On one of the first genuinely pleasant evenings of this interminably wintry spring, a street scene plays itself out in West London - a gathering of bohemians and artists, writers, collectors, aesthetes, drunks, former drunks, French House regulars, spies on their down-time, retired actors, mid-rank poets. The assemblage is gathered in and outside James Jackson Antiques, where The Artist Formerly Known as Robert Rubbish has hung his latest exhibition, La Promenade de Venus. The work is distinct to anyone who has known Rubbish’s oeuvre, going back as it does now to his Le Gun days and before - delicate, scratchy pen and ink drawings full of remarkable detail - finely cross-hatched shading, immense planes of patterns rendered in the thinnest of black lines - lino floors, various fabrics, columns, buildings, outdoor vistas. All populated, now at least, by a revolving cast of historical figures, mostly Surrealist artists and their extended entourage - creating a kind of visual mythology formed from the wellspring of Rubbish’s imagination and deep reading of the group’s history. In this new body of work, as well as the distinctive Parisian scenes, there are a suite of pictures featuring the distinctive pink granite stones of Brittany. These stones become startlingly sculptural non-human counterpoints to the definitively art-making figures that surround them, marking, somehow, both distinction and communion between the human drive to make artworks, and the natural world’s innate aesthetics. I wanted to ask Robert some questions about this new body of work, and his answers are characteristically witty, intelligent and illuminating.

Can you tell us a bit about these new pictures? About the figures that feature and the locations?

The new body of work is called La Promenade de Venus and it takes its name from the Parisian café that the Paris Surrealists met in during the 1960s. The body of work is split into two themes - figures in the interior and the exterior, so essentially the café and a series of seascapes, or perhaps, rock-scapes. I like to think of it as tales from the city and tales from the sea. Some of the figures in the artworks are imagined and others are real like Surrealist artists Eileen Agar, Egyptian Surrealist poet Joyce Mansour, the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Operatic diva Maria Callas and my interpretation of André Breton. Other figures that appear are the Minotaur of Montmartre, the Cocteau Twins and lots of variations of the goddess Venus - some influenced by the real life goddess Monica Bellucci. In the Golden Lion artwork I have included all the people that were still active in the Surrealist Paris meetings - Robert Benayoun, Jean Schuster, Joyce Mansour, Elisa Breton, Ted Joans, Nicole Espagnol, Alain Joubert Toyen.

What is it about these gatherings that interests you?
I watched the David Byrne film, American Utopia, lately and he said humans are interested in looking at and watching other humans. I suppose I just like this statement. I love looking at old photographs of weddings, of people having meals in restaurants and cafés, and I love photos of artists gathered in groups, I find it fascinating to look at. The Surrealists really enjoyed having group photos taken and documented their gatherings. I think they saw it as an important record. In my last show, I found some photos of André Breton meeting Trotsky in Mexico, and they were all having a picnic with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and it was such an odd photo to look at a snapshot of strange meetings alongside the mundane nature of a picnic. Researching old photographs for this artwork, I was lucky to find a few of the Surrealists meeting at the café. I think I first got interested in gatherings of people as images by watching Amacord by Fellini where there's a great wedding feast, and when I saw it as a still in a book, I really thought, ‘there's something in these gatherings.’

Can you tell us about the stones in these pictures?

The stones in the pictures are based on the stones that I saw on the pink granite coast in Brittany. I first became aware of the stones in photographs by the artist Eileen Agar who was holidaying in Brittany in the 1930s, and by chance encountered these rocks and was fascinated by them. She bought a camera and documented them and later they appeared in her artwork as paintings. I really wanted to see this natural phenomena, as it's a strange sculptural form of rock, creating a kind of other-worldly landscape. I went to visit them last July dressed in my summer clothing and it was the worst weather I've ever encountered! Sheet-rain, cold wind. I was expecting to find a beautiful sunny day. There is quite a magical vibe to this place, even with the awful weather.

So there’s a kind of interface here between your real life experience of these rocks and the imaginary group of people you’ve placed there?

When I saw these rocks there was only tourists in yachting jackets, no bohemian, artistic types picnicking next to them, so I had to create that fantasy in the art. I feel these rocks are so odd and sculptural and very surreal, so I decided I’d like to have them in my paintings next to appropriate figures and create some sort of narrative between the people and the rocks. I also added text onto some of the rocks in the paintings to suggest connections or ideas. One painting is my depiction of André Breton, with the words that are inscribed on his tomb on a rock next to him. It's interesting to me that the Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy painted bizarre rock formations that were inspired by the terrain of Brittany, where his mother lived and he holidayed. It has just occurred to me that the name of my exhibition is the La Promenade de Venus which I like to think means a walk on Venus and this rock-scape feels like it's from another planet maybe.

What is it about the places in these pictures that you think draws you to them? The cafés, the parks, the beaches etc? 

I am a vibes man. I love to go to places where I know certain artists or writers that I admire and have researched have been. I like to soak up any remaining resonance that might be hanging around in the air, certain places have atmospheres and knowing the history of those places and what has happened there, I feel that fires something up in my mind’s eye. It's funny that the café that was called La Promenade de Venus now is lacking any atmosphere whatsoever really - I went there with a friend and tried to find the place that the Surrealists used to sit. There didn't seem to be much of the spirit left lingering. But I did have a nice chocolate madeleine and caffè crema and thought about Proust for a second.

What is it about the Surrealists that keeps on drawing you back to them as a subject?

I think it's because it's such a vast history that I keep finding new things, new books, new lines of enquiry. I like the period and the people because I am always finding something new. A few weeks back I was watching a live zoom interview with Jean-Jacques Lebel who was involved with the Surrealists when he was a young man. His view is that Surrealism is still alive and is still a thing, it was very inspiring to hear what he said.

It seemed to me with these new pictures that the rock formations - the shapes and cultural associations that you’ve made with them - allowed for that newness, that sense that these figures and this movement was still alive somehow?

The new work I feel is being inspired by new research and is me following on from work by artists like Eileen Agar. When I read her biography I then wanted to visit the pink granite coast and see these rocks. I view some Surrealists as spirit guides who have laid down markers that people in the 21st century continue to discover and be inspired by. Also placing the figures next to the rocks may have something to do with how natural phenomena is still fascinating to us in the digital age.

And what about the ceramics? These are linked to your time in Cornwall I gather? And I suppose there’s another link through the clay to the earth and the topography of Cornwall (and therefore Northern France in a way…) ?

The ceramic collaboration is with the Penzance-based ceramicist Dominique Füglistaller who introduced me to the technique of sgraffito - scratching onto wet clay. I was at her house for dinner and she asked me if I would decorate a bird whistle and I enjoyed the process so by chance that collaboration started. Dominique has used the locally dug clay of the area to make her work before. Cornwall, Ireland, South Wales, Northern France all have a similar and familiar look to the landscape, which possibly is a Celtic link. A friend said the ceramics are my Cornish period and I like that as it's a new thing for that has been conceived, devised and made in Cornwall.

La Promenade de Venus, an exhibition by The Artist Formerly Known as Robert Rubbish is on display at James Jackson until May 18th. The work can be seen HERE.