Born in Kent in 1960, Oliver Budd is a mosaicist who has spent his professional life creating artistic, functional pieces for dozens of public and private clients. Following the footsteps of his father, Kenneth Budd, Oliver studied art before beginning his own practice in the early 80s. While his work differs starkly from the installations typically featured in this magazine, Oliver Budd has actually been a reader since TSJ’s very first issues. When he got in touch with his latest work then, a series of large decorative panels commissioned for the exterior of the recently opened Ruby Zoe Hotel in Notting Hill, we were keen to discuss the project!
Artistic traditions
Jumbie Jubilation is, in fact, a collaborative piece: while Budd hand-crafted the mosaic panels, their designs are the work of British-Trinidadian artist Zac Ové. In an interesting parallel between the two men, Zac’s work is also heavily influenced by his father, Sir Horace Ové, reportedly the first Black British filmmaker to direct a feature-length film, in 1976’s Pressure. Sir Horace was knighted last year, but sadly passed away shortly after, at the age of 86. For Budd, this shared sense of continuity in artistic practice is a part of why he and Ove were such an obvious fit for the project. “We’re both second-generation people really!” he says. “I think that’s why Zach and I hit it off really, because we have this strange link.”
The piece itself is based around carnival, says Budd, hence the connection to Notting Hill, while its imagery draws from African folklore. The Moko Jumbie, a traditional figure of West African folklore, has featured several times in Ové previous work, notably in a pair of 7m sculptures now permanently displayed at the British Museum. In the mosaics, rather than the towering statues Ové has created before, there is a sense of movement and progression, reflecting the movement of the carnival where the Moko Jumbie character originates. “Ové talks about Ancient Greek, Roman and Islamic mosaics, how they depict mythology and religions in those traditions, while carnival culture has not really been expressed in mosaics before. His idea is that this is probably the first interpretation of carnival in mosaic,” Budd suggests.
Creative technique
To create that interpretation however, Ové needed help, and this is where Budd enters the picture. The task of creating the mosaics was a difficult one, not least because of their location in a busy part of London. Using traditional mosaic-making techniques, putting the piece together on site, the density and complexity of these pieces may have been literally impossible to achieve.
“If we were still using the old technique we employed in my dad’s day,” Budd points out, “we would have been on-site for all four weeks, and nowadays that’s just impossible.” He recalls the last on-site job he undertook, over ten years ago in Birmingham, which required a separate licence just for traffic control (to the tune of £1500 a day).
Thankfully, over the course of his long career, Budd has not only become extremely skilled at his craft, but he has also developed a special method to enable projects like this one. Today, rather than creating the entire mosaic on-site, Budd works primarily at his studio, fixing the individual pieces to an aluminium panel before supplying the panel in its entirety. This method was a huge innovation, saving him time and avoiding the logistical headaches of working on location.
Long days
“So that would have been a challenge if I hadn’t addressed it already!” Budd points out, however even with his innovation, the project was far from an easy one. The primary obstacle in completing Jumbie Jubilation was the sheer quantity of detailed, meticulous work it required, even in the optimal studio environment. Ove initially asked Budd if it could be created in 9 months, who explained a year was the absolute minimum timescale for the job. In the end, the panels took 18 months to finish, even with Budd “getting in the studio at 8am in the morning and walking out at 8pm at night” each day.
This particular challenge was perhaps exacerbated by the fact the mosaicist currently works alone. Of course, a team may have been able to complete the panels faster, but like Ové, Budd is an idiosyncratic artist with a keen eye for detail, making it difficult for him to cede any responsibility or control over his work. Given this piece’s complexity, it seems Budd’s solo approach allowed him to reduce the variables and envision the whole project as he worked.
“Basically, I built them from panel one on the left-hand side to panel eight on the right-hand side in sequence. And by the time I finished the first panel, I had figured out the whole thing in my head, as well as how I would overcome most of the problems.” On the product side, for example, Budd uses Mapei for both his adhesives and grout, opting for a grey shade of grout so as not to take any attention away from the mosaics themselves. Beyond that, he says, the challenges were simple: time and effort.
A job well done
The finished product speaks for itself though – a veritable explosion of colour and culture befitting its name. “I love the intensity of it,” Budd says. “I’ve done loads of projects over the years, but I think this is probably the most vibrant, exciting piece I’ve ever made.”
Interestingly, while the designs for each panel were supplied to him as computer generated images by Ové, Budd did have to take some creative licence in the process of translating the artwork to mosaic form. Areas of block colour in the original images, for example, became more dynamic with multiple shades of tile used in the mosaics.
Naturally, Ové loves the completed work, and he’s clearly not the only one. Following Jumbie Jubilation’s unveiling in August, Budd says, the piece has received massive attention, including from the Tate.
So what’s next for Budd Mosaics? After such a lengthy and difficult project, the second-generation mosaicist definitely wants to slow down, at least for a while! “I haven’t done a big project like that for quite a long time,” he explains, “and I’m 64 now, so I’m getting to the stage where I don’t want to do a really big one again. I’ve got quite a large bench in my studio, and I’ve promised my wife that I won’t do anything bigger than the bench in future.” That is, of course, unless someone comes along with a really exciting project. After all, for Budd, it’s a “vocation and a job”.
That passion for the craft is what carries him through those 12-hour days and stops him hanging up the tools. In a refrain that will likely be familiar to any readers with their own tiling business, Budd explains: “You’ve got to have a passion for it. Not just for the work itself, but for the times when you haven’t got any work and you wonder: why am I doing this? It’s the great quandary of being self-employed – but I do really enjoy it!”
And if there were any doubts over that fact, they might well be dispelled by the fact that he’s already working with Ové on a new project. Rather than the permanent panels installed at the Ruby Zoe hotel, these pieces will be displayed in various galleries from New York to France and England. “And the first piece I’m making is a large, circular mosaic, which I’ve got right here in front of me,” says Budd, as we finish our discussion. Perhaps those plans to slow down will have to wait.
www.buddmosaics.co.uk
