interventions

CUT OUTS _ BREAK INS _ BREAK OUTS

CUT I HIT I TEAR | STRIKE I SCRAPE I DIG

I had been cutting into things throughout my life. I had made works back in 1978 cutting shapes and lines in cardboard constructions. Since then I have been cutting, scratching and slicing into sheets of paper, in a series called Page-Specific.

I began making a series of possible and impossible, proposed and invisible works. I made a piece just of labels. One of the ideas was to make a wall cuts.

This came about after working on my own house in East London. I saw the possibility of using the wall as a material. But the idea began much further back. When I was about 6 years old I went back with my parents to our old house in Hackney. It was now boarded up and derelict. I broke into the house and explored the empty space that had once been home. The floors had been removed in places and as I made my way in the semi-darkness, i lost my footing and was left danglerling from the staircase as the floor beneath was removed. This left a mark on me. Anyway, once i had this idea i tried to find somewhere to try this out.

I had friends living in Leytonstone whose ACME houses were about to be demolished. This was around 1994, I tried to get permission to work in these houses but was denied. Well, I did not think no was the right response so I just gained access illegally and made my work. I had to be quick to avoid detection from the police and security guards that were all over the area as it was the centre of massive demonstrations and occupation by the crusties.

Cutting and revealing are central to my process and method. The excitement and danger of those early interventions have found a new home in my site specific performance work.

All of the interventions were destroyed *. That was built into the concept from the start. All of the sculptural interventions were also destroyed.

*one exception is in Caracas, where I have a long term project that began in 1995 and still continues. Its a long story.