Rose Garrard

Interview by William Furlong

from Audio Arts Volume 6, Number 2, 1983

Transcript

Introduction: This double issue of Audio Arts includes Volume 6 numbers 2 & 3 and three new supplements. As with the two previous issues, this booklet relates to all five tapes, each of which are available separately.
Audio Arts is ten years old this year. The idea of establishing a visual art magazine based on the audio cassette evolved from April 1973, and the first cassette was published in October of that year. Since 1973 over 80 issues have been produced.
Although the original intention of Audio Arts was to retain conversation, discussion and dialogue between artists and those in related disciplines, it soon became evident that there was a much wider area of creative activity appropriate for inclusion in Audio Arts. Both the original concept and something of the diversity that has developed over the last ten years is reflected in the current set of five tapes, which contain artworks, interviews, documentation, new music and reportage. A new regular ‘space’ in the magazine is devoted to tapes and records received. This will preview new work and is a response to the growing volume of art related material in sound.
During April and May, Audio Arts curated an exhibition at Franklin Furnace in New York. The show called ‘British Soundworks’, included Gerald Newman, Stuart Brisley, Charlie Hooker, Silvia C Ziranek and Audio Arts tapes. Being presented in New York resulted in the magazine issue, ‘New York Report’.
From August 13 to October 9, Audio Arts is participating in ‘Sculpture ‘83’ at the Hayward and Serpentine Galleries. Audio Arts’ contribution is in three parts: a flexi-disc in the catalogue, titles ‘Objects & Spaces’; a tape installation at the Hayward gallery; and radio broadcasts including BBC Radio 1’s John Peel Show, a live satellite link with Australia and several other broadcasts around the world.

William Furlong: Rose we’re in your exhibition at the Lewis Johnson Gallery and I think it would be interesting to perhaps start talking about ‘Rock Drill’ and ‘Bolt Upright’.

Rose Garrard: It’s interesting that you’ve recognised some of the pieces. ‘Bolt Upright’ is actually a piece that I’ve made this year for a performance that I wrote for television. It’s an image of myself in early teenage, reading childhood book of Greek myths and legends which belonged to my father, which is when I first read the Pandora myth. The book is open at a page, which shows the image of Pandora, by Harry Bates. The book is balanced on her head and she’s bolted to a plinth by her feet, even though she’s sitting with her feet upright, so the plinth is at right angles to the floor. This was to try to somehow summarise, in a static way, the mood that I was trying to create. It comes from how I felt when I was actually sitting in this position in the performance, which is a very difficult position to sustain. It’s a sort of analogy of the difficulty women have sustaining their appearance.

WF: If we could move on to another piece, ‘Freeze Frame’. There are the predominant elements, the gun, the bird that comes out of Pandora’s box, the open book in relation to four heads that are turning. Are the heads going through various stages of thinking about the associations of those objects?

RG: Yes, I mean it links directly back to ‘Bolt Upright’. During the performance, in which I was sitting next to ‘Bolt Upright’, I was looking into a monitor in order to carry out the director’s instructions. I had to get into distorted positions to keep the image beautiful within the monitor frame. I became quite fascinated by the feeling of being uncomfortable inside and the apparent elegance and beauty of the outer covering; that was the idea behind it. It extended into taking the rubber mould of the head for ‘Bolt Upright’, and distorting that to try and create the archetypal images that appear in ‘Tumbled Myths’; Joan of Arc, Pandora, Eve and the Madonna. It is exactly the same composition as in that painting, but produced as a relief.

WF: In ‘Tumbled Myths’ you’ve got the additional issue to do with the traditional use of canvas. The male normally paints on it and the female is associated with stitching it and making it into household decorations.

RG: Yes, it’s the notion of how the frame elevates the subject and how different skills attain different degrees of importance within the hierarchy. When women have sufficient influence and insight to create their own archetypal role models then perhaps the picture will be complete. I wanted to utilise the technique and style of the old master painting without actually supporting that system, so it became a question of undermining, subverting the image by some form of destruction.

WF: I mean it might be worth introducing at this point the fact that you worked in a very broad sense in the 70’s and this is fed into this work somehow, because of its freedoms.

RG: Yes, I think the 70’s were a tremendously important exploration time for me and the delight that I had in the 70’s, of introducing all those areas of interest, that have been eradicated from my work, partly by me but partly by the specialisation of college training, that led me into incorporating performances, into the pieces. The sort of freedom that I felt in those early performances I now have felt returning to objects that stand in their own right, without a live element. The frames in themselves can become so rigid and restricting; the words can become rigid and restricting and somehow the whole of this exhibition is about flowing and fluidity and not the destruction but the transformation of the frame.

WF: Well you are actually working with associations a great deal and what does the gilt frame actually represent in ‘Madonna Cascade’?

RG: That piece is so awkward to categorise. You can recognise it as a painted image within a frame and yet it isn’t, which the ambiguity of the word ‘model’ which is written on it. Is it a painted sculpture or is it a fresco; where are its perimeters in terms of categorisation? The frame is muddled and contains the Virgin Mary cascading up from the floor into the frame. You’re looking at a woman, being the model, but here she’s actually holding her palette and brushes, so it’s actually quite a shocking image, because it’s a woman placing herself in the frame. It is a self-portrait by (Judith Laidstone?) so it becomes a previously unknown role model for me and for other women artists.

WF: The painting then, on the other side of the fireplace, ‘Flaccid Guns’ you’ve recuperated elements from childhood. Why did you feel it necessary to take things from your childhood and to re-work them?

RG: Well it’s again a flowing process, gradually over a period of maybe five years, explored the relationship of incidents to objects from my childhood. What I’ve tried to do is select objects that I believe have got some sort of universal symbolism, so the gun and the Madonna are immediately read in a particular way. I think that it is beautiful to have knowledge of the artist who made the work; it’s a hook, into the work. There is a similar memory for me, to come back to the gun, the gun was my father’s service revolver but it was always locked away. Every child knows the box they were not allowed to open; this sense of being excluded is what I’m getting at. The first stage of the freedom is actually gaining access to the territory.

WF: Yes of course and a wider understanding in terms of that as a symbol is the notion of the gun as a symbol of male potency.

RG: I’ve done exactly the same with the guns as with Madonna, I’ve made them melt. Obviously it has comments on potency, but it’s again to do with the hierarchy that puts the notion of impotency completely outside the role of the male. There’s a sense of optimism in all the pieces, but there is always present a sense of dilemma too, which is very much how I feel as a woman. Most women, when they come to any sort of decision making, see a more complex picture than most men. So the notion of exploring is where the optimism comes in, and so these works are informed by feminism but to do with reaching out into an area in which you haven’t pre-determined the answers.