I make work primarily because I don’t think I should do anything else. If I have time I want to spend it trying to understand why I have time to spend in the first place. I can’t get over the apparent lack of meaning in life and making art allows me to explore this area how a physicist, philosopher or psychologist might, except that with art I am also questioning objectivity.
I ‘make things’ with stuff/matter, because it is the interaction between the material world, the body, and the conscious mind that confuses me -where they meet, how they interact and why? I am interested in Gnostics because they believed the body might contain some sort of code, hidden in form, that would unravel the way back to a divine existence, freedom from matter. I think I am also looking for some sort of code in the way in which the body exists as a link between the conscious self and the outside material world.
I kind of see myself as a pre-Newton scientist.
2 What do you intend your work to convey to an audience?
I am experimenting with my reality, the limits imposed by the condition of being in a body, how it distorts and translates the world for my consciousness. I’d like my work to suggest questions. I don’t have answers of messages to get across, I don’t think my own life is more interesting than anyone else’s. It is only more interesting to me. Therefore I don’t see my work as being about me in particular even though I am using my own body. I just use myself because using other people would imply issues of control that I feel work much more interestingly when I am ‘using’ myself.
I like to think of the idea of leading by example and like to think that when someone sees the work it can make them ask questions that lead them to the ideas that fuel the work, bringing to the surface some of the unanswered stuff that society asks us to ignore in order to function at an optimum level.
3 Why do you work in your chosen medium and format?
I use a lot of different media and formats. Each one is chosen specifically because I feel it is the best way to bring a specific project into reality. If I use video then it is because I feel movement and time are essential to understand something. Or if it is sculpture then it is mainly because the process of making the work can only exist as a sculpture. The work all exists as documentation in one way or another.
The performance thing – how the work is all very performative but I don’t present it as performance is because I don’t like the spectator – subject issues that come into play with art performance. Often if I’m watching a performance I feel like the work is satisfying some collective desire (including the artists’) for uncannily intimate interaction or theatrics come into play and it is a narrative theatrical event. Performance only works for me if it is really interactive. It needs the audience.
4 Technically speaking how do you go about constructing your work, that is the image or object itself? What devices do you employ?
I usually start by experimenting with things in the studio. Objects or materials. Often household objects like chairs, tables, etc. will inspire work because they are the objects human beings most interact with. They have anthropomorphic qualities that are undeniable. I also choose materials for their tactile qualities and the action they carry; latex is stretchy, clay is heavy and sags, plaster runs then sets. I tend to use cameras on tripods, cable releases. If I use props in videos they are usually found objects and materials or inspired by a found object that somehow could not be used because of some reason. I have not issues with creating slightly altered replicas of found objects. The table in ‘Table’ is an imitation of a table, but made to fit my body. The object in ‘Breathe’ is made from found chairs and other materials I had collected in the studio like bits of latex, cloth, balloons. It is as if by collecting this material one develops a repertoire, an aesthetic that is almost unintentional.
5 Which period(s)/artists/specific works of art are you influenced by and how directly? How does this manifest in your work?
I am interested in many artists and periods and this is always changing. At the moment, 08/2007, I am looking at a lot of physics and popular sciences; neuro-psychology, quantum physics, the Wellcome Collection. I am looking at artists like Morandi, Tacita Dean and artists working in New York the 60s and 70s. As far as artists working with the body I find Bruce Nauman, Helen Chadwick, Matthew Barney’s earlier work, and Doris Salcedo interesting.
I think this manifests in the ideas behind my work and not necessarily aesthetically in the work itself. Maybe I am wrong. I have definitely narrowed the work into a more precise aesthetic lately.
I am very into art theory and I read a lot of books on the subject. I research the portrayals of the human body in art history, focusing mainly on sculpture and the nude but also interested in the vanitas genre of painting and still life.
6 What stimulates/informs your work from the world around you?
Popular science sections in book shops. Things like Telepathy, Gnosticism, Quantum Physics. I also observe people and how they work with their material surroundings and mainly with their own bodies. People with strange shapes, scars, limps, disabilities etc. interest me. I always want to talk to them. People who shop a lot and use objects as a way to express emotions; people who are poor but buy lots of cheap junk at Argos and at pound shops.
7 What stimulates/informs your work from your own personal experience?
My own life at home, the routines of everyday life that keep my body alive and healthy fascinate me. The constant cleaning of dead skin cells from the floors of the house, the hair in the drain, etc. I think that riding the bus and walking are very important aspects of what I do. I need to see other people and most importantly see how I react to other people. My own prejudices and weaknesses inspire the work a lot. Neediness, loneliness, self-imposed loneliness and depression inspire the work a lot. The inability to reach out to other people and how objects surround us and witness our lives.
8 From where do you derive your other visual source material (i.e. non art historical) and how do you implement this material within your work?
Other visual source material comes from observing fashion. The shapes of clothing, the shapes people wish their bodies were. I think this comes across in the ideas not so much visually, although I do work with fabric.
9 What are the main problems that you face in making your work?
Making the work often involves putting myself into physically demanding situations and sometimes it can be difficult to motivate myself to get naked and dig into a cold block of clay or lay on a hard floor. The roles become very separate and my body really does become a material that has to obey my mind’s vision. This process has become part of the work but documenting it would be very theatrical. Staying away from the theatrical is also an issue. I want it to be real, unemotional action. It is about matter and the body as matter.
I think how to show is always an issue. Making work can become a very private affair and putting it out into the world brings up questions about how a viewer will understand the work, especially when it is process based as mine often is.
With video things are easier than with sculpture because there are the pre-prescribed models of monitors or projection and I don’t wish to question these so far. The size of a projection comes very naturally to each piece and works conceptually with the work. When sculpture comes into play this conceptual consistency becomes more challenging because unless it has been factored into the making of the piece one has to rely on annoying things like plinths.
10 Where do you intend to take your work from here?
I’d like to work a lot on the ideas behind ‘Breathe’ and ‘Table’, and play around with other objects. I also feel the urge to explore repetition with video. I don’t see my work going back to narrative but I would like these investigations into meaning etc. to become more visceral and for the physical intensity of the process behind the making of the sculptures to come across more efficiently. I think I was getting too caught up in modernist notions of being true to material and that this was holding me back. I’d like the work to improve, to become better at expressing and exploring what is becoming an ever stronger notion in my mind.