M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

something, an attachment to visibility, a reluctance to
allow an extraordinary elusive presence to depart too
soon. At core there was a need to stabilise or slow the
process of change allowing more people to witness the
works for longer periods of time. And by working with
scientists we have managed to do that. The seductions of
time and visibility are still at the heart of the work
though.
Your work follows a tradition of contemporary art
works which question the limits of what art
outside the spaces of museums or art galleries
can achieve. As a result the work is accessible to
a much wider audience. How do you feel about
documentations made of your works which may
be edited and re-presented by external media?
With the FlyTower we could exert no control over film,
documentation. It was in the public realm, outside and up
for grabs on some levels. With Dilston Grove we did not
allow anyone to film or photograph in the interior space
of the installation during public showing times as we felt
it would be too distracting and invasive in the space.
Something about the ephemeral nature of your
organic photographs reminds me of Gerhard
Richter’s use of blurry, photographically sourced
images, suggesting doubt and fragile illusions.
The tension created between material and
process in his work could be also be conferred by
your methodology. Would such a comparison ring
true and if not why not?
We very much like Richter’s work and do see
connections – particularly with the blurring of viewer’s
ability to grasp the image, it questions visual memory and
illustrates how impossible it is to freeze a look properly,
fact or feeling. Our photographs have an elusive
presence. The image is on a molecular level – subliminal.
It could be also claimed that in your practice,
elements correspond to Richter’s in its preference
for chromatic tonal ranges and a certain
randomness in choice of subject. How do you
choose your subject matter and how do you feel
about the embedded technical challenges of your
palette?
The context of where we place our work has always
been carefully considered. Because it is a phenomenal
way of making a photograph, it has felt right for us to
take traditional subjects, such as portraiture and
landscape. They are something else in the grass. We
always take the photographs ourselves, and they often
relate directly to the context where we exhibit them.
Architectural influences also play into possible content.
They are grounded in a reality to do with our
circumstance, and to do with place.
The photosynthesis work draws inspiration from
the act of being there, or wherever, rather than arriving
70
Gerahrd Richter
Cage 6, 300 cm x 300 cm, Oil on canvas, 2006, Catalogue Raisonné:
897-6 �
with a pre-conceived set of ideas, and wallet of prepared
negatives.
We are like a traveling troupe at times, arriving
with our daughter, setting ourselves up for weeks at a
time in a disused building, some found site, or as with the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 2001, we
used the Special Exhibition space for a month as a
working studio, making all the pieces in there. We love
this itinerant way of working. There is something
spontaneous about it, an element of improvisation that
comes from trusting each other and our approach.
In 2004, we worked on a new commission
Green brick, green back at the Rice Gallery, Houston,
Texas. We played with notion of inhaling the exterior
fabric of the building into the interior space, bricks that
appear hard and permanent were made soft and
mutable, reflecting a sense of impermanence that seems
to pervade much of the city’s infrastructure of clapboard
houses and rapid cheap material construction springing
up everywhere. The second image, the dollar bill, was a
response to the oil rich environment of Houston
‘Emerald City gone bad!’ and the fact that oil comes
about through the ancient process of photosynthesis, as
do all fossil fuels.
Technical challenges? We’ve learnt the hard way!
Nearly all of our experimentation has taken place on the
exhibition ‘floor’ and the performance charge swiftly
enters in. There is no room for failure, so adapting
becomes paramount. In Brazil just last year, we used a
much larger 6KW projector than the 2.5KW we normally
use as was only available machine. We prepared our
negative in advance to adapt to this. But there was still a
sticky moment when setting up equipment, the first
negative shriveled in less than a minute. Stomach
shrinking, but then we realised with this scale of
projector we could not place the negative between glass.