Axisweb Curated Prize
As part of my research for the Axisweb Curated Prize, I interview the artists in my selection on their use of rubbish/waste/discards.
Interview with Lousie Winter (part 2)
AB: What processes do you apply to these materials?
LW: Once the collected material has been brought back into the studio I embark on a process of intuitive play. This enables a fluidity that arises as a result of almost not thinking, or, it is a different kind of thinking, one based on the physicality of learning. This intuitive play enables me to uncover more abstract readings of these materials, questioning their status as signifiers and is essential if one is to avoid imposing meaning onto something. It is only after this process that I attempt a kind of post-rationalizing, so, in a sense, there is a kind of distillation that occurs from the outset as I gradually narrow things down in order for them to become more concentrated.
My most recent works have developed beyond the displacement and reassembling of collected material as I attempt to somehow re-animate the materials. The latest pieces such as ‘Rubbish pile and fan’ evidence something that has happened and in effect continues to happen in the context of the gallery. This absurd counter reading of the material is intended to question our relationship with things in the world and, in particular, our mediated relationship with nature and our often futile attempts to harness it for our own devices. It is where this simulation falls down and collapses into parody that I find most fertile.
AB: What context do you show your work in?
LW: For me, first hand experience of the work is essential, so, the optimum viewing space, if there is such a thing, would be the white cube. The reason why experiencing the work first hand is so important is because it is at this point the viewer or audience are confronted by the non-site, and there is an inherent paradox within this, that the viewer is to some extent experiencing something that is ‘unreal’ in a ‘real’ space which could equally be viewed vice versa. It’s an interesting interplay in that one proposition questions the boundaries of the other and that this is somehow made accessible in the present or, as the critic John Haber has said, the non-site creates ‘a rupture in the gallery walls, one in turn predicated on their existence in the first place.’
AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?
LW: I like to keep a plethora of rubbish and collected material in my studio as kind of permanent collection if you like! I like to have a continuous resource that I can draw from at any time. It’s important to remember that although I might only ever use a handful of these objects to form actual pieces of work, that is not to say that the remaining items won’t be used in the future so there is this amassing of unrealized potential.
Interestingly, this collecting of material also creates a pause or suspension within the existence of the object itself, often interfering in its process of decay through the process of salvaging. At the same time they are also withdrawn from circulation in a similar way to the fact that most pennies are sitting in peoples coin jars and not being exchanged within the currency system. Going back to the idea of rubbish and its relative value, it is interesting that people are now calling for the penny to be scrapped because it is deemed to have outlived its economic usefulness.
