Audio Arts: Volume 15 No 3

00:00:01 Interview with Angela Bulloch. During a walk along the Thames from Tower Bridge to Bankside, Angela Bulloch discusses her residency, commissioned by the Public Art Development Trust, titled From the Chink to Panorama lsland. This involved assembling a personal archive drawn from historical, contemporary, literary and anecdotal sources. A number of these are discussed en route in relation to specific places, sites and buildings. These include the Tower of London, The Antigallican (a pub with a sig depicting three men in a boat with a tricolour flag and Napoleonic hats) HMS Belfast, the Clink Prison, the new Globe Theatre and Cardinals Wharf. As part of her research strategy, the artist gathered books, photographs, texts and video tapes including an early Nineteen Sixties film titled, The London Nobody Knows, narrated by James Mason. Bulloch's commentary on the tape builds up a complex sense of the layerings and interrelations that arise out of a response to the various locations and their associations. She goes on to talk about the final destination of the walk which focused on a fuel loading bay, situated in the river next to the former Bankside power station, which she proposes to rename Panorama lsland. 00:19:02 Interview withJake and Dinos Chapman. The interview starts with Dinos and Jake Chapman responding to a question which proposed that the tension and resonance in their work, Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model (enlarged X 1OOO) at the Victoria Miro Gallery, was created through a complex interrelation of opposing values, definitions and readings. In responding, the artists claimed that the oppositions in the work set up a physiological oscillation, so the reading never really clearly becomes one or the other; either a conscious rationalisation of an idea or merely an expressionist discourse. The work comprised mannequins of children placed in an oval configuration, joined, Siamese-twins like, with 're-located genitalia'. Given the way in which the work provided a challenging dislocation between expectation and representation, the artists add that 'the most interesting thing about a work of art is that it dispossesses intentions, so¿ the object becomes a trace or residue of all the things it fails to do materially or otherwise'. They go on to say that they are more interested in the discourse surrounding the object and add that they were interested in the point at which the object could almost make itself absent by an over-burdening presence. Finally the interview covers various critical references to their work including that of Fascism and an empathy with the work of Jeff Koons. 00:35:04 Interview with Gerhard Richter. During his exhibition, Painting in the Nineties at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, Gerhard Richter starts this interview by discussing the painting Red and the process of arriving at the finished work through twenty-eight stages. These were reproduced in the accompanying catalogue. Richter adds: 'I was not sure whether to publish all these states of a painting because they show their helplessness.' He goes on to talk about the organic process in his work 'with all the difficulties life has¿ with all the mistakes'. He then talks about the triptych, River in the upstairs gallery and the importance in his painting of atmosphere and mood. ln response to a question about purpose and intention in his painting he adds: 'I don't intend anything. I'm totally helpless when I start a painting and during the painting I'm still helpless and after the end it's the same'. In relation to verbal explanation and description Richter adds finally: 'I have to avoid this, to explain what I am doing because this is dangerous when I know what I do¿ I have to lose my intellect¿lt's a special feeling, many painters know this.'

00:00:00 Interview with Tracey Emin. This conversation starts with the opening message on the answerphone of the Tracey Emin Museum.* The artist then elaborates on her reasons for establishing the museum which is located in a former mini-cab office the Waterloo Road in south east London. Emin claims that there is no separation between her life and her art to the extent that they combine to form her art practice. Her drawings and texts are self referential, arising out of the trials and tribulations of personal experience. The museum she claims, puts a roof over my own creativity, whilst formalising and making visible a practice that includes ephemeral, flimsy and time-based, rather than solid and monumental elements. At the time of the recording she was displaying a series of drawings which referred to the period of her life between thirteen and fifteen years old, when she lived in Margate. The exhibiting space also includes a video monitor showing her film titled, Why I Didn't Become a Dancer. The recording ends with a monologue by the artist from this film recounting her early life in Margate. *The Tracey Emin Museum, formerly at 221 Waterloo Road, London SE1 00:17:58 Interview with Gregory Green. Gregory Green's recent exhibition at the Cabinet Gallery comprised works which the artist claims were in reality a series of explorations of different strategies of enpowerment that are available to us as individuals. During this interview Green discusses his works in the exhibition which include 'explosive devices' a processing plant for LSD and a pirate radio station. Whether through violence, drugs or the dissemination of information, Green is proposing the possibility of social or political destabilisation available to and originated by the individual. In discussing works such as Suitcase Bomb #28, Bible Bomb #002 and lncendiary Devices #1 & #2, the artist accepts the possibility of multiple readings and the tension that arises out of the ambiguity of whether he is promoting, criticising or drawing attention to violent action. Whilst admitting a fascination for violence and its aesthetics, Green believes that violence has ceased to be an important energy in terms of change and it has been replaced by socially interactive processes. The artist also discusses another related project concerned with establishing The New Free State of Caroline, Green was also in London to install his piece, Worktable Number 5 at the Saatchi Gallery. This was previously installed in the Cabinet Gallery. 00:29:51 Interview with George Adeagbo. George Adéagbo was interviewed during the exhibition, Big City: Artists from Africa at the Serpentine Gallery London, September 1995. His works in that exhibition comprised numerous elements referring to contemporary popular culture alongside references to the nineteenth century. Adéagbo starts (through an interpreter)** to talk about the way in which he views history, and its function being able to inform an understanding of social and cultural processes in both the present and in the future. In selecting and assembling imagery texts and objects the artist discusses the idea of a cultural archaeology drawn from beneath the surface... going off in search of mysteries that are in nature. He goes on to talk about the issues of being an artist who works in Benin, Africa and how his work both functions and is regarded there and within a European gallery context. In responding to additional questions by La-Verne Douglas, Adéagbo speaks about how the hand-written texts which accompany his works in the gallery, reinforce their meanings. Finally Adéagbo talks about his perceptions of cultural identity in relation to being a black African artist. **The interview was recorded during the Adeagbo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The interpreter was Regine Cuzin.