Sculpture as Dialogue

This is a piece in the British Art Show, with the carpet installation and the skull. What is very important for me as well is to have the works like a pendulum; that’s why I’ve been showing works that I’ve done a few years ago with new projects. I quite like to have those pieces together in the exhibition. You have the carpet there with the skull and you have this other drawing made with the chains and the bones; they have like some skeleton hangs, so I think it’s quite interesting to be able to relate one piece to the other to see how they inform each other.
The skull is one of the works with gold. It’s about where you can find gold in ordinary life. I did a series of photographs, cut-outs, installed like books on the wall; basically the photograph would be the cover of the book: there was an image that would flip, and behind there was a golden area; the images were very dull, for example one of a swan in Kew Gardens. Or another one is about my neighbour who took over the street and obsessively put her flower pots there – because she doesn’t have a garden – so people keep nicking her plants and she goes there and puts them back, so you flip one of those pots and there is gold.
This piece was made after a guy on the train reading a book and eating grapes; I did a cut-out and put the grapes and then I decided to make a sculpture with the same idea. It’s all weaved grape stems and real grapes, so the difference is that for every grape that was plucked out there was a dot of gold, so you have this very sparkling piece all woven in the shape of a skull. When you’re dealing with such an obvious decay material in the present – because the grapes will become raisins – it is obviously about memento mori, so it would kind of reinforce the idea of all the qualities that a sculpture made of such a material has, plus relate to all of the gold projects.
This is a piece that I like very much as well. It’s a chain hanging from the ceiling, there is the word ‘aimless’ written in it and there is this drawing that is just made of loops in and out. It’s a kind of drawing where you don’t have to think too much, maybe like a doodle you’re doing while you’re on the phone, but it’s very meditative. Your mind goes in another direction, so in a way it is an aimless drawing, it could go on forever.
This was a project commissioned by Gasworks, called ‘Lyric Underground’, with the buskers in a time when it was illegal to busk in London. It involved making a jukebox with them, which you can access online at the Gasworks website. The busker thing now is legal, and it’s very interesting to see the same people play under different conditions – it’s all about change and transformation really.