My practice consists of sculptures and site-specific projects. A recurring theme is an attention to detail in the everyday object, action or experience. I usually work on series of sculptures and site-specific projects concurrently.
The work’s raw materials are a mix of new and second-hand objects. These objects might be found in flea markets and charity shops, or simply bought in stores and on-line. I am drawn to anonymous objects, that is, objects without a known history. This kind of object not only stands for itself, it also stands for similar objects elsewhere. It is intended that these familiar anonymous objects encourage the viewer to reflect on their own experience of similar things.
Recent sculptural work features domestic crockery and baking tins. Previous pieces featured men’s shirts and handkerchiefs. Collections of objects are selected for their particular social and cultural significance as well as their visual appeal, for example it is important that the second-hand-shirts are business shirts. The materials are treated with processes that are more often associated with domestic craft than fine art.
The site-specific projects take familiar objects and shift how, or where, they function. These projects often include simple technology or the participation/activation of the viewer. They combine personal research with responses to the particular location. The architecture and history of the site plays a significant role in the project’s development. Some projects have a live element where the on-site production is part of the piece. Other pieces are designed to change or evolve over the period of installation, for example outdoor chalk drawings. Sites for projects include a decommissioned train station, a garden shed, a gallery window, and a former factory and warehouse.
My work addresses how mass produced mundane objects acquire personal significance. This might be through applying a labour intensive process such as patchwork and hand polishing, or alternatively through conceptual associations. The work is often made from materials with one or two colours from a palette of white, black, shades of blue and grey, silver and gold. I write detailed descriptions of the materials in each piece as this information forms part of the work. The titles indicate some of my intentions and I enjoy a vocabulary that can be read as both bawdy and academic.
Stuart Mayes’ body of sculptural works has grown out of his long-term performance-art practice. Often incorporating traditional, practical craftwork - such as sewing - Mayes’ sculptures explore notions of masculinity through a domestic vocabulary that relies on memories of old-fashioned suburban values. While the range of Mayes’ subjects takes in bawdiness, tragedy, and sentimentality, each is handled with a rigorously controlled aesthetic of terrifying restraint. Perhaps the true subject of Mayes’ work is precisely this maddening British quality: phlegmatic restraint in the face of necessary, turbulent emotions.
London-based conceptual artist Stuart Mayes makes good use of the stuff most of us take for granted. Working with articles traditionally made for men, he recreates the mundane and the commonplace into bespoke items of beauty. In previous London shows he has painstakingly restitched red and white shirts so that the patchwork appears like molecular blood cells in a wall piece entitled Exchange. Hot water bottles in Sensible Bedfellow turn mutant and elsewhere, urinal bottles becomes smothered in trashy blue glitter. Mayes creates a world in which masculinity and male etiquette become unpicked.
Why work with these objects?
I was originally doing a lot of performance. After a performance there’s usually debris but mine were about sealing things up in a very English, male way: by sewing a white shirt, with white thread, in a white room with white lights. People became interested in the finished objects and I realised that the pieces could have a life beyond me. So I started to work with installations using shirts. Most male clothing is unisex, whereas shirts, male handkerchiefs and ties are about masculinity. They are aspirational and about status and precision. In the business world men are allowed some colour in a shirt or tie. I twist the meaning of the object and try to do it in a celebratory way.
The shirts used in Climb and Exchange are the same size as the actual shirt. Is that deliberate?
I’m interested in things that already exist in the world. My works are familiar and not so abstract that they become alienating. I work to the size of a handkerchief or a pillowcase, so it’s comfortable but a the same time it’s not because I’ve done something to it.
Do you have a fetish for Englishmen and shirts?
No, it’s not erotic, more my fascination. I’m interested in systems and the way that men organise the world. The cells on the shirts are connective, for example, and I guess it’s like business meetings where men shake hands. There’s physical contact, but it’s momentary. You have these meetings and you touch the palms of your hands together, which is an intimate area. It’s odd in such a formal environment.
How long does each piece take?
Three to four months but I can’t work on them all the time. I get uptight about the grain and fabric - each forearm must match the real dimension. I tend to zone out but I have to be very specific and particular while I’m doing them because I have to cut each one out in paper, then fabric, then tack, sew, press and hem it. Each one is unique and autobiographical because I wore them. In a sense, they are beyond fashion.
And now you’re working with disposable urinal bottles ...
Yes, they are odd objects. I came into contact with them with hospital visits with my partner John who has motor neurone disease. These urinals are about male fragility, they are not celebrating masculinity. They are not for the physically fit man. Death and beauty interests me a lot because beauty is the only thing that makes death palatable. I’ve worked a lot with kids and the first things they do to make something beautiful is to cover it in glitter. Glitter is camp, throwaway and we always think of it as part of the stage show. I’m trying to transform them [urinal bottles] into beautiful things by getting people to look at them in a different way.