Matt Bray

About me:

"To stay fluid... "
"That's the desire of Remodernist artist Matt Bray, a desire that is evident in this interview. He looks at the art world - the entire world, really - through the grizzled eye of a salty mariner yet retains a curiosity that keeps his explorations exciting. He sees the dangers and navigates the waters like a skilled seaman, acknowledging that the adventure changes him. A self-taught artist, Matt Bray adheres to the 1999 Remodernist Manifesto written by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson. He has been painting in Medway for about ten years and has just embarked on a Fine Art degree at the Ashford School of Art and Design. Like the movement he embraces, Matt is true to himself and continually growing, learning, and inspiring. We surveyed the stream of questions before us and dove right in."

[Mungbeing Magazine]

“A self-taught artist, Matt Bray works according to the Remodernist Manifesto written in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thompson. He likes to invoke a sense of classicism and modernity in his work by re-using existing objects.”

[‘Made In Medway’ published autumn 2007]

“It’s a rare thing these days to find work that has any real content over form and style. People make all too much of originality and forsake authenticity. I think Matt Bray’s work is a sure Triumph of this.”

[Pete Molinari – singer/song writer]



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I believe one idea could change everything you knew.

And you wouldn’t be able to see in that old way any more. No matter how hard you tried.

Which has positive and negative connotations. But to stick your head in the ground is not the answer.

I just try to stay fluid and aware. I have very few certainties anymore though, of which I used to have plenty.

You could say objective truth was abandoned in place of subjective truth. I think Post-Modernism has abandoned the idea of subjective truth, believing instead there are no truths. It is a cynical view, that as you practice it, can slowly eat away at your sense of power and purpose.

Remodernism seemed to me to be addressing this problem and allowing artists to again claim some kind of belief, and to begin creating from the heart, allowing self-expression back into the fray.

Spirituality is the study of the inner world (psyche/emotional body). Science is the study of the outside world (manifest reality). Religion is the organizing principle of both. In this sense I believe science tries to understand what we experience. Spirituality tries to understand our reaction to these experiences. And religion tries to control and dictate the results of both. From this perspective (ie:mine) Science and Spirituality are complimentary and Religion is simply a political imposter.

One’s life experiences could be characterized as the froth on the surface of a chaotic body of water – you can rise above the froth and become conceptual and cerebral as the post-modernists have, or you can dig below to its universal causes; universal in the sense that they are common to all of us. This is what I believe is meant by the term spirituality in the Remodernist Manifesto.

I do not believe in any god or higher power, and don’t consider myself religious, although I admit an intersest in religious characters and mythic stories because of their dramatic power. I do believe however in a de rigeur human experience, which I feel when listening to the blues for example. And it is this, existential experience, which for me goes beyond the everyday and becomes timeless and inextricable when considering the life of an emotional creature.

[Matt Bray - mungbeing interview 2008]

“There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual – become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

At such times there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their own song. Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect. It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace – and we fall back and become our ordinary selves. Yet we live in the memory of these songs which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us. They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.”

[Robert Henri]

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