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with artists in our genre, people like Shepard Fa
irey and Futura, so they are good supporters of the art world. I was still a bit unsure of what it was they wanted me to do but after more browsing I copped that a big anniversary was coming up so that got my creative juices stirred up, especially as we are the first Irish artists to do something on this scale and also that it’s celebrating a fellow Corkonian. It’s funny, a lot of people from Cork don’t realise that Richard Hennessy is from the county, and us being such humble folk (laughs) I’m shocked that we aren’t talking about it all the time. Maser: It’s about 18 months since I first got the email from them but when I saw Hennessy and Conor’s name involved, I just thought “this is brilliant’. Our styles are miles apart but they have a lovely synergy when they sit together, they definitely compliment each other. Sometimes things look good on paper but they never hit that sweet spot but this worked from the get-go. C: I was out with Shepard Fairey during the week and he thought the campaign was really well thought out, because Hennessy is all about heritage and contemporary street culture. My style brings that historial facet to the project while Masers is very now and abstract so our work reflects that two sided concept and ethos that Hennessy strives for. How fast did the project progress after that initial contact? C: Really fast. Two weeks after our first chats with the brand we were both whisked over to Cognac with our wives for an intense two day tour of the Maison, where they showed us the process from harvesting the grapes in the vineyard all the way through to the bottling. We stayed in the Chateau de Bagnolet, which is without doubt the best place I’ve ever stayed in my life. It’s been in the Hennessy family for over 250 years so they really immersed us in the culture and ethos of the brand, it was so interesting. M: The service was unbelieve, they literally said to us we could have what we wanted when we wanted it, citing previous guests’ requests for a Playstation at 2am and other mad stuff. We really went all out and ordered a ham and cheese toastie! Joking aside, it was an enormously beneficial trip. We really felt like we were tracing Richard’s footsteps and I genuinely absorbed that whole experience and that became the foundation and inspiration for our work. It really framed it and gave it a theme and structure. We were also given a masterclass in brandy blending by the house master blender Renaud Fillioux de Gironde and it was an education just to see the level of detail and finesse that he applied to his craft. C: They have a tasting committee of around 7 members and the whole production rests on their taste buds which was fascinating. They taste grapes from all the local suppliers and vineyards and check the distilling process at every step of the way, if there’s a barrel that’s ageing for five years they are tasting it every six months. What impressed me was that there seemed to be very little science going on. It was ultimately down to the taste buds of this select group of people. They are the Le Bron James of taste buds! M: We chatted to him about the pandemic 50 and obviously with one of the side effects of Covid being loss of taste they were terrified but, thankfully, because the area is so isolated none of the committee got the virus. I’d imagine ideas were formulating in your heads while in this environment? M: Absolutely, there was a wealth of visuals in that environment but in the end it all came back to that one theme of landscape, the spaces that Richard inhabited. C: We also went to the ancestral home in Killavullen – the artwork is being hung there after the official launch – but it was also informative to walk around the house and grounds and absorb the Irish landscape. A lot of the colours we used in the piece reflected this landscape, mossy hues, greens, oranges and then balancing those with bright colours to bring that contemporary feel into the work. M: We also went down into a cave on the grounds and there was a drink waiting for us in the depths. That was unexpected but really, the whole experience was lovely. Everyone was very accommodating. How did the work commence? C: I live and work in London so because I work in oil paints, which take weeks to dry, we housed the canvas in my studio and Maser would come over sporadically to layer up. He uses masking tape to get those sharp lines so the paint had to be totally dry before he could do anything over the oils. It took a few months from start to finish as there was a fair bit of management to the project but it was fairly seamless to be honest. We kept Hennessy in the loop at all times, sending them sketches etc so they knew what was going on throughout. As it is for worldwide consumption and display on stockists shelves there could be no surprises but they trusted us implicitly throughout the process.