Tony Matelli’s Sleepwalker at Wellesley College: special focus (2014)

This sensationalized story raises several questions. What was the media result? What was its value? Was the coverage a strategic, PR-led media push, or a media pull, a compelling, journalism-led story?

According to what became the standard phrasing, Tony Matelli’s Sleepwalker, a “remarkably lifelike sculpture sleepwalking in nothing but his underpants” in an “eyes closed, zombie-like trance” was placed outdoors “at a busy area of campus” at the “prestigious women’s school.” [The sculpture was installed as part of Matelli’s solo show at the college’s Davis Museum.] Soon after the work’s installation, a group of students launched a "petition" on <change.org> demanding its removal, as "the sculpture is a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault.” As of 5 February 2014, the petition had collected 300 signatures.

The [sensational quotes above], which framed the story, come from an Associated Press (AP) wire release bearing the headline “Mass. College Man-in-Undies Sculpture Causes Stir.” This article was one of at least four AP wires that steamrolled through American media. AP offers its stories to about 1,400 U.S. daily newspaper members and thousands of TV/radio broadcast members, among other news outlets, both for hardcopy and Web usage. (In this case, we recorded more than 750 placements.) Interestingly, the Sleepwalker story was quickly bumped up from “odd news” to “big story,” and information about the exhibition was announced nationally. Images of the sculpture in the snow— perfect for news photo galleries and “photo of the day” features on Web sites— were also offered by AP, Getty, and Reuters, further driving the coverage.

Other news distributors followed suit with headlines like “Statue of near-naked man sparks ‘brief’ controversy” (Internet Broadcasting, more than 45 placements), “Realistic statue of man in underwear freaks out women’s college” (networked, Rick Couri-authored text, more than 40 placements), and “Naked Sleepwalker statue stirring controversy at college campus” (NBC News, more than 50 placements). Nationwide, more than 320 local TV affiliates of the four major TV networks published as many as four articles about Sleepwalker on their Web sites. News outlets in all 50 states carried the story. At the national level, almost every news outlet ran at least one report. In addition to the U.S., the story was reported in more than 90 other countries. As one can imagine, a social media frenzy accompanied the [mass-media performative mix].

Colorful headlines and opinion pieces of all stripes abounded, including “All-Female College Terrified by Creepy Underwear Man Statue” (gawker.com). A Time magazine writer slammed the protesters with “Man up, Wellesley: You’re a generation of sheltered children.” In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Wellesley College President H. Kim Bottomly slammed back, “None of them have any need to man up, and I hope and trust, for women’s sake, that none of them will ever shut up.” Andrea Peyser in the New York Post gave the following advice: “Girls, relax.”

Later news stories reported that the sculpture now had its own Twitter and Facebook accounts. Tony Matelli spoke out defending Sleepwalker, and Bottomly announced that “after weighing many perspectives,” the sculpture would stay, and “we must do everything we can to support those students who find themselves deeply affected by it” (Boston.com). This decision produced more news coverage, but by then the volume had peaked, and coverage began to trickle out.

The story was reported through diverse news categories, from strange news to arts and entertainment, style, celebrity, big story, trending, and national/world. Equally diverse were the kinds of publications running it, including outlets for arts news, political outlets, PerezHilton.com, Time magazine, and university news outlets— the student-run Wellesley News featured a particularly lively discussion. On U.S. and Canadian radio, Sleepwalker was consumed across formats, including news/talk, soul, country, pop, and rock.

Any press is not necessarily good press. Assessing “tonality” is a key element, and content analysis is necessary. Les Roka, a journalism researcher who examined key sample texts, says, “Overall, Wellesley and Matelli hit a grand slam. On the surface, yes, some phrasing is not ideal. But that’s the price one pays to interest the media and public at this level. In the end, people will remember an interesting sculpture that prompted a public, open debate. It also helps to keep Wellesley College on the radar as an interesting school.”

The story, of course, raised the general visibility of the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, and Tony Matelli. Roka went on to evaluate the impact in six U.S. media markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Utah, Ohio, New York City, and Boston. Based on the <artdesigncafe.com> compilation (and assuming text placement on the Web equates to TV/radio broadcast and hardcopy publication), he conservatively estimates at least 39.2 million media impressions, meaning eyeballs in front of a text or broadcast. “If the museum were more of a standard national attraction, this could potentially mean 140,000 additional visits per year,” Roka explains. “If spending were $20 each, that’s $2.8 million from visitors, members, or tourists.” As of February 18, the Davis Museum reported a fivefold increase in attendance (first weekend, 270 per day), but admission is free.

Nina Berger also reports an increase in Web traffic on the museum’s site, which peaked at 10 times more visits than usual (6,300 page views[/day]) before settling in at three times more than average. We located numerous outgoing links in on-line articles on top-powered news sites. Many go to Tony Matelli’s Web site and to that of Wellesley College. Internet marketers dream of these kinds of results because they competitively lift a site’s Google search rankings.

