Interview to the artist by Rachelle Gryn Brettler, from our Anniversary Book
I am not a draughtsman. I trained as a sculptor and have worked as a ceramicist and a welder.
I find that it is the mix of materials that are juxtaposed that create a dialogue. I am frequently attracted to industrial materials: mainly sheet material and how that can be manipulated. I like plexiglass, wood, metals, plywood — Baltic plywood is a favourite. I predominantly use plexiglass as a project material and I try to manipulate it in many ways. I have explored and expanded my own use of materials. Some ideas require certain thicknesses or certain capabilities of the material. This is married with what I can do to manipulate each material — be it cut, groove, scratch, reassemble.The idea is very integral to the choice of materials, but sometimes the materials direct the idea.
Every time I buy a new tool my work changes because certain tools allow me to do certain things — the more tools I have, the more range I have. One year I bought a jigsaw and that meant I could do wavy lines. Before that I was using a router so everything was deep, wide and straight. I use a lot of precision electronic tools and I feel much more comfortable with a drill in my hand than a paint brush.
I do not sit down with a palette of paints and paint a landscape with perfect perspective, that inability is actually what fuels my work. I find safety in a process and I am interested in processes. I have invented a process that finishes the work. In Flatland, a grid of lines is scratched with a bamboo knitting needle on a freshly painted polished plexiglass or mirror surface. Where the four lines intersect creating perfect squares, the paint is removed with the back of a scalpel. How many squares and where they are located on the painted surface is led by chance, revealing the backing surface and creating reflections. As you move, the reflections change — it is as if they are alive, they are a performance work. Essentially it is a two-dimensional monochrome abstract painting that has portals through to a three-dimensional world.
There are clues as to the work’s construction and raison d’être. I do not wish them to be totally opaque. I want there to be a hook, like a hook in a song that keeps you wanting to explore the work. In fact, music is crucial to my practice. I listen to it all the time. Electronic. Ambient. Techno. Beats. With electronic music the sounds are contemporary.
One of the important elements for me, is to create works that need the viewer to interact with them to fulfil their potential. Maybe that is a sculptural hangover — being interesting from all angles.There is a lot of two-way traffic between the two and three-dimensional worlds.
Caro and Serra were the two big inspirations in my early days of making art. I love Eduardo Chillida because he has a sense of line. I want my work to have a sense of line. My pieces come from simple little line drawings and things develop quite organically out of these exceptionally simplistic drawings. After completing a line drawing: what materials would it suit, how does it attach to the wall? For me, inspiration is very much either subconscious or physical play.
When I moved to France, people asked if I moved for the light. No, but I could not help but be affected by the light in Provence, more often than not it is totally stunning. I think it has infused my work — I have harnessed it because it is there, I did not do it consciously. I am very interested in light refraction and reflection, and in movement, balance and interaction. Chance is my current interest. Minimalism can sometimes be a little too organised and I want there to be a hint of poetry, a hint of chance. I like the fact that it is process that creates the poetry and not necessarily me. I do 90% of the work but the process finishes and defines it.