Rosie Lowit

In the Studio with Leon Scott-Engel

Multidisciplinary artist Leon Scott-Engel’s practice spans painting and sculpture. Focusing on themes of tenderness and intimacy, much of his work mimics found objects. Leon’s mattresses, boxing pads and punch bags are handmade, however, acting as canvases onto which he imbues meaning. He explores vulnerability through figuration, and in doing so softens the formal language of traditional painting.

At twenty four, Leon represents an exciting new generation of emerging London-based artists. Alongside his first solo show at Pipeline in 2023, aptly named Handle with Care, his work has been featured in a series of group exhibitions at venues including The Saatchi Gallery, Split Gallery and Black White Gallery.

After his recent participation in HBH Gallery’s inaugural group show Voyeur - The Space Between Us (March 2024), I joined Leon in his Dalston studio to discuss his work and his career to date.

Could you tell me a bit about how you got into art?

I grew up around the arts. My mum is an artist and costume designer and my dad is an architect, so there are photos of me as a toddler holding drills and painting my mum’s studio walls. I’ve always loved art, but at school you’re often taught to go into a career there’s security in. I considered various paths but knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t just go for it and see what happened. So I did my foundation at Central Saint Martins and then my undergrad at Glasgow School of Art. I actually feel like the tutors who interviewed me at Glasgow pre-empted the trajectory of my practice. The conversations we had about expanded field painting and figuration is essentially where my work ended up going. They understood where I wanted to go before I did.

How has your practice evolved since this point?

During art school I made both paintings and sculptures, but the two never quite sat together aesthetically. My sculptural works were greatly inspired by 90s British sculpture and neo-dada, which I guess is what I was brought up around, the aftermath of Sensation. My paintings, on the other hand, were inspired by Bacon, Baselitz and Dumas and recalled very expressionist themes. The two disciplines didn’t really work together aesthetically, and I always wanted to have a practice where I could make anything and shift between materials, methods of making and medium. It became a journey of trying to bridge the gap between the two. There was a definite playfulness to the process, as I started to make paintings on table legs and shove bike wheels through canvases. This grew into a language of beginning to fold and hinge canvases, informed by expanded field painting, which eventually led to the curved paintings I create today. During my degree show, I think I had reached a place within my practice where it felt like painting and sculpture were starting to work together. A lot of my current works are soft sculptural pieces that still recall the traditional language of the painted form.

Leon Scott-Engel, Swole (2023), Courtesy Pipeline. Photographer: m8r8s Studio

I initially assumed - and I know that you’ve spoken about this previously - that your canvases (mattresses, punch bags and boxing pads) were found objects. How do you think constructing the canvases yourself impacts the meaning of the work?

Yes, so I make everything! The structures of the curved paintings are based on traditional stretchers. I’ve had great technical support to help me learn these skills, and since finishing my BA I've started to sew and upholster. I’m definitely still learning, but I think there’s a beauty to inaccuracies that perhaps makes the works feel more human. I’ve always loved sculpture that uses or plays with found objects. I’m greatly inspired by the domestically surreal work of Robert Gober, or the work of Rachel Whiteread - especially her mattresses. My favourite artwork by her, however, is Torso. This is a plaster cast of a hot water bottle that has a really bodily feel and holds a lived history of emotions and presence.

My reason, then, for making a canvas that resembles a mattress - rather than painting on an old mattress - is to start with a clean slate that doesn’t hold a lived history itself, but remains a recognisable object onto which I can impart my own thoughts, history and feelings. This journey started with the punchbags. Part of the reason I started using the boxing apparatus is because it was so accessible and recognisable to the conversations and topics surrounding the machismo which I was looking at in my work. Universally understood, recalling the appearance of these apparatus and familiar objects removes this level of hierarchy in a gallery space. Found objects have the same effect; the public saw Sensation, for example, and found it far more accessible than previous shows, even if it too was in a white cube.

Leon Scott-Engel, Trace (2023). Courtesy Pipeline. Photographer: m8r8s Studio

You mention using boxing apparatus to recall topics you were focusing on in your work. Could you tell me a bit more about these themes?