Both Tony Matelli and Nina Berger say they were completely surprised by the full-on media reaction, as well as by the social media onslaught. “I don’t think anyone saw it coming,” says Berger. “I know I didn’t. We did think Sleepwalker was newsworthy— and had invited a photographer from the Boston Globe to shoot the installation— but we had no idea how it would take off. The Globe ran a photo of Matelli’s Josh sculpture the next day [February 4], not Sleepwalker.”

The media frenzy didn’t begin until after word of the student petition started to spread— and Sleepwalker photographed vulnerably in the snow helped. Boston TV and newspapers were the first networked outlets to break the story, which quickly led to text, photos, and broadcast footage for national and international distribution. However, it was a local blog, The Swellesley Report, that first saw Sleepwalker’s media appeal on February 3, [and later announced] the student petition and the sculpture’s social media accounts.

Reflecting on the media frenzy two months later, Tony Matelli said, “I think it’s bizarre. The attention it received was so out of left field, so irrelevant to the work. So, I’m mystified by it really. It was fascinating just to watch it happen. It’s like watching yourself in a movie, like I was viewing all this as a third person.” Has he been able to capitalize on the media attention? “Not yet,” he says. “The art world moves slowly, it seems, especially when something like this happens.”

This article was co-partnered with Sculpture magazine, July/August 2014. The article was sent for hard-copy publication at the end of April 2014.

I had just published an interview of Tony Matelli in the January / February issue of Sculpture, focusing mainly on the work he presented the previous year at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark. While working at my computer on 8 February 2014, CNN Europe was on in the background. Some sort of artwork controversy was previewed but I didn’t pay much attention. After the commercial, still working, I registered a familiar name. I quickly glanced over and my jaw dropped. Tony was speaking on CNN, in interview with Jeanne Moos, and all I could think was, "Why is he on TV and what on earth is going on?"

This was my introduction to the mass media Sleepwalker controversy, and I had never expected this would happen with a work by Tony Matelli, because he didn’t seem orientated to it. This is even after writing and researching quite a bit on other artists and designers interfacing with mass media over 17 years. Tony was equally surprised by the media response. (But then so was, or claimed, Tracey Emin with her media coverage-generating tent sculpture Everyone I’ve ever slept with 1963-1995.) During a quick telephone call later with Tony, we agreed to let the media dust settle and have a follow-up interview in a few weeks.

R. J. Preece: Tony, what do you think of the media frenzy?

Tony Matelli: I think it’s bizarre.

I think it’s great that an artwork can still generate something like this. It’s been interesting and fascinating although I feel somewhat removed from it. The attention it received was so out of left field, so irrelevant to the work. So, I’m mystified by it really.

It’s also a lesson in how things go viral. I don’t know if this kind of media attention was possible before social media. A lot of the coverage seemed generated by the media but then also generated by social media.

The level of attention was super. It was fascinating just to watch it happen. It’s like watching yourself in a movie, like I was viewing all this as a third person.

R. J. Preece: What did you learn about the media, because this was your first semi-contentious experience, right?

Tony Matelli: Well it was my first, totally immersive experience. That’s for sure. And it was my first experience with so many types of media.

It felt like such a lazy story honestly, because essentially many of these stories were the same one. Taken from the AP, the headline tweaked here and there. The story wrote itself. The headline was really punchy. To me, everyone wanted to put it in their newspaper because it’s easy and the story is semi-salacious.

It was covered thoughtfully by a few people though. I found it strange that the traditional art media barely touched it.

R. J. Preece: Have you been able to capitalize on this media event, in any way?

Tony Matelli: Not yet. The art world moves slowly, it seems, especially when something like this happens. I think the media attention scared people. It may have hurt Sleepwalker in the short term. When everyone saw the media attention, it kitschified the work, almost. Everyone owned it, in a sense. Collectors may have been turned off because now everyone owns this piece because it got so much attention.

It might take a little bit of time for the work to rehabilitate itself, or assert its own authority again, and reclaim some of its own intrinsic power, rather than the media defining what it was. Because the media attention was never about the piece, so I think all of it may have obfuscated Sleepwalker.

Nina Berger, a publicity and media relations consultant specializing exclusively in arts and culture, works with a wide variety of clients engaged in visual arts, dance, theater, music, literary and educational initiatives. She’s been working with the Davis Museum since 2001. Her client roster includes the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Boston Cyberarts, Cantata Singers, the Boston International Antiquarian Book Festival, Handel & Haydn Society and Summer Stages Dance. Before starting her own consulting firm in 1998, Nina was the Director of Public Relations at Boston Ballet for 14 years.

The following is my interview of Nina Berger.

R. J. Preece: Were you surprised by the full-on regional, national and international media coverage?

Nina Berger: Absolutely! I don’t think anyone saw it coming. I know I didn’t. Wellesley College Media Relations Director Sofiya Cabalquinto and I did think the Sleepwalker, and Tony’s exhibition, was newsworthy, possibly on a national level since New Gravity is Tony’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S.— and had invited a photographer from the Boston Globe to shoot the installation— but we had NO idea how it would take off. The Globe ran a photo of Matelli’s Josh sculpture the next day, not Sleepwalker.

