James Schofield 

Terracotta Dreams, 2022.





















The following conversation took place online between James Schofield and Matthew
Merrick sporadically in preparation for Terracotta Dreams at Existential House.  It has been
copied and edited from an original, collaborative, Google Doc.
 
James Schofield is a practitioner, based between Blackburn and Liverpool.
Matthew Merrick is an artist and educator, based in Leeds.
 
-
 
----
 
*** Content Warning ***
 
The conversation contains reference to trauma and prolonged periods of depression, and the effects that has had on personal relationships.
 
----
 
----
 
[JS] Just to open on an awkward note and to get conversation flowing before we even get anywhere close to talking about me and my work, I wanted to be really clear about why I was asking you to join me here. I know when I first spoke to you pretty briefly about this I hastily said it was because you knew me before I went through that period of depression and you were involved in the first exhibition I had any hand in organising whilst at university in Leeds at Left Bank (1984 / 2010 ), so it would be nice to come full circle with you for this new installation, post-depression.
 
That’s all true, but it was also because you’ve had a really profound impact on my life and practice, and we’ve never spoken about it. Mainly because you’re far too modest. But I’m sure this is the same for dozens of other people too. Without you encouraging me to apply for a job at the Henry Moore Institute and being able to observe you work (and generally unofficially/unknowingly mentor me), I would never have set off down the path that I did and end up with a PhD. Let alone having travelled literally to the otherside of the world to talk about my research and practice. I know our relationship is mainly built on dry humour, sarcasm and pop culture references, but genuinely thank you.
 
----
 
[MM] That is very nice of you to say and I’m really glad that I could help you though I’d never thought of our friendship that way. Also, you have achieved a very impressive amount in a relatively short amount of time and you should be really proud of that – not just academically but also in terms of your recovery. What I would say is that, I have also been really driven by how you have approached creative practice as well.
 
Your presence at LJMU nudged me to think of that as the place to return to education (as a student!). There were other factors, but it confirmed a lot to me about the tone and atmosphere of the place that you had found it to be so productive.
 
Maybe we could start from the beginning? I suppose from your project text, the first thing that seems to be poignant to me is that the condition you were/are being treated for was previously largely unrecognised – unrecognised by me as well. Do you feel able to discuss that? My question, if you are, would concern whether that unrecognition (and now recognition) has adjusted how you perceive your work as an artist and curator in terms of their forms and contents, and the pressure that you put on them to be or do a certain thing?
 
----
 
[JS] A little unexpectedly, it’s been surprisingly easy to talk about once I realised there was an issue. That’s not to say that the first few counselling sessions weren’t excruciating (and especially some of the later ones), but it always felt cathartic. I think the issue for me was that when I first became depressed in 2010 it was quite literally like a switch getting flicked in my brain that just shut off the majority of my feelings as a self-preservation measure, after my mum got rushed into a critical care unit and nearly died. I had no control over it happening and it was just a natural response to trauma. And then with it being at the end of the year at university I was alone as everyone had moved home, and I ended up being the one to go every day to visit her as I was the closest one of my family. So it turned into a routine of just putting one foot in front of the other and getting on with it. Making the trip over and then coming home to an empty house and being absolutely numb and feeling nothing.
 
Then in the blink of an eye that numbness just became normality, and from that point my brain just stayed in that self-preservation mode indefinitely up until mid-2019. And it’s only with hindsight that that whole period of my life just feels like I was there but I wasn’t present. Like I was stood outside of everything and everyone else, looking in and watching them live their lives (terrible way of expressing it there…).
 
In terms of art it’s only with hindsight that I realise I started to move more and more towards curatorial projects in my third year at university because I just didn’t feel anything for the work I was making and didn’t have any desire to make anything new purely for myself. But I could still see connections between works and ideas from other people, and started to focus on how to best join them up whilst still convincing myself I had some semblance of a practice and wasn’t just an imposter in this world that most of my friends were involved in. Now though, I feel properly emotionally connected to my practice and have been really enjoying getting back to grips with it and finding out what exactly it is in an expanded sense (and properly drawing together the artistic and curatorial aspects alongside others).
 
