Photos courtesy Virginia Rollison

Earlier this month I sat down with London artist Joe Black and the artist-duo Miss Bugs to talk about their work. The artists flew in to prepare their show at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Brooklynite Gallery and to add their touch to the neighborhood by means of a little street art. This show was the first at the gallery, and maybe anywhere, to have its opening broadcast online, and according to cofounder Rae McGrath, 45 viewers from 30 different countries tuned in to the gallery’s website for the live feed. Street artist Leon Reid IV interviewed guests, some local, some international, creating what McGrath calls a “red carpet” atmosphere.

Time Out New York: Miss Bugs, you’ve said that you don’t refer to yourselves as “artists,” rather as “image-makers.” Why is that?

Miss Bugs: In a sense it removes us a little bit from the work, because a lot looks at the ownership of work and the ownership of ideas. We take other things and remix it and tell a new story. So it removes us from the work, and then it belongs to the viewers more. We’re taking iconic imagery that we think belongs to everybody, anyway, and putting our flag on it.

Where do you see the dividing line between art with a capital A and commercial imagery?
MB: For us, it’s all one and the same. Some people say (about Shepard Fairey), “Oh, he’s sold out.” Has he really sold out? He’s just done a political poster. That’s development. That’s what he should be doing at that level.

Why is that not selling out? Why is that progress?
MB: Because things have to change, and they have to move on. From that poster he’s got more to say now, and if that’s his opinion, then he should be doing something like that. I think people are too quick to say, “that’s selling out.” It isn’t. It’s just the next step.

Can you explain to me the breakdown of the Miss Bugs collective? What can be attributed to Miss and what to Bugs?
[Silence]

Okay! Anyway, you both deal heavily in the appropriation of commercial and artistic imagery. Are you at all concerned about copyright laws?
Joe Black: It’s quite a gray area in the art world. I think it’s hard to bring in copyright for an artist although they may have brought in elements of other artwork.

MB: We’d like to confront it. I think everyone’s pinching from each other, stealing from each other, call it what you want really. It’s just the way it goes.

Miss Bugs, you’ve been critical of copyright and even of the Turner Prize as two means of protecting artists and making them untouchable.
MB: Sometimes it can seem critical, but this is kind of what I’m saying about being an “image maker.” It’s like being a photojournalist, it’s a study of something. We’re just looking at things that happen. Often the work can be mistaken as being cynical. So our reference to the Turner Prize is to look at the other side of the art world, the powers that control it and run it. We’re trying to show the viewers that where they might not always understand that. Turner Prize winners come about, and then they’re in that world. They’re put public. They’re in that world, and then they’re protected by the collectors, the galleries and the whole system around them.

Would you turn down the Turner Prize?
MB: Why not turn it down? We would do that, but then you’d also get coverage for that, so it’s the same.

JB: There is a structure in the fine-art world, certainly in the U.K. Royal College, Goldsmiths, it’s kind of a stepping-stone process. I think what street art has opened up, is that artists can come from a nontraditional art background. Now’s a really strong time for the open art world. In the U.K., the established art world frowned upon it. Artists have been protected by galleries or institutes, and ultimately collected as well. And now it’s happening in new markets, as well, in urban art and street art; the same thing’s happening as in the higher-end art world.

How traditional are your backgrounds?
JB: I went to Royal College.

Really?!
JB: Yeah, that’s right; we met at Royal College. [Laughs] No, we didn’t. My background was, I was a sculptor, and then I moved into furniture design and then into illustration. I was an illustrator for quite some time, so I was working in that commercial art world. There’s still a sculptural element to my work.

What’s the draw to images, as opposed to sculpture or furniture?
JB: I think my heart lies with the image. Whether it’s 3-D structure or a 2-D image, it’s still about the image really. Even furniture design, you’ve got these classics, like Eames chairs or Bauhaus. They’re classic pieces of art.

Of course, the sort of appropriation work you do is mostly with two-dimensional images. I guess you could quote an Eames chair, but in the end—unless you were the genius of furniture design appropriation—it would come off as a knock-off rather than as a quotation.
JB: Yeah, that’s nicely put.

Joe, you have a piece in the show that’s a LEGO portrait of Andy Warhol and was originally entitled Andy, the Original Pirateer. There seems to be a celebration of piracy in your work. How would you feel in thirty years—after you’ve won the Turner Prize—if other people started pirating your work?
JB: I’d be a bit touchy about it. If they took the imagery, who’s for me to say you can’t. The technique—maybe a little bit. It’s taken me quite a while to work out the process using these materials. In ten or fifteen years time, that might be okay, as long as I keep moving it forward.

Do you perceive a massive difference between being an artist in London and in New York?
JB: I think East London—Shoreditch—is very similar to Williamsburg. They say there are more artists per head in East London than anywhere else in the country.

Yeah, and so-called artists. [Laughs] One story you tell in your works is that of the power of the image and of advertising.
MB: With the (pieces containing) Kate Moss I think, she’s the queen of advertising. She’ll advertise any product. It’s like street stickers from kids just promoting themselves, and how that’s grown into something massive now where you use these big advertising firms and guerilla advertising techniques. That shows the power that one single artist can have.… So we’re showing that development and how powerful (the artist and the image) can be.—David Levitz

“2 Many Artists” remains at the Brooklynite Gallery through May 2.