Nº 66: Harry Hugo Little
The London-based painter talks image archiving, fossil hunting and facial scars.
We’re back with Harry Hugo Little. Read on to find out what he’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for secret recommendations every week.
Harry Hugo Little (b.1995) silently prevails. Patient and methodical, he paints grief, loss, and nostalgia.
☞ IMAGE ARCHIVING: We live in a hyper visual culture; we are exposed to so much imagery every day. To acquire is to document, and to document is to bear witness. A large archive of rare images is paramount for my practice, and its applications extend far beyond those of aesthetic.
☞ FACE APP: To morph a face is to play god.
☞ FOSSIL HUNTING: For the past two summers I’ve stayed in a tiny caravan on the cliffs of Dorset. I’d spend my days walking the Jurassic coast, where you can find fossils from 200 million years ago. For a fossil to be made, animals had to die and be preserved in rare circumstances. This process creates a perfect replica of the original structure—rock replaces bone, the animal makes a grave of itself. Over millennia, species come and go, tectonic plates shift, and so do the ocean floors. Where once stood a mountain, now lies an ocean. What was once covered by the sea is now a cliff face. As surely as the wind howls, the rain erodes. Cliffs fall, and history is uncovered—history that long predates humans. The fossilized remains, which haven't seen daylight for two hundred million years, are exposed to the air for the first time. To feel sunlight and sea breeze after being entombed in Jurassic sediment for that long can only feel like an amazing relief. To me, fossils act as a reminder that everything comes and goes. No matter how things are at dusk, there will always be dawn. If I can find the fossil of an animal from 200 years ago, it serves as a reassuring sign that whatever happens tomorrow will be okay.
☞ AMERICANA: Jackass is the embodiment of this. I feel the aesthetic of guns falls under the same category. Specifically guns with silencers. They’re sleek and comforting. The sound of firing an empty gun or screwing on a silencer in a video game is revolutionary.
☞ LIMITATIONS AND REDUCTION: We live in a world of gross abundance. There’s infinite potential to everything. By placing limitations on yourself it allows for the practice of restraint to be enacted. Horses wear blinkers so they stay focused on only what is in front of them. To enact the same limitations to one’s endeavours, eventually you will thrive in that niche. Maxing out one stat is better than being an all rounder.
☞ ESPRESSO SODA: My girlfriend put me on and they slap.
☞ FACIAL SCARS: I was bit on the face by a dog last summer and wish it gave me a better scar.
☞ STOICISM: I don’t know anything about psychology, but from my armchair I feel like there are two branches that sit on opposite ends of the horseshoe. I think there are probably many subcategories of stoicism; one branch leads the individual to suppress, to ignore and to box up, the other allows for an individual to experience emotion, but not let it affect. One branch leads to the incel and one the buddha.
☞ CRYSTALS AND CURSES: Once you place intention on an object it psychologically holds that intention. If I tell myself that a beautiful object will bring me peace then that object will bring me peace. Crystals can hold whatever values you put into them. Out of intrigue I bought a fox tail bone key-chain. When I got it I felt unnerved and by association this feeling stuck to it. As soon as I associated this feeling with the object it became cursed. After a week of accidentally carrying it around in my bag I realised the negative association and threw it away. In the woods near my mum's house there have been sightings of a man driving a quad bike with a trailer full of dead deer. Over the last year people have seen dead deer gutted and disembodied around the woods. My mum saw a skinned deer hanging two meters up in a tree. On the local Facebook groups people are saying it’s somebody culling the population but I like the idea of it being something more sinister. I went to the woods to try to find something and found a pile of bin bags full of guts and two dead deer skeletons. I took one of the skulls out of curiosity. I decided owning that would be a bad omen, and when I got rid of it I really felt better. Whilst these objects aren’t actually cursed, I think that once the object holds a negative value, that value is echoed when you encounter the object mentally or physically. To rid yourself of these objects is to rid yourself of the association, and therefore of burden.
☞ JULIUS JAKE LITTLE: Another recommendation is remembering my brother’s name. Julius Jake Little. He took his life at 20 years old in 2019. I know that memories fade, and time forgets us all, but I would like his name to be remembered for just a little longer.
☞ ALL MY FRIENDS WORK IN MUSIC: The music industry feels light years ahead of the art work with regard to mindset and ingenuity. The art world feels stale in comparison.
♪ LISTENING TO: Wraith9 & Lancer. You’re on the curve or behind it.
☠ HATES: Hating on AI. The technical stuff is over my head, and I’m sure some parts of it are as problematic as they are ingenuitive, but hating on it is dumb. When the internet came out people were scared. People were terrified when moving image was invented. There was huge worry about job displacement when the computer was invented. When photoshop was brought out there was worry it would bring an end to the graphic design industry. Image generation has upped my game and is exciting. Innovation leads to change, and whilst change can be scary, it isn’t a bad thing. Get on the wave or drown.
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