22 November - 15 December

Happi with an i is a long term project by Norwich based artists, Alec Game and Tom Little. Working under the collective name of Studio 3.4, Part 1 - (Co)lapse, documents their exploration of, and developing relationship to, a cliff on the Norfolk coast. Both members of Studio 3.4 studied at Norwich University of the Arts. They currently live and work in Norwich, and are OUTPOST Studio Holders.

A conversation between Charlie Barkus and Studio 3.4 artists, Tom Little and Alec Game, 15 November 2019, OUTPOST Gallery.

Charlie Barkus: I wanted to start by asking about your process for creating work, and what was the starting point for this project?

Tom Little: The start of the project was when I went to The Cliff on my birthday 3 or 4 years ago.

Alec Game: We got together to discuss making new work and we didn’t really have a theme or idea, Tom suggested we just go to The Cliff because he remembered it being an interesting place and I had never been, we’ve just kept going back.

TL: Yeah, we’ve been going there once or twice a week, on and off, for the last six months now.

CB: So it’s the site itself that has driven the ideas, thoughts, and processes behind the project?

TL: Absolutely, we went there originally to take photographs and we were trying to record The Cliff in a methodical/scientific way, but also take beautiful images as well. It is only through going so regularly that the way we were thinking about making work started to change because of the broadness of the discussions we were having. So the conversations we were having became more important than the work we were making initially. It is what we were talking about there, by being there, being present there, having moments alone, we would walk away from one another, come back and have a conversation based on what we were thinking about.

AG: It’s such a big space that you can easily wander off on your own. For the first actual piece of work we made there we started on The Cliff and photographed the edge of The Cliff, where there was a clear definition of where the cliff ended and you could see the beach below. I think in the very first photograph we recorded the coordinates of where we stood, then walked 10 meters along the cliff, stopped, and took another photograph. We recorded the coordinates of the last photograph as well. That was kind of how we started looking at the area through this documentative archival process.

TL: When we first started going we wanted to record the change and we had a clear idea that we were going to document or photograph these very specific changes. We even measured the distance of the tripod to the edge of The Cliff, what’s really interesting is that we didn’t necessarily need to do that because of the rapid change. On a day to day basis, going back there regularly, we noticed every change; even down to a small pile of clay and rocks.

CB: What awareness and thoughts do you have that you are both outsiders to The Cliff? I was wondering about this idea of perception and your thoughts on how the audience will view your work as you haven’t given away too much information.

TL: I think when making work it is a constant battle between what you think is right to do and what you think people are going to enjoy. We were just discussing this actually, in terms of not wanting to make individual pieces, but entire spaces.

AG: Yes, we want to make work for specific places. But back to this idea of outsiders, we have spoken to people there, people stop and chat to you and we have spoken to some of the guys putting in sea defences. Initially we wanted to get more involved with the local community, which we still do, but the work in this show, I don’t think, is telling anyone else’s specific story; it’s very much a direct showing of our initial exploration of the place, in that sense it is very personal.

TL: It is an instinctive response to the way we have felt for however long, but because it is part of a wider project we somehow need to compartmentalise elements of what we are actually looking at when we are doing a certain thing.

CB: So this is partly a documentation of that larger project.

TL: Partly, yes, but it is more a documentation of our first response, it’s like how do we deal with this massive idea, or issue; it’s not as simple as ‘A Cliff is falling into the sea’. It is so broad we needed to make it smaller to even think about it ourselves.

AG: We wanted to make people look at it the way we have been looking at, to sort of highlight the things we always pick up on when we are there. To help bring people into that space.

TL: This work in OUTPOST is an introduction into the way we see the project going in the future.

AG: There is something maybe childish and playful about the way we interact with the site, we are always picking up pieces, getting up close to things; we didn’t want to overlook that experience because it is enjoyable and interesting.

TL: It’s also difficult and challenging because when you pick up a piece of clay and then you also pick up a piece of tile or brick fallen from the top, these two things together are almost disturbing.

AG: Yeah, one piece is the reason the other piece is there. There is a bridge, or a gap between the two. There is the evidence of the before and after, but the between is not there.

TL: Going back to a previous question, I always feel like a tourist, and I can’t escape the idea that I am a tourist.

CB: So the idea of the site is something that seems important to you and as you have both been working all week in the gallery already I wanted to know if it was important to negotiate with the space here at OUTPOST. Do you see yourselves as making work in the space or bringing work into the space?

AG: I guess we have been curating this show in our heads for a while now, in that we know what the space looks like and what we can do with it.

TL: I don’t really know what we have been doing. This is the first time we have actually had a preconceived idea of what’s going to happen in the space on this scale. I’ve not thought about it as in we are actually bringing material in, I had the idea that we are making an entire installation, that the space is the work.

CB: It’s almost as if the work you have made outside of the space is the material you are using to create the work in here?

AG: Well, we have got two films finished, so it’s about creating an environment to show them in. But we haven’t actually talked about the films yet.

TL: Do we need to?

AG: I think we should.