Pubs, Play, and Politics of Space: In the Studio with Mac Collins

Mac Collins has transformed Newcastle gallery Slugtown into an abstracted pub – a place of ritual, camaraderie and conflict. Born in Nottingham and now working between Newcastle and his hometown, the artist turns his gaze to architectures of gathering for his latest body of work. At Miscue’s centre stands a colossal, warped pool table. Upholstered panels and cast aluminium totems extend Collins’ forensic attention to material and memory, probing how civic spaces shape collective identity. Shortly before the show’s opening, Something Curated’s Keshav Anand spoke with Collins to learn more about his evolving practice and the thinking behind the new presentation.

Keshav Anand: You work with what you’ve described as “resistant” materials — hardwood, welded steel, cast aluminium. What draws you to these stubborn substances?

Mac Collins: The materials I use are ones we encounter often in domestic spaces and the built environment, and so we already have some relationship with them. Even from just observing objects made from these substances, we immediately understand their material properties, weight, and texture – I feel making sculpture from these materials helps to connect and communicate with those encountering the work. I am also drawn to the permanence of these materials. The work will inevitably patina and change throughout time. So, I am drawn to materials that will last, and that will become richer and more intense in tone and texture with time.

I also romanticise the acquisition of muscle memory and dexterity. The stubborn materials I use naturally resist intervention and so require specific processes, tools and dexterity to shape. Muscle memory, or procedural memory, is the form of memory that outlasts all the others that we hold. Long after the memories we have of people, places and moments have warped or eroded, the muscle memory we hold will persist. The innate know-how to hold a chisel with just enough ease and rigidity as to make my intended marks will likely be with me for the rest of my life, even if I don’t pick up a chisel again for the next 30 years. I find this concept interesting, and I use these materials and follow repetitive making processes almost to try and embed more and more of this muscle memory.

KA: Do you find that the qualities of a material ever dictate the direction of a piece more than your own intention?

MC: There is a push and pull; the materials resist manipulation, and so working them becomes a game. When sand casting in metals or glass, there are undercuts and draft angles to consider, which certainly influence the form that a sculpture may take. I enjoy the puzzle of attempting to get around the restrictions that these materials and processes present, and it feels like I am tapping into an industrial lineage. However, often the intended form of a piece must shift to suit what is physically possible. Or I must accept whatever emerges from the sand and work with that, even if that deviates from the intention. I feel this allows some scope for unpredictability and spontaneity in my practice, which is otherwise quite measured and planned.

KA: Your work slips between the languages of design and sculpture. Do you still see yourself as rooted in design, or has art fully taken over?

MC: Art has taken over. I am glad to have now established myself within what feels like a broader title of visual arts. I feel comfortable in the art lane that I now occupy and excited for the kind of work I had always planned to make and am now making. That said, I am grateful for my design roots, which definitely influence the way I make the more conceptual work I am producing now. My approach is still grounded in materiality and tactility. Learning to make functional furniture has shaped the way I approach the making of sculpture and installation work. Within my practice, I continue to exploit the familiarity of domestic objects and materials, but now I find myself dissecting, subverting and reconstituting these material culture references.

KA: The pool table is such a loaded object. There’s a real duality in it too — as a site of play and ritual, but also bravado and conflict. Did your own memories of pubs and social clubs play a role in how you approached this work? 

MC: Yes, time spent in pubs has influenced this body of work. My family was involved with a pub for a bit, and as a kid, I liked having the run of that space in the day when no one was there. I have always been drawn to the details and textures of these spaces, and particularly the visual composition of the pool table. I am drawn to symmetry and repetition in things, both in the artefacts I observe and in the way I make work in response. There is something in the symmetry of the table, the measured movements around it, and the order-chaos-reorder loop from breaking to re-racking. It is the centre of this choreographed ritual and performance.

There is bravado and conflict, arguments and tension, but there is also this change in tempo, slipping between rowdiness and moments of pause and measured gestures. There is the gentle resonance of the balls colliding. The composure, stillness and elegant bridging of a hand. And the release of tension, driving a chain reaction. Through popular culture, it is easy to associate the objecthood of pool with violence. In Baize, the upturned pool-table-like sculpture of Miscue, I tried to capture something of this duality, with a stature and presence which is both soothing and imposing.

KA: The new show has upholstered wall panels with those busy, patterned fabrics you see in pubs. How important is tactility to you — that urge people might have to want to touch your work?

MC: I hope those who encounter the works do feel compelled to touch them, even if this is not always possible. Much like that of pubs, the material palette that I have used in Miscue is familiar and comforting. At the opening, an element of the show was up for grabs, with visitors allowed to take cast aluminium artefacts away from the installation. The pub is a space that we commandeer when we enter. We feel a sense of ownership over these civic spaces – it seemed only right that people could touch, own and remove part of the show during the opening night.

Suggestive of pub seating, but with their function subverted and presented flat to the wall, the upholstered works that sweep in the back corners of the show dampen the sounds of the space and speak to the quieter, more intimate and private exchanges that civic spaces facilitate. 

KA: Many civic spaces, pubs especially, are disappearing in the UK. Do you see your work as a kind of mourning, or more as a reimagining of what those spaces might be?

MC: I see Miscue more as a critique of these spaces and an interrogation of the complexities in human relationships, behaviours and interactions that occur within them. The collision of cultures and both the camaraderie and conflict that these spaces facilitate. Rather than a mourning, it is an acknowledgement of their significance, and a comment on the erasure of these common spaces from the communities they once bolstered. I feel the warping of perspectives and the dismantling of our common ground may well be related in some way to the breakdown of third space culture.

KA: What are your favourite pubs in Newcastle/Nottingham? 

MC: The Limekiln is a Jamaican-run pub in Nottingham and is the pub that instigated this broader investigation. It is the same pub where Premier League Dominoes, a competitive Caribbean dominoes league, gathers to play every week. I have worked with the league and pub on various things over the years. In Newcastle, St Teresa’s is a good social club, cheap, cheerful, with low ceilings and a central pool table that is never vacant.

KA: And what are you currently listening to in the studio? 

MC: A shift between audiobooks and the Brazilian icon, Tim Maia, has got me through the making of this show.

Miscue continues until 11 October 2025 at Slugtown.



Photography courtesy Mac Collins, Slugtown and Megan Jepson