R.J. Preece: There’s something really interesting: sometimes TV stations have three news reports on their websites: via Associated Press (AP) on February 5; on February 6, either via the AP again or a distributed NBC News report (but on all TV network local affiliate sites) or another distributed article; and then an “updated” report on February 8. But the three AP texts are exactly the same.

I’m wondering what this means. Did all of these regional TV stations end up broadcasting it 2 or even 3 days at different times, or is AP text on their sites and broadcasts unrelated? Also, I wonder if this means they released the web-based story through their channels over 3 days.

What do you think?

Nina Berger: As for the local TV stations, they repackaged the story for different newscasts. Initially, some just talked about the story on air, using a still photo that had been posted by another news source. All of our local TV stations did a story on Tuesday, February 5— the day of the snowstorm— that was repackaged for the morning news the next day.

And, then they did another story on February 6 that included footage from the opening and interviews with Tony and the Davis Museum Director Lisa Fischman. They then turned around and fed their footage to national stations. And, what is available on their websites might not be all that they put on air. And, I think the Associated Press story often ran independent from the video pieces on the station’s website blogs.

R.J. Preece: It’s really amazing when you look at regional media markets across the United States. It seems sometimes it was announced by up to four TV stations, radio broadcasts— talk shows, rock radio, etc.— and the newspapers. This is in addition to the national-level media layer, times the internet coverage, and then social media, the comments, etc.

Nina Berger: It is pretty amazing how many different types of media covered the story. Something of a perfect storm.

All this definitely has me rethinking how social media works as a news source. Somehow this story crossed over a lot of usual boundaries, and captured people’s attention.

I’ve been struck by what this whole story says about the changing nature of American, national and international media— both traditional and social media— and the how and why this story was of interest on such a global scale.

I know personally that it sparked numerous conversations about art, gender, feminism, psychology, higher education, and censorship. The list goes on. Although, the contrast of being on the ground and seeing and experiencing the real-time story, in relationship to the media story, are often two different, albeit, intersecting realities. Working in media for the past 30 years, that’s always been the case.

It seems that the real story is just a spark for a broader conversation that’s been waiting to take place.

R.J. Preece: As I mentioned to you earlier, I proposed and curated my first show, in a Hong Kong gallery, right after the handover to China in 1997 with a political activist theme, but by a Japanese artist to create that “acceptable” distance. Hong Kong is a regional media capital, and newspapers, radio stations, and even CNN Asia ran stories. For a long time I was in a daze about it, and it took years to feel like I understood what happened and why. But your experience is 200+ times that.

Nina Berger: Yes, I’m sure that with time, the impact of this story and its coverage will be seen through a new lens and from new perspectives. I don’t remember a work of art ever engendering so much discussion. Maybe it’s the mix of humor & gravitas in Tony’s work that gives people an entrée. His art elicits so many questions! What is art? What is acceptable as public art? How should it be controlled? How do we define public/private space? How should art make you feel? Not to mention deeper questions of our humanity. Already, conversations in the media have evolved to include his Sleepwalker as a touchstone – in larger discussions of academic and artistic freedom versus social justice. And, I’m sure the nature of the conversation will change with time— as will our analysis of the story.

R.J. Preece: What new things did you learn that you will add to your practice?

Nina Berger: I’d like to try out more strategic use of social media for spurring on news coverage. It’s something I’ve been incorporating in my practice to date with some success. But it’s critical to be mindful of timing, image use, language, relevance— and of course, your long-range PR goals.

R.J. Preece: Do you have any advice to PR officers or artists that wake up one day and find themselves under the national— and international— spotlight? I particularly recommend artists getting media training…

Nina Berger: Of course getting media training is very helpful. Luckily, Tony Matelli, and Davis Director Lisa Fischman are very articulate, introspective, and down-to-earth. Tony’s on-campus discussions were critical in diffusing some of the tensions around the Sleepwalker installation and media storm. I always recommend being honest and staying true to your personal values, sticking to simple core messages, knowing your audience, and contextualizing your work and practice.

Also, check out our interviews of White Cube gallery’s PR guru in London: Now it’s Honey Luard’s turn and from Germany, Thomas Girst: Communicating BMW Art Cars.

Please note, this is a tough challenge. I’m as knee-deep in my discourse as many arts people are in theirs. My core academic / practitioner background includes journalism, public relations and media history/criticism. Adding to this, almost everything mentioned below is up for academic debate, as vociferous as anything I can imagine in the arts. So, for the occasional PR/journalism academic that stumbles on this article, please do see the endnotes page.

For everyone else, below is my abbreviated, best guesstimate.

