Victoria Bean Artist Interview

Here is the next of our RCA secret contributing artist interviews.  This time with visual poet Victoria Bean.  You can find out more about Victoria here or follow her on twitter.

You've donated to the sale for a number of years now what is it about it that you like?

 I like keeping in contact with the college (even if it's only once a year), and I like the fact that everyone involved gets something out of it - the artist, the college, and the person buying the postcard.

 

You studied at the college, how important is the sale and the money raised from it for the students at the college?

 

 Apart from the financial help it gave me as a student, the sale's a great model for self-funding.

 

What do you think of the people who camp out all night, or even days, to attend the sale?

 

The show wouldn't feel like such a big deal to the public if they didn't camp out all night. They embody the sense of anticipation.

 

Do you like looking round the postcards yourself?  What work appeals to you?

 

Usually the ones that couldn't work in any other size/scale, and I'm always drawn to the text pieces.

Have you ever bought anything from the sale and what did you get?
 

I haven't yet, but would like to.

 

Do you have a favourite card that you have donated to a previous sale?

 

I like the one I've just done because it accidentally made me resolve another piece of work.  

 

So what is visual poetry?  Tell us more about your work?

Visual poetry is the arrangement of the text on the page where everything's considered: the type size & shape, the white space on the page -  and when you look at a visual poem you can tell if it works by asking  - could this have been done any other way -  is it making the meaning of a poem too obvious? 

 

 Have you got any projects on the go at the moment?  What can we look forward to?

I've just had a poetry book published called Caught - which is a poet's perspective of a Magistrate's Court in London, and I'm off to Frankfurt where I'm having a show of my visual poetry with two other artists at the Klingspor Musem which opens on Friday 14th October.