Martin Lau, winner of TLM Cover Competition 2023, talks alteration, identity, and multicultural London

.
.
.

In your artistic practice, you use digital montage techniques and incorporate your own photographs. Can you talk me through your creative process?
.
Creating the montages that you see in Alteration has been a gradual, evolutionary process. As you mention, my work before this phase of my practice has been based on photographs that I have taken, and no matter how much that photograph has been transformed, the finished work can be traced back to the original moment when it was taken. The emotional charge of that moment is what I am attempting to capture when I press the shutter button, and I’ve tried to remain true to that despite the temptation to photograph something purely on the basis that it will make a good montage later.
.
These “pure” photographs will then be filed away to be used later – for what, I don’t know at the time. I once estimated that on average it was two years before I used photographs in an artwork. But as the images in Alteration date from my early childhood, that figure will have increased massively now! The idea of montaging together multiple images was brewing for some time before I started putting that into action; sometimes you come up with a technique but the time to use it comes about much later. As the parts of any one image contained in my montages tend to retain their relative positions to one another, it makes sense to assemble them digitally.

Over time I chose to concentrate on montaging images only with copies of themselves. I work intuitively and to appeal directly to emotion, and I wanted to remove the more top-down, intellectual option of choosing two or more photographs to cut together. I feel that the less I impose an agenda, the more room there is for the viewer to draw their own conclusions, rather than interpreting my intentions.
.
After a while of practising this kind of montage, the idea of using photographs of myself as a child came up. Of course, I had been well aware that much collage/montage incorporates found images from magazines and postcards etc, but my own practice had always been rooted in my own acts of photography. It might be worth mentioning as well that my work up to this point, dating back to my school days, had very rarely depicted human figures, and was, so I imagined, altogether deadpan and non-autobiographical in nature. Industrial estates, dual carriageways and municipal and corporate environments were grist to my mill.
.
This felt like a quantum leap on multiple levels, and quite intimidating. I was going to be laying bare my own life, and the techniques I had evolved from my photography practice were going to be applied to images where not only was I not the photographer, but where I myself was the object being captured by a camera under the control of another person, generally a parent. So it was some time again before I started scanning and working on these images. Looking back at my earlier work, full of concrete structures and discarded objects, I now realise that it was always utterly personal and suffused with my own life history, regardless of how much I thought otherwise.
.
You’ve mentioned that your work often explores the in-between spaces where dualities blur, mesh, and coalesce with each other. I’d like to know about how that idea informs your series Alteration and how it reflects your experience of growing up in multicultural London.
.
This overlaps quite a lot with the question about Buddhism, though a non-dualistic mindset would see all questions as overlapping! There’s a tendency for our rational minds, or mine anyway, to categorise things as good/bad, as having this or that quality, but I think that the world is more nuanced than that. On an experiential level, a lot of my work aims to tap into the kind of moments of clarity beyond rational thought, which I first recognised in dreams as a child, and I think this series continues that interest in conveying a sense of uncanniness, where categories such as self/other break down.
.
This self/other tension can be quite a salient topic when it comes to a multicultural environment and coming from an immigrant background. My West London primary school in the 1970s took part in the “bussing” programme where children, in this case from South Asian backgrounds from nearby Southall, were taken en masse by bus to attend schools outside their neighbourhoods in an attempt to encourage integration. This imbued them with “difference” in that they came and left via a coach rather than with their parents. But then the kids that I spent all my time hanging around with at that age were “coach children”, so in my eyes they were the in-group, and the local kids were more peripheral.

I myself experienced a quite distinct sense of otherness growing up, and I’m sure that my Chinese heritage would have factored into that, but it would have been one of a number of factors at work. Working on Alteration has raised the question of how much of a role did my cultural background play in my formation and contributing to this feeling of alienation? After all, I have a feeling that a lot of artists felt like outsiders in their formative years, regardless of their ethnicity.
.
Even mentioning my racial heritage in artist statements is a decision beset by contradictions. Am I reductively casting myself in the “other” role by doing so, and adding myself to the list of artists from non-native backgrounds who seem to be only permitted to operate within the sphere of discussing race and identity, or is it cutting out an essential piece of the overall picture to omit this information? I think that the reality is that to take either position steadfastly is another example of dualistic thinking and that they have to sit side-by-side.
.
So you talk about how Buddhist philosophy informs some of your work. I’d like to know how this perspective shapes your artistic vision and influences the themes you explore in your visual art.
.
Connecting with some “higher truth”, whether you see it as higher, or deeply within, and whether you call it Nature, The Universe, or whatever, has always been what moves me in art, and for me personally is what art is for. Buddhism, as far as I have encountered it, does seem aligned with this. So it’s rather fortunate to have this millennia-old tradition shaped by wiser people than me to help clarify what might have been more of a vague felt sense otherwise. And while I refer to it as a philosophy, which is fine for everyday parlance, I think of it more as a practical way of being, with a view to getting in touch with reality as it is.
.
By the way, I’m not saying that art or spirituality gives you this fast track to “The Truth”. The most that I can hope for, speaking for myself, is a very sideways, momentary glimpse through a crack in the door at something beyond my clouded human perspective.

