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Spiritual Shapeshifter

Local lad Simon Godfrey - a graduate of the old Anglia Poly. art foundation course - did good when the exhibition Spiritual Shapeshifter showing works by himself and London-based artist Ben Tunstall- (also a graduate of the Anglia Foundation course) -  opened at Unit, a London project space - as these London arty types like to call it.
+loophole decided to investigate. But when we contacted him to arrange an interview, we were surprised to find him, not beavering away in a white-cube studio, but working at a St. Ives engineering firm making magnetos - the coil in electric motors apparently.
 Our man in the murky world of contemporary art, Shaun Davis, irony-detector at the ready, defied the double-bluffs, stuffed the self-references and cut through the crap to ask ëwhat's it all about?í

Below: Surfboard by Ben Tunstall.  Acrylic on canvas.

The Old Copper Kettle opposite King's College is where  Simon Godfrey and Ben Tunstall decide we should meet one sunny afternoon. With Ben arriving fresh off the London train and Simon days away from jetting to Chicago on business, we settle into a corner with our tea and cake and talk art. Or try to. As the interview progresses, I start to sense hidden reasons why they have chosen this particular cafe. Besides the particularly fine gateau, the cafe has deep shadows, cast by the brown walls, affording a certain amount of cover that the two artists use to strange and at times, it seems, choreographed effect. They disappear into the shadows and come forward into the bright sunshine in a show of chiaroscuro that emphasises what they say, and lends an air of mystery to their words. I say 'their' words but infact, most of my questions have to be addressed to Simon - he at least will speak. Ben, dark-haired, thick-lipped and moustachioed, remains back in the shadows, an  almost sinister character, who speaks candidly at first, but withdraws more and more into the dark.

Below: Untitled by Ben Tunstall.  Wood, car-spray.

We started by talking about the foundation course at Anglia Poly where they had met in 1991. As bright-eyed 18 year olds, both had come from backgrounds where art-making meant still-life painting. But the foundation course had opened their eyes. Both artists talk with admiration - and perhaps just a hint of fear - of the tutor who had introduced them to names such as Blinky Palermo and they express a hope that the freedom they had been given would continue in the present course which went through radical restructuring a couple of years after they left. Simon in particular talks forlornly, his blonde-hair suddenly lit like a halo in the sunlight, of the current fashion of having to quantify and assess in education. In fact through the interview, we keep returning to methods of accountability and analysis which the two seem to hate with such a poisonous vehemence that at times they become almost incoherent, spitting venom over my half-eaten sponge. Indeed, it seems to be this topic of conversation that is the cause of Ben's retreat into the shadows.

Below: Exoteric+Exotic+Esoteric in Do by Simon Godfery, a sculpture of Marge Simpson's hair made from car-spray painted Lychees

 Since graduating from Brighton University, Ben has continued making art and films. Simon has however, since graduating from Goldsmiths and to the relief of his parents, relegated art to the position of hobby. Relegated? No. Simply shifted the focus. And the relationship between business and art has been an advantage in both areas of his life. This then leads us to the exhibition - there is a lot of business in the show. There is a painting of a business man on a surf board, photographs of a hotel conference hall, a hotel room with a laptop and a pile of lard on the chair, a stick with a cabbage hanging off it entitled Futures, a still life painting entitled At Work. The name of the show itself Spiritual Shapeshifter is taken from a book called Journeys Through the Electric Moons: Lessons For Managers From Contemporary Mysticism which I have to admit I've not heard of - but I've promised to read. The  book was researched over ten years by FR Grant who, so I'm told, went a lot further than the so-called radicals of management theory. As well as looking at the American consultancies, also looked at the organisational structures within the Hells Angels, and even at the functioning of some weird creatures that are both mono and poly cellular. Apparently the book has become essential reading - of an underground sort - at the Cambridge University business school.

 It is when I try to move from the book to the nitty gritty, the actual relationship between business and art - and what a 'Spiritual Shapeshifter' actually is - that it all goes wrong. Simon rants through a history of Protestantism, the history of the white cube, the American army trying to win the Vietnam war with equations, harmonies, faith, the Wild West, and in the shadows Ben begins to rock back and forth. When we get onto the Spiritual Shapeshifter, they both come to life. Ben still enshadowed, Simon forward in the sunshine they animatedly tell me about ghosts and how they exist all the more because they don't.

 I begin to think that they are just slightly deranged adolescents, their heads filled with crazy ideas which don't really matter. When I suggest that all this has been said a thousand times before, Ben's head protrudes half into the light, and Simon's recedes so that both heads are bisected identically. In unison they say 'It's in the details, man.' Hurriedly, I move on. So I say, you've had a show in London and a good review in Time Out. What are you doing now? But at this they draw a blank. A change occurs as if a lens has shifted out of acutely sharp focus into the middle distance. Ben shuffles back into the shadows, Simon talks about the company's plans for expansion into American markets. And I think I understand - all things are one, and yet infinitely divided. Like a nest of scorpions. On fire.  +