Introducing Andrew J. Steel

For ten years Andrew J. Steel painted as half of BMD, the New Zealand street art duo from Taranaki whose members kept their names to themselves. In October 2015 the pair announced they were going separate ways, and revealed who they were: Steel and Damin Radford-Scott. Three months into his solo career, Steel answered a set of questions from the UK street-art quarterly Very Nearly Almost about who he is and what he intends to do next, and his answers were as direct as his painting.

Ten thousand days

He introduced himself as a little over ten thousand days old, which puts him in his late twenties, and as a creative first and foremost. He said he makes some of the largest public artworks in New Zealand and wants to be a real force in the country’s creative scene. His description of his own style was cheerfully self-deprecating: ridiculous, anti-style, the sort of thing a younger brother might have done. His explanation for why it works was simpler still. Keep at anything for long enough, he said, and people start to care.

He has never taken an art or design class. He came in as an outsider and worked out for himself both how his work should look and how to get projects made. He sees everyone as a remix of their influences and experiences, and he spoke frankly about a hard childhood marked by family breakdown, fire and suicide. His work, as he put it, is an escape from that and an attempt to put something positive into the world.

Going solo

Asked whether working alone had changed his approach, he answered with a question of his own: whether a band that no longer rehearses or plays together can still call itself a band. He was proud that BMD reached ten years, pointing out that most ventures do not, but said the two had drifted apart and were rarely working together by the end. Going solo felt like the natural step.

He described the change in practical terms. Working alone is faster, and he no longer has to compromise on ideas. He added, with some satisfaction, that painting a very large wall single-handed is a much better workout.

A piece a month

The most interesting part of his plan is how he intends to sell. Steel pointed out that he had never sold a single piece of fine art under his own name, something few artists can say. BMD had kept to walls by choice. Now that the restriction was gone, he wanted to arrive with an entrepreneurial approach to selling.

His answer is a silent auction he built himself. One original work is released on the first of each month and stays open for seven days. Anyone anywhere can bid any amount, and the highest bid when the week closes takes it. Twelve works a year, one at a time. The first, The Divide, went up in December 2015 and drew on the conflict around the end of BMD.

The logic is that the model removes both the physical and the financial barriers to owning his work. There is no gallery to visit and no fixed price to meet. He said he was hoping for bids from as far away as Africa. It is an unusual approach for a painter at the start of a solo career, trading the security of a set price for reach, and it puts the market’s view of his work in plain sight month by month (andrewjsteel.com).

Plans for 2016

Asked something about himself that search engines would not know, he gave a deliberately provocative answer about what really motivates artists, and he returned to the theme when talking about the year ahead. He declared 2016 to be his year. He was working on collaborative projects with furniture and clothing brands, lining up more public walls, and writing two books: a self-help book about art, and a Kama Sutra. His reasoning, delivered with a straight face, was that sex and mental health both matter. Behind the jokes the programme is serious enough: more walls, more work sold under his own name, and a public profile built for the first time around his own name.