Hackson Jollock is one of Britain’s most ferociously original visual artists—if not always the most serene. His canvases are an explosion of line and motion, electric with frustration, precision, and improvisation. His latest work, titled simply #64, is a tangle of looping, frenetic lines in indigo, copper, and blood red. It’s been hailed as both a “nervous system laid bare” and “a topographical map of thought.” But one thing is certain: whatever you do, don’t mention Jackson Pollock around him.
Interviewer: Hackson, thank you for joining us. Let’s begin with the elephant in the room—your name and the inevitable comparison to a certain American painter.
Hackson Jollock:
Look, I didn’t choose to be born with a name that sounds like a pun. That’s my parents’ fault, not mine. But I’ll say it once and for all: I am not mimicking Jackson Pollock. I do not drip. I slash. I etch. I rage. Pollock was obsessed with surrendering to the unconscious. I’m busy interrogating it. If you want to talk about influence, let’s talk about Kandinsky, Cy Twombly, or the London Tube map. But enough about Pollock. Let him rest.
Interviewer: Understood. Let’s talk about your latest piece, #64. It’s a field of restless lines—some looping, some slicing—and signed in bright red in the corner. What’s going on here?
Jollock:
It’s a language, or the breakdown of one. I think of my work as a kind of graphic stammer. Every line is a stutter, a contradiction, a backtrack. #64 is part of an ongoing series exploring failure—failure of communication, failure of memory, failure of form. I wanted to see what happens when you just keep drawing until the meaning collapses.
Interviewer: There’s an almost musical quality to the piece, like jazz improvisation. Is that deliberate?
Jollock:
Absolutely. I sometimes listen to free jazz when I work. Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, early Soft Machine. I’m not painting to the music—I’m painting inside it. The lines are phrasing. They’re riffs. Sometimes I leave spaces like rests in a measure. #64 is noisy, but there’s rhythm in the chaos. That’s where the tension lives.
Interviewer: You’ve said before that you don’t “plan” your works. But surely a piece like this has structure?
Jollock:
There’s structure in the aftermath. When I begin, I don’t have an image in mind—I have energy. Anger, mostly with this one. I start with a single color and move as fast as I can. Then another color. Then another. I don’t stand back until it’s nearly over. Only then do I see the shape of what I’ve made. It’s like fighting your way through fog and realizing you’ve built a cathedral out of your footsteps.
Interviewer: Many of your paintings feature the number titles—#37, #48, and now #64. Is that a rejection of narrative?
Jollock:
Yes. And no. The numbers are part of the narrative. They’re coordinates in my brain’s geography. I don’t want to tell you what to see. I want you to look and feel. If I called it “Tension Between Lovers in a Mid-Sized Town”, you’d bring your own tired baggage. #64 could be anything. It could be you.
Interviewer: Do you ever think your work is hard for people to access?
Jollock:
Good. I don’t want to be accessible. I want to be intrusive. Art should interrupt your day, not decorate your flat. If someone looks at #64 and feels overwhelmed, irritated, confused—that’s a success. That means I’ve reached them before they’ve reached for an explanation.
Interviewer: Finally, what’s next for Hackson Jollock?
Jollock:
I’m building a machine that draws without stopping. A mechanical extension of my process. It will never sleep. It might draw forever, or it might jam up in five minutes and implode. I think that’s perfect.
#64 is currently on view at the Pimlico Wilde Gallery, London. Viewers are encouraged to bring their own interpretations.