ARTISTS TALKING

I must admit I had a great time there and I was so confident that I thought that I could just start with no MA, no networking and no clear plan.

Well, as we all know, becoming an artist is a long haul and I pretty quickly found that the loot wasn’t rolling in. My first years were spent working for modelmakers doing the occasional bit of set design and working as a ‘visualiser’ for some architects – sketching out complex joints or service runs in pre-computer days. In 1986 I thought I should have a go at the art again, dumped my jobs and made a whole new batch of art. Good idea, bad timing, as six months later I found out that most of my architect colleagues received fat redundancy cheques as recession hit and the architect firm ‘downsized’.

Luckily all was not lost. I managed to get a series of exhibitions in Germany and was selected to show at the Whitechapel Gallery Open. I started making sculpture influenced by architecture and the science behind architecture. Perhaps, because I knew which way round to hold a set of building plans, I managed to land some public art commissions and I have continued in that direction ever since.

My exhibitions are generally linked in some way to the most recent public piece. In that way I can examine further some of the issues raised whilst working on commissions which are either too impractical or too ‘difficult’ for the site.

My latest direction is combining public art with landscape. I have never been a great plinth fan and ‘integrating artworks into the constructed environment’ seems on today’s agenda at last.

The first image shows the Moiree exhibition for Platform for art in London, 2003. By using cheap fencing materials and angle iron I completely altered an environment, in this case a seventy-metre-long tube station. The other image shows a commission using water jets and fibre optics for Cambridge University. Currently I am working on two eight metre acoustic mirrors set in a 200m walkway linked by lighting and textured paths set into the ground. These reflectors will engage the viewer with naturally amplified sea sounds. This will be at Swansea, completion 2006; a travelling exhibition on acoustic artworks will compliment this at the Martello Tower Arts Centre at Jaywick and the Mission Gallery, Swansea in 2007.

It’s not a bad way to earn a living really. I get a rush of excitement, even a feeling of elation, whilst working on new projects, concepts and ideas. This slowly evaporates as the reality of budgets and structural engineers kicks in. If I had my time again would I have done it differently? Probably...