ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 193

Suzanne Smith

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Special Issue

Your works are marked out with an
unconventional hybrid combination
between abstraction and explicit
reminders to everyday life's objects,
especially found materials: this mix
triggers unexpected reactions in the
viewers, that are walked into an area of
intellectual interplay in which are
urged to question their usual
relationships with a variety of objects
that you recontextualize and bring to a
new level of significance. Gerhard
Richter once remarked, "my concern is
never art, but always what art can be
used for": what is your opinion about
the functional aspect of Art in the
contemporary age?

I think Art's function is to ask questions
and to help people think, not to impress
them. I'm much more interested in the
gasp, the laugh or the tilted head rather
than the "wow!". The art I'm interested
in stimulates thought and questions
assumptions on whatever scale. It might
be a Richard Tuttle where I think "why
on earth do I find that form and those
colours so bloody stimulating?" or a
M ika Rottenberg film that makes me
laugh out loud whilst feeling really
uncomfortably voyeuristic. Those are
exciting experiences. I do get cross with
artists who say their work isn't political.
It is. It always is. And that's exciting!
Your practice reflects the negotiation
of an environment saturated with
social norms and conventions: while
lots of artists from the contemporary
scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently
Jennifer Linton, use to convey open
socio-political criticism in their works,
you seem more interested to hint the

direction, inviting the viewers to a
process of self-reflection that may lead
to subvert a variety of usual, almost
stereotyped cultural categories. Do you
consider that your works could be
considered political in a certain sense
or did you seek to maintain a more
neutral approach? And in particular,
what could be in your opinion the role
that an artist could play in the
contemporary society?

My Chimera series of collages was an
attempt to explore Britain's involvement
in global conflict and my total horror but
also lack of understanding of it.
Machinery and body parts. I work with
teenagers who come from
disadvantaged backgrounds, many of
whom intend to join the army. I care
about them as individuals and wonder
how much awareness has gone into
their decisions and whether it's true free
choice or a lack of other options. I find it
overwhelming. War appalls me but I
also feel extremely guilty that I don't
fully understand how my own country is
engaged in it. I'm aware that's an
extremely privileged position. I think
rather than standing on a soap box
shouting about right and wrong it's
possibly more important for me to use
my work to say "this really worries me
but I don't know the answers". It's okay
to not know the answers as long as your
part of a process of finding out.
So yes, I suppose my work pivots
around the idea of questioning
everything. Seeing norms as social
constructs rather than the natural way.
There's a destabilising mentality to it.

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