A teenage riot in a public station

There’s a rare sense of realness throughout British photographer Nick Waplington’s work, from his first published book in 1991 (Living Room, which chronicled two working-class families living on a Nottingham council estate) to his forthcoming Alexander McQueen exhibition at Tate Britain next year. He has a particular curiosity that’s led him to explore graffiti from WWI prisons (“We Live as We Dream, Alone”) and even spent four years documenting Occupied Territories' Jewish settlers in the West Bank. No matter the current climate around him, Waplington simply does what he feels, and lets the work follow.

His latest collection, A Good Man’s Grave Is His Sabbath, at LA’s Little Big Man Gallery, proves the sentiment further, showcasing two collections from his youth: Surf Riot and Made Glorious Summer. The former is a collection of images taken during a riot at the Surf Pro Championships of 1986, when hundreds of young surfers rampaged, for no apparent reason, through Huntington Beach, overturning police cars and setting the beach alight. Made Glorious Summer traces Waplington’s teenage years living across Surrey and West Sussex. There’s threads of punk (including his 7” collection at the time and various ticket stubs), skate culture and the recurring theme of public uproar – one image shows a young male protester holding a sign that reads “Police shoot women.”

Both collections look back on the past while highlighting the present, with the current wave of youth protests amid the Ferguson trials. Waplington meanwhile is already facing towards the future, as he works on his next artistic exploration: painting.

What are you up to?

Nick Waplington: I’m just finishing up for the day, just playing some music. I’ve been painting all day today. I’ve got to go retrieve my credit card from the pub soon!

Where are you at the moment?

Nick Waplington: I’m in London for my show opening at the Tate. I have the McQueen show in March at Tate Britain – this is a different show at Tate Modern. It’s work that I made about the Second World War. I photographed the prison where they held the SS – the ones they captured during the War were held in the UK, before they were taken to Nuremberg for the trial. The prison was demolished in 1994, so a long time ago. I took the pictures in 92, 93. It’s been 100 years since the first World War at the moment, right now, so it’s an important subject! It’s been really nice making the work up again, and going to Germany again.

Are you primarily in New York these days?

Nick Waplington: I live mainly in New York but I’m here quite a bit. I’ve been in New York since 2011. It’s not the first time I’ve lived there, I was there 89-96. I’ve lived in Los Angeles as well, but I have a 10 year old son in London so I can’t be that far away. New York’s good, though the weather was terrible last winter. If it gets really bad in the winter this year, I might just come here. London may be wet, but it’s always warmer.

Your blog mentioned skating at the pier 62 Skatepark in NYC. Do you still skate?

Nick Waplington: I’ve been skateboarding since I was 10. I almost gave up last year, I dislocated my ankle. I was in the hospital and they were looking at me, like, ‘How did you do this?!’ It was on the ramp in the skatepark. But my son is really into it so I decided to continue. I don’t know how much longer I can go on but this is my 39th year, so it’s not bad really.

Speaking of LA, what can you tell us about Surf Riot?

Nick Waplington: I went to go to the Surf Pro and luckily I had my camera. It just kicked off. I’m not sure myself what the reason was. I just saw a lot of people turning over police cars! In 2009, the negatives of the photos turned up again in a box of stuff that my mother gave me. There were other rolls of film, various different things, but nothing quite as striking as those images. I’d had a set of small prints all along (I actually wrote an essay about the work at one point), I just didn’t have the negatives. But when the neg’s turned up again, I thought they’d make a nice book. It’s kind of weird because it’s out of the remit of my working practice; it’s just something that I did when I was a kid, but it was interesting. They have historical interest to a lot of people; a lot of people were interested in the work.

What inspired Made Glorious Summer?

Nick Waplington: Made Glorious Summer ties in a little bit as a work that I started to make around the time that my mother gave me the box of negatives back, around the time my father died, in 2009. It was the interweaving thread in the period between ’79 to ‘84. So that work is from when I was even younger. They’re all kind of teenage pictures. I weaved them in with some landscapes that I’d taken more recently, and records from my record collection, and bits of ephemera that I'd kept, to make it a statement on time passing, family relationships and economic meltdown. Throw them together in one big pot - that’s what that is.

It’s interesting that both bodies of work center around youth. What do you think of the current youth generation?

Nick Waplington: I don’t really know. I have no idea. I’ve got some friends in their 20s and they have a lot less than we had, in many respects. Economically things aren't very good now, When I was in my early 20s, it was easy to buy a house - you could buy a house and live there with your friends, live cheaply and make art. Nowadays everything costs a lot of money and rent is expensive. It’s a different kind of world. And technology plays such a big part in people’s lives these days - there wasn’t any technology back then! (laughs) Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know. If I think of all the times, before mobile phones, that I stood waiting for someone for hours and they didn’t turn up, then maybe technology’s a good thing. 

“I don’t know anything about what teenagers are up to now. I don’t care, really” – Nick Waplington

Why do you think we have a fascination with youth?

Nick Waplington: I don’t. I have no interest in [youth culture], to be honest. Looking at aspects of my own life through work that I created in the past is one thing, but I don’t know anything about what teenagers are up to now. I don’t care, really.

What fascinates you these days – what are you looking to work on next?

Nick Waplington: I paint a lot now. I’m working on a series of iconoclast paintings, I’m mixing iconography. I was living in Jerusalem for a long time so I’m quite interested in the imagery in the churches, especially St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. I’m mixing that with pornography. I’m interested in what’s happening on the internet, with technology especially – transgressive behaviour and cultural norms being subverted by video clips on the internet. It’s much more interesting than what the kids are wearing or listening to. That’s where I’m at right now. All I do is work. I’m at a stage in my life where, unless I’m taking some time off to be with my child, I just work. With friends, we go to the pub and talk about art. But I don’t do anything else, I don’t have time to do anything else. 

Any last thoughts on the exhibition title, A Good Man’s Grave Is His Sabbath?

Nick Waplington: It’s from a metaphysical poet from the 16th century called John Donne. I like his poetry very much. It’s fairly simplistic: it means a good man will rest when he’s dead. He’s an amazing poet. This is more what I’m into nowadays than, you know, whatever the kids like. What do kids like nowadays? The lady with the large bottom and her rapper husband?