The scope
I chose to look closely at the following media markets: Ohio, where I grew up and earned my PhD; Utah, where I’ve lived and worked for 14 years; New York, because it’s the American media capital and one would expect the widest discussion across media types; Boston, because the media event was located and fueled there. Lastly, I chose Los Angeles and San Francisco because I wanted to sort of compare these two West Coast cities with their East Coast counterparts.

I also looked at the US national compilation, as this is a media coverage layer on top of all of these markets.

Tonality: negative/positive on a scale
Cutting to the core, overall, Wellesley and Matelli hit a grand slam. On the superficial surface, yes, some phrasing is not ideal. But that’s the price one pays to interest the media and public at this level. In the end, people will remember an interesting sculpture that prompted a public, open debate. It also helps to keep the Wellesley College name on the radar as an interesting school.

When one looks closely at the compilation, sees the headlines, and goes into the articles, the controversy inspired all sorts of narratives: it’s creepy, it’s bizarre, it’s unconventional, it’s fantastic. Someone even created a Twitter account for Sleepwalker. It raises issues of appropriateness. It may signify a kind of sub-cultural, generational divide, and maybe an academic divide. And so forth.

The media coverage value
First, please note that addressing this question is a can of worms that has for years resulted in many articles and books about numbers and methodology. It’s like answering the question, “Who is the leading artist of our time? And which artist will be in the future, looking back at our time?”

Having said this, one needs to put something out there to give an indication. It also can be a starting point; in PR circles, hopefully it will attract attention for a healthy discussion. So, here is my best guesstimate, as simply the matter of “raising visibility” for the parties mentioned in the media coverage is not very helpful at all really.

Overall, I conservatively estimate there were at least 39.2 million media impressions in the six Designated Marketing Areas (DMAs), meaning eyeballs in front of the text or broadcast. (This is for the “first wave” of coverage that occurred in February 2014.) Here, for argument’s sake, I’m assuming that web publication on a TV, newspaper and magazine website is translating into hard copy publication and TV and radio broadcast. This is also based on the practical limitations of the data set. A more thorough and expensive compilation would specify Internet publication and audience— as well as hard copy publication and audience, and TV/radio broadcast and audience. I’ve taken the former and applied the publicly available data of the latter. Again, for argument’s sake.

If the museum were more of a standard national attraction, such as a national history museum or aquarium, 39.2 million media impressions could mean potentially 140,000 additional visits/year. If spending were $20 each, that’s USD$2.8 million from visitors, members or tourists.

Again, you can imagine the debate that can occur in PR circles about this guesstimate. Imagine a group of burlesque show PRs in Las Vegas. The feathers would definitely be flying.

Now, let’s look at the individual markets.

Boston Designated Marketing Area (DMA)
Guesstimate: at least 4.0 million media impressions. In Boston, the 7th largest US media market, there was quite a bit of variety in the story angles— which then went national via distribution channels. I found it intriguing they went into more detail about the controversy and how the college was responding. The coverage was quite balanced with follow-up stories, as opposed to other DMAs that opted for simply the initial oddity or weirdness angle. There was discussion about the artistic value and merit, and there was a response by the artist in the media coverage.

New York City DMA
Guesstimate: at least 12.4 million media impressions. In the New York City DMA, there also was a full discussion, as one would expect, given the established interest base via AP (Associated Press), and the elements of a controversy involving a public sculpture, an elite women’s college, the student response, and New York being the US media capital. (FYI: it’s important to look closely at the “US national level” of the compilation; many of these “national” media outlets are New York-based, as well as Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.)

Ohio DMAs and Utah DMA
Guesstimate: Ohio - at least 5.3 million media impressions; Utah - at least 1.3 million media impressions. These DMAs appear to be highly reliant upon what AP correspondents offered in their coverage, based on the compilation. In addition, in Ohio, there appears to be more usage of the terms “creepy” and “odd” and “realistic”. So it seems to have been treated, overall, more as a novelty, versus the various coverage tones in New York and Boston.

Does this say something about audience sizes in Ohio? Or, those who are interested in certain kinds of coverage defer to national outlets—or those in other places? A worthwhile discussion point.

I particularly like looking at the Salt Lake City DMA. Make it here and your message is tightly projected across the entire state, even spilling over the border. Curiously, the Deseret News ran the headline “’Sleepwalker’ braves the cold at Massachusetts college”. This newspaper is based in Salt Lake City and is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the readership extends through this “channel” internationally (with an impressive top 5700 website traffic-ranking according to Alexa, comparable to the Miami Herald). While the story mentions the sculpture appearing nearly nude, the headline was as vanilla as it could possibly be with this story. This compares to others like “man-in-undies”, “tighty-whities”, and “nearly naked man”.

Los Angeles DMA and San Francisco DMA
Guesstimate: Los Angeles - at least 9.5 million media impressions; San Francisco - at least 6.7 million media impressions. What’s interesting here is that, overall, at first the coverage appears very AP-driven and in some ways, comparable to Ohio and Utah (minus the Deseret News). However, look closely at the US national layer. Here, many pop/celebrity culture websites are based, or centered, in Los Angeles. Then you have major Internet companies headquartered in the San Francisco area that distribute news nationally and internationally in multiple countries. So these two didn’t seem to take on the story to the level of New York and Boston, but this highlights that the national layer must be looked at when examining any of the DMAs.

