Article from The Times magazine; 24 May 2003
By Rose Shepherd

Olly and Suzi are not your typical YBAs. Rather than spending their days in Hoxton's lofts and bars, these artist explorers roam the world, from pole to pole, depicting nature at its most raw and wild and then allow their animal subjects to get up close and personal with their portraits. The result is an extraordinary record of the breathtaking grace, power and danger of some of some of the furthest corners of our planet.

When I first met Olly and Suzi, back in 1999, they were talking of going to the moon. And it tells you something about this dauntless pair, that I was at least half persuaded that they'd make it. There were, however, practical problems. As Suzi says, with characteristic understatement, "It would be a bit expensive." Besides, she was six months' pregnant at the time. She now has a daughter, Missy, with her partner (Damon Albarn, as it happens, and I mean no disrespect to Blur's lead singer when I say that this is by no means the interesting thing about Suzi). Olly meanwhile, has married his girlfriend, Lisa, and has a son, Bear, aged two.

Olly and Suzi are not, then, an "item". They are, rather, "an artist", singular, as their great friend and fan Clive James says in his foreword to their new book, Olly & Suzi: Arctic, Desert, Ocean, Jungle - a collection of their paintings, anecdotes and musings. They first met at Central St Martins School of Art in 1987, and, finding much in common, not least a deep feeling for the natural world, they soon teamed up and vowed to make art together, not just for then, but for ever.

Fifteen years on, they're still doing it, working hand over hand, on the same sheet of paper, the same canvas, holding the same pencil, brush, feather, leaf; at moments deferring to each other, at moments barging each other out of the way. Where possible they favour natural pigments - mud, blood, ochre, berry juices. Don't ask who did what. There are not two egos involved, just a shared alter ego.

Olly and Suzi have travelled to the world's most inhospitable places - Siberia, the North Pole, the African deserts, the Amazonian jungle - to capture, in their unique way, some of the world's most fearsome predators. They've been "up close and personal", as Suzi wryly puts it, with polar bears, grizzlies, lions, wolves, crocodiles and tarantulas They have dived among sharks, hung with orangutans. They work fast because their "sitters" are elusive, because, at temperatures of plus or minus thirty-something, you don't want to dally, and because life is fleeting.

Sometimes their subjects are invited to inspect the works, and may even make a contribution. The shark that took a bite out of its portrait, and the wild dog in Tanzania that peed over his could teach the likes of Brian Sewell a thing or two about excoriating art criticism.

Olly and Suzi's landscapes are big and bold and spare; they cry freedom. Their ammal studies are primitive, feral, fearless, yet with a tender sensibility, a feeling of connection.You look at them and know that they were there. Today, however, they are here, in the studio in west London where they have temporarily come to rest. They are easy and companionable as ever, talking the same way as they paint, over each other, finishing each other's sentences.

Round and about are the bones of the "half a giraffe" they brought back from their last foray (not, you guess, through the "nothing to dedare" lane). "It was dead when we found it," says Suzi. "Dead for a year," confirms Olly "There's loads of it at my house. That there is a bit of leg. And we brought all the ribs. They're beautitul."

"The scale is amazing," enthuses Suzi. "I was carrying all these ribs back, just thinking, My God" As well she might.

On the walls are hung "tribal" artefacts that they've been fashioning as part of a new project "It's all about the juxtaposition of our lives, I guess," says Olly "Of having families and living in London and being often away, being semi-nomadic, and the nomads we actually travel and work with." "The real nomads," says Suzi. "The real nomads," echoes Olly. "Our work has been kind of informed by them, but we've never made work about them. We've always had local trackers or indigenous people to help us get into position, but now we're gettinig quite involved with their meclianics of living, and how they compare to ours.

"And also," says Suzi, "the similarities between different places. You know there are all these people, all over the world, and actually they share similar ways. Because what do you need? The basic, primary tools that you've always needed don't change."

"Our work is still a collaborative, mutual response to the wild" continues Olly, "but we're starting to be intrigued by the people who live on the peripheries of the wild, and who hold the survival of the wild in their hands. They are the ones who subsist in the bush and are at one with it. We're intrigued by the fact that, in 2003, there are men who feed their families by hunting with eagles or living off the forest."

So the moon trip is now pie in the sky? "It's not looking good at the moment," chuckles Olly, "but I tell you what we are doing. Our big trip, early next year, our big conquest, is to be Antarctica, where we're going to be working under the ice. So I think maybe the moon after that. We're working with a couple of wonderful people. When you do things like this, you need the right people around you."

You also, if you're Olly and Suzi, need a photographer to make art of you making art, and, as ever, Olly's brother Greg will be going along to record the process on camera.

"The plan is to sail from South America to the Antarctic peninsular with this amazing captain called Skip Novak. He's done, like, the Whitbread four times, he's really experienced. And Greggy's going to come, says Olly fondly.

For both Olly and Suzi, the "warm glow" of fear makes for heightened intensity in their work, of a kind that just would not be present in the studio. They are not quite mad, however, and have learnt, with the guidance of experts, to understand a little of animal behaviour, of the flight-or-fight responses that can mean life or death. We actually do know what we shouldn't do," says Olly which is to run. But a hell of a lot of people would freak. We always say we're not experts, but at the same time we've learnt that there is a certain code of conduct that keeps us safe."

