Breaking Ground

We have spent a day each interviewing our collaborator about their work.
I started by showing Judith the framed pictures I have up on my walls – a safe place to keep them – and gave her a pile of black photo books to look through. These contain images from the 3 years I spent at Brighton University. Next I took her through a powerpoint presentation titled ‘Seven years: a journey through art education’. We finished by examining the zigzag books I have made for each body of work, the final one being ‘animals, vegetable, mineral’ a set of 5 zigzags in a slipcase produced using duotone lithography at the Royal College of Art last year.
Judith showed me her work in the Blue Monkey studio surrounded by the paper trees she is making presently. She explained how she is mapping and documenting her journey from home to the studio. She took me through her website and talked about the various residencies and projects and the changes in perspective they have involved. After lunch I asked a set of prepared questions and recorded her answers on my new voice recorder.
Both of us are writing and shaping our notes into draft articles for the other’s consideration and comments.

Visited TATE Modern last week to see, among other things, the Gilbert & George exhibition and to see G & G themselves in conversation with Michael Bracewell in the Starr Auditorium.

I was keen to see the show and to hear the pair talk about their enduring collaboration. I hoped I might gain an insight into the way the collaborative relationship worked for G & G, and although they did briefly talk about the strength which came from being a partnership, I came away with the feeling that there was little to be said about how collaboration works for them, because, after 40 years, it is so entirely a way of life.

They talk only of “we” and “our”, never “me” or “mine”. There is no evidence of a division of labour or of defined roles or responsibilities. It appears that they think and work as one.