Pull Light
No Laughing
This Week we interview a couple of the artists who will be exhibiting their work at The Florence Trust second up is Alexandra Wilk.
1.If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
A blacksmith. I’d like to live in Italy, or perhaps the Welsh countryside, making beautiful wrought iron staircases and gates for a living. Making things is what keeps me human.
2. Can you tell us more about your work and what are the main ideas you would like to express?
I like to subvert meaning through my work. I am fascinated by the absurdity of signs and systems of control.
3. How do you start the process of making work?
I always start with a drawing of the idea in my head. This helps me to understand the work before I start to make it. I never show the sketches, but they are quite interesting in themselves.
4. Do you consider the viewer, when making your work?
Always, but the things I make come from me entirely. It’s a difficult balance to strike, between yourself and the external viewer. But in the end, I think if you make something with entire concentration and conviction, then it will always be affective to the viewer in some way, even if it’s impossible to predict in what way exactly.
5. Name 3 artists that have inspired your work.
Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha and Marcel Duchamp.
6. What defines something as a work of art?
A work of art is something declared so by an artist. And an artist is anyone who makes art! I love the cyclical absurdity.
7. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
Kurt Schwitters probably. I’m curious about the man who was rejected as being too absurd for the Dadaists. Or Duchamp because he had the most incredible mind and I would like to play chess in the way he could.
8. What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
The curator Erica Shiozaki, wrote in this year’s Florence Trust Catalogue: “Wilk’s objects hold no formal significance, and it stands without any concept or story, just, as-it is with all its surface quality, colour and aesthetics. It becomes much easier to understand the whole of the object as the veils of previous knowledge are removed, and past associations are made redundant. Instead, as one observes, the coldness of metal is felt and her words transform into a series of patterns that once signified something to someone.”
9. Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
I don’t have an interest in appropriating other artists’ work, but I do appropriate existing and archaic design. In particular, I have an obsession with the design and signage of the London Underground.
10. Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
I spend as much as needed on the making of a piece (within what’s affordable obviously). For me, it’s the most exciting thing I can spend money on. I’d rather new work than new shoes any day.
11. What’s next for you?
I am going to take part in the Culturia Residency in Berlin for three months, which is a writing and artistic research programme. I am planning on looking into the similarities between our minds when we dream, and our minds when perceiving images in the world around us.
You can see Alexandra at The Florence Trust Sumer Exhibition Which opens tonight Friday 5th July 2013
Read Fred Sorrell’s Interview HERE