I feel," says Suzi, the romantic, "that if I walked up to some creature with a gun in my hand, or had some intentions like that, we would have had some very different experiences."

Ask which are their favourite animals, and Olly declares, "I'm a bear man, I love bears." You can imagine the feelihg is mutual. Indeed, if the grizzly bears of Alaska did not grasp this huge guy to their bosoms like a long lost brother, it can only be because bears stand on ceremony.

Suzi, for her part, adores the wild dogs of Tanzania, delicate creatures with appealitig faces and dainty legs. (like clearly attracts like.) She is less keen on hyenas, but is trying to see their good side. Then there are mosquitoes. "I've always had a bit of a problem with mosquitoes, attacking us," she reveals. "But I've started reading this book, and at the beginning it talks about these beautiful creatures, and the way the guy explains it, I just thought, "No, I'm going to love them as well, any minute."

No you're not, man," Olly counters. "You can't reason with them. I sometimes catch them, and I go, 'Don't!'Then, what about the tsetses? You hit them, and you roll them, and they unroll themselves, get up and fly off!"

In truth, their attitude is inclusive. Every creature has its place in the scheme of things, and a large part of their aim is to document the passing of animals, habitats and tribes that are here now but may not be for much longer". "But it's a subtle message," says Olly "I think we've learnt that it's best to just kind of subtly push ahead. By making a show, as we did last year at the Natural History Museum, where you contact four to five mllhon children and their families, and by doing a book, and by working on a film in Antarctica, slowly, slowly you get it across.

"People can say 'So, why that landscape?' Or, 'Why are they painting that bear?' Or, 'Why get an imprint of an animal that might not be here tomorrow?' I think the true relevance of our work will come over in the next 20 to 30 years. It's a long-term game. Ten years ago, our critics maybe thought, 'Oh, Olly and Suzi, rushing off together'. and now they're going. 'Oh. they must be quite serious about this.'"

It's not that they have been publicly mauled by an art establishment notoriously red in tooth and claw but from the outset they met with cynicism. They were called "naive" by their course tutors, whom they chose to ignore. Six months into their degree course, they took up an exchange scholarship at Syracuse University arriving in the heart of Mohawk territory in bitter cold and, almost at once, dropping out of classes. (Who wants to learn to prepare an etching plate, when there is a wealth of Mohawk myth and iconography to imbibe?)

They rented a house and began painting prolifically working on cheap brown paper, and becoming lost in their endeavours. They might have been expelled, had a tutor not shown up, seen the fruits of their creative frenzy and weighed in on their behalf.

Now these two outsiders are coming in from the cold. They have been taken on by the Briggs Robinson Gallery in New York. Their book - written collaboratively, of course, although not hand overhand - promises to reach a wide audience Olly's wife, Lisa is managing them, quietly making things happen. Family commitments mean they travel less. They may manage one or two big trips a year. They have, though, found a whole new world to explore. Stung by the attitude of a good friend, who asked if they were not limiting themselves by choosing to paint "only" the natural world, they have embarked on a journey within.

They have been working with Dr Mex Ball, at The Natural History Museum, painting what they see through a microscope. In the museum's in-house magazine, in an article titled "Working With Nutters", Dr Ball describes how he has prepared snake fangs, spiders, ants and tiny mites for their delectatiom "They talk nonstop," he relates, "constantly come up with new ideas, and run me ragged to keep up with them."

Then," says Suzi, "I want to do a show called Made in Taiwan." It's a really good idea," says Olly. Both Lisa and Damon must be very spacious people, I suggest, to accept the long absences, however occasional.

Well, for me," says Suzi, lots of boyfriends in the past..." "Lots?" snorts Olly "I was always the one going away," she presses on, "and I found this lack of understanding of what I was doing. So it's wondefful with Damon, because he goes away. And he's passionate, he's like the biggest workaholic I've ever met. But he loves making music, so we can understand each other's thing.

"And what is it like to live with a pop idol?" I was really put off when I realised how kind of full on it was for him with the press. It was funny when I first met him. We were in my fiat in east London, and we had to go west, and I said, 'Oh, it's really quick from here. Just jump on the Central Line.' He said, 'No, I don't think we should go on the Tube.' I had literally just met him, and I said, 'What are you talking about? It's 20 minutes. It's the quickest way' Anyway, we went down to the Tube, and there were all these people shouting, all these girls running around, and I suddenly thought, 'I don't like this.' It's all very well for him, because he courted that in the past, although he's not interested in it now. But it's got nothing to do with me, that's his life before he met me. So I just keep my head down."

As for the children, Missy and Bear, they will sometimes go along on trips. Already their eyes are being opened to the wonders of this fragile world.

The moon, meanwhile, remains a disant dreaim (Oh, I so want to say "The moon is on the back burner"!) But, you know with Olly and Suzi, who can say? Watch this space.

For more information on the artists and their work please contact lisa@ollysuzi.com