Interview: Margot Bowman

All this week, Kopparberg are hosting a series of workshops, talks and events with mind-boggling creative talent including Camille Walala, Hattie Stewart, Pothole Gardener, Pure Evil, and more, to celebrate the DIY culture and get you all a bit creative! All the London events are taking place in Shoreditch. We chatted to Notion contributor Margot Bowman, ahead of her session to get a little more acquainted with what she does and how she does it.

Planet Notion: You are pretty much an all-round, multi-media artist – in 3 words, how would you best describe what you do?
Margot Bowman: See, think, do.

PN: Your work is accessible to everyone; is this part of your work ethic?
MB: Yes that is important to me. I guess its quite a British mentality – all those years as a kid of going to see amazing things for free in the Tate, British Museum, Science Museum etc.

PN: How did you find your signature style?
MB: I heard it through the grape vine.

PN: Do you have a specific role model?
MB: I have some, but my work is quite hybrid-ised so it’s difficult to find a good match. I’m reading my first David Foster Wallace book at the moment – I think I’m going to learn a lot from him.

PN: Where and how did you get your first job/internship as an artist/graphic designer?
MB: My first internship was at See Studio and my first job was doing all the flyers for mine and Bip’s first club night HotBed.

PN: You did the Painted Truths project for Notion Magazine – how did you decide to create it the way you did?
MB: Well [Notion Editor] Michael and I were talking about me doing a series for the magazine and I wanted to do like a great quote every issue. I had the first quote in my mind, Gil Scott Heron’s ‘I’m the closest thing I have to a voice of reason’, and I was talking to my friend Naomi Shimada and realized she so embodied that quote – she was a living example of how it worked in the real world. So it just sort of seemed logical to execute it in the way I did. I cant really intellectualize it more than that – it just felt very very right.

PN: How did you get involved with ün-establishment? What was your first reaction?
MB: I was really excited to design and experience that allowed other people to get involved. To design something that is alive is always fun – you have to allow for other peoples input and your kind of don’t know what’s going to happen.

PN: What’s the plan for your workshop at ün-establishment?
MB: The work shop is about making Gifs based on the weeks news. Were going to be making sort of ‘Have I Got News For You’ style Gifs where participants chop up the weeks papers to make their own stories from the news. I wanted to demonstrate that the media is a construct and we can construct our own. That’s really important to me – the idea that anything is real if you want it to be. Creative output allows you to make things that only exist in your head real.

PN: Do you know any of the other creative individuals involved with the ün-establishment project?
MB: I was really happy to hear that NTS and SuperCollider were also going to be involved – I think those guys are great.

PN: Would you like to work with any of the other artists that are involved with ün-establishment?
MB: Yes I’d love to do something with both of the above!

PN: What advice would you give to any starting up graphic designers and artists?
MB: Work hard, be nice, be smart, be yourself.

Interview – Nina Hoogstraate

Full details on Kopparberg’s Facebook and Twitter here: facebook.com/KopparbergUK / twitter.com/KopparbergUK