Big Yin
Euan Roberts shares his journey from classrooms to galleries.
Was art your thing as a child?
Euan. I grew up in Brighton in the ’90s. My dad made a bit of art; he was like a Sunday painter making cut-up abstract work. So, he was the first artist I was aware of, but I don’t remember seeing him painting, just a few finished pieces dotted around the house.
In year three, I made a painting that was my masterpiece. I was painting a rainforest with clouds with my classmate Babak. Somehow, I ended up with it, and my parents have it at their house. I can still remember the brushstrokes of that painting. I was doing an intense patch of grass, painting individual blades. Then the teacher told us we had to finish what we were doing. I remember doing the clouds, just like circles and adding some lightning. I must have been seven, but I vividly remember making that painting.
The Simpsons significantly affected me growing up; it was the first cartoon I loved. Hopefully, you can see that in my work today in the comedy, blocks of colour, and colour palette. I had a book that taught me how to draw some of The Simpsons characters by sketching the outlines of circles and filling them in. But I didn’t love drawing back then. I was several rungs below the best kid in the class.
“My parents have had the same kitchen table for over 30 years. My mum didn’t find out for years that, as a kid, I drew on the underside of it. I’d love to put it in a show one day.”
I had a very short-lived graffiti career as well. A friend’s older brother, who’s two years older, got some pens. I drew a camel in a hot air balloon on a disused shed in a park. I got caught red-handed by the police. I was so upset and humiliated as I was taken back home in the police car, and they told my parents what I’d done. Later, I found a photograph my dad had taken. He had possibly gone to the park to paint over my drawing. I would like to think he thought it was cool enough to bother taking the photo. My tagging career was over.
Did education help to steer you toward a career?
Euan. I was quite an underachiever at school. I didn’t find it easy, but I only applied myself if I was into the subject. I did double Art GCSE, which wasn’t two different subjects; it was just twice as much art. It was a chance to laugh with my mate.
I was really into Banksy at the time and trying to cut stencils. We didn’t have the right equipment or the right spray paint. At the time, I had no idea that Banksy’s art sold in galleries, and later, I would go on to sell his art when I worked in galleries.
I’d seen his work in the streets on a trip to London when I was around 14 and then in his books. I just thought it was so cool and very rebellious. That was about the total of my art knowledge.
If you asked me what I wanted to do for a career when I was young, I would have replied that I wanted to be a dog walker, a duck feeder, or a generic sportsman.
I passed my GCSEs and decided to study Graphic Design at sixth-form college, with English Literature and Spanish GCSE. The graphics course was quite commercial, with projects like branding a T-shirt company and designing a T-shirt. It wasn’t a very arty time. We were learning some skills while designing terrible graphics in Photoshop.
After that, I did an Art Foundation at college in Brighton, which was great. I met a new group of people from other places, like kids from the countryside in Lewes. It was a great time; we’d go to indie disco nights and hang out around Brighton. The course would focus on Illustration for six weeks, then Fine Art, then Fashion, then 3D Design, and it was experimental. We were making what we thought was avant-garde and ground-breaking. It wasn’t, but I guess that’s the point of art school.
It opened my eyes and gave me some direction. We spent much of the course preparing a portfolio in case we wanted to go to university. In the second half of the course, I decided to focus on Illustration, but looking back, I wasn’t suited to doing that. In that room of students, many are still making art and have progressed far in their careers.
I loved Manchester and studied at Manchester School of Art, where I did a three-year degree in Illustration. My mum grew up in Manchester; they moved there from Barbados when she was 11. So, we’d been up there to see the family before I went to uni.
But the School of Art wasn’t worth it for the education. I have a problem with how art education is generally run; it is treated too much as a business. Although I was there, I would say I am self-taught as an artist. I didn’t pick up a paintbrush during those three years. My love of painting came to me a lot later. I would also tell young people to think long and hard about further education and getting saddled with insane debts. There are other options.
So, now that you’ve graduated, what path did you follow to find what you wanted to do?
Euan. My first job out of uni was at an off-licence in Brighton. My boss, Dave the Rave, wasn’t management material. When I printed a customer’s receipt for our records, I drew the people from memory and wrote a few lines about it. I put it on this website as a way of continuing to make stuff in a very small way. Looking back at those drawings, I realise they were the start of what I do today, with the colour and simplicity.