Lastly, the university-affiliated news coverage across the DMAs was interesting to examine. One example was at the University of San Francisco. The Foghorn (student publication) ran a piece that was as detailed, thoughtful and balanced as any I saw in Boston or New York.

Conclusion
So here you have my best guesstimate. Many artists sometimes make great sacrifices for developing their art. So do some media relations evaluators. Now I’ll go back to my core disciplines, ready to dodge any academic or practitioner arrows that fly my way at any moment…

Click to see the endnotes for this article.

Tony Matelli: New Gravity

Davis Museum at Wellesley College
Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA
5 February - 20 July 2014

Press release text by the Davis Museum

Tony Matelli: New Gravity, the artist’s first solo exhibition at a U.S museum, opens at the Davis Museum on February 5, 2014. Comprised of recent works from the past five years as well as new works created specifically for the Davis, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s discursive use of time, ambivalence, banality and wonder. In Matelli’s work the physical laws of objects are often reversed, upended or atomized, and with these deft manipulations of matter and gravity come profound reorientations in perspective and ways of seeing. Matelli creates a distortion field of sorts, a lens through which to question one reality and create another.

Installed in two parts at the Davis, the exhibition also sites two sculptures (Sleep Walker and Stray Dog) outdoors on campus. [...]

Often employing a hyper-realistic idiom, Tony Matelli’s work challenges our perceptions of reality. His sculptures create a disconcerting tension between uneasiness and humor, frequently suspending time and belief. Matelli imbues his art with layers of familiarity and discomfort, employing remarkable skill and technique to create works that ask us to take a critical look at ourselves and at the culture around us.

“There is a romantic impulse in my work, that strives to give form to my emotions and thoughts and the way I see the world,” commented Tony Matelli. “I’m fascinated with that moment when you become aware of a perceptual shift in your environment, so what was a seemingly real-life experience becomes a complicated art experience. That approach to art is really powerful. It makes everything else seem like a prop that only pointed to an idea. The precision of praxis has a great impact on me, and my work operates in that spirit.”

Tony Matelli’s work is in numerous private and public collections including the Cranbrook Art Museum; FLAG Art Foundation; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum; the National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Fundacion La Caixa, Madrid; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the KünstlerhausBethanien, Berlin and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. A mid-career survey, Tony Matelli: A Human Echo, premiered at the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark in 2012 and traveled to the Bergen Kunstmuseum, Norway in 2013. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, and is represented by Marlborough Chelsea, New York and Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm.

[...]

In February this year, a Tony Matelli sculpture called Sleepwalker appeared on a snow-covered roadside at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The hyper-realist depiction of a man in underwear walking with outstretched arms triggered student protests at the all-female college, followed by a worldwide avalanche of headlines across traditional press, television and social media.

Is this kind of media blast just a storm in a teacup, or can artists and arts organisations leverage it to their benefit? Scotland-based artist, arts/heritage trouble-shooter and former Director of Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, Hope London, interviews F. Kwong Lee, the current Director of Castlefield to explore some answers.

Hope London: Can artists or arts organisations propel themselves to fame and fortune by taking advantage of a viral media blast of the kind that brought Sleepwalker to world attention?

Kwong Lee: For organisations without too many roots in PR, any news story that comes through is good. When we lost our funding two years ago, there were a lot of stories with headlines like "Manchester Gallery Closing Down". That wasn’t the case, but we didn’t counter them very strongly because they were only headlines and the text explained it wasn’t as serious as that. But headlines, especially extreme headlines, do grab readers and there came a point when we had to say this was untrue. We have to be mindful that stories don’t misrepresent us or the artists we work with, and that we weren’t exploiting the press or the goodwill of people who support us as an organisation.

Hope London: Who are “the press” today? Let’s talk about social media...

Kwong Lee: Social media is basically opinion, not rounded investigative journalism. The person on the street has a voice through social media. Sometimes people’s voices are a good source of peer review, and their viewpoint will be re-tweeted or posted or commented on... if something is liked on a social media site, the groundswell of non-journalist reporting can be a powerful way to galvanise movements.

When we lost our funding, there were a lot of voices coming through social media expressing disbelief and about how much people value what we do. It’s not us reading it that matters, but other people, and I believe it helped when we presented ourselves to funders and stakeholders and even our own board— and our peers, not just artists and supporters, but the arts ecology, people who run other organisations. It was immediate and helpful to get that public opinion.

We’re talking about social media as personal opinions rather than to relay a piece of information as in this case, from one newspaper to another and to other media. That’s one way we’ve definitely experienced social media as a force. Another way is when the more traditional press has written something about us that gets re-tweeted, so maybe a piece in Art Monthly or the Manchester Evening News or BBC Online is relayed across media.

