Projection by David McDiarmid

Q&A with Adam Benmakhlouf
Scotland Art Editor for The Skinny
Adam Benmakhlouf: It seems like
you’re dealing with the monumental
in a precious way. You quote huge
structures in little sculptures and
detailed paintings. How do you
think about this clash between the
ornamental and the monumental?
David McDiarmid: I have always felt
really uncomfortable making large
work, especially when dealing with
megalomania as a subject. All these
overtly grand structures... I’m wary of
falling into a trap of just mimicking! It
was, for me, a natural response to work
in this way, as a way of highlighting such
delusions of grandeur. What I would try
to mimic is the way in which an architect
would work and approach the design of
such monumental structures – to try and
get into the mindset of a megalomaniac.
But I’m not an architect so nothing I make
can ever be considered perfect in these
professional terms.
I’m interested in how a little drawing
can end up functioning as an instruction
from an architect to an an engineer.
What happens along these processes
of transcribing and up-scaling, from
drawings to models. I find this more
interesting than seeing the design
actually constructed.
I think that’s the most
AB: important thing about
what’s going on. That it’s not just
quoting this architecture, but the
works posit themselves as a critical
engagement with it. It’s so easy
because I don’t think there is a huge
distinction between monumental
mentality in architecture and then in
art.
At the time when I first
DMc: started researching all
of this I was reading into public art
and there was a lot of criticism to do
with art and architecture and the point
where they combine. Just the fact that
artists seem to be making bigger and
bigger pieces of work now. Fair enough
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