----
 
[MM] “A Sisyphean exercise made public, questioning the nature and fragility of our relationships with ourselves and others, and the lengths we go to in order to find, develop and maintain them.”
 
This piece of text from your outline makes me think of the relationships often present in ‘the artworld’, and how so many of them are short-lived, spurious and often built on concealed or coy networking for someone’s benefit. From a personal point of view, I found that when I emigrated in 2015, many people from that world who I thought of as (very) close to me, vanished almost overnight from my life and have never reappeared, and I found that the most difficult adjustment. Maybe they feel the same about me! I don’t blame anyone necessarily but that realisation or recognition has framed how I now build relationships, it has perhaps made me quite distant.
 
I’d never called making art-friends a Sisyphean exercise but now you say it I see it. Have your experiences in the last few years adjusted the way in which you develop friendships? If so, how? If not, why/how?
 
----
 
[JS] Haha I think I wrote that first/second draft of the text a little unclearly – I was meaning the act of making the paintings as a Sisyphean exercise which in turn questions the lengths we go to for friendship, compassion and love. But I really like your interpretation of it!
 
Let’s just be honest (this is a safe space) – the feigned cordiality that is ‘networking’ in the art system is largely fucking horrible. Whoever says they enjoy going to events (mainly exhibition previews at large institutions) to meet new people is talking utter bullshit. It’s just an emperor’s new clothes moment writ large. Everyone knows you’re not making real friends or connections; most are either doing it to try and get an opportunity, or find someone to invite to an opportunity you’ve got. If I’m not going to an art event with people I know I’d rather just stick my headphones in and pretend I’m listening to music for the most part, instead of having to pretend to enjoy schmoozing (unless it’s a talk/performance). Although there are obvious (mainly artist-led) exceptions, where care is central to practice, and for the opening of Terracotta Dreams I hope it will at least act as a catalyst for people to have some meaningful conversations with strangers…
 
In terms of friendships, I think coming out of the other side of the depression changed how I interact with everyone. I made a point of reaching out to pretty much every one of my close friends – you included I might hasten to add – to apologise (in a variety of ways) to them for not being in the moment with them for any major life events, or for just being distant from them for that 9 year period as it wasn’t something I was conscious of doing. I think I’m really lucky, as similar to how you describe when you emigrated, anyone that has stuck around and I’m still friends with now feels like someone that’s really important. And even when we go through times of not speaking because of life in general getting in the way we can still pick up like no time has passed, and it’s a really wholesome thing that I value highly. And that extends to my friends that make art too.
 
I think I feel much more emotionally connected with my friends now in an empathic way, if that makes sense?
 
----
 
[MM] I would add that, I suspect why we have stayed friends for so long has a lot to do with having other things to talk about and do (eg. the low quality of our once great football clubs!).
 
I think of the hangs at Left Bank (2010) and at South Square (2013) where the experiences weren’t about a curator/group of artists' dynamics and were actually more to do with a collective spirit of enterprise and shared sense of dry humour.
 
The 12 hours at South Square hanging The Kozyrev Mirror and the immersion and sharing that came with it are actually some of the happiest moments I’ve had as an artist. I’ve been involved in hangs before and since where that dynamic was missing and I have felt like I’m swimming with sharks.
 
----
 
[JS] Completely! I feel like we got lucky that on a weird Venn diagramme of interests, ours line up pretty well, and even where they don’t we’re still interested to hear about them, and genuinely like each other as people. There’s never any airs or graces and we can just be ourselves.
 
I think that’s what made those shows so fun. We didn’t have any pretensions about who any of us were or what we were trying to do with them, we were just all invested in making something interesting. Not even necessarily good. And I think that our senses of humour helped unite what could have been disparate groups of people, as we hadn’t all worked together before, which was borne out in the finished shows.
 