I started working in a Korean Café; I liked working there and enjoyed half-price food. I got to know this guy who had a print gallery in Brighton and worked there for six months. He opened another gallery in London that sold original paintings and had artists’ shows. So, I went to work at the new gallery in London.
On a day off from the gallery, I drew this vampire guy who looked a bit like Nick Cave. He was playing that knife game where you put the point of the blade down between your fingers. But his hand was bleeding; he’d cut himself by accident. I made ten prints of that image and sold seven that day. A friend, Ash, who bought that first print, has been one of the biggest supporters of my art since day one.
My job involved interviewing many artists, writing blogs for the website, and creating content for the Instagram account. So, I got to visit many artist studios, meet them, and learn about their careers. Their lives and careers looked fun. Seeing their studios, which were beautiful spaces, and having
the ability to make art every day, I decided to give that a go.
Stylistically, what I was painting then was figurative imagined people. They were rough layered portraits with emblems and words scratched into them. I showed a few of them and I was inspired by selling the first painting I ever made to an artist that I knew. That made me want to continue and gave me momentum. I’d seen other artists start without a defined style and keep making stuff. These tiny percentages add up, and suddenly, they’ve got their own language, and it becomes effortless.
I lived in Soho in a guardian property. Amazingly located, but the building was dilapidated and pretty gross. There was such energy in the area; I went to show openings on the first Thursday of the month, drank free booze, saw other people, and painted nonsense. At this time, I met Ruth, my partner. She was and continues to be a huge inspiration. I definitely wouldn’t be where I am without her love and support.
I just started making art because I could no longer bear the tension of not making. I hit an escape velocity and gradually shed a fear of failure actually to create and not just think about it.
The galleries that I worked for never supported what I was doing. I had almost been hiding that I made art, but when they found out, they didn’t care or support me in any way when they had a platform. I was friends with artists and admired people who would go on to have huge careers. Lots of these artists weren’t on the gallery’s radars, but they never called on me or my experiences. I felt a lack of respect in the traditional gallery spaces.
I worked at a few different galleries in London. At one place, I snuck my work into the gallery when the boss was on holiday. With a supportive colleague, we hung all my paintings so I could take photos in situ, so it looked like I had a show. I’d use the basement space to work on stuff after closing.
From there, Ash and I started doing group shows. We started this thing called OTHER, a grassroots arts events organisation. We did pop-up shows around London in the cheapest venues we could find. Sometimes, they would be free if it was during the week. We would put up loads of art and have a party. We sold stuff for cheap at the shows and markets, while we still worked our full-time jobs and did this on the side. Many of the artists we worked with are stars in the art world now. I feel proud of what we did with no budget.
I had decided I couldn’t work for an employer after age 30. I got invited to show my work at Glastonbury and had my London debut solo show lined up when I left my gallery job. It forced me to seize the moment and go all in. It was two months before I turned 30 and I just went all in. I said goodbye to employment and sailed my ship to an imaginary destination that might not exist.
“I committed to being a full-time artist. An analogy I like is that you throw your bag over the fence and work out how to get yourself over to it.”
When did animals become the central characters in your work?
Euan. Featuring animals in my paintings came quite gradually before they were more layered with people and lots of portraits. Then I started doing collages, painting pieces of paper, cutting them up, and sticking them down.
I made a piece with a hand coming out of the water holding a sign that said I’m OK. When I worked in the gallery and would get home, I’d ask Ruth how her day was, and she’d reply, “I’m OK”. Then I’d say, no, how are you? Then she would explain. I’ve done a few variations. In some, the hand and sign come out of the sea, and shark fins circle them. That piece led me to do an image of two cacti holding hands, and my work shifted into nature.
It wasn’t a conscious thing to focus on animals; I still paint other things from nature. I can say so much through animals and nature. For example, if we see a human on an exercise bike watching a video on their phone, that’s one thing, but if we switch that person with a chimp, we question how weird that setup is. It’s like humans need to distract themselves from uncomfortable feelings.
When did you move to St Leonards and set up your own space?
Euan. We moved to St Leonards to a flat on the seafront the day before lockdown. We decided to leave London because we were already spending most of our weekends outside London. We got to know St Leonards through some people we knew. We didn’t have a big plan but decided to open Big Yin Gallery in the summer of 2021.