My practice comes from a personal place. As a young adult, a lot of that is trying to understand myself. My own masculinity is a huge topic that I looked at more explicitly in my older work during my BA. For example, I made a piece called Embrace (2020), which was a grid of paintings focusing on male contact. I wanted to try and dissolve the idea that the relationship between two men must either be violent or sexually charged. We weren’t brought up being told that men can be tender, open and sensitive, that they can embrace each other and support each other and it just be that. I think my practice has since shifted away from being more explicitly about masculinity, and I also don’t necessarily tie my work to gender as much as I used to, now finding it too binary.

My debut solo show, Handle with Care, at Pipeline (June - August 2023), was the beginning of this thematic departure. It had the sparring pads and the punchbags, but it also had these sculptural installations and my first mattress work. All of my works focused on softness, taking the formal language of painting and trying to soften it. I’ve taken these initial ideas around my own selfhood and notions of masculinity, but now focus on less binary themes of vulnerability, tenderness and intimacy.

This language of softness seamlessly translates to the materials as well as the themes of your work. These boxing pads, which you might expect to be firm and quite impenetrable, have a really gentle quality to them in person.

Exactly! I’m looking at this language of traditional stretcher making, but adding an upholstery element to make the works soft. This actually changes the way that paint physically reacts. When it’s stretched, the canvas almost pushes back out at you - there’s a resistance. With these boxing pads, the soft material almost absorbs the brush. With the wooden boards there is no pushback, it absorbs oil and you can almost wipe paint off. The harder the surface, the softer the painting tends to be. It’s a far more physical process to paint the curved works than the hard wooden boards.

You mentioned your 2020 work Embrace. Could you tell me a bit about the process of naming your pieces?

There’s an element of my titles that are descriptive, maybe to guide the viewer’s reading of something. Having said this, I often try to leave an openness when I name a work, aiming to create an ambiguity that gives the viewer space to attach their own meaning. There’s certainly a playfulness to titling works - you can imbue intensity on a piece or you can stray from it. For example, for my duo show with George Richardson, Another Round (September - November 2023), I made a peanut shaped, corseted punching bag called Waist Trainer, and that was great fun, but it also had this tender irony to it. A title is interesting as it’s the one bit of publicly visible text that an artist leaves with a work.

Speaking of your exhibitions, could you tell me a bit about your recent group show at HBH Gallery, Voyeur - The Space Between Us?

That was a really great show. It was the gallery’s inaugural exhibition and the start of something really exciting that [HBH Gallery founders] Nick and Thomas are putting together. I've never felt that level of care in a group show before. They spent six months before the show working with every artist, visiting our studios to conduct interviews and document our works in progress. The process was very organic, as we all made works specifically for the exhibition. As a result, the show had a really exciting charge, everything felt very conscious.

Courtesy HBH Gallery. Photographer: Thomas Hjelm

You had three pieces on display in the exhibition. What was it like, after this six month process, having the works leave the privacy of your studio? Does this departure change the narrative of the pieces for you?

I actually think this is a real reason to make. The work will always have its original intention, but by removing it from the confines of the studio you let it have a new lease of life, you get these really exciting moments. My works are three dimensional, so they need the viewer’s presence for them to really exist. They’re made to be experienced. By giving up my agency over my work, I allow viewers to come to their own conclusion about it. In a similar vein, I often choose to read press releases after seeing an exhibition, wanting to engage with the show myself before understanding what somebody else is gaining from it. I would say that the most exciting part of creating an artwork is seeing it leave the studio.

What can we expect to see from you in the next few months?

I’m really looking forward to spending time in the studio to dive deeper into my practice, and develop new ideas I've been having. During the summer I have an exciting opportunity coming up, which will be announced shortly, where I will be spending time intensively making and exploring in a different environment. Leading up to this will be a chance to slow down my process, with more time being put back into research and reading to help inform these new ideas. I look forward to seeing where my work goes!

You can find more of Leon’s work at:

https://leonscottengel.com/

@leonscottengel