You have this idea in Buddhism that everything is interdependent, and also that any given point of view, no matter how “correct”, is a possible object of ego attachment, and can prejudice your view of reality. This is why, whenever a piece that I am working on looks like it is pointing too much in a given direction, that it has a certain “meaning” that can be decoded from the clues given in the work, I take steps to make it more ambiguous or contradictory, because I believe both that multiple states that are usually seen as opposites can exist in the same time and place, and that there is this interconnectedness between things that are seen as mutually exclusive. So I feel quite disturbed in the current climate where having polarised views and picking sides are actively encouraged in so many areas.
.
In terms of themes, it’s rare for me to decide that I am going to make work about “X”. Rather, you work intuitively and themes arise which you then might nurture. Of course, these themes are informed by all kinds of circumstances, and that includes my own life experiences, what I’ve read and thought about etc.
.
Beyond visual art, you also craft intricate soundscapes that often accompany NASA footage. How do you integrate different senses into your artistic practice? And what is it that you hope to achieve through this combination of visual and sonic elements?
.
When I was growing up, the main form of culture I was exposed to was television, so it was natural that I started off focussing on films. Over time I discovered that other art forms suit my temperament much more – at least until Hollywood calls! What films capture for me personally is experience itself, which is what I see and hear. And space and sci-fi has always had a special place in my heart as having something in common with the elements of the dream reality that I want to get across, so adding moving image footage to my music/sound practice is perhaps the film-maker in me inviting you into my dreams in quite a direct way.

As a side note, beyond the visual and the sonic, I have made a piece involving chocolates moulded from my own body!
.
You’re a curator for Ealing Extranormal, a space for experimental musicians and sound artists, how do you see the intersection between your curatorial work and your artistic exploration? Does one influence the other?
.
Well, ultimately the curation and the art I create have one and the same aim, which is to put something into the world that will allow people to connect with that “something” bigger than themselves that I talked about. Having curated several exhibitions as well as the ongoing Ealing Extranormal event, I have come to realise that approaching curation in the same way that I would my own work is the best way to go about it. Previously I had worried about fulfilling some sort of imagined expectation of what an event or show should be, but now I use the same instincts that I would when creating a piece, except that here the “medium” happens to be amazing artists who have done all the hard work already.
.
And yes, the influence goes the other way as well, not least simply by being around such creative and dedicated people. It gets in through the pores…
.
National Gallery and Jumper aim to invite the audience to reflect on their own identity formation. As a final question, what reactions or reflections do you hope to elicit from viewers?
.
It’s always interesting to hear people’s responses to work you’ve made before telling them anything about it. And in the case of Alteration, these have often been surprisingly similar to my own feelings about it (which have been clarified by doing this interview, so thank you for the thought-provoking questions). Making a connection like this is a wonderful and affirming experience, which is especially poignant to me given the sense of dis-connection that underlies this series..
.
But when all is said and done, I only have so much influence over how the work will be interpreted, so my greatest hope is that it speaks to the viewer’s heart on some level and that it’s truthful and whole enough to strike a chord that is personal to them.
.
.
.
Martin Lau, a visual artist and musician based in Ealing, was born to Chinese immigrants from Singapore and Hong Kong. His practice explores the elusive territories that exist on the fringes of reality, in the in-between spaces where dualities blur. Informed by his affinity for Buddhist philosophy, Martin’s work seeks to unveil the interconnectedness of seemingly opposing elements, challenging conventional binaries. This pursuit weaves a consistent thread through his art, where he employs digital montage techniques, often using his own photographs.

---

To discover more content exclusive to our print and digital editions, subscribe here to receive a copy of The London Magazine to your door every two months, while also enjoying full access to our extensive digital archive of essays, literary journalism, fiction and poetry.