Whenever I’ve thought back about them I’m the same as you – it definitely feels like they were what kept me wanting to have some kind of practice during those few years as I wanted more of that. With the depression, although my base level was an emotional numbness, there were odd flashes of really strong emotion every now and then, and The Kozyrev Mirror was definitely one of those times. I guess I felt secure enough that the switch temporarily flicked the other way?
 
(As an aside, when I was tidying up my home office/studio during lockdown I found a key for South Square in a random box…never been asked for it back though!)
 
----
 
[MM] “Subsequently following the EMDR it would become apparent this colour signified a strong sense of happiness, contentment, grounding and ultimately love.”
 
How did it become apparent that this was its signifier? In what ways do you think it could be possible that the process you are undertaking for/during this installation might evolve this perspective?
 
----
 
[JS] So first and foremost, EMDR is wild. I was obviously open to trying anything that could potentially help me make sense of what I was going through and just agreed to try it without really reading up on what it was or anything. The best way I can describe my experience was that it was like watching a biography of the worst moments of my life; sometimes in third-person and sometimes in first-person.
 
Obviously it won’t work for everyone, and guess I was lucky that it worked for me. And just to be clear here, at points during those sessions I absolutely hated myself. Like a real deep anger and resentment that I’d never felt before. Purely because during the EMDR a lot of it was watching myself not be able to act to help the person (my partner at the time) with trauma that she was also going through. And I was just watching it play out with hindsight knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do to change the outcome of the situation because I was paralysed by depression, and knowing that what would follow from that point would be a slow-moving car crash to the end of our relationship. So I maybe wouldn’t recommend jumping straight into EMDR unless you feel totally ready to deal with anything that could turn up.
 
At the beginning of the sessions it was always in the first-person and I couldn’t really see past arm's length in front of me. Everything was grey/white and pretty washed out in terms of the background as we were going over the trauma of when I first went to see my mum in the hospital, and then skipping forward to different situations of when the relationship I was in with my partner at the time of 12 and a bit years started to break down. Then as the weeks went by and my emotions started to free up from those traumas it started off as a sense of warmth coming into it, and I started to be able to see further away in whatever environment I was in (or thinking about).
 
Then in one of the sessions I can remember being able to really clearly see what was in front of me and just saying out loud that I saw an orange colour/felt a sense of warmth. And the counsellor kind of jumped on it straight away and started asking if the colour already had any significance in my life (it didn’t). Then we went straight back into EMDR and she made me think about different situations and people without talking about any trauma, and this colour – or sense of colour – kept coming back. I’m not a psychologist by any stretch of the imagination, but it was even blatantly obvious to me that it was when I had strong feelings for the person/situation. And it felt good. It was something that I just hadn’t felt properly/consistently within myself for years.
 
I think the work for this show (the watercolours rather than the sculptural elements or this conversation) is more about putting them out there for the world to see and interact with, rather than an evolution of how I’m approaching what that colour means to me necessarily. I’m pretty clear in its meaning, but I think I’ve never really been this open about my own emotions, or practice, to other publics before. So you could argue if anything it’s even more of a safety net for me because even if everyone hates the installation then it’s something I’m fully invested in and brings me a form of comfort and happiness? And acts as a new departure point for myself, if nothing else.
 
----
 
[MM] “The colour would only ever appear fleetingly, and once the bilateral stimulation was over it would disappear. The exact shade seemingly always just out of reach, on the very edge of recollection.”
 
Would it matter if the intangibility of this colour and the impossibility of completion were interpreted as metaphors for recovery (or for self-care)? I ask because for some that sense of completion is not felt and they are not in a finite process. Perhaps it is more akin to resolution – something that might be returned to? What do you think?
 
