Order + Chaos
“I think you must acknowledge that it’s a twisted world of different things that come in and out of focus.”
Luke Hannam in his RCC studio
Could you tell us about your background and journey to becoming an artist?
Luke. I was a very emotional child, very permeable, and everything affected me. I was also a highly curious child, which people do remember me being. I didn’t have a talent and wasn’t academic; school was a disaster. The art teacher didn’t think I had anything significant. And I wasn’t invited to be part of the school orchestra. So I didn’t do music or any of those things.
When I look back at that time, I think society would’ve deemed me to be an immature person because I wanted or needed to remain childlike for as long as possible. And I think I stayed incredibly childlike well into my mid-twenties. I guess I’m still like that; I experience the world almost as a new experience every day. I am often blown away by things as if I’ve never encountered them before, which is a wonderful thing.
The day I left school, I went on a bricklaying course at Derby Technical College. I lasted a week, then realised I needed to find the answer to the question, what do you want to do? I found a two-year graphic design course, which appeared I didn’t need any qualifications. Because it was part of the art college, I felt that was a good start. I got through the first year making an awful mess, unable to understand anything.
I made friends with a young lad on the foundation course. He invited me to go to the life drawing class. I couldn’t believe it; I thought surely I was not allowed. He said come along; no one is going to say anything. I went along, and I was very nervous. I saw everyone putting up these easels and boards, and instantly, I felt comfortable for the first time; I felt a sense of identity or prestige that I was in an important space.
I remember the model’s name, an Irish lady called Briony and having an interesting conversation. The drawing tutor, Anthony Coral, came in and did all the classic things of life drawing, like 20-second poses. I had no idea; I started drawing and noticed people using charcoal, so I used charcoal. Then, after an hour, it got to the first crit; the tutor said, who’s, is this drawing? It’s mine. That is fantastic. And I still remember it like it was yesterday because it changed my life. So I carried on drawing, and he said, I don’t know who you are, but you can draw. Has anyone ever said that? I said, no, never. I’d drawn some spaceships, which got me into this graphic design course. He said, you won’t understand what I’m going to say, but you draw like Raphael; I had no idea who that was.
I told that tutor I’d love to do a course like my friend Stewart, but I don’t think I have the qualifications. And he said we should talk about you doing some A levels, but I didn’t have O levels. So Anthony suggested printmaking, history and a practical printmaking course, which I loved the sound of. I said I don’t know anything about colour, painting, or anything like that. He pointed at this large dark print roller on one of the etching presses. And he said, what colour is that? I said it was black. He said, have another look. I think I can see blue and some purple, maybe green. It was so eye-opening.
I remember telling my parents how amazing it was. And they wrote Anthony a letter which said, whatever you’re doing for our son, something’s happening. So we became best pals, and he helped me do those two A levels and to put my portfolio together.
I applied to Central Saint Martins and didn’t get in; I was disappointed. But I got into my second choice Canterbury College of Art, where I met this fantastic bunch of tutors. Mali Morris, who’s become a friend for life; she’s a great painter. She is very successful; she’s one of the judges for the Royal Academy Summer Show. So she took me under her wing.
I grew up playing music, I certainly wasn’t a jazz musician, but through my dad’s love of jazz, I’d picked up the language; lyricism, harmony, improvisation, rhythm and tempo. I noticed with Mali that the language we’re talking about painting was the language of music. I would understand what she was saying by understanding what my dad had taught me about music. It was a beautiful time, living in Whitstable, painting every day. I loved Canterbury, where I had many wonderful experiences.
I met Rob Welsh and many other Winchester School of Art teachers who were best friends with the people still alive from the St Ives scene. Through that, I was selected to attend private tutorials with Patrick Heron. I had the most incredibly poetic experience at art school. A very gentle team who were passionate about post-war painting and European lyrical traditions, and impressionism. The course wasn’t remotely business-focused; it was about colour, looking, and drawing. I just loved the seriousness of it.
“I’m probably at the far end of what people want to see around here. So many of my paintings explore intensely emotional subjects like love, lust and desire. They are often large, raw and intense, almost graffiti-esque.”
How did you cope with the literacy side of the degree?
