Exploring space and time with art

3:32pm Tuesday 9th September 2008

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Artist Simon Patterson talks to Kerry Ann Eustice about his current exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, his famous take on the London Underground map, The Great Bear

For Londoners in particular, Turner Prize nominated artist Simon Patterson's The Great Bear is an instantly recognisable work.

Even in that early piece - Patterson started The Great Bear fresh from art school - the artist's interest in National Maritime Museum (NMM) staples - sea, space and time - was clear. He devoted the East London line to the planets and the work itself is named after a star constellation, rendering him an ideal candidate to fill the NMM's contemporary gallery space, and to join space science professor John Zarnecki in conversation on art, science, space and exploration next week.

"I jumped at the chance because its not a gallery," said Simon of why he was keen to exhibit here.

"It has a contemporary art gallery space but it's the National Maritime Museum, which I hadn't been to since I was a kid.

"I liked the idea of doing a show where you get people who are mainly not going to see contemporary art, they're going to see the exhibitions. That appealed to me."

Despite featuring a lot of old work, it's not a retrospective, Simon insists. That happens, he says, when "you're old or dead".

And to make sure it didn't fall in this dreaded category, a new piece was commissioned too.

Cousteau and the Underworld, like many other of the featured works (take Cosmic Wallpaper where rock band Deep Purple references replace the names of star constellations) is a subverted map or chart, where pop culture references or myth are presented via authoritative factual documents.

For this Patterson worked with the museum's hydrograph expert to research existing and devise his own admiralty chart.

"When I was a child it was enormously popular on TV," said Simon of the idea for the source. "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was on of those must-see events in TV.

"If you asked a child now, they wouldn't know who I was talking about and that interested me, the idea of fame and heroes."

When doing his own research for the work, Simon also noted the unreliability of the internet - the fact he would get 20 different possible entries for someone's birth date - and explored that too.

"I thought it would be nice to include the corruption you get of information, a bit like the oral tradition in Homer's Odyssey, there wasn't somebody called Homer it was just repeated orally and finally put down in writing.

"It's like Chinese whispers."

Double meanings, possibilities and open questions, Patterson has forged a career on these ideas.

Yet, there's no definitive source of inspiration for the artist, he has "top of the bus moments" where ideas pop into his head.

"Often it's what seems very obvious to you which is quite a good idea," he said.

Is this true for The Great Bear?

"It's one of those funny situations, and this will come across as really arrogant, but one of the few works where I knew it was going to be good, a good work. It just felt right," he said.

It's become so ingrained in the culture, it's turned into an advertising cliche and there are countless parodies advertising flights or insurance on the tube now.

"I don't mind," said Simon. "I've taken something from someone else's masterpiece of graphic design which is one of the reasons why it's successful.

"When it was first done, someone had bought a copy and when I took it round to deliver it, the security guard started looking at it and became really interested in it.

"I thought well that's nice,' he doesn't care if it's contemporary art or anything, he's taking it on his terms rather than my terms."

"I'm quite relaxed about people getting it, it's not a game. If they don't spot there's some in joke or a connection in there which is my intended connection.

"My intention is interesting, I suppose, but once you make something it's in the public domain and it's out of your hands."

In conversation, Sep 15 at 7pm. NMM, Greenwich. Booking essential, 020 8312 8560.