Alongside his exhibition, A Tale of Two Lives, which runs at Art Bermondsey Project Space from 14-25 March, artist Nick Malone will be in conversation with art critic and Deputy Editor of State magazine, Anna McNay.

He will talk about his life as a writer, an artist, and now the creator of a graphic novel, his interest in ambiguity, and some of this rather incredible experiences along the way.

The conversation will start at 15:00, so please arrive in plenty of time to see the show and take a seat.

Extract from Q&A with Anna McNay in the catalogue to accompany the exhibition:

AMc: How did the idea of creating a graphic novel come about?

NM: Graham Crowley, a highly significant artist who had been Professor of Painting at the Royal College, suggested it: ‘Why don’t you write a graphic novel about your life?’ At first, I didn’t take him seriously, but, as I thought it about, I realised the genre had changed and was no longer just like Batman and so on. Graham referred me to a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, called Here, which uses the device of windows, to show exactly the same place at different points in time. You can cross timelines and even go back to prehistory. Apparently he got the idea from Microsoft developing Windows. I was attracted to what he was doing. I produced a timeline of my life, but the way that I constructed it was to make it a thriller or detective story, centred on the disappearance of my childhood friend, Makepeace, who personifies that part of us that constantly opens trapdoors of imagination; by cutting windows in the pages, the inner and outer worlds of our life look out to each other through the book.

AMc: It is a compelling read, and part of me wants to ask you all about it and try to elicit which parts are true and which are invented, but part of me feels that would be too disingenuous, and would also spoil the lasting enjoyment of the story.

NM: Well, there is a sense in which it is all true. Even the bits that are manifestly not true are true in a metaphorical sense. In a way, therefore, it’s just a trope with which to engage, but, at times, the excitement of the narrative takes over – it’s all true in imagination. Fundamental to everything is that any significant work can cross art forms and allow for endless revisiting and reinterpretation.