Exploring landscape and language and the synonymous affect they have on one another in art and writing:
Sophie Frost first met Richard Taylor in Leeds in 2008. After finding a commonality in conversation over art they were soon enough collaborating on texts: Sophie wrote essays for two of Richard’s first shows after his BA, now, living at separate ends of the country, they collaborate again. What follows is an email conversation, in which Sophie makes incisions in to Richard’s visual practice. The same is done from Richard’s point of view in to Sophie’s writing practice. The first time they both met outside of Leeds was later in 2008 when they arranged to see a show together at the ICA in London. They took in the show, chatted a while on the gravel outside and then decided to take a walk through the park together:
“… are you reading any books at the moment Richard?” “Yes… a novel by Iris Murdoch called The Sea The Sea”, “Oh, I love Iris’s work, have you read any of her other works or plays?” “Nope just that one”. Sophie then began to tell Richard of the other novels she had read by Murdoch, they talked about the literary situation and the level of description whilst walking further and further in to the park, so much so that it became a garden – a grand inner-city garden ripe for more discourse, more discovery and more relevancy.
Sophie talks to Richard
SF: Richard, as an artist, what is your attitude to the idea of ‘permanence’?
RT: When I think of permanence I think of how often the way I write about my work changes. And how the work I produce is defined by the short concise piece of language and grammar squeezed in to a paragraph, that being the artist’s statement.
Permanent is not something an artist should be nor aspire to be as far as their practice goes - but I suppose another way of looking at things is how artists exist permanently through self-conservation, archives or documentation. My work does deal with these elements.
SF: Do you think this interview via email is organic? Are we talking at each other rather than to on another?
RT: I do not think that we are talking to one another or at each other. We are leaving notes for each other – we’re playing chess with words and awaiting replies together. That’s how I see it. I do a lot of interviews with other artists via email and I think it works as visual people need time to consider their response if they’re writing it down. So in this sense, I suppose it is less organic and more engineered.
One thing I will say is that my writing - and the images I post alongside it – is more organic and also automatic. I type, edit slightly, post, publish and then erase the actual text from my computer: it then exists in the organism of the Internet, which I also see as an archive.
SF: I’m interested in how you speak of the organic and automatic nature of the Internet and blogging. In terms of language, do you see this as an additional dimension to your artwork? What is your approach to language in your work?
RT: When you talk about dimensions I think of both fiction and then science. And both of these, either fiction written about science or the fictional actuality of scientific theory (the fact we happen to believe what scientists tell us), play a role in how I approach my work. My approach is a narrative one as well as an investigative one.
I am interested in the Internet as a medium and how it pushes new forms of language. It is also a question of space too: there is so much space in the capacity of blogging, its almost infinite, you really have to utilise language as a way of keeping your ideas close knit. It’s also a transitory space for my work, a place for documentation to reside and for archives to grow. So yes in terms of language it is an addition to my work.
I have always considered the structure of written language - and our common and learned understanding of it - in terms of grammar and intonation. I am increasingly interested in the translation of such linguistic constructs in to visual art – for instance how an installation and its arrangement of objects in an environment can also have certain intonations and grammatical structures.
SF: Do you ever find the endless possibilities of the Internet imposing and limiting on your artwork? Don’t you ever want to “go back to zero” in terms of finding your own unique way of constructing visual forms and language?
RT: The Internet is a useful catalyst for disseminating art practice. But I do feel there is a limit to how much an artist should use it. To “go back to zero” for me, is to extract myself from the context of an art society, to build an art practice in the middle of nowhere. I find the ‘city’ more imposing than the Internet - but I suppose in one way or another they are one and the same, they’re both addictive and can be extreme too. I see the Internet as non-linear, more as a spherical expanse of non-space. It is a also non-specific space
SF: Turning to other forms of landscape then – discounting the Internet and looking at natural environments – what is the significance of other types of landscape to your artwork? Why? And what is their relationship to language?
RT: I see landscapes as narratives. I often write things down from conversations I have had, or overheard. At times, when on a train I treat my narrative as linear, touching on the ‘real’ landscapes outside. These bits and pieces of writing I then thread together abstractly. I see these collated pieces as round-walks that circumnavigate and fence in my ideas – something like a bowl or a valley with stand-points at various distances that can be seen and noted from all perspectives. I also see landscapes as ways in to and out of retreats in my work: if anything they are squeezed in to drawings and then explored through installations or filmed performances. I also see a landscape as an editing process.
Richard talks to Sophie
RT: What is your approach to regional aspects of art writing - as a writer do you believe travelling the country is a necessity?
SF: Yes, although I do consider myself to be London-centric and sometimes I don’t locate myself well enough geographically, as I spend more time fussing about politics and history. I tend to be more interested in the scope that foreign travel gives me as a writer and artist (a new label I have only recently decided to attach to myself!) rather than regional travel, and I feel that this is short sighted. In my writing I try to pull in as many references as possible related or unrelated to what I am writing about - a sort of bricolage effect. These can be personal references, political ones, religious ones, literary ones.
I am positive that I want to locate my practice somehow, to give it a position: to be orientated from a particular subjectivity I suppose. But these are all just words, and words ultimately bog me down. I’d be quite interested in mapping them out physically, although I cannot visualise how. For me, this sort of project would culminate in a final outcome, perhaps some documentation of an event before it disappears – here is where my need for permanence comes in.
RT: You say you are bogged down by words – it’s as if you bury your head in books or political histories and their relevance to today instead of ‘locating’ yourself geographically. Here’s a thought process: if you had a compass how would you use it, would you read up how to make the most of its magnetic powers or would you use it instinctively?
SF: If I were to use a compass I’d try my hardest to use it instinctively. But then, as the old Marxist trope goes, we are all social beings, and it’s inevitable that words, theories and ideas will control our ultimate movements, even if we choose as rigorously as possible for that not to be so.
RT: This new label then, is it a visual language that you endeavour to approach instead of a textual one? Or are you interested in them being one and the same?
SF: I see no binary difference between visual and textual language. They are symbiotic to one another and complimentary. I always think of a great artwork as something that hits you at several different levels of meaning (or perhaps language) - a textual level, an aesthetic level, an intellectual level, an experiential level.
RT: What springs to mind is how “going back to zero” would necessitate certain concentrated steps away from your learned language. To me this coincides with taking yourself out of the ‘city’, or London and its specifics, to meet other ends . How do you think language deals with this sort of backward motion? What visual reaction would you construct in the middle of a field after orientating a locale using your compass? I’m seeing this as more of a journey with multifaceted legs attached.
SF: If I left London and re-orientated myself with a compass, I think I’d have to leave my reaction partially up to chance and quite a bit of it up to circumstance too. What would be the first words and actions that would come into my head? What would inspire me? Could I remap myself in a ‘hypertextual’ way?
Would we be able to re-create the ways that we construct ourselves outside of the confines we stick too (the Internet, our habitats, our comfort zones): to construct ourselves instead in the expanse of British countryside for instance, or in places reached by entirely different avenues?
This garden is an avenue and soon - after wandering through floral and past fauna - they will reach the end of the track. Both Richard and Sophie have successfully taken themselves out of the city, through conversation and thoughts of other places, thoughts of that walk and that talk. Richard remembers a certain character created by Iris Murdoch, a character that had supper in the same brassiere every evening near the ICA: the same brassiere in fact where Sophie has brunch every morning. This character was much discussed during their walk through the garden next to the gallery that day. As they reached the other side they came across a tall house with lights switched on behind sash windows up above. They imagined this character lived there. All of a sudden it was a new discovery, a new relevance and a placing for revisited discourse...