Luke. I didn’t cope well; although I was passionately interested in the history of painting, my academic skills were almost non-existent, and I had no practical understanding of a thesis or how to write one. I was pretty illiterate from school. And so these demons caught up with me. I nearly failed my degree through not being able to write correctly. I started this incredibly ambitious thesis on Matisse, packed with ideas about painting but so poorly written. It was humiliating; I felt uneducated again. So this is a story of my life, this collapse of confidence through demons.
In 1987 I left and moved up to Newcastle Upon Tyne, and I tried to keep painting. I worked with a wonderful, very elderly Scottish impressionist painter, Tom Watt, who took me on as an assistant. I worked with him for a year, but he died. So I found myself wondering what to do next.
“It was an exciting time; it made me feel positive about myself. I didn’t feel like a failure. Instead, I felt something very philosophical had happened, and the past had come back to find me.”
Had you started making music by this stage?
Luke. I have played bass since I was 11. I grew up in a very musical family. My dad is an incredible jazz pianist; I’d played with my dad and my brothers. So I decided that maybe music was what I should be doing because I needed to be around other people. I got involved in an interesting band with another guy, a saxophone player. In 1992 we had this band called Emperor’s New Clothes. We moved to London, and signed to Acid Jazz with Eddie Pillar, where artists like Jamiroquai and The Brand New Heavies careers took off. I have always been obsessed with black music, jazz, early Detroit techno and the New York funk scenes.
Our band was odd, really outsider; not remotely like any other Acid Jazz band. Strange experimental jazz mixed with electronics, so we found a context. In ’95, we’d become good friends with a guy called Trevor Jackson, who was working with a graphic designer who was working with a British hip-hop outfit called The Brotherhood. He decided he wanted to produce our third album by this point. So we went up to Lincolnshire in a residential studio for about a month. The band was already very volatile; Andy and I were falling out. Andy would record at night, and I’d record during the day, but we made this incredible record. That was 25 years ago, the record never came out, and the band split up. Acid Jazz dropped us; the record was too dark for their tastes. This Acid Jazz thing had its moment.
Then Gramme, the band I formed on the dying embers of that band and the relationship we had with Trevor. I was still drawing but wasn’t painting through this whole period. I was absolutely dedicated to music. Trevor set up a label called Output, and Gramme recorded an EP, which didn’t see the light of day until 1999. We had an incredible mid-nineties experience. We opened up the Levi’s store with Irvine Welsh telling everyone we would be the biggest band in the world. We eventually signed to Junior Boy’s Own, a big dance label. Once again, we set about making an album; we were given loads of money, failed to make the album that the label wanted and then it all went wrong.
By 2001, the band folded after endless photo shoots with Dazed and Confused, The Face, and ID Magazine. We were being tipped for incredible things, but in the end, it all collapsed, and it reminded me of how my degree had collapsed. I’d spent my twenties flying towards the sun, so ambitious; then it all imploded, and so did I. I thought none of this was getting me anyway; something kept coming back to get me. I felt disillusioned.
Did you have a plan C?
Luke. In 2001, I trained as a teacher and managed to get a job running a creative music course in East London. It became an interesting job. I ended up working with the University of Westminster, running degree courses in music. Another chap and I set up the Artist Development Program, developing young talent in East London, including Ed Sheeran; he did all right.
By 2007, loads of people were talking about Gramme; Hot Chip, LCD Sound System, Gossip, and James Murphy in New York said we were one of his biggest influences. Klaxons said we’ve discovered this Gramme record released in the nineties. Who are this band? Where are they now? We hadn’t spoken for six years. It was like something had come back to find me. So we met up in a pub in South London and decided we’d reform, and everyone went crazy for it. Gramme is back together. In our non-existence, we’d become mythological. It took us about three or four years to make a record. We got new management, signed to Tummy Touch Records in New York, a really cool label, Tim Lovely. In 2013 we released a record.
Then we got a phone call, a national newspaper Nova, in Paris wanted to meet us. So we were taken to Paris to do all these shows. We played at the Moulin Rouge, and it just kicked off. We ended up having a hit record and played everywhere. We were on the front covers of national papers and interviewed on TV shows. It was amazing.
