Interviewed by Ally Standing for ArtsLab 2023
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How might your art relate to the act of storytelling
I would say that my sculptures and videos centre around creating a situation and an action, a scenario, if you like. It is often simple, using objects and materials that are everyday, and actions that are familiar such as stacking, cutting, tying. The result is a charge or detonation of meaning that hopefully resonates, a bond or something happening that is intriguing and readable.
I noticed in your Instagram a photograph of objects that have such a charge: a stuffed deer head and a clown doll.
Yes, a perfect start of a story, or even an end, an extraordinary coincidence of two objects lying together in a field, both with eyes wide open. Luckily, we all have a camera in our pocket to capture such a poetic and stimulating chance encounter.
What are your influences?
The work has echoes of the early film comedy of Buster Keaton who created deceptively simple physical scenarios that suggest thwarted ambition: the crooked house, the sinking ship, the runaway train - in my case a video wearing a cast iron hat, or a sculpture bringing together boxing gloves and dressmaking pins.
Or the paintings of domestic and urban ennui by Edward Hopper, or the wonderful photographs of Saul Leiter, who in 1950s New York manages to combine shape, colour, composition and moment, of a women with a red umbrella in a snow filled street. A passing strangeness.
Or the short stories of Raymond Carver and the poetry of Philip Larkin; both profoundly beautiful and painful in their unspooling observations of life happening and running out.
In each there is a simplicity, economy and rigour of conveying meaning that thrills me.
It seems that sometimes text itself becomes part of the work
Yes, occasionally I use a single word or line of text, the title itself becoming a material. In one work, ‘Back in 4 mins’, the notation that more belongs on a Post It is deep etched into a block of brass, a wonderfully stupid contradiction, a memorial to lost time. Simple, funny and a reminder, if ever we need one, of not knowing what is in front of us and how time can be cut short.
In your work the objects and materials you use seem to be chosen for their ordinariness and familiarity, can you say something about this?
It is true, I use objects such as shoes, tables, chairs, hats, gloves, plates, doors and suitcases, all with visible history of use and belonging, and materials that have centuries of existence such as marble, iron, steel, paper, wood, felt, leather and glass. This prevents the work from dating or being fixed, as well as being immediately identifiable and known. The table and chair are generic and functional, a working example. Meaning is created by minors adjustments, alterations, additions or placements.
I buy many of the objects from second hand shops and flea fairs, selecting and recovering lost things that have had a life. Perhaps this is why I often refer to my work in the context of the genre of Still Life. I am drawn to the poignancy of this, though also aware what will happens to all of my own objects in the future.
The other day I found a large bunch of white and grey balloons, discarded after an unknown event. Bringing them back to the studio, this transformed by my laying tresses of cut hair across them, almost creating a drawing but at the same time a timepiece evoking impending loss, a held breath, a day ending.