Honey, I shrunk the art

We meet Paterson, a Glaswegian born in 1974, at his strenuously neat, white studio hidden away in a drab street near the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow. The be-whiskered artist has a little office, a compact library and a coffee-creating area in a tiny mezzanine up a small wooden ladder, and below, a large white working space which holds framed prints, pictures and models of his former and unmade works (and some of his skateboards).

Paterson’s artistic exploration of architectural, designed spaces, buildings and sculpture is still greatly evident in his current, ongoing work: precise little maquettes of a beautiful Dutch mural he has been asked to re-hang sit on various surfaces, as well as his prints for the Peacock made from different techniques and substances such as lino, lithography, digital print and etching, as well as relief and silk-screen printing.

But before we talk about his Aberdeen show, another work looms large: his enormous commission for the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), and its extension, necessitated by the 2012 London Olympics, to Stratford International. This extension of the DLR runs from Stratford International to Canning Town and includes three existing and four new stations. Paterson was appointed in 2007 as the principal artist, alongside the architects Weston Williamson. His initial plans involved extensive designs on glass, as well as two very large sculptures – but the final plan has not worked out quite as the artist hoped. Both time and money worked against him. Part of it has been completed: his elegant and extensive designs adorn “kilometres” of glazing at the stations, but Paterson is clearly frustrated by the overall experience, even though the subtle, intertwining designs – “almost ambient”, he says – still remain among the most extensive works of art this young artist has done.

“Physically the biggest is actually the work outside BBC Scotland [Poised Array, which is 20 metres long and nine metres high] but if the DLR work was laid end to end, it would be by far the longest,” he says.

He adds, rather sadly: “As usual, I had 10 ideas and you throw them at the wall and three or four stick, and it got pared back and pared back until the whole idea of having this variegated body of things became critical, because there were only two things going on. There have been some delays and problems and unfortunately in the current climate, the money ran out.

“Half of what I was doing was treating existing architectural elements, most notably the glazing – really kilometres of glazing – in four of the stations. They are designed to the millimetre, so there wasn’t much room for three-dimensional art. So it was pretty much about being a painter again, working in a two-dimensional setting. They are really quite subtle but they don’t shout ‘massive public art commission’.”

The largest work he planned, however, did not materialise: “The stuff that was meant to look like ‘art’ was at Canning Town and Stratford. They both have long concrete retaining walls – I wanted to make some very large scale, 60 or 70 metre long, coloured aluminium reliefs. They would have added some visual dynamism to a space that was otherwise quite static. Again, it used a very specific colour palette, but unfortunately – though they still have the option to do them – in reality they are not going to happen, which is a real shame. I feel a bit guilty with the DLR because we have worked on it for four years, it’s been a hell of a lot of work, but it doesn’t look like a big, massive commission.”

The seven new prints for the Peacock are on an entirely different scale, but still reflect his overwhelming inspiration from architecture – one is based on a piece of “vernacular constructivism”: an unassuming kiosk in Sofia that he saw and “sums up 100 years of architecture in one little condenser”.

“I’m making tiny wee paintings, now,” he says. “The scale thing – I have always tried to have a mixed ecology in my work: in a way it cuts both ways – you work on something that is all consuming, and 80% of your time is not making art, it’s writing emails and so on, and it can become extremely frustrating and it can completely derail your studio practice.”

The prints at Peacock are displayed alongside 26 of his previous works which include photographs, sculpture and paintings. It is another stage in a long relationship: Paterson first worked with the Peacock’s printmakers in 2003, just after he won the Beck’s Futures art prize in 2002. The Paterson exhibition runs in conjunction with The Black and White Show, a monochromatic medley of prints from various artists including Enzo Mari, John Byrne, Donald Urquhart, David Shrigley, Kenny Hunter, John Bellany and Alan Davie among others.

For Paterson, it is a welcome change of pace from his large public commissions, but those large commissions also connect with the public realm in a way which goes to the heart of his art. He says: “In terms of taking these commissions, these are things that I really support: I support the BBC, and the DLR is a really nice thing. Despite it being such a Thatcherite monorail, it is quickly becoming an egalitarian thing, because it is opening up a part of London that really needs transport links. It’s an interesting area: that part of London is so beleaguered, it seems to get steam-rolled every 30 years or so: the Luftwaffe, then comprehensive redevelopment in the 1960s, and then that’s being swept away again, and when do people who live there get a chance to establish a community and an identity? And now you have the Olympics coming in: it’s an area of such flux.” Paterson adds: “I’m an artist, my job is not to solve all those things, but it was an interesting context to be working in.”

The exhibition at Aberdeen Peacock runs until October 22, Tuesday-Saturday, 9.30-5.30pm.