Anish Kapoor on Alan Yentob's 'Imagine'

The Air Loom

This is a really good site for finding out about the Air Loom, as well as seeing photographs of one that was actually built. I wish I had built it.

Roman Signer

Roman Signer has been a great influence because of the humour, sense of spectacle and event basis of his works.

Phil Collins

Phil Collins did a piece at Tramway earlier this year. The two things that were particularly interesting to me was the video (with headphones) of people in laugh therapy sessions. A group of people all made themselves laugh and the combination of the fakeness in the laughs and the baring of so many teeth made it a very confrontational work. Made me think of Pavel Buchlers 'canned laughter'. The other aspect I liked was the huge structure that was made to house some videos. On the way in you were immersed in total darkness and you would feel lost until a guide with a torch who guided you into what seemed like a new reality where only the video works existed. It seemed like a better approach to creating a context outside of reality than the white cube.

Pavel Buchler

I thought I had already mentioned Pavel Buchler but apparently not. He made a piece in which it played a constant loop of canned laughter (I found him while researching laughing gas). Apparently this had the effect of going from being funny to being a bit sinister. He also made a series of 'small sculptures' which were at streetlevel photoworks. They were a combination of beautifully simple and humourously elegant.

Memories of the exhibition at GFC

Since before the exhibition Ive had doubts about how 'fully realised' this work is if it can be placed in any gallery space. That seems to be ignoring the contextual issues of any given space, whether it is the nuances of the gallery space, the town in which it is or the culture of the country it is shown in. So I feel this has been a lazy effort. In order to address this I started playing with the title. I liked the idea of giving the object a destination using the title (I talked about this before). However the first title I tried was simply a specific location and a specific future time and date. i discovered that this caused confusion in relation to the object so I tried to find a title that would sugest a destination more candidly without being too overt and clunky. In the end I decided on 'Intended for Fremantle', which I am still pretty happy with for the purposes that I was considering. However this is cheating slightly as the work was not based on anything to do with Fremantle and so this is not its intended destination. In a way the title is a trial go at when I do make objects from particular cultural backgrounds so it is a seperate work in itself.
The exhibition seemed to go well. At first the canister nozzle didnt seem to work and it was embarrassing having to fix it in the middle of the opening (though I had no idea how long it would take for the balloon to burst so I couldnt risk testing it. In retrospect I should have tested the canister without a balloon attatched and that was probably my biggest failing of the exhibition). However after I had fixed it it worked perfectly. While the other balloon I had made would go down quickly in between doses of gas this one took much longer. It took quite a while of people looking at it and moving on ( I saw some younger children being shown the piece and I suddenly realised that I had made an assumption that the person who burst it would be an adult and would not be quite so upset by the guilt of breaking something) before someone decided to follow the advice on the sign. He seemed a little surprised at how quickly it inflated and backed off. After a little while he tried it again, this time much more in control of the situation. I thought he might be the one to burst it out of curiosity but he stopped after two tries. I was very happy that the balloon had inflated so much more than I expected and hadnt yet burst but now I had a new worry: would somebody burst it before the gas canister ran out?
Around this time I was taking lots of photographs and videos of the interaction with the piece and I started getting very aware of how I might be changing the piece by doing so. In future I think the ideal would be to have some sort of film camera film the proceedings but this would raise other issues of consent.
I left the space and as I was returning there was an incredibly large bang, followed by a small silence in which I couldnt help loudly laughing. The bang was heard all over the ground floor and even outside. Shortly after everything went back to normal and I felt relieved that I no longer had to hover around my piece to document it. Some people would still try the canister after the balloon had burst and I felt bad that my work was not for these people too, but it didnt change that the work had worked better than expected and I had already accounted for there being lots of people who the work 'wasnt for'. It was already my intention that the full work would have only 1 audience member, the person who burst it, and so I was particularly happy when that person appeared towards the end of the night to apologise for bursting the balloon. That seemed like a pretty good sign that I had succeeded in my intentions. I have since asked him some questions about the event.

Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely makes remarkable machines that, among other things, self-destruct. I think its a fantastic way for artworks to combine playfulness, spectacle and also threat.

Sandy Stoddart

Its also worth mentioning Sandy Stoddart. Im really impressed with the huge level of skill involved in these modelled works, though I would prefer to do something else with this practice. I still think there is a great amount of admiration from any audience for things either of beauty or of obvious high skill.

Kenny Hunter

While making my calf I spent a lot of time looking at books of Kenny Hunters work. I particularly appreciate the contemporary use of historical practices like clay modelling. Its worth noting though that Kenny Hunter casts into fibreglass before casting into bronzes in order to create a smooth, slightly outside the real, look.