civic twilight end - brook andrew - jon campbell - kate daw
roderick buchanan - tiwi islands - andrew hazewinkel - ACCA
I know in London you had some incredible success working with artists like Yinka Shonibare, Mark Wallinger, Nathan Coley… is it hard to make time to work with artists at spacecraft?
No, not difficult at all. Right from my earliest model the plan was to factor in time to work with artists and time to work on my projects. Actually, thinking back it wasn’t always easy to prioritise art projects, but I think the commitment has been pretty solid over the years.
We’ve made some great work, important work at spacecraft. But the situation is different in Australia, definitely. Artists have to be very motivated here and we all have to be generous with our time, ideas and resources. But I think ultimately Melbourne is like anywhere else if the idea is good enough, you can nearly always find a way.
How does it work, what happens when an artist comes to you with an idea?
When an artist comes with a problem, a technical problem and the idea behind the work is really strong, and it’s something I can relate to, I find myself carrying that problem around with me. It’s been lodged and will hang around until I have a solution. It sort of rumbles around in there being processed, probably subconsciously you’re testing the various permutations until you alight on the killer methodology.
I think from then you can start to visualise the process, I mean start fine tuning that methodology breaking it down into the various stages of the process. I expect ninety percent of the work is done just while your going about your day, and then there’s a period of testing things with Clara and Marina you know, could this work, what would happen if … So for me this is the most critical time, and it’s probably the only part of the process you can’t write down on a spread sheet.
