Liam Gillick

Interview by William Furlong, recorded June 1996

In this recording the artist discusses his first exhibition at the Robert Prime Gallery, London, 'The What If? Scenario'.

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 16 Number 1, 1996

Transcript

William Furlong: Liam Gillick, we're in your show in the Robert Prime Gallery in London, and you've titled it The What if? Scenario. Could you give me an overview of the underlying concerns of the work?

Liam Gillick: In the last couple of years I've really been playing with a series of ideas that I think of now as 'parallel histories', that really came about as a result of a kind of process, rather than as an initial set of philosophical or precise concerns. But they tended in general to deal with ideas of the recent past, and certainly also to do with certain secondary or parallel characters from the past. And I'm thinking in particular about the cartoon and film that I wrote, called Macnamara, and also the two books, Erasmus's Lake and Ebuca. In a way, what we’re dealing with in this gallery is something that is an extension of that thinking. People really reacted to those two books, and I began to read a number of what you could call ‘utopias', books and in particular one by Edward Bellamy, titled 'Looking Backward', which was written in 1887, and is basically set around now. And I was struck by the extent to which a lot of the content has come true. I then became much more interested in the aspects of these kind of texts and this kind of thinking that hadn't come true. And, from this mass of material, not written material, I started to develop a kind of parallel present that was based on people's imagination of what our time could be. What I decided to consider instead, was a way that one might start thinking about a future, based on this parallel present, and see what happened. Because I'd evolved this working technique, that tended to involve the creation of a text, and then the production of some objects. I decided to work the same way. Once I started doing that, I tended to be writing a kind of science fiction that was rather unsatisfactory. So I abandoned this and decided to make some images, objects, and some propositions, so that at some point I could actually write this predictive report. So, what you're seeing, when you walk into the gallery is a number of basic elements that I need to begin thinking about - the 'what if?' scenario!

WF: Shall we look at some of the l pieces? There's a piece in the corner of the upstairs gallery here which is a structure, a platform that is above head height. Could you elaborate on this particular piece?

LG: Something that's very crucial to understand about the show is the extent to which all the objects and all the elements presented somehow have a function that is about some fundamental ideas that you would require in order to think about the future, based on a present that's not taken place. So this piece is called a 'Discussion Platform' because I recognise the necessity for there to be an area where people might interact to discuss certain ideas. Because I'd abandoned this technique of having a textual base for work in favour of first making the images and objects, I didn't need to stick too rigorously to a pre-determined set of ideas. I was considering things like a certain form of 'rough seduction', a desire to react to specific architectural archetypes. I’ve created something extremely direct that performs a double function; on one level it’s a fairly solid, well put-together thing and can be looked at; an object for consideration. You can look at it and then reflect back on the initial idea of the show, and then look back at the object, and start to have a play of ideas in relation to a 'thing'. On the other hand it does have certain aesthetic properties that I enjoyed. Being lit from above the coloured Perspex tends to cast shadows and coloured effects on the wall. I liked the way that the piece maybe had some form of 'aura', as a literal, visual effect; almost a reflection of an idea. So, what we're really dealing with here is this kind of strange flickering object, some kind of object that has the potential to allow you to spring off with a series of ideas. I'm looking always for these middle areas, and I've been doing this in different ways for a number of years. I’m much less interested in defining boundary points than looking to see if there is a boundary at all. This piece exemplifies that in a way, and amazingly enough people do tend to use it, they tend to stand underneath it.

WF: The sense I get is similar to the sense I get from a number of other pieces that we'll talk about also, which is not exactly of ambiguity, but that I can't pin down.

LG: Absolutely. And I found that in the past it's been much more the case that the objects and information that I proposed have been rooted in the necessity to have taken in number of other ideas. Obviously, when you do something very precise, like screw a plate of aluminium to the wall, in a fairly workman-like way, it will inevitably alter the space. So I have no need to really over-emphasise the formalism of the work because I know that, when you do make changes there will be a number of issues about how to get a 'flicker' effect.

WF: We're talking now about a piece titled The What if? Scenario, in brackets (Mirrored installation Plate). It’s a sheet of industrial grade brushed aluminium, screwed directly to the wall and there’s a shadowy reflection, but it's not like the reflection of a mirror.