Hope London: Yes, that sums up the mechanics. The next question is how you can translate that kind of coverage into more long term, tangible benefits for the organisation or artist... can you?

Kwong Lee: Truthfully, for us it’s early days. We’re trying to get noticed and there are so many competing voices out there, but that’s not anything new. But now we are much more aware of the power of communications, and our social media voice is louder and more persistent. We don’t have many staff, but we have a great voice now because of social media. Even after losing our core funding, we were able to continue telling the story of CG.

Our supporters used to say we were really great at delivering programmes and projects, but not at explaining what we do to different people, so only artists, curators and our audiences were aware of it. We weren’t communicating well beyond that select group of people.

Hope London: So do you think that now, because of social media, a small organisation is better able to punch above its weight in the competitive world of PR?

Kwong Lee: Yes, for me it’s about staff capacity. Previously, we didn’t have someone who was dedicated to communications. Now we have someone in place four days a week. What’s changed is that we are much more outward facing in terms of our own understanding that we need to reach people who may be interested in us and able to support us in the future.

Hope London: That sounds like a realistic strategy for long term growth. Are you aware of any artists or arts organisations who’ve managed to parlay a successful media blast into something bigger in a more immediate way?

Kwong Lee: A few years ago, Manchester Museum had a small statue that seemed to spin on his own and was really mysterious. They put a stop motion camera on it and had about a million hits on YouTube. It was on CNN in America and the Museum really capitalised on it. Was it the power of the ancient pharoahs? It turned out it was some kind of vibration in the building causing it to spin. So it wasn’t even really a story.

But it’s about how you tell the story. It would be really niche if it was just reported in the normal way. The video sparked people’s imaginations and became a public interest story. The serious side is that as a result more people knew about the Manchester Museum. That took somebody to just dip a toe in the water, test it out, and create a human interest story as opposed to an arts or archaeological story.

Hope London: Any examples involving artists?

Kwong Lee: UHC (Ultimate Holding Co.) is a socially engaged artist collective in Manchester. Their Camp X-ray installation was a recreation of the US camp at Guantanamo Bay, only based here in Manchester. It had barbed wire and everything, and people could go in and intern themselves. The piece attracted national and international media attention, and the Observer’s Art Review of 2003 cited it as one of the events of the year.

These artists are real thinkers. In 2009, they had a project called extInked where they drew 100 of the most endangered species in the British Isles at the time. It was a comment on green issues and evolution. Then they got on social media to encourage people to tattoo these images on their bodies. About 400 people applied. They had to explain how they’d be an ambassador for a particular species. As a result, 100 people are now walking around with one of the endangered species tattooed on their bodies.

Ai Wei Wei is an artist who generates lots of international press and used to tweet a lot. Other people would also tweet on his behalf. He’s very much in the public realm. But this is an important question for me, whether you can ever rely on one news story to carry you through. You need to have a continuing narrative to keep you in the public eye. And stories have to be truthful, not like some pointless social media stories that seem to be invented.

If we have something to say we should say it. We’re evolving. What is the new social media platform to share stories in five years time? You always need to be investigating how people are communicating with each other, ordinary people as well as experts like journalists and writers.

Hope London: What you’re saying makes me wonder whether the more things change the more they stay the same... people are the same, we like to share our stories, but the media are different.

Kwong Lee: Yes, we have more tools today, but the environment of press and public relations remains the same. Maybe what’s different is the citizen reporter. Videos and images are really good, so immediate. Reading something goes in tandem but people tend to believe more in things they can see. So I’m saying that first, there’s more immediacy in how stories can get out there and circulated. Secondly, video and photographs taken on phones or other technology are further evidence of something happening. And thirdly, there is the element of the citizen reporter. The tools have enabled us to be more participatory. The images cross language barriers— like Tony Matelli’s Sleepwalker at Wellesley College, which has been taken up by China and other countries. If it was just text-based, it wouldn’t have had the impact or ability to translate so easily.

Hope London: I agree. The media may have changed, but human beings have never been able to resist spreading a spicy message. It will be interesting to see how well social media stories stand the test of time, like some of the old folk songs still being sung in pubs throughout the land. Part of me keeps thinking back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the scene where the wandering minstrel made up a nasty song about an unfortunate knight called Sir Robin...

Kwong Lee: I bought that a few Christmases ago— think I’ll have to go home and watch it again!

Tony Matelli’s imperfect human figures and macabre self-portraits might be described as expressions of hyperrealistic angst. Over the past 15 years, he has reinterpreted the human condition through an interplay of humor and horror, a strategy best demonstrated in Total Torpor, Mad Malaise (2003). In this grotesque parody of a classical reclining figure, a deformed, nude man overcome by boils smiles curiously at us over the remains of his bingeing— a reference to the foot of Tracey Emin’s iconic Bed (1998), with its carpet-strewn garbage and associated questions.

