Audio Arts: Volume 14 No 4

00:00:01 Richard Wentworth interviewed by William Furlong. The hybridisation of physicality and meaning contributed to the sense of dramatic tension in False Ceiling, a new work by Richard Wentworth, installed in the Lisson Gallery, London March and April 1995. The work comprised hundreds of books, skewered through the centre and suspended from the ceiling, in the main part of the gallery just above head height and at chest height in the raised smaller ancillary space next to an entrance. In this interview, conducted in the gallery, Wentworth talks about the genesis of this work which developed out of the artist's visits to various street markets in Berlin (where he recently spent fifteen months on a D&AD Scholarship). In the markets he observed books invested with a wide range of technical, theoretical and ideological purposes in process from being highly valued objects of knowledge and information to becoming redundant 'shells' that ceased to be relevant or functional, or as Wentworth puts it, lost knowledge or knowledge which is getting lost. In this work the books are however revalued, reclaimed and presented, as in taxidermy, simultaneously to celebrate and to deny essential identity, meaning and function. In speaking about using the space of the gallery for the work, Wentworth adds that he intended to create something that would haul the space together but in an utterly provisional and slightly irresponsible way ¿ the inverse of a fitted carpet. As well as invoking metaphorical ideas about a 'sky of knowledge', the combined effect of the suspended books suggested a consistent and astonishingly even plane above the head, yet Wentworth suggests that the books are almost live, they do not sit straight, there is a sensuality which is quite contradictory or even humorous. The artist concludes with some comments on artists; Oldenburg, Beuys and Duchamp. 00:23:24 Marina Abramovic interviewed by Michael Archer. In recent years, Marina Abramovic has been engaged in the making of sculptures which incorporate a variety of crystals. Many of these have required the direct participation of the viewer for their full impact to be realised. At first sight these works might seem far removed from the intense, extreme performances she undertook in the seventies, and equally distant, at least in a formal sense, from her collaborative projects with Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay) in the late Seventies and Eighties. The exhibition, organised by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in April 1995 brought together Abramovic's newer work with documentation of the earlier phases of her career. In so doing, the consistency of purpose within this art was made evident. Indeed, in the course of this interview Abramovic suggests that most of us, if we are lucky, will only ever have one idea in our lives. What her work has consisted of is the exploration and articulation of this idea. From the early sound pieces, one of which ushers the spectator into this exhibition, up to the latest rooms in which one is invited to sit, stand or lie on some of her 'transitional objects' in meditative contemplation, there has been a wish to cleanse the body of inherited assumptions and beliefs before allowing it to attune itself more fully to the world in which, and as part of which, it exists.

00:00:01 Kiki Smith interviewed by Zoe Irvine. The conversation take place at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery in Spring 1995. During the Spring of 1995, Kiki Smith exhibited concurrently at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and at Anthony d'Offay. This conversation takes place at Anthony d'Offay, where Smith begins by talking about the work on show there, heads and arms combined with other forms such as birds, mushrooms and butterflies. Following this she explains her approach to the Whitechapel exhibition, particularly with regard to the use of the space with its large central nave-like area and flanking aisles. The Judaeo-Christian overtones here lead to consideration of similar aspects in her work itself. Apparent oppositions - body and soul, sensuality and spirituality, attraction and repulsion - are not evoked in distinction to one another, but recognised as interlinked facets of each sculpture. Smith's sculpture is grounded in her own experience, a reality she acknowledges while rejecting the idea that it might be seen simply as autobiographical. It appears as not quite life size, something that stems from her preference for using models smaller than herself as well as from the natural reduction involved in the casting process. The importance of this scale as a simultaneous confounding and reinforcement of monumentality is brought out. Smith also explains her use of materials and ends by recognising that her work is beginning to look beyond the human form for its subject matter. 00:15:08 Keith Coventry interviewed by William Furlong. Interview recorded at the Karsten Schubert Gallery in London, at the end of 1994. In this interview recorded in the Karsten Schubert Gallery, London, at the end of 1994, Keith Coventry describes an underlying concern of his exhibition, White Abstracts, as an interrogation of modernism and how it can fit in or be used in the service of the traditions being depicted. The traditions Coventry chooses as subject matter for his paintings are revealed in their titles: White Abstract (Trooping the Colour) 1994, White Abstract (Lifeguard) 1994, White Abstract (Noel Coward) 1994 and White Abstract (Sir Norman Reid Explaining Modern Art to the Queen 1979) 1994. In quoting from the conventions of modernism a tension is articulated by the dual strands that arise out of the image Keith Coventry and its painted representation. The images in this series of works are implicit rather than explicit. They are constructed beneath the surface with texture and impasto similar, as the artist puts it, to a kind of textural painting by numbers where the marks are there to fill in the gaps between the forms. Whilst there is evidence of 'the hand' Coventry claims that there is actually no feeling for the paint, it is used purely to substantiate 'the image'. Each individual mark doesn't add to the meaning of the picture, they are totally devoid of any accumulative meaning. Coventry chooses source images and icons from popular culture to be found on picture postcards or on the front page of tabloid newspapers. One reading of the work could suggest a social critique where durable English institutions, traditionally associated with spectacle, pageantry, privilege and power have, in Coventry's white paintings, become drained of their original vitality and colour, 'held captive by tradition'* and trapped within both an actual and metaphorical art historical frame. 00:31:04 Maggie Roberts interviewed by Michael Archer. Orphandrift is the title of the art installation by Maggie Roberts, Ranu Mukherjee and Susan Karakashian displayed at the Cabinet Gallery in London in April 1995. Orphandrift are Maggie Roberts, Ranu Mukherjee and Susie Karakashian. For their exhibition at the Cabinet Gallery, London, in April 1995 they used a large number of photographs shot from TV and video monitors and subsequently manipulated in the darkroom. As well as this varied visual display covering the gallery's silver-painted walls, the space was filled with techno music. The three members of the group describe how the images work as a narrative which is not linear so much as spatial. This space is confounded and complex, bearing qualities to be found in the different landscapes of the earth, in the images of film, and in the logic chips of the computer. In its viewing as much as its construction, the exhibition invites one to navigate through this space. As the presence of the music suggests, viewing is not a purely visual affair but incorporates tactile, auditory and other sensory perceptual modes. What the exhibition and the world it represents point towards are the limits of what it means to be human. How is it possible nowadays to mark a clear distinction between oneself and one's environment? In exploring this question here and in their writings and performances, Orphandrift use three inter-related themes, autism, vampirism and voodoo, the significance of which are elaborated upon in the course of the conversation. The tape also includes Ranu Mukherjee reading a fragment from one of their texts.