REBECCA GLOVER Discusses her recent work
The installations are fairly recent what inspired that change?
Up until 2008 the majority of my work had been two dimensional. The few sculptures I’d done were fun, playful and mostly light relief from the seriousness of painting! Whilst studying in Edinburgh I began to play increasingly with the third dimension. I started creating drawings in wire which helped me solve problems in my painting.
The installations were really just the next step on from those drawings. I began wondering what it would look like if I actually drew in the space rather than translating it all into two dimensions. With installations the space becomes a sort of playground, the whole building is my canvas.
It’s really physical – like dancing – my whole body has to engage with the space.
It wasn’t until I worked at the Market Estate Project that I really got a chance to explore that idea fully.
Are all your installation works site specific?
Do you have an idea first and then adapt it to the space or the other way around?
So far, most of them have been site specific. By that I mean that the ideas/visuals have mostly come from being in the space and playing around with it.
For example, with The Coal Room, the visual form for that piece came from exploring the function and feel of the space. I was asked to do an installation for a group show at the Menier Gallery and while I was looking around for inspiration I discovered the coal bunkers under the street. There’s a whole passageway of them and some are full of piles of unused coal. They triggered a thought process. That said, the inspiration is never from the space entirely. I bring my own thoughts and ideas but it’s the physical space that helps me materialise those ideas. It’s really a combination.
I would like to do that particular piece again but on a much bigger scale and with a few alterations. I’m looking for the right location. So, initially it begins as a site specific piece and develops into something of its own.
One of the main subjects in your work revolves around the idea of space and movement. You express it in any media you use, but you would think that those issues would be most easily translated into three dimensional pieces.
The problem with working three dimensionally is that there are certain things which are impossible to do in real life, things which you can suggest in the alternate reality of the painted surface or for that matter, on Photoshop. I always want to suspend objects in mid air, without strings attached – as they spoil the illusion. I want to believe the work even if my brain can ultimately work out that it’s an illusion. Some part of me, my imagination perhaps, has to be able to feel it’s true.
What I like about the installations is that you are supposed to experience them in relation to and as part of the existing space. They affect your spatial perception and challenge it. As I see it, that’s different from sculpture – which you look at as an object. I find sculpture tricky, it often seems out of place and because it’s totally physical it often tells you too much, your imagination doesn’t keep exploring.
I want the installations to engage the imagination and take it beyond the physical constructs of the space. I find that interesting…thinking about the space inside the walls and beyond, making things seem less solid than we normally perceive.
They are a bit like suspended animations which come to life in your mind. It is the hidden bits/ the suspended explosion that is the most important element of it all.
Do you feel you are going to be working exclusively on installation works in the future?
It’s really hard to tell. A lot of people have asked me that. Painting and installation come together. I use painting to help me develop ideas for installations and the installations help solve problems with painting. I like them both for different reasons and I enjoy the dialogue between them.
How different is your approach to the issue of space from the two dimensional surface to three-dimensional?
Well I don’t really think it’s all too different. With the two dimensional work you have to work to create the space and in three dimensions you have to manipulate the existing space in order to suggest the alternate reality. How I go about that is very similar.
I’m not all that visual really. I struggle to imagine what things look like in a particular space so the computer images and the paintings help me to do that. But sometimes the paintings turn into pieces on their own, separate from any installation plans.
Most of the time I have to work really hard to develop the visuals. I’ll have a feeling that I want to describe. I look at images, other artists, colours textures, photos, and the news (that’s been good fuel recently)…
I’ll look for things that are close matches to the feeling, favouring particular lines over others, colour combinations, opacity, shapes etc.
Once in a while it’s like you find the missing piece to a puzzle you’ve been trying to solve. You create the perfect visual match for the feeling you’ve had.
Thanks to Neus, Damian, Lilly, Justin and Josh for all your questions.
Photo: Rob Baker Ashton
