James Cabaniuk Interview

James Cabaniuk employs strategies of queer opacity and abstraction to construct gleefully layered large-scale abstract oil paintings, installations, and site-specific projects that embody concepts of fun, camp, sexuality, gender, self-destruction, and healing, seeking to liberate personal trauma from shame, and exploring queer identity and history.

The singularity and machismo of 20th Century Abstract Expressionist painting become, in Cabaniuk’s assured hands, a world wherein they navigate their complex relationship to the power it embodies – simultaneously fetishizing and critiquing it.

James lives and works between Manchester and London. They were interviewed by London-based curator Leo Babsky.

Soooooo before we start talking about art ….. I actually really want you to talk me through your wedding-day lewks cos they were amazing.

Thank you! That is all down to my friends Stephen Doherty and Craig Lawrence. They are both incredible artists and designers, and wanted to make sure I could feel FAB! as it’s quite hard to find really glamorous clothes if you’re 6’3 and a size 18. The first two looks were actually meant to be as one for a reveal on the aisle, but I read the email confirmation wrong, and we all arrived 45 minutes late for the ceremony and barely had time to get shoved in one.

Where did you grow up, and how was your childhood/adolescence as a queer person?

I grew up in a small town on the edge of the Lake District. Drop dead gorgeous countryside but limiting as a young person, especially one who was a raging queen. There were lots of fab women who were quite camp in that really northern way in my town who, like most little fem boys, I gravitated to, so it wasn’t lonely. Outside of this, as a queer person it was a bit bleak and rough at times which is probably where I developed a healthy dose of delusion.

Growing up, art felt like the gay boy version of football where you could leave your stifling little town and be really glam and live the fantasy. So, naturally, I ran to London at 18.

Your practice feels almost archeological, literally plowing through paint or metaphorically excavating facets of queer history such as cruising, glory holes, or, more recently, queer subculture in the late 1800s or early 1900s. How do you approach and research these historical aspects of LGBTQIA+ history?

I’ve always seen the making of the paintings as creating a record of queer and personal histories and placing it within a specific time in art history and trojan horse-ing that agenda. There is a parallel for me between the cultural history of queerness, the personal histories of experience/trauma/healing (and, at points, loads of self-sabotage obvs), and the idea of personal growth through excavating these things. Part of the use of the abstraction is to keep these coded languages in some way private. I don’t want to translate everything to a viewer who it might not be for. The best response I ever had to work was this 60-something queen wandered past my painting, clocked the yellow hanky, turned to me, gave a little wink and a grin, then slunk out of the room.

Love that. Following the above, can you tell me a bit more about your exhibition, In Holes and Corners, which was held at the Italian Garden, Great Ambrook in Devon?

So I learned of the Italian Garden, Great Ambrook, a private walled garden created as a gay oasis by its owner, Arthur Smith Graham, in 1909, after having a gorgeous evening watching Gardeners’ World. The article showed the garden, which is stunning, and spoke of Arthur’s sexuality and reasons for building the garden. There was a talk on queer Edwardian gardeners the following Friday, so I went down and met Kate Hext, who had organized the series of talks, who then wrote the incredible text for the show.

Graham had to live a life in the closet due to the cultural and legal limits set by the time, and it is believed he built the garden as a private refuge to relax and gather his gay confidants openly in a beautiful place of privacy. Graham requested that all of his documents, photos, and diaries be burned when he died, which means there aren’t any records of what happened in there, and I wanted the possibilities of what happened to be held in the light and be able to be seen outside of those walls.

The garden was designed by the architect Thomas Henry Lyon, also a noted homosexual, and was built in the Italianatestyle and features a swimming pool, plunge pool, tennis court and summer house. It is like an open-air Chariots (* gay sauna in London). It lay forgotten for decades before being discovered and gently restored by the current owners.

I went to the garden and collected soil which I then mixed with pigment in the colors associated with queer culture at the time and glitter and sieved it onto the surface of the paintings. One of the opening questions I asked Kate was what color would most strongly define this, and she sent me an image of the first issue of a publication called The Yellow Book. It was an exact match to Grindr Yellow, and the characters on the cover were wearing black masks. These historical references were framed blatantly alongside the recurring themes in my work.

As visitors took a turn around the garden, they were given a scroll written by Kate that set the scene of queer culture in the late 1800s/early 1900s. There was also a sound piece recorded by Georgie Wells of queer pop songs performed as siren songs that played from the Dell in the center of the garden.

There are still issues with some visitors to the garden today not wanting to hear about its gay context. Fortunately, Steph, one of the owners, is really open to championing queer projects and was supportive of both my work and not setting conditions that got in the way of telling the story of Arthur’s queerness.

Your paintings always make me laugh (in a good way) as they seem such a piss take/ subversion of that macho cliche of the lame, cis-het male “auteur“ artist throwing paint onto the canvas in a poor imitation of gestural abstraction/ abstract expressionism and I know you enjoy playing with those tropes. Would you like to expand on that for me?

Oh, I’m glad you think they are funny. This might be a really unhealthy coping strategy, but even when talking about big or heavy subjects, there is usually some humor in there. I guess it’s about laughing instead of feeling shame about it all. The history of big, ab-ex painting is a bit like hetero-masculinity, it’s quite sexy, and I definitely fetishized it in a way that was detrimental for a while, but I don’t respect it for what it represents to me as a queer person. I find it fun to be sarcastic and critical inside it. With the scale, there is something about altering spaces with the work and what it’s trying to say that I enjoy. They turn into props for the content as they get bigger and move into something more spatial.

What future projects are you looking forward to?

I am showing some work with Workplace at Nada Miami, which is fab because I imagine it’s like the Bird Cage, and I have a solo at the gallery in the spring of next year. Also, topping up my Botox.