We saw the space and thought it would be perfect for showing art. In 2020, it felt like a weird time in the art world. There was an intensity of people creating a lot of stuff, and all eyes were on social media. I was working from home and desperately needed a studio to push my work. We saw the space and thought it would be perfect for showing art. It is south-facing, has big windows, and is really near the sea in the centre of town.
Instagram might be good for finding artists, but the best way to view art is to stand directly in front of it. Because of the pandemic, people hadn’t been to shows or galleries for a while. There was a big question of whether art needed to return to physical spaces. Also, London doesn’t have to be the centre of everything, not just in the arts, that is happening across many industries. Great art deserves to be shown and seen wherever people are, regardless
of class, gender, or ethnicity.
Another reason why we started the Big Yin Gallery was that when police in America murdered George Floyd, we saw a huge resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. As a black artist, I was asked by so many people to create stuff. That was intense and overwhelming. Requests like, Can you take over our Instagram account? Can you recommend artists? I said no to most of it. My first thought was, Oh, yeah, I can do that. Then I thought, why do I have to find this gallery ten young black artists to promote? This isn’t work you can outsource. I don’t have to be the conduit for this.
One thing I said yes to was an American Black-Owned Bookshops Directory that Facebook was making. I didn’t do this because I like Facebook, far from it, but this project felt valuable and positive.
A reaction to everything happening at that time was a lot of galleries posted the Black Square on social media. I knew, as most people of colour knew at the time, that people were doing this to look good, but six months from then, would their galleries be showing any artists of colour? The proof is in the pudding. Will people continue to practice what they preach and not just tick that box when something is trending? Of course, most didn’t. The art world is still predominantly dominated by white walls, white men, and white wine.
Hastings and St Leonards are more ethnically diverse than I first thought when I moved here, and I’ve found more global majority community here than anywhere else I’ve lived. Playing The Race Card, Afri-Co-Lab, Refugee Buddy Project, and so many incredible people are doing great work in centring global majority stories and art.
From our first opening, we showed an inclusive group of artists. Art galleries are quite political spaces where not everyone feels comfortable to enter. Our job as a gallery is to show and sell work and make money for artists to distribute wealth that way. But you don’t have to buy the work to enjoy it. Art is there for people to see and experience. Everybody has the same right to visit the gallery, from a homeless person sitting on the corner to a millionaire.
“Just because you can’t afford something doesn’t mean you don’t get to appreciate and enjoy it.”
Ruth and I ran a workshop in the town hall with Lily from Seaview and Emerging Futures, an Addiction Recovery Service that Ruth worked for. On Wednesdays, we would come together with people in recovery, a space to listen to music, paint, draw, and connect. We plan to run more workshops and put on shows in the community with people who traditionally aren’t served by art galleries. So, when they sell a painting, they receive the money.
We had a show with The Refugee Buddy Project last year, and I went up to Christ Church School and worked with the kids there. There are many children there with refugee backgrounds. I believe there are over 37 languages spoken at Christ Church School, which is impressive. At the exhibition, we saw this boy standing in front of his art with three generations of his family in the gallery. He had such pride in showing his work to everyone, and he deserved
it for making art.
You are involved in group shows and your own exhibitions away from Big Yin Gallery; what have you been up to recently?
Euan. A positive of Instagram is the ability for a gallery anywhere in the world to see your work and informally contact you. It’s an excellent opportunity for more people to see my work. But it can feel very impersonal. I’ve had a show in Taiwan and two in Japan, and I’ve not been there, which feels weird.
I’ve just returned from America, where I showed my work at Antler Gallery in Portland, Oregon. I have a big show in September in LA at one of my favourite galleries in the world, Think Space. I’ve just started showing with Helm Gallery in Brighton; who are doing great things. I have another show in Taiwan at the end of the year. I’m focused on making the best work I can and encouraging others to make some art because we all have the right to creative play.
“Through my art, I can deliver powerful messages, but through my mixture of comedy and tragedy, the colour palette and simplified imagery, the topic of the piece is lightened.”
Euan Roberts - Artist
www.euanrobertsart.com
@euanrobertsart
Big Yin Gallery
1 London Road, St Leonards, TN37 6AE
Thurs 11:30-5 / Fri + Sat 11:30-5:30 / Sun 12-4
www.bigyingallery.com
@bigyingallery