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Gary Hume Incubus 1991
MP3 Transcript
MP3 Transcript
Download MP3Narrator: Tom Learner, Conservation Scientist at Tate, on Incubus by Gary Hume - painted entirely in gloss house-paint:
TL: "It's intended to look like doors, hospital doors. But in fact the support - the material that the paint is actually applied to - were custom-made for Hume and consists of a sheet of aluminium honey-comb onto which a piece of Formica was glued so that the glossy shiny surface is actually stuck onto the aluminium. So the actual surface that's being painted on is the reverse side of a sheet of Formica - it's a much rougher consistency and provides a decent key, or tooth, for the paint to stick to.
The actual image of the doors was created with other household materials. Strips of masking tape were first applied to the panels followed by strips of draft-excluder. The paint was then applied right up to the edge of these materials and once the paint had dried the draft excluder was peeled back and there we have the ridges that were left.
The kinds of house-paint that Hume is regularly using are the typical house-paints that you would buy in any hardware shop. So he has used Crown, Dulux, Brommel. But in fact for this painting and the paintings that went with it, painted in America, Hume recalls finding it very difficult to find high-gloss house-paints. He did find a Dutch paint which he says the gloss is not as high as normal gloss-paint but it gives this very nice sheen.
The paint was brushed onto these panels, never poured. The panels were laid flat, supported by paint pots at each corner. And if you crouch down you can quite clearly see the brushstrokes and the direction that the paint was applied."