Thomas Yeomans: Ecstatic Awe

I noticed from the bio on your website that you were on the MA Painting course at the RCA but the work you make is predominantly film-based now- how did that come about?

I think I was trying to be too clever with the paintings I was making. I was copying Ikea and John Lewis print patterns- appropriating abstract shapes and colours that have mass appeal- generic but desirable. The paintings just looked gross. I realised I was interested in mimicking lots of visual languages that exist to compel their audience in one way or another. I wanted to better understand ideas like persuasion, appeal and desire. At some point I felt there was more fertile ground in appropriating moving image to explore this. With ‘Painting’ written over the entrance to the building I felt I could understand my practice better as image-based; whether as paint on canvas or projection on a wall. I think my videos are really painterly.

Can you tell us about the main ideas you try to express in your work?

I suppose ultimately I’m expressing my feelings. That I’m in ecstatic awe of the baroque pictures I take from mainstream culture but also deeply troubled by and cynical of the physical impact and emotional manipulation they can exert on us.

You co-opt a lot of corporate aesthetics in your videos- stock footage and the tropes of aspirational advertising for example. What draws you to this kind of imagery?

The efficacy of a medium to persuade a recipient into changing their behaviour fascinates me. An ideographic animation, a sentimental piece of music or some footage that at first seems generic but when recontextualised appears sinister – these are the tools of corporate capitalist visual ideology that persuade us to buy into non-physical goods or services. Broadband, TV, phone contracts and so on. I don’t think my work subverts these strategies, as I’m sure we’re all aware of their power over us. But I do seek to divert these tropes into new meanings in order to create a slippage or space in which to better consider their power.

In a lot of your work you seem to be dealing with, or talking about triteness. Is it always about critique or is there something more reverent at play too- reasserting overlooked value or meaning in a cliché by changing its context maybe?

Both. It’s in my contrary nature to receive something with reverence and immediately find it disgraced as a result. When something becomes cliché or trite we tend to feel we have control over it- we recognise it’s machinations and almost laugh it off. But perhaps that’s exactly what needs mining- the material that has become so assimilated into mass consciousness we no longer accept its power. Like shampoo adverts that haven’t changed since the 80s.

There’s also a lot of quite menacing imagery referencing internet culture in some of your videos. Often its presented with a very aggressive, rapid-fire style of editing. What kind of relationship do you have with the internet as an artist?

I have a very obsessive relationship with the internet. Most of my studio time is spent browsing. I see the internet as providing a post-cinematic landscape of co-authorship across multiple platforms, multiple devices, multiple timelines and multiple places. The fragmented narratives that can be constructed online in real time is endless, immediate and- yes- rapid. By taking video and sound from the web and re-stitching it together into fast paced works I feel I’m emulating a common place, mass activity of parody, appropriation and collage that previously existed as a strategy of the avant-garde.

Which artists or artworks have inspired you the most?

I think artists like Jon Rafman, Amalia Ulman and Petra Cortright are doing interesting things. I love everything Diplo touches right now and can’t wait to see Rihanna at Wembley in June. I think she’ll always inspire me the most.

Lastly do you having any forthcoming exhibitions or current projects you’re working on?

I’m excited to have just been asked to participate in a live broadcast of video art through a TV Channel being launched in New York in February. I’ve always wanted to be on TV.