students on it and we shared space with graphic designers so quite a lot of the time we’d have joint briefs. We weren’t necessarily graded too heavily at the start, so we’d be given a brief and it would be really open. Everyone would be really diverse in our class, which was great.”

Would you agree that your work is more diverse than other artists?

“I think you can tell my work is linked. You can tell it’s done by the same person, even though there are different media. I try and see which medium is going to be appropriate to that subject. I think this is the graphic designer influence coming through in me, because in graphic design you spend more time focusing on the concept and the brief rather than how you are going to represent it in a certain style.

“I take the long way round most things. I explore loads of different ideas and I enjoy that process. I always think the long way round is the more interesting way round. The people that are immediately like - “it’s going to look like this” - are probably really good to work with in the industry because they can deliver. They are probably the people that do have a distinct style. I’m more scatty, so it lends itself to a longer creative process.”

So do you find yourself immersed in a constant stream of ideas?

“I get involved with ideas loads. In university I was quite outspoken in crits and probably irritated my class. Not in an arrogant way, I just always wanted to suggest ideas and was way too enthusiastic. I was always taken in by people’s projects and interested in the ideas.

“This certainly helped me when I was teaching art foundation in Cheltenham. There were opportunities for me to get involved in the ideas process, set briefs and act as a deputy tutor. I love helping people with that process and students who are just out of school, energetic and bubbling with ideas. They aren’t held back by anything.”

So did you find it hard post-university to keep the idea stream going?

“I did a placement with Fat Cat Records in Brighton and when I moved back home I really wasn’t sure what I was doing. Being at home, I wasn’t paying rent, so I wanted to be as productive as I could, which meant getting involved with projects I wasn’t necessarily getting paid for. I also set up my space in Cheltenham with some friends, called Studio Weekend. We’d get commissions for work which was great. I’ve also done some freelancing with musicians on their artwork and I would get paid bits here and there. I was also working on a children’s book project in Stroud, so my creative juices kept ticking over.”

So what else in particular has influenced your artistic ethos?

“In my third year my friend and I went to Oslo and I was really affected by walking down the street and being away by these amazing screen-printed posters. Over here everything is printed, framed and sold for hundreds of pounds. Over there you have these incredible artworks serving a function and looking great. The difference is you don’t have to pay loads of money for it. It was a good moment of clarity because that’s what it should be like here.

“It’s a case of getting people to see the value of design. Take the Cube Cinema in Stokes Croft. I was just being a bit nosy and got in touch and helped out with a small part of their website using their flyer and taking an active approach with a small re-design. It’s great to work with people in other ways who are creative, but not necessarily into design. It’s great when you can combine those skills to make something productive.”

Have any other places you have visited been an artistic inspiration?

“My study abroad scheme in Minneapolis in 2006 was a huge inspiration. It was a private school, but I didn’t have to pay anything because the fees are ridiculous over there. It did mean that the facilities were amazing. I took four classes and had four times more work than I would have usually had on my course. People were consistently up till five in the morning working. I’d go to the screen-printing room as a reward if I’d finished a lot of work. It definitely confirmed to me that my work had expanded into different media because I was doing an animation class, a graphic design class, a film studies class as well as an illustration class. I was really inspired by that education system but also quite cynical because of how much the American students have to pay for it and how it. I did my dissertation on that experience.

“After Minneapolis working for two nights in a row didn’t seem so extreme. After going through being able to produce such a large volume of work in such little time you know what you are capable of. I think that’s maybe why I’m a bit overactive, because I know what I can do.”



http://www.aurelialange.co.uk/

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