In Conversation: Electric Gallery's Director Jai and Artist Adam Bridgland.

On the opening night of ELECTRIC curates. Adam Bridgland, Electric’s Director Jai Francois, sat down with featured artist Adam Bridgland at the Hoxton, Shoreditch, to get to know the artist and discuss his latest works made exclusively for the show…

Jai: What inspires your art?

Adam: All sorts of everyday life. Mundane life, nostalgia, music and song lyrics, travel. And fan clubs! I love the idea of being part of a fan club and the identity that you get.

Jai: What do you like about fan clubs?

Adam: Well, in the 80’s, all those years back, when you were part of a Lego club or a band's fan club, you used to get a patch or badge to say, you're part of this club, and that meant something. There's something tangible about having that experience. Nowadays, you get a code and you can get into a website. It’s not the same as actually holding something.

Jai: How long have you been an artist?

Adam: I graduated college in 2006. When you go to college, nobody tells you that you come out of art school, and you get dumped in the heat of things. It’s like right, go for it, and it's just a case of finding your way. It may take a year, it may take several years. Probably only in the last four or five years, I've really felt like, yes, you're an artist. Because I think it's a weird thing to say, I'm an artist.

Jai: From the pieces that you've produced for this show, are there any that stand out for you?

Adam: I think what's really nice about this show is it's showing more of my print-based work. In the last few shows, I’ve done more unique works. It’s good to have a look back at something which I trained in. I did my BA and MA in print. I was interested in Warhol and Rauschenberg and the School of Cantata. Multiples have always interested me. It’s lovely to see as you walk down the exhibition, all the different kinds of variations. All the little bodies of work, I've been working on for the last four or five years, and the new ones we're doing that exclusively for the show.

Jai: Can you tell us about the live screen printing here tonight?

Adam: I'm creating a print that is partly based on the evening tonight. We're doing it for this event and space. And I think that that's special because it can create a lineage between my practice and the time. It says at this point, I did this, and that's always interested me. I like that kind of objectivity of pieces.

Jai: Do you think as a medium, screen printing ever gets overlooked as an art form?

Adam: That's one of the reasons why I really like doing live printing because it gives that understanding and shows what a print really is. When you're printing like tonight, that's only 20%. The other 80% is being back in the studio, creating the screen and creating the artwork. And I think that that's the thing that people find difficult to understand.