There's is an honesty to Husk Bennett's work. During our conversation, he often speaks about how he creates art naturally, without wanting to overthink it. This is ultimately what makes it powerful, it is an artist portraying their unfiltered view of the world onto a canvas, in film, through digital collages or whatever other medium Bennett's feels like exploring.
In an interview with the artist, we discussed his Irish nationality, the importance of taking the piss out of politicians and who has inspired him. Read the full interview below and head to our New Tenants exhibition to see Bennett's work in the gallery space.
What draws you to the topic of Britishness?
It's been a thing I’ve explored for a while. It started off with unionism when I was doing my foundation year how the DUP is in charge of Northern Ireland and they really don't represent us. Then going to England there's just so much that people didn't know about Northern Ireland. I knew so many people who didn't know about any of the troubles there had been or this 30-year civil war between Northern Ireland and Britain and it was so annoying. I'm brought up my whole life being taught about it in school, my family lived it and then there's just nothing. Obviously, it's not in the curriculum because the British government don't really take responsibility for anything and that's never going to happen. It just leads to this weird place to grow up, Northern Ireland is such a strange little pocket of the world, it's just bizarre. There's all this mistrust, the Good Friday agreement was only in 1998, it hasn't been that long, it's still fresh. Just because the trouble's ended it didn't mean the end of sectarianism and the end of the sectarian violence and stuff like that. Even people my age, I'm 23, still grow up being wary of where we would go, what we would say, how we would do things in certain areas.
It is quite political the things you're looking at, have you always been very political or, growing up where you did, do you feel there wasn't a choice not to be?
I think it is that thing of not having a choice. I always hated the fact that I was the person explaining the troubles to my friends because I'm not the person to do it. I'm sitting here painting the Bee Movie or something and trying to also get my facts straight but they don't live in my brain properly so I'm telling these rambling stories. I don't have a choice and I make all this work that is political but it's also not for me to make a graph about it and put it into the work, it's the trigger of thought process. It's just this idea of thinking about stuff and then putting it to the forefront but putting it there behind a curtain. It's there but you might not get it, you might not see it immediately but it is there for you to find.
Quite often you use a lot of humour, why is it important to have this element of satire?
It's always felt natural. It's such an easy way to knock politicians down a peg or two, satirise them. The easiest way to draw attention to someone is to take the piss out of them and take them down a peg or two just by being a bastard. Whenever you're painting it's very hard to do what I want to do, which is very brash, without it coming across as really contrived in a way.
Yeah, that element of taking the piss out of politicians is so British in itself, especially the way that you use humour.
I'm Irish by nationality, obviously, there are a lot of cultural similarities there between Ireland and Britain. It is just part of growing up in the UK, there is a lot of good humour but I think a lot of the time in the past of the two decades British humour hasn't been great. In early 2020 I was making a lot of work about Cats the musical because that film came out in 2019 and people were like 'that was awful.' That was such a powerhouse of British musicals, people loved it so much and I guess I never looked at musicals as being this underworld but so many people hadn't seen it or paid attention to it.
Moving on to the piece that we exhibited titled Lockdown Drawings. When in lockdown did you create that?
It was made in 2021, it was kind of at a weird point. While I was making that piece, there was a massive feeling of nostalgia and constantly going back through my Instagram archives, looking at old photos, kind of realising that I've had friends for 8/9 years, I'm old now. Not even wanting normality but something a bit different. It was quite visceral, it just kind of happened.
Your work spans several mediums, why is this?
It's this thing about being visceral and wanting to make stuff and having that inherent desire to create. I always think that work comes from work, I don't know who said that first but I believe in it. I always thought that I would end up making big pattern paintings with all these motifs and it hasn't happened yet but it could eventually. I paint a lot of characters and I really enjoy painting sometimes. I think that the sensibility of using a lot of different things just happens, it just makes sense in my head. There's no point getting fixated on any one thing.
Are there any people, places or events that have influenced your work and that you often revisit?
There have been a few things that at the time have felt important in my work. I remember going to an exhibition called Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness in Belfast five or six years ago. It was really good just seeing this expression of art in a very non-critical, non-polished way but a lot of it was really polished in its own way. That was good because I remember there was a time my old tutor in university said to me I'm just conditioned to think that there is a certain way that paintings and drawings should look and I really agree with that. It's still a painting and a drawing, it's the exact same as any other painting or drawing, it just looks different.
Also, Paul McCarthy's painter video. I remember watching that two and a half times in Tate Liverpool and there's just something about the absurdity of it. It's just mind-boggling and then Paul McCarthy was like 'fuck De Kooning what an idiot I'm going to make this hour and a half video just taking the piss out of him,' for so little reason and it's just great.
Are you optimistic about the future?
Yeah, I think I am. I don't draw or paint every day, I don't write things down every day, I don't think that you have to. It's just this ongoing thing of trial and error and trying to find opportunities and what works for you and trying to work around the barriers. Recently, using social media, about 80% of the art that I see is on social media so being able to put it there is kind of the equivalent of having your own solo show every couple of days if you want to. You have your own little audience. Even light-hearted stuff at the minute is nice to see and I think it's more important than big serious scary art, just little drawings of little people with big shoes and funny eyes.