----
 
[JS] I suppose the process itself was more mindful and meditative. The counsellor said she normally asks people to wear clothes of the same colour, or in some cases paint a wall in their house with it, so there’s always a presence for them, but neither of those were really practical for me. So instead I just decided to try and make the colour with what I had lying around (it was between lockdowns so I’d got some watercolours and paper with the intention of doing something, but never did, given how weighed down I’d become knowing that what I was experiencing was depression, and the impact that had on trying to be creative at all). The actual act of painting was really cathartic. I’d measure out a square on the paper and just take 5-10mins after a session to try and remember what the shade was and then try to mix it, and just enjoy the tactility of painting again. Even down to how the brush felt as it moved across the surface of the paper, and how the texture made it behave depending on how much paint was on the bristles. And after the sessions stopped I’d revisit it maybe once or twice a week if I was having a bad/stressful day, or if I just wanted to have a few minutes to zone out and focus.
 
There’s ones that are wildly different in terms of shade, and also the brushstrokes from the process of painting too, so you can definitely get a sense of my emotional state at the time, I think. I purposely didn’t date them individually though as I’ve never wanted to look at them as a fixed record. They feel more like a broader overview, if that makes sense? And I like that from that they can be viewed from any orientation and can be read into in a variety of ways, always presenting new possibilities for display and communication (with myself and others).
 
And I’m not so blinkered as to think that I’m cured of depression forever, that’d be totally shortsighted and naive; it’s very much an ongoing concern. One which I confidently know how to recognise and manage now at least. And my counsellor also told me that I wouldn’t be able to remember what the colour was because that’s not how the brain works. I was switching off part of it whilst accessing the memories that brought the colour up to begin with, so I’d never be able to remember it exactly, but if I ever felt that same sense of love and contentment in real life then it should be there if I did something simple enough like closing my eyes, concentrating and going into an almost meditative state.
 
So the metaphor definitely rings true for me, to a certain extent at least? Whenever I’ve thought about it it’s always reminded me of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, where Jiro knows he can never make something truly perfect, but he tries to improve his craft every day as an act of service to others in the general spirit of shokunin. (May have watched that documentary a good few times over lockdown to try and get some creative energy back.) The same thing rings true here to a certain extent, I think. It’s processual both artistically to reproduce the colour, and emotionally to find that sense of it in real life with someone else. And I might never really find it – and I’m genuinely ok with that – but the act of attempting to find it is still a hopeful one.
 
Maybe the only thing that resonates with some of my past work (like the rearticulation of a negative fortune to try and dispel it that was in The Kozyrev Mirror) shares a similar sense of bleak optimism, I don’t know?
 
----
 
[MM] That fortune has been re-used by you in a number of ways and settings almost as fragments of itself, hasn’t it?
 
----
 
[JS] Yes, you could say that. And in terms of practice, and specifically for this installation, I’m looking at things in a more fragmentary way, where there are component parts but not finished works. The watercolours were originally intended to be a part of a wider show based on my work from 2010-2021 that was inspired by the Maurizio Cattalan: All retrospective I saw at the Guggenheim in 2011. This isn’t me nailing my colours to the mast for Cattalan, but in the show all of his works from 1989 onwards were hung from a mobile suspended from the ceiling of the entrance hall in the gallery. It really played with what it is to make a literal retrospective of a period of time, with elements making new connections between one another. But without some gimmicky way to install everything it would end up being far too referential and obtuse for people to interact with. (Obviously there’s a slight referential nod to that show in Terracotta Dreams.)
 
Instead of a literal presentation I began to think about how I could still combine parts of my practice without it being so didactic as to say one piece was from one year, and one was from another, as that just didn’t feel right. Mainly because over the past 10 years everything has bled into one another (in terms of ideas) whilst I was in a haze of depression. So I’ve settled (for the moment) on looking at visual/conceptual references as component parts that are constantly regurgitated in new combinations. They’re always in some kind of flux, and the only things that are formally dated are components that existed prior to whatever installation they are part of at any given time.
 
And by defining them as installations – as a form of exhibition rather than an exhibition with individually named/dated works – it allows for them to be incorporated into other projects by other practitioners too. Or that’s the intention. For now.
 
