Pablo Bronstein on art vs design, and how Brexit changed the meaning of his work

In a world of media-trained pursed lips, Pablo Bronstein is a refreshing riposte to press release jargon and art world air kisses. He’s honest, a bit sweary, and hugely eloquent. When I call, he’s charmingly flustered. “I’m in a panic about scrubbing the floor before World of Interiors comes round,” he says. “It’s pretty bloody terrifying if I’m honest. With shoots like that they find the most fucked up thing you own, so my job is to find the most fucked up thing and get rid of it. When the world’s falling apart I’m making sure my floors are scrubbed.”

Bronstein is currently showing a piece called Historical Dances in an Antique Setting at Tate Britain. The work combines vast architectural imagery with a performance by three dancers, which will run every day at the gallery throughout the show’s six-month tenure.

This month, Bronstein will see the fruits of his labour on a rather different project, creating the set design for large-scale production of The Creation, an opera based on Paradise Lost which will feature over 50 dancers and over 70 musicians. Working with dance company Rambert, Bronstein’s designs take the form of an on-stage cathedral combining gothic tracery with post-modern features, while the costumes were created with Stevie Stewart and are inspired by Ken Russell’s film The Devils.

It’s an unusual project for Bronstein, who’s more suited to fine art projects, but as he explains, Rambert “has a very long history of commissioning artists.” We spoke to the artist about his work, his love of craftsmanship and the differences between being an artist and a designer.

Where abouts are you based at the moment?

In the summer months mostly in Deal in Kent, and in the winter mostly in London. It depends on what I’m working on. The project at the Tate means I’m in London all the time.

When you’re making work like the Tate project, once you’ve conceived the piece, made it, and implemented it, it’s very much in the hands of others. Does that feel strange?

The feeling i have is that the work at the Tate changes with who’s performing it. It looks different and feels different every time, because the dancer behaves and reacts to the performance, so every time I go I see something new. It is a really responsibility to hand it over and not be able to change it for six months.

It certainly feels a bit weird in that current climate [following the referendum vote to leave the EU] making anything that is public. The work is very intimately tied up with Tate Britain and the fact it’s the home of British art.

How have these events changed the way you approach your work?

The look of my work is very very “London” in a way, it has the very London bright red bus colour on the jerseys, it’s London architecture, it’s a famous London landscape but it’s also an extremely multicultural and diverse dance group so it’s a statement in favour of cultural diversity. It wasn’t when I made it but I think it’s readable as that now. Some of the dancers live in Europe, a lot of them are in Berlin, and they come in for the week to perform.

There’s a sense of readjusting how I view my work and how international it is in character in a way. There has been something in the art world for years to do with how international or local you are as an artist, and I think artists that have previously been considered very “national” artists might have had the playing field levelled. But that remains to be seen.

I’ve read that you don’t feel much connection to art and design post-1960, can you tell me a bit more about that?

I think when I said that I was being a bit disingenuous. I look very much from architecture from the 20th Century, I think my most visible project has been the book A Guide to Postmodern Architecture in London.

But the art and design that I love post 1960s is an art that looks to the past and reworks the past. But I grew up in Neasden, where there were lots of postmodern faded lumps.

I like that aspect of your work, the reworks elements of different ideas from throughout art history, but in a very playful way. There’s something very “postmodern” about that.

I connect to certain periods but I also remake history. But I’m not a scholar so I don’t really care about the minute details or inaccuracies. There’s not much historical reliability to it all at the Tate piece, but who cares? It’s a piece of contemporary art.

What I love about earlier art is that I think contemporary art and 20th Century art hasn’t been able to grasp the manual dexterity [of earlier work] through machine technology. When painter do it now it’s in quite a twee way. The objects that make us gasp in, say the V&A, are the elaborate relics that are entirely handmade. We value more the high end, very worked objects that have had a lot of time invested doing something with our hands than mass produced objects. We would happily go and see a shoe exhibition, but not a shoe exhibition of 90s shoes from Clark’s.

You’re working with Rambert Dance Company on the show The Creation. What’s it like working with a client so directly? When you’re working like that, are you more a designer than an artist? What do you think the difference is?

In a way I feel like it’s a sort of role play, of trying to be a designer. I assimilate stuff and it’s like when I’m designing a building, in some ways it’s about history and representation, so in some ways it’s a design act. But it’s not the same as if I’ve got a client.

I would say there is a difference between art and design: the role of the brief when there is a brief means there is a very fixed client/architect relationship. That [brief] might be self-generated in the way the architect or designer will try and make something better, but an artwork has no obligation to do that.

I’m getting to a stage where people are trusting me with quite large commissions but I don’t have the freedom or the power to seriously impact people’s lives, which architects do and artists don’t.

As an artist, I have more pleasure in moving around and being freer, but the art world is full of cunts and you’ve got to pitch for things in the same way an architect has. One of the joys of being an artist is you just do the work, and it comes from quite an instinctive place. Everyone wants to be applauded and written about and cried over.

Can you tell me a bit more about what you’ve done with The Creation?

The way I understand the work is Haydn composed it around 1800 as an old fashioned oratorio about the creation up to Adam and Eve. It’s got an old style, it has a Handel-esque, quite baroque flavour. I was looking around at the architectural references at the time, but rather than something twee or nostalgic I was trying to come up with something that was sort of gothic style, but decayed glamour. I decided to treat this as something that started with my architectural interests: the idea of the house of god is a useful one, because you can use it to house the musicians and the cast.

The project has been very collaborative, it’s been my first thing as a proper “designer” where I’ve had to accommodate a lot of other people. I’m very excited by it as it’s a new thing. It’s a bloody miracle getting these things done on time, within budget and with all the technical stuff. Artists aren’t really used to that.

The Creation premieres on 14 July at Garsington Opera Pavilion Wormsley, before transferring to London in November.