We Are Out Of Office, dutch creative duo, discuss their messy studio and new colourful risograph prints

ph: Oakandfir

Dutch creative duo We Are Out Of Office is comprised of Winneke de Groot & Felix van Dam, currently based out of Utrecht, Holland. They have worked together since meeting in art school and produce colourful wooden sculptures, risograph prints and intricate enamel pins. Unagi chats with We Are Out Of Office on creating ‘weird looking objects’ and wandering through supermarkets, gathering inspiration from Japanese packaging.

We love your work at unagi life - for anyone that hasn’t visited We Are Out Of Office or seen any of your products, how would you describe it? 

Thanks! I guess you could describe our work as bold and colourful. Maybe also a bit naive and playful.

We Are Out Of Office work from an artist community in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where amongst the cherry trees they work on multiple projects, such as ‘paintings, wooden sculptures and new risograph prints at the same time, so you can probably imagine it’s quite messy’. Winneke and Felix lived in New York before settling in Utrecht, drawing inspiration from their travels and packaging that they have encountered and collected. In fact an image to describe their studio output quite simply would be ‘a picture of [their] messy studio’.

What mainly inspires your work and how do you decide on what avenue to go down?  

We get inspiration from a lot of different things, of course there is the travel and packaging. We both have a background in graphic design so this is something we’re still looking at a lot. We also like to go and see other cultures, the way they design stuff in other parts of the world, the way other people use colour and that kind of things, very interesting! And we both really like product design, that’s a huge inspiration too. From tableware to fishing floaters to chairs. There are so many great shapes and colour combinations out there!

Your products cover many media from rugs to a range of prints. What is your favourite?

As I mentioned above we work in a wide range of different media and on a wide range of different projects. We do a lot of self initiated projects but we do also a lot of commissioned work. For us this diversity makes it interesting. We don’t want to do the same things day in and out so I guess there is not one favourite but the whole bunch together is what it makes it work for us. Of course there are things we like to do most at the moment. We really like to make physical work so we really enjoy working on sculptures and ceramics at the moment. We try to push these things a bit because it would be great to do that sort of stuff commissioned as well.

Your ceramic test series are fantastic. What started your design studio? 

When we started making still lifes we already figured it would be great to use these still lifes as an inspiration for ceramics. We thought it would be cool to make all these non symmetric cups and vases we have been drawing for ages. On the other side we thought it would be great to make these weird looking objects first and then use them as inspiration for our still lifes. It took us a couple of years before we started experimenting with this and soon we came across this colour problem. We had to find a way we could paint or glaze the objects in a way it would be an extension of our work in print. So we started using different types of glazes and engobes and started throwing cups and also casting stuff. It’s quite fun and it’s strange there is not a lot of information to find about how to colour your ceramics. At the moment we found a way which really suits us and we ended up using them on the vases we make. We really like it to connect all the work we do, so we do ceramics, but we still do packaging design, but we also do still life and all of that in one piece. The possibilities are endless and that’s what makes it so much fun.

Do you have any projects coming up in 2020? Have these been affected by corona virus?

We were planning to attend an art fair to see how people would react on our paintings, sculptures and ceramics. But the fair got canceled. We’ve had a really busy year so we planned to take some time off after the fair. But of course that got cancelled too. So now we’re working on new things and figuring out what to do when all this is over. We really would love to do a residency somewhere far away, to focus on new work and new input. We also would love to do more sculptural work and murals so that’s also a thing we want to push a bit more. So plenty of plans! For now we’re just waiting for this horrible situation to be over and after that we’ll see what happens.

At Unagilife we provide useful recommendations for those inspired by Japanese aesthetic and lifestyle. What would you recommend to our readers?

Well, I would say go to Japan! You won’t be disappointed! We want to go back there so badly! But of course for now that’s not possible. We really like to stroll around in the ‘toko’ (that’s how they call oriental oriented supermarkets in The Netherlands). Lot’s of nice packaging design to be seen there. And we really like to cook Japanese meals so that’s also something you could try! It’s fun and tasty!

Visit We Are Out Of Office for more info.