Projection by David McDiarmid

some of it is genuinely quite interesting
but there’s a lot that’s just big and that’s
what’s impressive about it. It’s a funny
one, my subject matter is very much to do
with going big, but then for me to respond
to this by making large-scale work just
seems to be the most ridiculously obvious
thing to do.
It’s interesting because just
AB: when you’re saying that there.
It dawned on me a bit, when we were
talking about mimicking the scale.
How you don’t do that. In the way
that you do kind of mimic is with the
materials. Is with the cement and the
tape. Maybe it’s all to do with the scale,
if you were just making big cement
things you would just kind of make a
mini building. If you scale it up with
the same materials it would just be a
building.
Exactly. The title piece of
DMc: the show, Projection, is
the nearest to ‘full-scale’ I have allowed.
The piece has been presented a few
times before at different stages in its
development, however, it’s size has
always been limited by the space -
it’s height prescribed by the gallery
environment. For the IR11 show, the
benchmark was projecting it to a
size in which someone could stand
under the archway. I was pleased the
Interviewroom 11 was tall enough
to do that. At the same time, I see
this piece as a work in progression.
Despite my trepidations of working
in large-scale, I have this ambition to
see the piece exhibited “properly” as
in projected as a full-scale scaffold
structure. This is maybe contradictory,
but I’m comfortable with the idea of
scaling up this particular piece, because
it ultimately remains as a proposal
or a plan, and never fills its inherent
function.
You said before that you
AB: make an effort to work
like an architect. How far does that
go, and how do you consider the
distinction?
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