Meet The Artist - Joe Stevens
Art & Soul recently spoke to our lead artist facilitator Joe Stevens about his art-making process, inspirations, and his proudest moments throughout his art journey.
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What are your earliest memories of art-making?
"My earliest memories of making art are from Primary School. For two years running I was
the winner of the Christmas colouring-in competition! My ability to keep within the lines
served me well here when adding colour to Santa and his sleigh."
What/who inspires you the most when it comes to your creativity?
"When it comes to creativity, what inspires me most is video games. Video games are the
most common and thorough example of the visuals, processes and environments I like to
explore. In art-historical terms, my influences flow from nine culturally significant 20th
Century artists: Carl Andre, Tehching Hsieh, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Piet Mondrian, Bruce
Nauman, Nam June Paik, Martha Rosler and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Additionally, key
words associated with my practice are: Abstraction, Appropriation, Chance, Colour,
Everyday, Information, Materiality, Networks, Object, Participation, Practice, Situation,
Systems, Time, Utopias and Work."
How would you describe your artistic process?
"I am a conceptual artist and writer who explores spaces, systems and spectacle by
progressively generating, through a process of world-building, many different facets of a
semi-fictional virtual space. My work consists of games, sculptures, photos, videos, fonts,
installations and more. What I refer to as my artistic ‘ground zero’ occurred during my
Goldsmiths MA in 2007, where a patterned arrangement of Wine Gums (Wine Games)
became the starting point and basis for everything.
My work helps me to make sense of life, the world and my place within it, giving me a
framework with which to hang my entire existence. It’s a way to understand, limit and
liberate myself and what I am doing; a coping mechanism and a driving force. The
patchwork grid of my life will overlap in some small way at least with the grids of others.
My way of dealing with things may not be the same as yours but can serve as an example
of how to proceed or a guide, rather than a definition. This is the stance I take when
devising participatory projects, which provide personal starting points for collective
journeys."
In a world that feels increasingly divided, how important do you think community is
in art?
"Art cannot exist without a community ready and willing to receive it. We are all part of the
same ecosystem and art is no different. Without community, creativity is starved of oxygen
and won't escape it's bubble. To take this analogy further, I would say that traditional art
functions as a monolith, separate from the rest of life. Art made with community in mind,
alternatively, acknowledges shared existences and collides elements together in order to
create something new: strange juxtapositions, the way people react to unexpected public
occurrences. The pedestal may collapse but the rubble is the soil from which a collective
practice takes root."
What has been your biggest artistic achievement?
"My greatest artistic achievement of recent times was to release a book called Playing
Public: Performing Participation with Pens, Planes and People. This self-funded project
was about developing my professional creative and cultural practice and contributing to the
body of knowledge available to those involved in social art/participatory art practices. This A5 format artist/research publication and project archive focuses on participatory game
Flight Club and the years that preceded its creation. It shows a raw, honest and decades-
spanning developmental journey and contains information, anecdotes and incite that acts
as an example of how emerging artists might sustain their careers and navigate the
complex and challenging arena of public art practice. It demonstrates how a single idea
can be stretched and modified repeatedly and in different contexts.
Playing Public: Performing Participation with Pens, Planes and People was published on
7th November 2025 and is now available to buy via Amazon. Every copy of Playing Public
is individually numbered, signed and dated."
What have you learnt from leading Art & Soul sessions and meeting other artists
there?
"During my time with Art & Soul either supporting or leading workshops, there was a phrase
that kept coming to mind, a kind of mantra that I would repeat and endorse to participants.
This is the idea that if you can make a choice, you can make art. I aim to bring this
perspective to various endeavours in order to encourage others to set aside their
misgivings and embark on their own creative journey.
The possibilities of communal practice are endless and there is constant dialogue
occurring within the feedback loop between my own practice and the interaction of others
with the materials and processes I present. Coming full-circle, I now view my work through
the idea of ‘world play,’ a collaborative and community-based form of creativity. I do this by
presenting my world and the bits and pieces within to audiences, so that they can play with
them and interpret them in their own way within that space. I want people to experience
world-building through configuration practices that experiment with the materials contained
within the presented code, its limits and its boundaries."
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We'd like to thank Joe for sharing his story with us, and for helping make Art & Soul such a wonderful, thriving creative community.
You can follow Joe's journey at the below links.
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