We are just three guys, and we are making stuff. The musician Nick Cave and the actor Brad Pitt are two of his closest friends. He doesn't care about the weirdness of this trio. We know we're crazy. His voice was full of energy. Is it possible to see Brad Pitt? That's a movie creation. I love it. He is a great actor of his generation. There is another human who has allowed me to breathe in a new way. I think I did the same thing for him.
Houseago is the linchpin of the exhibition at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, which opened just a few days ago. This is the first major museum show for the artist in over a year, and it includes both sculptures and paintings. His journey of the past three years includes a time when he suffered a serious breakdown and went through recovery. He says he is being reborn. I'm no longer me anymore. I used to be like that. That guy is not me. If I am going to do my first show after recovering, I will do it in safety and with my creative partners.
It’s just exhausting to be anything but who you are
The WE exhibition rejects the idea of the solitary artist in favor of a more connected approach to art. Pitt and Cave have never exhibited their artwork before. Their friendship has been forged by exploring their creativity.
Houseago says that they were thrown together in trauma and catastrophe because of their addictions, Pitt's divorce and the deaths of two of Cave's. They now share a relationship that might be described as a bromance because of the raw and brutal circumstances.
Cave set the scene of the lakeside house in which they are all staying and where they were celebrating Susie Cave's birthday the night before. I woke up this morning and noticed that Brad was sitting next to me. He started playing the guitar and singing a song to me, and then Thomas walked in and joined in.
Nick Cave wrote The Devil - A Life, 2020-22.
Devil returns from the war.
Pitt jokes that they did not do a good rendition. I was more taken with the way he looked. I have luggage under the eyes as Thomas walks out. Nick is wearing shorts and a shirt. The whoop from Houseago signaled the trio's arrival at the exhibition. The disparate crew: 65-year-old Cave, characteristically gothic, bordering on vampire, in an ultra-Slim dark suit; Pitt, still ruggedly handsome, in. The strange cast of characters came into Houseago's life. They were very fond of me. Brad told him he loved him. I told him I loved him. I wouldn't be here without Nick and Brad.
Six years ago, at a New Year's Eve party, Pitt and Houseago met for the first time since Pitt separated from his second wife. The separation became a media frenzy. Immediately, they hit it off. Pitt found an artistic outlet by hanging out at the sculptor's studio on a regular basis. There was a flame of joy in my life after this. I wanted to be a sculptor ever since I was a child. Cave was introduced to Houseago by Pitt, who took him to see one more time with feeling, a documentary about the making of Skeleton Tree, an album created in the aftermath of the death of Arthur.
Cave says that they started to meet up as a group of people who sat around a table on weekends. The dinners were joined by the likes of Spike Jonze and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as the recently directed film Blonde, which was produced by Pitt's production company Plan B. Cave is new to talking to people about things. I usually just work away and do my thing, and I have my friends and stuff. We were able to discuss anything. It was a very freeing situation for me to be in.
The photo shoot is set against the backdrop of Houseago's room-size plaster, hemp and rebar work Cast Studio, which features a stage, chairs, bed, mound, cave, bath, grave. Three men are talking. They are larking about. Houseago took his shoes off and posed in the cast bed. He starts to sing. It is more than a bit strange. Houseago is singing and Pitt is dancing by the time the shoot is over.
The trio's concept of "we" is a simple but strong message of love, hope, friendship and forgiveness. She says that the new opening is a momentous one, where Thomas Houseago is reinventing himself as a sculptor and also showing strong paintings.
This is Houseago's moment, with Pitt and Cave playing supporting roles. His gallery walk-through moved from towering sculptures cast in bronze to plaster maquettes for monumental spaces, along with amalgamations of beach-found objects assembled with his children. A new look at nature and its healing power can be seen in Houseago's recent paintings.
Where I grew up, you hold everything in
The catalyst for Houseago's new paintings was a phone conversation he had with Cave. We made a deal when Thomas said he couldn't pick up a paintbrush. I said I was having trouble writing songs. If you make me a picture, I will write you a song. That kind of sparked something for me. Houseago was spurred into action when Cave email the poem that became the song "White Elephant". I didn't make any art at that time. I had finished. He was trying to connect to nature while running in Malibu. I decided to paint that flower for Nick when I saw it for the first time.
The creative exchange was one of the factors that led Cave to ceramics, and in Tampere he shows a series of 17 figurines, produced in a studio in south London with the assistance of British sculptor Corin Johnson. Cave says he has hundreds of the kitschy forms he has subverted into The Devil. A desire to create a single small devil figure as a vehicle for an intense red glaze became a journey towards some kind of exoneration from a series of shattering events. The ceramic works are about forgiveness and the idea of a moral virtue in beauty. It is a balance of our sins. The result is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
Pitt's work isn't easy to place. A cluster of his handcrafted porcelain candleholders are displayed among Houseago's sculptures. A relief plaster panel imprinted with his own body to depict a filmic gunfight is one of his larger-scale sculptural works. He says it is all about self- reflection. I was looking at my own life and trying to figure out where I've messed up and where I've failed. It was born from owning a radical inventory of self, getting brutally honest with me, and taking account of those I may have hurt.
Pitt is eating a sandwich in the cafe. He is open for a man whose every move is subject to scrutiny. He says it is tiring to be anything but who you are. We are more the Clint Eastwood character, you hold everything within, you are capable, and you don't show weakness. It is exhausting in my father and the older generations of actors. I like to be completely myself in my friends, and I want that to extend in the outer world. People think I'm fine. There is a focus on our struggles as human beings and that makes me feel safe. It's also joy as well.
There is a lot of discussion about how to talk about grief and trauma. Pitt says that he has to walk with pain but also with joy.
Cave says he is more circumspect about trauma than Houseago. It has more control. He remembers that he and Houseago were models for Susie Cave's fashion label. Within 30 seconds of talking to the hairdresser, Thomas had revealed the most mind- incomprehensible, traumatic events. Cave doesn't shy away from difficult subjects in his new book, Faith, Hope and Carnage. His griefs are explored in both of the books. You have to respond to that with a full heart because it pulled out of me. There is a time when you are terrified and everything collapses, your life is destroyed. There is a way through that. It seems duty-bound to talk to people from the other side of the chasm because I went through it.
Houseago is trying to figure out how much to tell. He says that he doesn't have to talk about his recovery over and over again. I want everyone who sees my work to know that I am open to talking about trauma and solutions in a grassroots way. If there is a need for me to speak to a group about how to survive trauma, I'm there.
Pitt and Cave want to continue their artistic journeys. A new series of ceramics is being made. Pitt feels that the practice is about art as therapy. Houseago is finishing off a large-scale outdoor commission in LA, and is also creating a series of new sculptures for the Centre Pompidou-Metz, which will go on show alongside paintings from 22 October. His spirit of hope is reflected in all of them. He says that his goal is to sing the beauty of the world.
The Sara Hildén Art Museum is showing WE With Brad Pitt and Nick Cave. They were guests of The City of Tampere.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