Tony Matelli has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across Europe and North America, including “Personal Structures,” a collateral event/exhibition at the 2011 Venice Biennale. His most wide-ranging solo exhibition, “Tony Matelli— A HUMAN ECHO,” was shown at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark in 2012. Matelli grew up in Chicago and Wisconsin and received a BFA in sculpture from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and an MFA in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He now lives and works in New York.

R.J. Preece: To what extent are your works autobiographical?

Tony Matelli: Less and less. Early on, I was really interested in the possibility of my work operating within a Romantic framework— work that stemmed from my daily experience, that tried to give form to my emotions and feelings. I was thinking of Munch. This was important to me for a few reasons. I wanted to connect with the viewer in an empathic way, since I was disillusioned with what I saw as the largely intellectual work around me, which all seemed academic and dry. I thought that this was hurting art, making it detached and boring. I felt that if I could connect with a viewer’s empathy, then that would empower the work. My first serious work was a self-portrait, a sculpture of an open cardboard box with my name printed on the side. It was a kind of declaration: this is how I want to be— like an open box, empty and ready to receive. Through the years, I’ve inserted my own image into the work a lot, but I have started to move away from that because I think that in some ways it reduced the possibilities of the work. My interests are now in reducing the work’s focus. I am still interested in an empathic connection with the viewer, but I’ve largely removed myself. I want the work to be more expansive, which is to say more abstract.

R.J. Preece: How do you go about choosing your subjects?

Tony Matelli: Slowly. I typically start with a very loose notion, a feeling even. For instance, with Josh, I was thinking about personality, individual character, and how those things can weigh us down— how we can sometimes become imprisoned within the accumulation and inertia of our own character. I was thinking about what it would mean to be free of those things, how liberating but also how terrifying. I envisioned an empty cup floating on the surface of water— buoyant but also very precarious, ready at any moment to fill and sink. I then thought of the body in equilibrium. Levitation. One thought leads to the next for me until I have an unshakable image in my head. Then that’s the thing I try to make.

R.J. Preece: Do you start with an idea, a subject, or a material?

Tony Matelli: I guess it starts with a vague subject or idea. Sometimes a vague formal notion can spark a work. Sometimes I just want something to sit in space like this or that, but I never begin with the material. Materials are there to serve ideas.

R.J. Preece: What were you going after in F***ed (Couple) (2005/06)?

Tony Matelli: I wanted to make a sculpture about romantic love. Since “love” is such an old and, in some ways, clichéd or debased idea, I needed to find a way for it to feel fresh and relevant. Sometimes the best way to speak to something powerful is to powerfully represent its opposite. I wanted to represent all of the possible adversities to romantic love and to humanity in general— to absurdly represent the complications of life through extreme cartoon violence— and I thought I would make the power of these figures’ connection even more potent and visible. The two figures are impaled and suffering all kinds of absurd trauma, yet they still manage to move forward. They still manage to hold hands. On his arm is a tattoo that says, “True love forever.” This is the arm that holds his partner; in fact, their joined limbs are untouched by violence— those arms are pure.

R.J. Preece: What are you trying to say in Total Torpor, Mad Malaise (2003), with its grotesqueness, classic pose, and staged quality?

Tony Matelli: Total Torpor, Mad Malaise is my third self-portrait. I was most interested in the combination of a body dysmorphia, grotesquely reified, and a comically stoic disposition. This gets back to my idea of empathic connection with a work of art. There is an almost anxious identification with this sculpture. It is a sort of reimagined Greek statue, one that has been disfigured by the anxieties of contemporary life.

R.J. Preece: It must be fun to watch reactions to this work.

Tony Matelli: I honestly don’t enjoy watching people look at my work. It feels too personal, and I’d rather be in another room or on the plane home.

R.J. Preece: Do you see Old Enemy, New Victim (2007) as an illustration of earth’s interspecies and environmental battles?

Tony Matelli: Absolutely not. I was thinking about my relationships to other people. I wanted to make a work that represented two sets of victims. There is a former oppressor, the fat chimp, and a present oppressor, the emaciated chimp. How viewers read the work— and which character they identify with— depends on how they perceive their current position in life. Although I use elements of nature in my work, I don’t care about nature as a subject. These are just metaphors for me. I don’t really care about chimps; I don’t really care about weeds: I only use these things to talk about us.

R.J. Preece: How do you go about making a hyperrealist sculpture like Old Enemy, New Victim?

Tony Matelli: I try to think about the best, most interesting way to express an idea. After that, it’s almost all execution. I start with a series of small maquettes or collages to get the composition as I want it. Then, I move on to posing and photographing models in positions based on my collages. Next, I start constructing armatures for the clay work, while keeping in mind how things will get molded and cast and reassembled.

This one was particularly involved because every little thing needed to be custom-made, including the teeth and eyes for all three chimps. The mold-making was a bitch; and all this is before reassembly, clean up, painting, and all the hair work. Obviously this is done with assistants. The entire process for the first edition of Old Enemy took about eight months. The subsequent two editions were much faster, because the mold-making and sculpting were already done and we had the learning curve under our belts.

