Word To Your Mother: Portable Chats to Andrew Telling

By Brodie Lancaster / May 18th, 2011 in Art / Italy / 408 views

The last time we heard from director Andrew Telling was via Crossing Lines, his documentary on street artist Conor Harrington’s politically-charged work on walls in the Middle East. Since that time, he’s been hard at work creating Madré, a short film following artist Wordtomother around Italy, during his time as a participating artist at the 2010 Fame Festival.

Each year the Fame Festival invites a dozen international artists to Grottaglie to spend up to four weeks working in collaboration with local artisans to create pottery and limited edition prints. They also have a number of the city’s more run-down walls at their disposal to create works that are exhibited in one final group show.

Also featuring fellow artists Lucy Mclauchlan and Cyop&Kaf, as well as Fame Festival’s Angelino Milano, Madré offers a great insight into the life of a street artist; his process, his dedication to his craft and the impact his work holds no matter where in the world it’s experienced. Courtesy of musicians Buddy Peace and Lucasse (the director’s musical alter ego), the film’s soundtrack is also available for free download here.

We spoke with Andrew on the eve of Madré‘s release about the film, the artist and working in a foreign environment.

Portable: How did your collaboration with Word to Mother come about?
Andrew Telling: We had worked together on a film the year previous which focused on his creative process in the studio/the lead up to his show at the time. When he was invited to participate in Fame Festival last year it was the perfect opportunity to collaborate on another film together.

What was the extent of Wordtomother’s involvement in the festival?
Fame Festival is run by Angelino Milano. Its in his fifth year now, it’s the meeting point for a lot of international street artists invited to come out for period of time to create pieces of work and prints for the show and also paint in the isolated areas of the rural town of Grottaglie. Wordtomother was just one 14 artists invited over for the 6 months the festival runs for. When we were out there Lucy Mclauchlan was coming to the end of her stay and Italian artist

Cyop&Kaf came and hung out when we painted and filmed the ‘Mother’ pieces. There’s a great sense of family when you’re out there, especially as you get to sit down with Angelo’s family every evening and eat the best home cooked Italian food you’re ever gonna experience in your life.

What is the street art scene like in Grotalligio, and Italy in general?
That’s a hard one for me to answer, as staying in south rural part of Italy I was isolated from any kind of ‘scene’, I met Cyop & Kaf whose piece features in the film. He is from the north and there seem’s to be more going on in the cities around there where artists like Blu and Erica Il Cane are from, but that’s the beautiful thing about Fame Festival; it is its own entity and it’s taking the street art out of the cities into a this remote rural loaction.

How did you find the process of shooting in the streets of a foreign city?
I thrive on it! There are times when you don’t know what direction to point your camera as everything is so foreign to your eyes and ears you just want to capture/take it all in. That’s when I turn the camera off and just take it for what it is, otherwise you can’t really capture what you feel is the right aspect of where you are if you’re trying capture it all. The difficult thing with Madré, in particular, was the 7D camera constantly over-heating and the combination of two pasty British guys trying to work in these Mediterranean conditions…we got burnt a lot by the end of first day and coined the term “bacon back”, as our backs were just bright red and sore for the rest of the trip. No pain, no gain, right!?

What will we see form you next?
I’ve just finished shooting a film in North Wales on fine art photographer Robin Friend with Owen Richards. That film will be out in the next few months. I am off to Ireland with Conor Harrington to work on another film in a few months and just putting some finishing touches to an EP of music I’ve been working on for a while.