----
 
[MM] Do you think this comes from not wanting to focus on one thing or another?
 
----
 
[JS] I’ve definitely struggled with how to define my practice overall recently, and I think leaning into nothing really being fixed is indicative of that. When I talk to my students, I increasingly tend to describe myself as a practitioner not an artist, curator, artist-curator, curator-artist, etc. because I think what I do is more than binaries of practice. I’ve been looking at how I want to work, and trying to do that meaningfully. But also not wanting to be tied down to one particular aspect, always being in some kind of flux and not settling to say I’ve reached the limit in any particular area. This has roots in doing my PhD, which involved more of a shift towards teaching, speaking and writing but not as separate things; they very much bleed into each other in a really interdisciplinary way.
 
As well, from a research point of view, and currently working in academia, I find it’s often just easier to define yourself with a title because you can align yourself with others and not be so open to co-optation/abuse from the art system and broader society. So it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. I suppose the aim is to have a way of identifying that is flexible enough to allow you to more widely do what you want or need to do, whilst still providing solidarity and some form of collective protection. It’d be interesting to hear how you feel about this and if you’ve had a similar experience?
 
----
 
[MM] I’m definitely better at being called an artist by others than I was in the past. I suppose age has had that impact because I have found that I now care much less about it. It’s just what I do. In terms of self-identifying, again it is what I do. I make some sound, and I perform as parts of what I do, but I’m not an actor or a musician and I would reject those as titles. Do you think as well, self-identification is a part of the recovery you are talking about in this installation?
 
----
 
[JS] Yes, self-actualising and feeling more emotionally connected again are part of that. I’m at a stage of understanding myself now, similar to you, where I honestly couldn’t care less what people define me as really. Zero fucks given. Understanding myself, and what I do, is very much for me after not really knowing what that was for so long.
 
In terms of this installation and my work, I’m trying not to be so vague or esoteric. Previously I’d even argue I added intentional vagueness because I didn’t have an emotional connection with it, and used that as a bit of a crutch as it let me get away with being quite cold about my own practice. I know some people do like that way of working in terms of utilising vagueness really constructively, but again, I want there to be some kind of framework at least at this stage in my practice. However minimal that may be.
 
----
 
[MM] I like that quality in my work though I can see why now, you would want to reject that approach. I find that ambiguity and vagueness gives
 me scope to do what I want; kind of what we were talking about before. In what ways do you think you are trying to define your position as a practitioner or what you mean when you use the term practitioner? 
 
----
 
[JS] I am trying to get to the bottom of what I am doing, not in a selfish way, but like I say I just want to get that structure into what I do. In a way, giving reassurance to myself and to have that self-actualisation, where I can confidently call myself a practitioner rather than singularly an artist who is doing some teaching, or writing or curating. Obviously that isn’t something that is unique to me, it just feels new to me at the minute with everything that’s happened.
 
----
 
[MM] I can relate to that though, I remember being told when I first started teaching by a few people that I was going about it in the wrong way. That training to teach was a mistake, and that I should allow my practice to give me opportunities to work in education. I suppose that was my moment where I went looking for definitions and certainties in what I was doing.
 
In many ways, I think teaching can really positively impact art practice. It can also utterly demolish some parts of it though.
 
----
 
[JS] It can be emotionally draining; teaching and supporting people are so rewarding, but it also takes away a lot of energy for the other aspects of your life. I think previously I hadn’t really noticed that in teaching and the other areas of my practice, because my depression was quite high-functioning and my default is always to keep going and push through. (Totally blame playing football for that mentality – I might not be the most skilled, but the least I can do is try and outlast everyone!)
 
Whereas now I’m slowly getting better at turning that empathy for others onto myself too. Like I said earlier, there were times when I genuinely hated myself as there was nowhere else to channel that emotion under the circumstances. And it wasn’t really until I started to do the EMDR and make the watercolours that I felt comfortable in loving myself again, I think.
 
