He helped create the fist-pumping soundtrack of a generation – now the Stone Roses guitarist paints pictures he makes on Snapchat. Will Ian Brown be coming to his show?
I’m in an enormous, concrete, box-shaped space. Alone, but the noise of men working nearby – drilling, talking – reverberates around the room. Literally an echo chamber. On the walls rest huge, colourful paintings, ready to be hung. Figures that are lifelike but messed with, so that bits are in the wrong place, or the background appears within the boundaries of the figures, a jigsaw forced together the wrong way.
The artist, John Squire, comes in quietly (he does everything quietly, he used to be much louder) and explains how he did it. It starts with a photo – perhaps one he’s found on Tumblr, or taken himself (this one is his wife, at the basin in the bathroom at home near Macclesfield) – which he then manipulates.