“I know what people think about celebrities doing art, and I feel the same way,” said Robbie Williams. “Fuck off, keep it to yourself.” He is in a chalet in Gstaad, where rooms are lined in glowing golden wood and every window looks out to a mountain. “I’m here because I’m drawing and writing and creating,” he said of the location. “I am my own creative hub.”
He’s not the first pop star to hole up in Switzerland, or to ignore his own advice. Last night, Williams launched a new series of ceramics at Mint, a London gallery that specializes in fancy contemporary design. Williams’s offerings are two big, bold Memphis-style busts of the Pope and Jesus, and an enormous ceramic wall work of Jesus with a shimmering baby blue crown of thorns. The men’s bas relief, highly-worked faces are in cobalt and brilliant yellow, salmon, lime and turquoise: an acid trip in a paint store.
Robbie Williams, and (2024). Photo courtesy of 1882 Ltd.
Exquisitely made in Williams’s home town of Stoke-on-Trent, by the craftspeople at the pottery 1882 Ltd, they seem to offer a turbulent view of religion: the Pope demonically fierce; Jesus in a state of anxious fear. “I didn’t see that; I’m not picking up pain,” said Williams, lounging on a couch as he peers at me through his computer’s screen.
Brought up Catholic, Williams’s relationship with religion is now on a par with his ones to drugs and alcohol (non-existent), but he’s feeling a need for a god. “I can see myself circling back,” he mused. “The other day I posted on Instagram: where do you go to for religion if you’re not religious?” These images, though, suggest that Williams might not have entirely shrugged off the enforced Catholicism of his early years.
Robbie Williams’s Pope bust. Photo courtesy of 1882 Ltd.
If the busts pay homage to a range of artists including Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Alex Israel, then Williams readily admits his debt to David Shrigley, too. “I only exist as an artist because of David Shrigley and Banksy. And then Keith Haring and Basquiat,” he said. (He bought a bunch of Banksys at the artist’s famous Notting Hill show in 2005, and offloaded a couple in 2022. “I am impulsive,” is his explanation. Together, they made around $9.8 million.) Shrigley, in particular, allowed him to think that being an artist didn’t mean painting like Constable.
He credits Pollock, too. “An entry route for artists that aren’t artists,” he said. “When Ed Sheeran tried his hand at art, it was colorful entry-level Pollock, ‘I can do that’ stuff.’” The pair swapped paintings a while ago. Williams’s was a “psychedelic, drippy paint thing. It said ‘Say Drugs to No.’”
Close-up of one of Robbie William’s ceramic works. Photo courtesy of 1882 Ltd.
Emily Johnson, also a daughter of Stoke but endowed with a brisk boarding school accent, set up 1882 Ltd in 2011, initially subletting 900-square-meters from the famous Wedgwood pottery in nearby Barleston. “We wanted to keep manufacturing in Stoke, and inject wonderful design,” she said. “And we wanted to work with non-ceramists, so they wouldn’t come with pre-conceived ideas and a fixed notion of what the material can and can’t do.” They have included the fashion designer Paul Smith and the set designer Shona Heath.
The Williams connection came through his manager, a charming Irish man called Stephen O’Reilly, though no one seems quite sure how. “Just the Stoke connection, I think,” said Johnson. “Then he left me a voice message. That was in January. After that, he showed me hundreds of drawings. I thought the Pope and Jesus were phenomenal.” The fact that Williams was going for scale—the slab-built busts are 50 centimeters high—caused a long list of issues. Each took three and a half months. One, a Jesus with hair, collapsed in the kiln once it had been completed. The wall work—120 by 150 centimeters—curled and shrank and cracked. But now, with its finish of brilliant colored glaze, it looks vibrant and pristine.
The process of creating Robbie Williams’s Jesus bust. Photo courtesy of 1882 Ltd.
Usually, Williams draws on paper with water-based Posca pens which contain a water-based acrylic paint that creates a solid opaque finish. Otherwise, he works on an iPad, ever since David Hockney taught him how. “We got invited to his house in L.A. and to where he paints, and it was just fucking wonderful,” said Williams. “Like being in the same room as the Beatles while they’re composing a song. Then he drew a chair on his iPad and I thought, ‘there’s no way on earth you could work electronically and it mean something.’ But here’s David Hockney doing it, and if an iPad is good enough for David Hockney…”
The colored drawings are over-written with slogans such as “I was mentally ill before it was cool”; crude black and white ones—the Shrigley homages—are covered in conjoined speech bubbles containing pithy, self-referential wit. Once Williams had generated around 1,200 of them, he started posting on Instagram. Now he can’t stop. “There’s dopamine happening there when you get a good response,” he said.
He has a biopic out at Christmas in which he appears as a digital version of himself; an album next year; plans for a hotel with a 3000-seater auditorium; and an entertainment university where students will learn about mental health and contacts and agenting. “There’s a complicated inner life. If left untended, it roams to places one wouldn’t want to go,” he said. In other words: stay busy.
Robbie Williams’s Jesus bust. Photo courtesy of 1882 Ltd.
Of the reaction to his art works, Williams is more relaxed. “The kids’ education isn’t funded by my art; it’s not part of my vulnerable identity,” he said. His ego is tied to his performing self; art is a mere adventure and he is an autodidact passing through.
But there’s a bravura in the new works. Perhaps they will appeal to those who like the high-octane Robbie, the “Rock DJ” Williams, the restless loudmouth, as well as Keith Haring and Banksy. And as much as he professes to feel “blessed” with the opportunity to get the work made, he admits that he will only really believe in them once someone shells out the £18,000 ($23,000) to acquire one. “I didn’t create capitalism, but if it sells, I’ll think it’s fucking art.”
Meanwhile, the Ed Sheeran is in storage in Switzerland. I wonder where the psychedelic Williams has gone?
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
