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01:02 Jo Dennis: Absent without leave
Late last November (23) Abi went to speak to Jo Dennis on the last day of her solo show “Absent without leave”. This was the 5th show by the artist with Sid Motion Gallery in five years, a fitting reflection of the busy nature of Jo herself. An artist who is constantly digesting and endlessly exploring the medium of painting; what it is or what it can be. The show was diverse, ballsey and quiet. Both in your face yet whispering and undoubtably rewarded those who really stayed to looked.
Abi Hampsey,
Artist and co-founder of Minutes.
00:00
Jo
Hmm. So I'll do an intro to the show.
Abi
Yeah, lets just have a talk, since it's the last day.
Jo
So the reason I want to talk about this piece is because I was talking earlier about how all of the work starts off on the ground, on the floor. So the substrate, which is an army surplus tent, starts off on the floor and that's where I start painting it. And then it can have two or three passes on the floor or just one. It's dried out and then I'll pin it to the wall and have a think about what I'm going to do with it.
This particular piece, which is called ‘Funny Weather’, I'd started it off in London and then took it to Cyprus with me. I worked on it in Cyprus, pinned it to the wall and then decided that this one piece was going to be two and I just cut it.
![]()
Abi
I don't remember this one in Cyprus.
Jo
Yeah, It was also upside down. I was working on it the other way round and when I got it back to London, I cut through it and was like actually, I really want to try out a diptych having one side bigger than the other and by cutting them apart it somehow became more about the materiality. By cutting them apart, what you essentially do is you lose an amount of the painting because it gets stretched into the fold of the stretcher bars. So as it was all connected, you disconnect it and then you put it back together again and in the act of putting it back together again It's like, yeah!
Abi
But you’ve removed a whole section in the process!
Jo
And so to try and sort of marry them up again and say you belong together. I put this line, which became like a stitch. Stitching the two together which then carried on into a horizon line along that seam. Following the line of the stitch.
And again using this sort of new device which started in Cyprus, these little sticks or fence marks.
![]()
Abi
They run throughout almost every single piece in the show. Which is interesting if we consider they are a new mark from say…four months ago?
Jo
Yeah exactly.
Abi
So they're quite important obviously, they do something.
Jo
Well I think they started off when I've used both my brushes and hands to paint. I would have literally had the residue of the paint on my fingertips and touched the side of the canvas and wiped my fingers on it. So I’d get these three or four little marks, which is literally just pulled through finger paint.
Abi
I never realised that's what they were!
Jo
Then it kind of developed from there.
A lot of this is done with fingers, this is oil paint with spray paint on top, then I've done that.
(Gestures fingers dragging across surface)
I basically moved all the paint and mixed them together with my fingers.
It all came from that wiping motion and then in other pieces you can see smaller ones, little small taggy ones, that look more like fingerprints. Often it's on the side of the painting near the stretcher. That's where it all developed from.
Then these small fingerprint marks turned into little lines, then turned into a real sort of purposeful line, that then kind of looked like little fence posts and I thought that actually conceptually worked because it's like ohhhh, that’s a border, a barrier.
That's my barriers, physical and emotional barriers. I thought, oh, that's interesting.
But in a painting sense, what that actually does, is it allows me to try and create a space within the abstraction, within an abstract image. So I'm creating depth and space.
So when we step back, this one we are talking about today is the most landscape one I have because of that incidental stitch line, which has become the horizon. And so with the posts coming out of it, it gives it even more depth.
Abi
But in this one they’re being used formatively to make, like you say, the closest to an example of a landscape that you've got in the show. Yet in other senses they are very much at the front.
In the reading of the works as purely abstract the lines are on the top. Yet, if we read these works as having a physical depth they are really close to the front, literally the front line.
Jo
I was talking to somebody and they said it's like you've got a physical piece of rebar and you've moved it, in and further backwards. Some of them I literally picked the lines out of one painting and without knowing it I’d then moved them into this painting and stuck them in the ground.
Very close.
Jo
So its like I’m imagining doing it physically, in real life. Most of them are in the foreground. You are stood here right in front of them and then the rest of it falls behind. And actually what is interesting is playing around with that.
How far forward can I make us and how far back can I push the rest of the painting? To try and find some sort of depth within these paintings. And actually that's what I’m really focusing on now, or in the last six months, is how can I make a space within them. How does that work and why does that work.
Abi
When I'm looking at the work or thinking about these works without the lines, the landscape element is harder to envision. They become something different. They become, not purely abstract, but a lot more material focused. I start looking at material and also the texture, a lot more.
However, when I feel that depth because of the lines, I see it as a whole place or space first and then look into the material and so they aren’t necessarily figurative, but put you on that border between figuration and abstraction.
