Inside the Scream
Now the
exhibition is all up, how do you feel?
Tremendously
excited and tremendously pleased that it has all worked so well. I
thought this was the best room in Towneley Hall when I looked round
it 18 months ago, and the way the pieces sit in the room, with the
light and the colours of the room, is just fabulous. What is
wonderful for me is seeing the pieces that I haven't seen for some
time together with my new sculptures, and the sculptures that looked
incredibly big in my studio actually look just the right size here.
And there is space for people to stand back and look at the
sculptures, and most of them you can walk round, and that's fantastic
because a good sculpture is one that is different from different
angles, and needs to be seen from every angle. There have been some
surprises: I was delighted when we realised that the dust montage
'Soul Window' matches so beautifully with Swan Preening, because the
base of Swan Preening is frostily marble, which is the stone I'd used
for half of the image for Soul Window and so we have placed those
together in the exhibition. One of the things that people love –
looking up at the ceiling – is a stone mobile, because it defies
understandings of stone. I love the way it is hanging, and it is
almost being a sun to Connection, which is set in sand because it is
an Egyptian piece. I love the juxtaposition of those two.
There musical
or sound element of this exhibition. This is quite a new dimension to
your work isn't it?
I made the
lithophone last year because somebody said to me, 'What are you doing
about sounds?', and I said 'well I don't know!' My lovely friend
Alastair Anderson, the folk musician, suggested to me that I should
make a lithophone (a stone xylophone). I tested all the stone I had
to see if it rang, and there was just one piece that rang very well,
so from that piece I have made a five note lithophone. There is an
image of it in the exhibition, but it is too delicate, sadly, for
people to play. However, I have asked various people to make
compositions using it. Music student Chris Hobbs has created a
composition using it, and also Barbara Mangles, and both of these are
being premièred at the preview of this exhibition. And then another
friend said to me: 'Wouldn't it be fun to have the sounds of the
lithophone and the sounds of you working combined?' So my idea is
that as people look at the sculptures they can listen to the sound of
the lithophone and also the sound of me working. These are
'Soundscapes' because they are not what one would classically term
'music', nor are they designed to be something that reaches the top
of the hit parade; their purpose it to be something that enhances the
viewing of the sculptures.
Why did you
decide to make an interactive piece in 60 second sculpture?
60 Second
Sculpture is another idea from Robert Shaw. He has three of my
works and he asked if I could make him some blocks to put on his
windowsil because he would like to be able to make his own
sculptures and have the light passing through the alabaster everyday.
I took that idea and thought it would be fantastic for an exhibition,
because everyone wants to be able to touch the sculptures but can't. I
thought it would be nice to have a challenge for people, so the
blocks are all different sizes, they have different textures on
different sides so they are interesting from a tactile point of view.
I was particularly thinking of a friend of mine who is blind, and I
have made her a touching sculpture; I was thinking about making
the surfaces different from the point of view of people who can't see.
There is a hole in one of the sculptures as well so they are easy to
hold if you are very small. The idea is that everybody comes and has
one minute to make a sculpture using the five blocks.
Have you got a
favourite sculpture?
The sculpture
which I think is the best sculpture in many ways is Inside the
Scream. It is quite a disturbing piece (it has reduced someone to
tears) and there can be different interpretations: someone saw it as
two dolphins leaping, though that's not the origins of the sculpture.
What makes it a good sculpture for me is that there are strong
turning points so your eye is led round the sculpture, and also it
looks dramatically different from each angle. There is a very strong
hole through it: going through a hole is interesting because it adds
a different dimension to the sculpture, which is the dimension of
time that it takes your eye to pass through the hole. The piece of
alabaster itself is extraordinary; its very translucent, it looks
almost like you are looking into a brain, and that's the very
disturbing element of it. It has also got things that look like wings
coming out of it, and there's a very interesting part where I have
left some of the rough stone to contrast with the highly sanded,
sealed stone, and so both visually and from a tactile point of view
you get a contrast.
