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Where does the inspiration come from?

I think the inspiration comes from that idea of cutting and pasting. It’s a process similar to what a DJ does… We like looking at the connections in the art world and we draw from new and old styles, from Basquiat to Picasso and from Tom Wasselman to Gary Humes.

There’s a quote on your website by Picasso that says ‘If there is something to steal, I steal it!' How meaningful is that to you in terms of how you work?

Well, that was our initial approach to creating our work… We started stealing from other artists; we took some of their elements, their imagery, and then reworked them and reformed them in order to create something new. Those elements would then become a part of our work. Within one of our pieces there could be references to more than 20 artists... In the shows we have done in the past, we have referenced directors like David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, etc., and there were also some musical references. We were just referencing and mixing all the time. We enjoyed establishing these connections, showing how often artists could sit quite closely in styles while coming from different time periods. I suppose our current work still has that theme running through it in a way, although it now has a more dreamlike quality to it; our portraits and figurative work are characters set in their own world.

I remember that on your first solo show ‘Monsters of Spin’ (ink_d Gallery, Brighton, 2008), your work used a lot of referencing to other artists whereas now your current pieces might make reference through the use of a pattern, textures or even graphics.

That’s right, in the early days it was more in your face, there might have been one or two elements as a direct reference to Damien Hirst’s work for example, but now our references might be more delicate, more subtle.

We see you working in different methods now, do you have a favourite?

The initial idea of Miss Bugs was based on a quick process, stealing from other artists, putting everything together, making new imagery, taking things that were already iconic and trying to make fast, new imagery, not being too precious about it. Our work has now moved on from that approach. What we do now, the process we follow, has almost become painstaking… A piece will take months; it can be a very labour intensive process that has the intervention of many hands. So rather than taking a quick afternoon to finish a piece, it now takes a month or two in production, maybe even longer… It’s a completely different working method. Our connection to the work has also changed. When you work on a piece for that long, when you spend so much time with it, you develop a closer relationship. The piece becomes more precious, and we become more attached to it.

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