When does art come back ioto your life?
Luke. Rewind a bit; in 2004, I started painting again after a long hiatus. Through the nineties, I’d always been drawing; you’d always find me with a pad of paper. I was very troubled by it; I had disconnected from the art world and become immersed in the music world. Anyone that knew me as a bass player did not know me as a painter.
By around 2012, we had moved from South London to the south east. I had a studio at the Rye Creative Centre, in an old swimming pool in the back. People had started noticing my work; I felt like I had a long way to go. I had thought when I started painting again, I’ll be able to catch up with myself. If I had known how much of a mountain I had to climb, I wonder if I’d have done it.
The thing coming through me in my painting was as turbulent as my music. I needed to be raw, edgy, heavy and emotional, not to be frightened of any subject. So I’m trying to find substance, where the pain comes from, or where the feeling is. Being born in the sixties, I grew up through the recessions of the seventies and eighties. So I feel a lot of sadness, struggle, despair, and political consciousness. I’ve always felt this is the basis for my whole aesthetic beauty through the pain, or maybe real beauty emerges from struggle; bands like Joy Division and Public Image Ltd always resonate deeply with me.
“I suppose the message that I understand now more than ever before in my life is that I think I’m about order and chaos, about the relationships between pain and joy.”
I was slow to realise that paintings are just a nice thing to put on the wall for many people. I couldn’t relate to that, which is why sometimes my work looks like it wants to be a finger down your throat. It’s a bit too much for some people.
By the end of 2019, my work had become incredibly dark. I worked on these vast paintings, 12’ x 9’, with house paint. They were demonic, and in a way, they almost prophesied the pandemic. I remember thinking, I might stop. I could see myself self-sabotaging to try and make my work as ugly as possible seemed to be the mission. It was almost adolescent.
Gramme had made another album by this point, Fascination, which brought us back together. Then we made Disco Lovers, which we put out on our label, with a fantastic reception and excellent reviews. But then, the pandemic hit, and our tour and other plans just nose-dived. So we regrouped and decided to make another record. I had an idea to record with a guy I used to play bass with in a band called Grand National. Where I met one of the best British producers called Rupert. I said I wanted to make another record and would him like to work with me. He said he’d wanted to make an album with Gramme. So we started writing a new album in 2020, which turned into an EP.
I needed to find my own space during the lockdown, and I started drawing. And what emerged was highly fantastical. They looked like drawings from a classical era, with loads of figures and angels. Richard Davey, the art critic, contacted me; he said I love your work. There’s a re-emergence of a romantic tradition. He was terrific, and we ended up having Zoom conversations through the pandemic. Richard said you’re this nebulous person; your drawings look like they’re floating in space, but everything has lost its gravity, and everything could be anywhere, doing anything at any point. And we had long conversations about this. And he touched on something that no one had ever described. He gave me a tremendous sense of self, and from a spiritual point of view, he helped me understand what was being called darkness and where it was coming from. A profound philosophical truth that dark and light live together.
Then Joseph Clarke from The Anima Mundi Gallery asked Richard if I was the real thing, and he said I was. So Joseph and I spoke on the phone, and he told me I love the ambition in your work, and I would like to show it. So in 2021, I did a solo show on three floors of The Anima Mundi Gallery called The Compass & The Rosary. Richard wrote the foreword for the catalogue. An absolutely incredible experience; I felt good about myself after an incredibly long period of dysfunctionality. And it brought out a much more optimistic side of my work.
Earlier this year, in 2022, I had an exhibition with two other artists at the Saatchi Gallery on Kings Road, which was fantastic. It brought in a lot of interest; people saw the scale and the ambition, and I was starting to feel more settled that things were going well.
Plus, the band have new songs; Rupert has been working with us; on writing; he helped us make these incredible arrangements. And the record has started to come together. We are getting majorly excited; extraordinary times. Lauren Laverne, BBC 6 Music, has played our first single every week and said it was her record of the year. We are starting to plan European shows.
I’m 56 years old. It’s been hard, but I still do everything I’ve ever done and do it intensely and passionately. I try never to look down or back. And that’s something I’m proud of. I believe in my work and ability, and I’m cheered on by a strong sense of what I want to do.