----
 
[MM] I think we should talk a little more about the colour you are trying to replicate. Terracotta. In what ways did you realise this colour had a significance for you?
 
----
 
[JS] Like I said earlier, I’ve no idea where I arrived at it. At the time I was speaking out loud without really paying attention to what I was saying and the counsellor asked me about it and its relevance to me. And then we had to piece together the significance of its relationship to emotion in the EMDR session itself.
 
----
 
[MM] Do you think the task within this installation (trying to find that colour but knowing you won’t necessarily be able to) is an attempt for you to answer questions about what else the colour could mean to you?
 
----
 
[JS] Maybe? I just had no idea where it came from initially, and I have no emotional connections to terracotta otherwise. During EMDR, it made sense to me. Generally, for me I suppose it's a colour that is connected to certain feelings and emotions and in relation to these, I began to have an emotional response. I felt happy, content and I felt affection. Beyond that it could really mean anything?
 
----
 
[MM] In repeating the task and knowing that you won’t achieve the same result, is that acknowledgement important to you? What do you think the purpose of repetition is?
 
----
 
[JS] As a task, it is more an attempt to clear my mind, and I don’t just mean emotionally. I think of this as more of a mindfulness exercise than a grand gesture. I’m also conscious that I am unable to make that exact colour again unless I’m feeling those same emotions. I’m not attempting to force myself to feel that emotion again, this is more a process where I can just focus on one task for 10-15 minutes at a time.
 
----
 
[MM] How, or in what ways, does this clear your mind?
 
----
 
[JS] It’s really the tactility and the sensation of paint on paper and the handling of media, and being really aware of that. Sort of like doing the washing up and being fully present in the moment because of the repetitive act and sensations that it produces. Concentrating purely on that one thing drains everything else away temporarily and acts as a bit of a reset.
 
----
 
[MM] We talked a while ago about your plan to make these paintings beyond the installation. Do you have any targets or parameters that you want to achieve with this?
 
----
 
[JS] In the same way as I know that I won’t achieve the same colour and that not being the aim, I don’t have a set production rate or time to do things. I am going to continue to make them as and when I feel the need to, mainly in moments when I’m trying to clear my mind. I think it is important to stress again that these paintings are not titled or classified and don’t have biographies. I think if there was then they might become, or be seen as an attempt, to almost try and manufacture those feelings again.
 
----
 
[MM] I’ve also been wondering why you chose to use watercolour. Was it for its material properties or something more prosaic?
 
----
 
[JS] Purely as it was close to hand and immediate?
 
----
 
[MM] I like it and if it wasn’t intended, I also like its fogginess as a medium and how it works on paper. I’m thinking of how a viewer might think the translucency is a deliberate act. How would this work have developed if you had used oil or acrylics?
 
----
 
[JS] They would have been simpler, but I like the vagueness of the surface that watercolours create. To get any texture in oil or acrylic would’ve meant a move more towards three dimensionality and a different kind of physicality.
 
----
 
[MM] Perhaps it might be wrong if the work was full of clarity because it doesn’t stem from that. So, perhaps that is a connection between the form and content?
 
----
 
[JS] Yes, in the sense of the vagueness. I also really like the areas where paint has dried and layered (but still in two dimensionality). Watercolour gives both a visual and physical texture, but does it with relative uncertainty different to other paint.
 
----
 
[MM] There is also a performative quality, I think, to the way you talk about your work and in what you are making. What are your thoughts about that?
 
----
 
[JS] That’s interesting; I was having a couple of conversations about this recently discussing performative language and how we don’t consider the etymology of what we are saying. Mainly how in relation to visual art that the language we use is historically drawn from theatre, dance and music. And also importantly, the idea of art being the process but any tangible outcomes are just a reference to that, like documentation of a rehearsal and a performance.
 
