Ben Heslop
I first interviewed Ben Heslop from Landmark Street Art in 2018 so we thought it was time to catch up and talk about all the amazing things he has been up to since then. I’ve always loved his work and his passion for art. He has been working with incredible artists around the world and it’s been very inspiring to see.
On this interview, we talked about his latest collaborations and projects. If you’d like to know more about Landmark Street Art and Blank Wall Assassins, I’ll put the links at the end of this interview :)
Thank you so much Ben !!
Hi Ben !! How are you? What have you been up to since our first interview in 2018 (crazyyy!!)?
2018...man It doesn't seem real! I totally feel like covid has stolen 18 months of everyone's timeline! Whenever I talk about things I seem to miss out that chunk of life, but then when I strip it down we have actually been super super busy! We have been very fortunate to keep working with incredible artists and see Landmark street Art go from strength to strength. We have travelled the world visiting clients and curating collections for people as well as expanding our efforts in public art back home.
How did Landmark Street Art evolve these past few years?
As I said above we have pushed in a positive trajectory but the biggest evolution has come in forming Blank Wall Assassins and taking on a business partner to help in this very important cultural endeavour. It now allows me to have two hats on and separate our work to get public art into the streets for purely cultural reasons and the more commercial gallery side of the business. For Landmark, like so many other businesses we have had to evolve in so many ways over the past 18 months due to the global situation. Brexit and the pandemic have both given us a lot of headaches but also meant we have benefited from being very fluid and nimble while being able to switch up our model very easily and stay relevant in the new world order.
You started working with many more artists around the world since our first chat - what inspires you the most about working with all these talents?
It all has to be about feel, it sounds like a crazy hippy sort of answer but it's so so true! I am a big believer in gut reactions and the fact that if you meet and connect with someone it is a really special thing that needs to be followed up on. I have had some of my biggest breaks from the most random situations that were heading one way and then, boom, out of the blue something or someone comes into the mix totally unrelated and the whole trajectory of what I thought was happening changes or the focus shifts to something completely different from the original goal. I love it, it is what life is built on for me. The artist and the art scene totally encapsulates this, my journey has never been too planned and certainly never been linear! But I am okay with that and that is what keeps me going. Being able to stay true to the artists I have worked with for a long while now and also show new ones that it is a path worth walking together. Integrity and passion is all you really have to offer so I don't hide behind anything else, I just bare my soul say what I think and it either happens or it doesn't.
“All From This Earth” by Tymon DE Laat from The Netherlands
You now have a cultural project called Blankwall Assassins - what can you tell us about this project? When did you start working on it?
Well!!!!!! It all started as you know from the last blog as a passion project to bring street art to my home city of Carlisle...and now ... It's a passion project that has a very serious track record, energy and power behind it! Over the past three years I have been steadily increasing the amount of public art in my home city and we are now at the point where we have an official trail around the city and that links back to a lot of outreach work with marginalised communities and the general public delving into the power of public art. I asked a good friend Anna Chippendale to come onboard and she has really helped in taking my vision and making it a reality and super-sizing our offering, we work well together and while I joke that she is 'good at all the boring stuff I ignore!' She also shares my passion and between us we have a lot of bases covered when it comes to pushing cultural initiviaties forwards. It is a joy to work together and although we are faced with lots of barriers and challenges we keep knocking the ideas together and between us have moved forwards massively.
What do you want to accomplish with Blankwall Assassins?
In a totally non arrogant way we have already surpassed what I set out to achieve the last time we spoke, but that 100% doesn't mean we are slowing down, if anything we are speeding up and going bigger! Our main aim was and always will be to engage people with cultural experiences through public art. Art happens in so many secluded spaces shut off from the world. It happens between groups of people that are already engaged 100% and who only proliferate the echo chamber effect back and forth between themselves. I always say, if I get to organise a 12m high mural on a public street I instantly engage 10's of thousands of people, most of whom were not even looking for a cultural experience and that is amazingly powerful. I genuinely don't care if they like it, hate it or are totally indifferent to it, but they have seen, they have experienced, they have had their daily commute or trip to school challenged, poked at and altered. Within that experience I may evoke a passion they didn't know they had, or I may simply confirm someone's suspicion that culture is bad and evil and that grey walls are better, but either way I got them to engage and to think outside their normal existence and life polars, if even only for a second.
You're currently working on your first street festival (congrats !!) - what can people expect to see?
I have been lucky enough to travel to some of the best festivals Europe has to offer (My favourite being Pow Wow Rotterdam!) and visit some real street art mechas in America such as Miami and New York and every time I am at one of these happenings it fills my mind with passion and creativity and I have taken what I consider to be the best bits from them all and boiled it down into my own version of what works best. We have to start small, so it is not going to be about being the biggest, it is about curating something that works for my own environment and for my own community but also challenges their perceptions and makes them come along on a journey. Any of the festivals I go to would not work out of their own setting, the teams who run them are super good at tailoring them to the local needs and environments they sit within and I have to do the same. My business partner Anna and I are so excited and with her events background and my knowledge and contacts in the community along with our shared passion I think we are going to bring something special to the community we serve to engage.
How would you define street art?
Art on the street!!!!! Sorry that sounds rude and it totally isn't meant to! But it is what it is, I hate labels, as, more often than not they do more harm than good. I don't get caught up in the whys and wherefores of the scene, be it graffiti or street art, new artist or long time professional, It matters not to me, get the art to the masses and stick it somewhere people are not expecting to breathe life into the world. We have some of the world's best on our streets in Carlisle sat right alongside 18 year old art students and local landscape artists that have never painted off canvas before, each has their place on their own merits and neither one is more important than the other, it is all just art on the streets that challenges people to think about the spaces they inhabit and move through differently.
What advices would you give to any artist around the world?
Stay true to yourself. I am no 'art expert' but I am a people person and am a laser guided judge of character and bullshit! Good art, bad art, what has monetary value, who is hot property, the experts can spend their time proving and disproving that for all I care, but one thing I do know is that if you are not authentically you as an artist, it shows! And that goes for some of the quote un quote 'best in the business" as well. And no I won't name names in a negative way but if you listen to someone like David Shrigley speak on his process and look at his outcome you can see he is so openly himself! His success, which in my opinion is 100% justified, is secondary to his process, he set out as himself, he continued as himself and he will always make work as himself, for the right reasons, the acclaim and financial rewards are very much secondary. I believe if no one liked his work he would be sitting in a studio somewhere creating the same body of work for the same reasons and that is truly awesome and very clear to me. I still get cold call emails with some bullshit unemotional copy of some other boring shit by artists I have never met asking to stock their work. Never be that artist!
What biggest lessons have you learnt since the beginning of your career so far?
To never stop...learning, exploring, being passionate, being adventurous, questioning others, questioning yourself, being comfortable, being brave, taking risks standing still. Never stop any of these and you will be just fine!