Jo
Absolutely and what's interesting, is creating those spaces. I think especially this one that we're looking at, I all but obliterated the materiality of the tent!
The only thing I can actually think that I did regarding the tent, is that line, is picking up that stitch line that runs through. Everything else, I've just worked against it.
Abi
Even the string that often gets special attention in your other works has been ignored.
![]()
Jo
Yeah, I’ve obliterate it. Mind you, the blue finishes where the seam finishes. So that is actually a consideration. That would have been a really early on consideration where I stopped painting and decided to go along the seam.
Abi
I went to the Turner show at the Tate Liverpool the other week and I mean, I’m of course not the first person to think it, but they're so abstract! If you remove the little ships and you remove the horizon line they are purely considerations of mark making and movement.
Jo
You are the second person to stand in front of this and say… Turner.
Abi
But I mention him because I think he was thinking like that, in terms of using paint to make space or mood and self. That I would put you together as a pair in a show of contemporary and historic painters. I think your work has a dialogue.
Abi
I totally see his work next to this work in conversation.
![Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on, J.M.W Turner 1840]()
(Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on, J.M.W Turner 1840)
Jo
Can you sort that out please! No, that is interesting though isn't it?
Abi
I think maybe particularly because this one's called funny whether.
Jo
That came from the Olivia Lang essays, collection of essays. I just really loved that title. Funny weather, because you know it's language. It’s the Sort of thing that we would say. Also just looking or thinking about the environment and this particular one being such a landscape which could be post-apocalyptic or there's an explosion going on.
Jo
This is the mushroom cloud.
Abi
So we've talked about the painted line, but then there’s the divide within canvases that you often use as well and you've already said about how you removed sections of it. Sometimes the split is somewhat central but in some other works it’s a much thinner panel like on ‘the sewing place’ painting.
![]()
Do the panel sizes choose themselves or do you have them made.
Jo
I think its a bit of both.
I suppose I have this pre prescribed shape in my head or I just think this is going to work. So it is sort of like trial and error I suppose. I think with ‘the sewing place’ it was definitely more led by the work itself because I'd been working on it while it was still one complete piece.
This was working on one complete piece and I literally just cut it in half and played around with what structures I had in the studio and I quite like that the right hand side is only slightly bigger than the left. So it's kind of slightly off. I don't think I would really like to do equal measures.
Jo
It's definitely something I'm going to work more with. It's quite nice to do one painting and then add a bit to it.
Abi
Yeah, well that’s the joy, if you run out of room on one canvas just add another and another.
Jo
And I also really wonder how does one decide what shape and dimensions to make a painting. Im always thinking how big should it be? I quite like referencing the size of your own body. That’s easy, or even practical things like: Can I pick it up, or can it fit into a car?
Abi
“Painter measures the size of taxi doors”
Jo
But yeah. It's still a question for me that I don't have a resolve to. As you can see they are all different shapes and sizes. I did do a whole series at the RCA which were the same size but they've now become different because I’ve added bits to them…
Abi
And I guess that's and example of the chance vs play vs decisions element in your work.
Jo
That is constantly pushing and pulling; loss of control, control, loss of control. Where are you going to cut? How are you going to stretch? How big is it going to be? That's all control. However you're dealing with a moveable feast of paint which is completely out of control and doing its own thing.
Abi
What's mixed into the orange here?
![]()
Jo
This is corse marble dust that I collected from the quarry in Cyprus. When I first started using the marble dust, it was much more pasty because it was really fine but because I couldn't get my hands on any fine stuff in Cyprus I went to the quarry and literally scooped this stuff all of the floor underneath the saw, where they were cutting the marble.
And so you get all of the really grainy bits in it. And actually, since then I’ve bought marble dust with the grain in it.
I like the pasty stuff for certain parts and it does bring things forward, but the grit gives you the grime, which is what I'm always looking for in work. So when using bright colours, I always want to make them look a little bit grimier, putting washes through them and things like that.
Abi
I suppose the grime as well and these slightly graffiti-esque marks could almost be a homage or nod to your past works as well, in a way.
Not that I would say you're a graffiti artist.
Jo
It's more like references of the materials that I collected through my photography. That's photographs of the urban environment and yeah, graffiti removal and covering up and patchwork. The sort of entropy and patchwork that you find in the urban environment. That's definitely a sort of spraypaint mark, which are kind of incongruous to a landscape.
Jo
Yeah, that's definitely a nod to that.
That whole book that I made is still what I look to for inspiration, for colour and shape. Or even just looking out the window here at the gallery. Look at the patchwork on that sea container.
Abi
Absolutely. Like the rust, the texture, the patches.
Jo
The dudes that work there might have to cover something up, the letter ‘c’ or whatever so they’ll just paint a blue patch on it. I like that approach in painting, like what we’ve talked about before, make a problem, fix a problem and so on.
