Audio Arts: Volume 19 Nos 1 & 2

00:00:01 Vanessa Beecroft interviewed by Jean Wainwright. Vanessa Beecroft's exhibition: VB43 PHOTOGRAPHS, comprised a selection of photographs made during VB43, which was the inaugural performance staged by Beecroft for the new London Gagosian Gallery, in May 2000. The performance comprised twenty-three pale, red-haired naked girls, standing, leaning, sitting and lying in the space. In conversation on the opening evening of VB43 PHOTOGRAPHS, Beecroft discusses the desires and drives inherent in her work. She cites Piero Della Francesca, Queen Elizabeth I and Helmut Newton as diverse sources and the timeless face as well as the 'hear and now' as a source of fascination. She confesses that she is often bereft when the performance is over and the piece will never be the same again, that the sense of loss that this evokes. Although her constant theme explores 'group identity' primarily with women she has also worked with men, most notably the U.S Navy Seals. Her work is about empowerment, beauty and discipline coupled with a sensibility that becomes obvious and is elaborated in this conversation. 00:20:42 Marc Camille Chaimowicz interviewed by Michael Archer. Marc Chaimowicz made Celebration? Real Life in 1972, staging it first in Birmingham and subsequently at Gallery House, London. For his first exhibition at the Cabinet Gallery in the summer of 2000, Chaimowicz recreated the installation using much of the original material with a few more contemporary additions. Here he talks about his interest in revisiting Celebration? Real Life nearly 30 years after its original appearance, seeing in its themes and concerns much that connects it to today's art. In addition, Chaimowicz considers the original work, both specifically in its Gallery House showing alongside works by Stuart Brisley and Gustav Metzger, and more generally, placing it in the context of other art being made in London and elsewhere at that time. The interview was conducted by Michael Archer and William Furlong. Also present were Cabinet directors Andrew Wheatley and Martin McGeown, who add to the discussion by talking about their own perspective on the work and their reasons for wanting to show it again now.

00:00:01 Guy Brett interviewed by Zöe Irvine. Curator Guy Brett talks about his approach to curating the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery London in summer 2000, Force Feilds: Phases of the Kinetic as an essay using Georges Vantongerloo's late paintings and Alexander Calder's earliest mobiles as leitmotifs. The interview, recorded at the Hayward Gallery London, takes the form of a walk around the exhibition (sometimes very noisy!) and a discussion of the individual works of artists such as Henri Michaux, Len Lye, Takis, David Medalla and Lygia Clark. The conversation explores the 'big questions' and themes of energy, space and time that form a thread through the works however historically disperate they may appear to be. Force Fields was organised by the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, in association with the Hayward Gallery.

00:00:01 Anya Gallaccio interviewed by William Furlong. Anya Gallaccio talks about her new work shown at Fig.1 in London. The interview addresses her moving away from a previous body work in practical, personal and social terms. In speaking about the 6 ft square photographic work at Fig. 1 she claims to be very curious about painting and how people often talk about painting in relation to what she does. In preparing to make the work she looked at Millais's Ophelia whilst searching for a location that had 'the same colour and the same texture combined with an idea of the British Landscape'. This work is clearly an important transitional work for the artist, signalling a much larger repertoire than the entrapment of being known as 'the flower girl'. Correspondingly, the image combines references of melancholy and decay with those of regeneration and the beginning of something else¿ Gallaccio goes on to talk candidly about her experience of the YBA phenomenon, celebrity status courted by some artists in the London, the art establishment and how these issues influence the critical elements of her new work. 00:19:14 Ed Ruscha interviewed by Jean Wainwright. Ed Ruscha discusses his symbolic landscapes with their superimposed signs and words at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery London, May 2000. Having painted pictures with words for nearly forty years, his sources of information are immediate; he overhears or sees something that arrests his visual or aural gaze. He has a Duchampian humour that transmutes language in his work. Although he has been claimed by various movements from the Pop artists to the Post Minimalists, he postulates that the best labels are 'pressure sensitive ones that can be taken off at any time'. He is mischievous and cool when interviewed, interjecting that the one thing he knows he isn't is a young British artist, and that there are no rules. His laconic Oklahoma drawl maps the key moments is in his artistic career.

00:00:01 Martin Maloney interviewed by Jean Wainwright. Martin Maloney graduated from Goldsmiths London in 1993. Since then he has developed a practice as curator, critic and artist. In discussion at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery London, he talks about his latest series of paintings where he tackles portraits of women for the first time. He suggests that these new works are 'warmer and more engaging' than his previous sex Paintings, exhibited in the Neurotic Realism show. Relationships are treated in a less aggressive way with a move from 'bleakness to optimism'. The show, which features works such as Mixed Ability, We Are Family, Community Association and Equal Opportunities is debated in terms of art history, the genre paintings of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Poussin and the textures and expressiveness of Bacon and de Kooning. The interview veers from his engagement with 'real' life groups and social patterns, to sex and class. He is, he suggests, 'gently' finding out about people, celebrating the fact by depicting familiar settings based on art historical references, in vibrant colours and patterns. 00:26:39 Chuck Close interviewed by Jean Wainwright. Chuck Close claims that there is nothing that interests him as much as portraiture. In conversation at the White Cube Gallery London, he postulates that his latest series of Polaroid ink jet portraits have come full circle. He is making works with machines that resemble the grey scale paintings of the early Seventies. He discusses the aesthetics of symmetry, his trope of repetition and the specific portraits of Philip Glass, Alex Katz, the late Roy Lichtenstein and Lucas Samaras. He touches on his confinement to a wheelchair culminating in restricted painting methods, involving whole arm locomotion, the brushes strapped to his hands. He is grateful that he can still continue with an activity that he loves. He believes in rhythmic painting activity and feels that that process will set you free. There is a huge amount of trust in his work, as people have lent him their images without any control, subjecting them to intense scrutiny. He cites seeing Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes as a seminal moment and his work as a major influence, 'every so often an artist comes along who changes the rules'. Declaring that he is interested in pictorial syntax and enjoys an incremental way of working, Chuck Close reveals his scopopholic gaze.