R.J. Preece: Which work in the ARoS installation was the hardest to make?

Tony Matelli: Jesus, everything is hard to make. Lost & Sick was difficult because it was the first big thing I ever made, and I did it all myself while working art assistant jobs. It took about a year with that schedule. Aside from that, Old Enemy takes the cake. It was complicated and involved many new things for the studio. After making that work, I felt like I could make just about anything that I could imagine.

R.J. Preece: Your works rely very heavily on craftsmanship. How did you learn, or learn to manage, this?

Tony Matelli: I suppose I’ve always had an aptitude for it. When I was a kid, I was really into building models and dioramas, which incorporated almost the same skills that I use now. Unfortunately art school erased a lot of this. I think that I lost manual skill because I got interested in different things. I ignored those skills for six years. I remember being in figure sculpture class and thinking that it was the dumbest, most irrelevant thing in the world. Then, when I actually wanted those skills, I had to learn them on my own. Now I’m able to hire technicians and other artists who are much better than I am at these very specialized things. Ultimately the work would suffer under my own technical limitations.

R.J. Preece: You’ve used mirroring and the appearance of “dust” in Josh (2010) and Arrangement (2012). Is this about offering another viewpoint? And why is “BITCHES” spelled out in the dust?

Tony Matelli: Sometimes it’s simple and sometimes it’s pretty complicated, but these pieces have related, though different motivations. With Josh, I wanted to create a simple image of personified ambivalence. Arrangement is also pretty simple, an image of beauty upended— a beautiful thing made strange, but still beautiful.

The mirrors are similar in that they take a known thing and complicate it. I wanted to undermine the idea of a mirror’s clarity. A mirror is all about the objective projection of subjectivity— the truth of one’s own image. I wanted to complicate it by adding traces of other people through the dust of time, interwoven with one’s own image. Instead of seeing yourself clearly, you see yourself through multiple layers of dust and finger traces of other people. Names and words written and crossed out, vulgarities and shout-outs, and in the background your own image. Ultimately, I wanted them to feel like cave paintings or palimpsests.

R.J. Preece: Who is Josh?

Tony Matelli: Josh is a close friend of mine. It’s the first time that I made a proper portrait of someone other than myself. He inspired the work and, in a strange way, embodies what I was trying to get at abstractly.

R.J. Preece: Are there materials that you really like or don’t like at all?

Tony Matelli: I like bronze because it stays put. It’s easy to paint and easy to fix. It does what you say. Sadly it’s not appropriate for everything. I hate silicone as a finished sculpture material. It’s very hard to work with in almost every way, but I cannot avoid it. Figures almost always need to be made of it.

R.J. Preece: What were some of your key breaks or opportunities?

Tony Matelli: In graduate school, I met the person who would become my first dealer. That was a very key break. And there have been others. I made F***ed (Couple) for a group show at ARoS, and based on that work [and some other ones], they invited me to do a large survey exhibition. It goes to show that you need to be trying all the time, 100 percent. You never know where a future opportunity will come from.

R.J. Preece: Who are your artistic influences?

Tony Matelli: I don’t love talking about this stuff, but for the sake of conversation, I would say Jeff Koons and Ivan Albright. Koons because of his determination to imbue conceptual ideas with seductive power. This is really the lesson of religious art, but I wouldn’t know it if not for Koons. And Albright was one of my first art experiences. There is a great collection of his paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I remember being struck by their anxious energy and detail. They seemed to vibrate with nervous tension. Later in life that spoke very clearly to me.

R.J. Preece: Are there other, perhaps stronger influences on your work?

Tony Matelli: I spoke earlier about toy model-making, which is still really strong in me. My first experience with what I would call narrative sculpture was playing Dungeons and Dragons. The game takes place mostly in the mind, but it is often accompanied by miniature pewter figures that represent imagined characters. This was when I started to invest in narrative figure sculpture, and I see a very clear lineage from that to what I was doing a few years ago.

R.J. Preece: Was there anything that you didn’t learn in art school that you wish you had?

Tony Matelli: Tons of things. I went to a somewhat provincial undergraduate art school, and this was before the Internet, so there was almost no access to contemporary art. The school made little or no effort to bring it in, and I was left on my own. I guess this is good and bad, but it was a very rude awakening when I met students from better schools. I felt as though my school was actively withholding information from me. In many ways, it was a reactionary art environment.

When I visit schools now for lectures, the main thing that seems to be missing from the students’ education is a knowledge of how the art world works. This is primarily because the teachers have no idea. Art school should be a little like a vocational school, like welding school or cooking school. It should not be a traditional liberal arts education, it should be a hybrid education. For some reason, art schools completely ignore the professional aspect, as though art is a privileged part of culture above commerce, professional status, and rules. I think this idea is harmful to artists— and to art. The more that schools ignore how students can and will function in the world, the more baristas we will have.