LG: One of the reasons for that is that I'm trying to work with an aspect of time, but time without resorting to time-based media. I am very interested in the aspect of how to employ time as a major concept, built into ideas behind the work. There have to be a certain number of issues at work in each piece, one of which can be the straightforwardness of the presentation, but another one being a necessity to maybe catch something in the corner of your eye as you're passing by, something that becomes less precise. Every aspect of the show has some very basic, fundamental connection to things that I need in order to start thinking about this 'parallel present' and 'parallel future'. The title Installation Plate indicates a sort of a memory of a future that hasn't happened. All the work in the show covers a different area of basic need, like writing, communication, discussion, and installation and finally at a certain point, the whole idea of a broken storyline. I'm not necessarily looking for a resolution of form and content, which is the classic idea of twentieth-century art. This show is more about that kind of disjunction between form and content that I see more and more in the most interesting art.

WF: Here is another work, which, after the bracketed title that applies to all the other pieces, titled, Communication Banners. It is two large banners in synthetic satin, and they're a brilliant orange, suspended from the ceiling. Formally, it's very different from the aluminium pieces but there's a sense in which they relate to them.

LG: It was really by accident that I became interested in the whole idea of a banner, the idea of a backdrop. I'd worked, around the idea of a device that could cover a wall, that was neither a painting nor a wall painting. The material is more familiarly used as a kite material. When I was working on this show, I didn't want to entirely abandon this banner idea, because there's something about the dumb simplicity of just hanging cloth that is totally devoid of any specificity beyond the actual material itself. I found this new material, called (cationic?) satin, heliotrope, which is a synthetic satin that is extremely sensitive to movement. It also looks much heavier than it actually is. There were a number of reason for using this particular strong colour, one of which was to somehow puncture or drain the authority of the silvery aluminium. Because using a material like aluminium in a gallery context, there are immediate cross-references to art that have already been done; Donald Judd immediately springs to mind. So I chose a particularly strong golden- orange for the banners because the golden orange and basically so synthetic The word 'communication' appears in the title because it somehow amplifies effects. It amplifies something that would take place in a room, but something that wouldn't necessarily be spoken. They're also emblematic; they seem to announce something.. If you see a piece of draped cloth hanging on the side of a building or hanging on a wall, it's either for a decorative or for announcing purpose. So, there are kind of sub-plots to my choice of this material. If I'd used a different kind of cloth, if I'd used a very heavy black, or something silvery, there would have been a very different effect. It would have actually boosted the look of the platforms and the mirrored plates.

WF: Is there a way in which you've reversed your strategy in this exhibition?

LG: Well, this is I difficult issue, because there are a lot of debates about the idea of how to formalise information, and I've been involved in a number of projects in the last few years, where the main gist of the show, has been to look at ideas beyond questions about resolving form and content into a number of objects. So, what you've ended up with is mainly something to do with what I thought of as the 'really real' syndrome, where you're introducing apparently un-art-like objects and structures into a gallery. When you see the presentation of some information in a space, you're never just seeing some information; there are a number of aesthetic choices every moment. Here I've presented a number of things that have a potential to be looked at or considered, as aesthetic objects.

WF: I get a strong sense from the works upstairs Discussion Platform and Report Platform, of physical interventions within an architectural space. Is that a particular characteristic of this show?

LG: Very much so. What I’ve done more and more in the last couple of years is produce a series of things where the space is affected in a very physical way. I also consider it very important to take into account the relationship between people and the things; they are not just neutralised objects that are presented for looking at, they are for thinking about and maybe coming back and looking at again. Always in my work I've had this interest in, not so much 'which side of the barricade are you on', but whether or not there is a barricade. What you're actually looking at most of the time are things that I've had to come up with, images and object, in order to proceed with this work. It's strange really, because although we're actually looking at, the 'Discussion Platform', a large two-metre square platform, a bit like a suspended ceiling, bolted into the corner of a room with a single pole, we're seeing something very tangible, very solid. For me, it's a source material for something else. I like this play between the idea that, while on the one hand it's a clearly solid made object, and on the other hand it's just a piece of source material, for me, for later.