Abi
Yeah, because we are just problem solvers, as soon as the problems fixed we get bored.
Jo
When there's something in the painting that’s just not working just cover it up
Abi
Get rid of it. Right?
Jo
Yeah.
Cool, So how long was that ?
Abi
Was 15 minutes. Perfect.
Jo
I told you it could.
Hmm. So I'll do an intro to the show.
Abi
Yeah, lets just have a talk, since it's the last day.
Jo
So the reason I want to talk about this piece is because I was talking earlier about how all of the work starts off on the ground, on the floor. So the substrate, which is an army surplus tent, starts off on the floor and that's where I start painting it. And then it can have two or three passes on the floor or just one. It's dried out and then I'll pin it to the wall and have a think about what I'm going to do with it.
This particular piece, which is called ‘Funny Weather’, I'd started it off in London and then took it to Cyprus with me. I worked on it in Cyprus, pinned it to the wall and then decided that this one piece was going to be two and I just cut it.
Abi
I don't remember this one in Cyprus.
Jo
Yeah, It was also upside down. I was working on it the other way round and when I got it back to London, I cut through it and was like actually, I really want to try out a diptych having one side bigger than the other and by cutting them apart it somehow became more about the materiality. By cutting them apart, what you essentially do is you lose an amount of the painting because it gets stretched into the fold of the stretcher bars. So as it was all connected, you disconnect it and then you put it back together again and in the act of putting it back together again It's like, yeah!
Abi
But you’ve removed a whole section in the process!
Jo
And so to try and sort of marry them up again and say you belong together. I put this line, which became like a stitch. Stitching the two together which then carried on into a horizon line along that seam. Following the line of the stitch.
And again using this sort of new device which started in Cyprus, these little sticks or fence marks.
Abi
They run throughout almost every single piece in the show. Which is interesting if we consider they are a new mark from say…four months ago?
Jo
Yeah exactly.
Abi
So they're quite important obviously, they do something.
Jo
Well I think they started off when I've used both my brushes and hands to paint. I would have literally had the residue of the paint on my fingertips and touched the side of the canvas and wiped my fingers on it. So I’d get these three or four little marks, which is literally just pulled through finger paint.
Abi
I never realised that's what they were!
Jo
Then it kind of developed from there.
A lot of this is done with fingers, this is oil paint with spray paint on top, then I've done that.
(Gestures fingers dragging across surface)
I basically moved all the paint and mixed them together with my fingers.
It all came from that wiping motion and then in other pieces you can see smaller ones, little small taggy ones, that look more like fingerprints. Often it's on the side of the painting near the stretcher. That's where it all developed from.
Then these small fingerprint marks turned into little lines, then turned into a real sort of purposeful line, that then kind of looked like little fence posts and I thought that actually conceptually worked because it's like ohhhh, that’s a border, a barrier.
That's my barriers, physical and emotional barriers. I thought, oh, that's interesting.
But in a painting sense, what that actually does, is it allows me to try and create a space within the abstraction, within an abstract image. So I'm creating depth and space.
So when we step back, this one we are talking about today is the most landscape one I have because of that incidental stitch line, which has become the horizon. And so with the posts coming out of it, it gives it even more depth.
Abi
But in this one they’re being used formatively to make, like you say, the closest to an example of a landscape that you've got in the show. Yet in other senses they are very much at the front.
In the reading of the works as purely abstract the lines are on the top. Yet, if we read these works as having a physical depth they are really close to the front, literally the front line.
Jo
I was talking to somebody and they said it's like you've got a physical piece of rebar and you've moved it, in and further backwards. Some of them I literally picked the lines out of one painting and without knowing it I’d then moved them into this painting and stuck them in the ground.
Very close.
Jo
So its like I’m imagining doing it physically, in real life. Most of them are in the foreground. You are stood here right in front of them and then the rest of it falls behind. And actually what is interesting is playing around with that.
How far forward can I make us and how far back can I push the rest of the painting? To try and find some sort of depth within these paintings. And actually that's what I’m really focusing on now, or in the last six months, is how can I make a space within them. How does that work and why does that work.
Abi
When I'm looking at the work or thinking about these works without the lines, the landscape element is harder to envision. They become something different. They become, not purely abstract, but a lot more material focused. I start looking at material and also the texture, a lot more.
However, when I feel that depth because of the lines, I see it as a whole place or space first and then look into the material and so they aren’t necessarily figurative, but put you on that border between figuration and abstraction.
Jo
Absolutely and what's interesting, is creating those spaces. I think especially this one that we're looking at, I all but obliterated the materiality of the tent!
The only thing I can actually think that I did regarding the tent, is that line, is picking up that stitch line that runs through. Everything else, I've just worked against it.
Abi
Even the string that often gets special attention in your other works has been ignored.
