Edinburgh Sculpture
Workshop: You have written about your interest in creation stories
and the origins of the creative drive. What has been the starting
point for making during your time on residency at the Edinburgh
Sculpture Workshop?
Dillan & Eleanor:
The very first thing we did was to make two armholes in a card board
box, and put it over our head while modelling some clay, one box each
and one lump of clay each. We didn’t have any idea for how it
should turn out, it was just a way of exploring the material, and how
to begin making something before an idea has formulated.
ESW: During your time here you have made further constructions with similar armholes that obstruct your reach and sight, prioritising a tactile encounter with lumps of clay. When you have finished working into the clay, taken the box off your head or walked around the screen, and seen what you have made, what do you do next?
D&E: That is a key question - what now? Where is the work? There is some thing like a performance in the making and something like a sculpture left over after that, but we felt that neither was really it, or that the work is somewhere in-between those things. So to answer the question: We weren’t really sure what to do next, because we weren’t really sure what we had done with the clay or what it was. We tried different things - writing and drawing, building up and breaking down the clay. We had a similar experience when we went on our trip to see the ancient sites. We didn’t really know what to do when we got there, and we didn’t really understand what they were, or even why we were there.
ESW: You have been writing about the sculptural experiments as a way to reflect upon them. Can you talk about how your writing functions within your practice and how it affects the decisions about the rest of the work you make in photography, film, drawing and with sound? Do you see writing as a way to negotiate the un knowns that arise in the making process?
D&E: It might not reveal what is unknown, but it can help to give clarity to those ideas or feelings that one is aware of when making the work, but that just pass fleetingly through the mind at the time, and may even seem inconsequential. It’s also a way to explore somebody else’s work – to really pay attention to what you are looking at and your response to that. It’s an attempt to focus on your encounter with the work, rather than what you think it ought to be about. As with all the other material we work with, such as photography, writing feeds back into what we are doing, as something to reflect upon, and as an element to combine with other things. It’s all potential matter for the constellation of stuff that makes up the work.
ESW: During your time here you have made further constructions with similar armholes that obstruct your reach and sight, prioritising a tactile encounter with lumps of clay. When you have finished working into the clay, taken the box off your head or walked around the screen, and seen what you have made, what do you do next?
D&E: That is a key question - what now? Where is the work? There is some thing like a performance in the making and something like a sculpture left over after that, but we felt that neither was really it, or that the work is somewhere in-between those things. So to answer the question: We weren’t really sure what to do next, because we weren’t really sure what we had done with the clay or what it was. We tried different things - writing and drawing, building up and breaking down the clay. We had a similar experience when we went on our trip to see the ancient sites. We didn’t really know what to do when we got there, and we didn’t really understand what they were, or even why we were there.
ESW: You have been writing about the sculptural experiments as a way to reflect upon them. Can you talk about how your writing functions within your practice and how it affects the decisions about the rest of the work you make in photography, film, drawing and with sound? Do you see writing as a way to negotiate the un knowns that arise in the making process?
D&E: It might not reveal what is unknown, but it can help to give clarity to those ideas or feelings that one is aware of when making the work, but that just pass fleetingly through the mind at the time, and may even seem inconsequential. It’s also a way to explore somebody else’s work – to really pay attention to what you are looking at and your response to that. It’s an attempt to focus on your encounter with the work, rather than what you think it ought to be about. As with all the other material we work with, such as photography, writing feeds back into what we are doing, as something to reflect upon, and as an element to combine with other things. It’s all potential matter for the constellation of stuff that makes up the work.