----
 
[MM] Looking back at my notes here I would say that it's really interesting for me to notice that you mostly haven’t spoken in definite verbs. You are not doing. Is that significant or a product of the urge not to be committed or to make a grand gesture?
 
----
 
[JS] I’d honestly not clocked onto that. But maybe it’s because I don’t think this work needs an end point or a commitment to one? I’m actually really interested to see how this might develop if I was in a future relationship because the lack of clarity is part of my experience of this. I like now that I have the capacity to consciously experience that potential change and know more about what is happening. I didn’t think I would get there at the start of doing EMDR.
 
----
 
[MM] Why was that? Is that connected to the vagueness we have talked about already?
 
----
 
[JS] With depression, some therapies don’t work for everyone. I had geared up for EMDR and the process of recovery not to work but I was open to its potential to help. That lack of clarity, I think, is reflected in the paintings because they are not so surface defined. Like you say, they have that foggy quality, which is perhaps also in how I talk about the work.
 
----
 
[MM] Do you think you will get to a point where the paintings cease to have a role in your recovery? And, do you think this will be reflected in how you describe what you are doing?
 
----
 
[JS] I think that might happen when I don’t try to rationalise feelings anymore, or when my feelings fundamentally change? But it’s something that will always have a role, I think. Even if it’s just for an act of mindfulness, which again could help give clarity to describe or understand myself and my practice better.
 
----
 
[MM] We should also talk about how the installation is displayed. Do you think that the way in which the show is presented is reflective of your intention for this to be an ongoing process?
 
----
 
[JS] I think so (to a certain extent), in terms of the component materials themselves and how they’re articulated. The ‘supportive’ elements like the masking tape, the aerated concrete blocks and the piece of marble are all deliberately not static. From their use in planning, arranging and construction they have an inherent processual and often temporary nature. The font choices on this conversation and the poster for the installation then start to bring that sense of vagueness back; they use Open Sans (2010) and Avenir Next (2019). Two of the most popular fonts from the period when I was depressed – that hopefully again works to provide a sense of familiarity without being able to pin down why or where from (again giving a relatively dynamic intimation). Then the physical placement of everything was done ad-hoc and by eye (with no measurements, etc.) whilst also being considered both conceptually and literally, with the contrasting heights.
 
----
 
[MM] Because height = importance or precedence?
 
----
 
[JS] I think more in relation to exhibitionary display lineages of the art system and specifically Existential House, really. Nothing is at a standard gallery (or museum) height, and the watercolours in particular are literally up in the air to reference dreams in a very tongue-in-cheek way. They also have the potential to fall out of the air at any moment if the weight of the paper grows too much for the tape. Then there’s the art historical references towards gallery precedents (the red of the tape nearly matches ‘galerierot’, the colour the first public museums and galleries tended to be painted), and links to traditional sculptural and painterly concerns with the choice of component materials and their physical arrangement, etc. Then those materials and that shared weight of history also reference one another, and this conversation acts to reference and contextualise them all, the installation as a whole, and it’s own existence as a conversation (very meta haha). In terms of Existential House too, given the shows that have gone before I wanted to reference them wherever possible without stepping on their toes, so to speak. They have all been dense either visually or conceptually, and have made use of most of the space (apart from the ceiling), often constructing new sculptural elements within it. So it was really exciting that Stephen was as open to being experimental with how everything was staged – and like we were saying earlier about us working together previously, here the install was genuinely really, really fun because there were no pretensions and we were both invested in making something that we thought was interesting.
 
I think maybe this is a good place to wrap things up now the conversation has moved back towards the installation and Existential House itself? I’m sure whoever is still reading at this point would like for it to end. Hopefully a rogue watercolour hasn’t fallen on them if they’re still in the gallery too.
 
I know I said this at the beginning, but again, thanks for taking the time to do this with me. I know you’re extremely busy, and I genuinely appreciate it. Just like all the other times you’ve advertently – or more likely inadvertently – helped me through things. 
 
----

----
 
My house fell down, but now I can see the stars.