Jo
Yeah, I’ve obliterate it. Mind you, the blue finishes where the seam finishes. So that is actually a consideration. That would have been a really early on consideration where I stopped painting and decided to go along the seam.
Abi
I went to the Turner show at the Tate Liverpool the other week and I mean, I’m of course not the first person to think it, but they're so abstract! If you remove the little ships and you remove the horizon line they are purely considerations of mark making and movement.
Jo
You are the second person to stand in front of this and say… Turner.
Abi
But I mention him because I think he was thinking like that, in terms of using paint to make space or mood and self. That I would put you together as a pair in a show of contemporary and historic painters. I think your work has a dialogue.
Abi
I totally see his work next to this work in conversation.
(Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on, J.M.W Turner 1840)
Jo
Can you sort that out please! No, that is interesting though isn't it?
Abi
I think maybe particularly because this one's called funny whether.
Jo
That came from the Olivia Lang essays, collection of essays. I just really loved that title. Funny weather, because you know it's language. It’s the Sort of thing that we would say. Also just looking or thinking about the environment and this particular one being such a landscape which could be post-apocalyptic or there's an explosion going on.
Jo
This is the mushroom cloud.
Abi
So we've talked about the painted line, but then there’s the divide within canvases that you often use as well and you've already said about how you removed sections of it. Sometimes the split is somewhat central but in some other works it’s a much thinner panel like on ‘the sewing place’ painting.
Do the panel sizes choose themselves or do you have them made.
Jo
I think its a bit of both.
I suppose I have this pre prescribed shape in my head or I just think this is going to work. So it is sort of like trial and error I suppose. I think with ‘the sewing place’ it was definitely more led by the work itself because I'd been working on it while it was still one complete piece.
This was working on one complete piece and I literally just cut it in half and played around with what structures I had in the studio and I quite like that the right hand side is only slightly bigger than the left. So it's kind of slightly off. I don't think I would really like to do equal measures.
Jo
It's definitely something I'm going to work more with. It's quite nice to do one painting and then add a bit to it.
Abi
Yeah, well that’s the joy, if you run out of room on one canvas just add another and another.
Jo
And I also really wonder how does one decide what shape and dimensions to make a painting. Im always thinking how big should it be? I quite like referencing the size of your own body. That’s easy, or even practical things like: Can I pick it up, or can it fit into a car?
Abi
“Painter measures the size of taxi doors”
Jo
But yeah. It's still a question for me that I don't have a resolve to. As you can see they are all different shapes and sizes. I did do a whole series at the RCA which were the same size but they've now become different because I’ve added bits to them…
Abi
And I guess that's and example of the chance vs play vs decisions element in your work.
Jo
That is constantly pushing and pulling; loss of control, control, loss of control. Where are you going to cut? How are you going to stretch? How big is it going to be? That's all control. However you're dealing with a moveable feast of paint which is completely out of control and doing its own thing.
Abi
What's mixed into the orange here?
Jo
This is corse marble dust that I collected from the quarry in Cyprus. When I first started using the marble dust, it was much more pasty because it was really fine but because I couldn't get my hands on any fine stuff in Cyprus I went to the quarry and literally scooped this stuff all of the floor underneath the saw, where they were cutting the marble.
And so you get all of the really grainy bits in it. And actually, since then I’ve bought marble dust with the grain in it.
I like the pasty stuff for certain parts and it does bring things forward, but the grit gives you the grime, which is what I'm always looking for in work. So when using bright colours, I always want to make them look a little bit grimier, putting washes through them and things like that.
Abi
I suppose the grime as well and these slightly graffiti-esque marks could almost be a homage or nod to your past works as well, in a way.
Not that I would say you're a graffiti artist.
Jo
It's more like references of the materials that I collected through my photography. That's photographs of the urban environment and yeah, graffiti removal and covering up and patchwork. The sort of entropy and patchwork that you find in the urban environment. That's definitely a sort of spraypaint mark, which are kind of incongruous to a landscape.
Jo
Yeah, that's definitely a nod to that.
That whole book that I made is still what I look to for inspiration, for colour and shape. Or even just looking out the window here at the gallery. Look at the patchwork on that sea container.
Abi
Absolutely. Like the rust, the texture, the patches.
Jo
The dudes that work there might have to cover something up, the letter ‘c’ or whatever so they’ll just paint a blue patch on it. I like that approach in painting, like what we’ve talked about before, make a problem, fix a problem and so on.
Abi
Yeah, because we are just problem solvers, as soon as the problems fixed we get bored.
Jo
When there's something in the painting that’s just not working just cover it up
Abi
Get rid of it. Right?
Jo
Yeah.
Cool, So how long was that ?
Abi
Was 15 minutes. Perfect.
Jo
I told you it could.
12:17
Recording Ends
