INTERVIEWER: What was the initial idea behind nsa?
INTERVIEWEE: It was less of a specific idea and more of a desire to make something large and conspicuous. My previous pieces, the Anthony Paul O’Connell formal archive and informal memorial were both small, made up of found objects and, specifically the memorial in the crypt, deliberately inconspicuous. So, for this work, I really just wanted to create the opposite.

INTERVIEWER: So, what provoked the forms in this work?
INTERVIEWEE: It started out as a very different piece. The original idea was for a film or a performance piece. One night coming home on the bus, it stopped on the Walworth Road and I saw a really buff, topless Asian guy doing the washing up in a window above a shop. He obviously knew he had an audience, but didn’t acknowledge it at all. It was really quite compelling and sexy and got me thinking about ideas around inside and outside, private and public space, voyeurism and exhibitionism, feminine and masculine roles and hyper-masculinity. So initially, I was going to re-create the scene on film.

INTERVIEWER: Is this why some of the objects resemble film or stage sets?
INTERVIEWEE: Yes. Once I started planning how I would make the scenery and started making models based on technical discussions, I really liked their flatness and fakery. How they only appeared real from the planned angle. At this point, I decided I would like to show the film and the set together in a space. But building on this idea of reality falling away as the viewer moves around the set, I wanted to push this further and make the elements of the set unexpected in some way.

INTERVIEWER: What elements did you want to introduce?
INTERVIEWEE: I wanted to think more about the inside and outside, the private and public, the protected and exposed and try to exaggerate that. So, I pushed the inside and outside walls apart, creating a greater physical distance between them, which also creating a new in-between space, that was neither outside or inside. I also wanted to consider the idea of this protective, but potentially claustrophobic interior space, so I reduce the scale of the inside element by 20 percent. And I also wanted to turn the voyeurism around. In the film, it is the public watching the private. In the installation, I wanted the private to be watching the public without them knowing. That’s what the funnel connecting the windows achieved. And as it occupied this hidden space between walls, materially, I wanted it to resemble heating or ventilation ducting.

INTERVIEWER: This sounds more like a single object than the collection of objects we see in the final piece?
INTERVIEWEE: Yes, originally it was essentially a single object composed of the various elements. I saw it as an architectural slice. I was starting to consider who or what might inhabit that space. I guess it was becoming another box like the informal memorial. I had started to make the interior space resemble a padded cell, returning to the idea of protection, but of whom, those inside or those outside and from what. At this stage, in a critical group viewing of work in progress, I also showed a sort of mind map of queer artists I had been looking at and some photographs of abandoned places I had taken, as potential ideas of a narrative that could inhabit the padded cell. Interestingly, at that stage, I had made some of the elements, but had not yet joined them together, so they were arranged as individual objects around the space, with a model, to show what the final piece would look like. It was quite exciting seeing them dispersed like that and interesting to hear how people linked them in their minds.

INTERVIEWER: Was this when you decided to deconstruct the single object into its various elements in the space?
INTERVIEWEE: No. I was still set on the single object. It wasn’t until I joined all the pieces together and looked at them in the space that I realised it was more interesting dispersed. Kira Freije also looked at it at this time and agreed. She also felt the elements worked as these kind of perfect, fetishized, abstract minimalist architectural objects.

INTERVIEWER: And what does the dispersal or deconstruction signify for you?
INTERVIEWEE: It pushes this idea of the public and private even further and I guess allowed me to consider each element individually as a sculptural object and not as part of the whole. At the time I was reading about Object-Orientated Ontology (OOO), and was particularly interest in the Kantian ideas of the Phenomena, the aspects of an object we experience, which in OOO is the Sensual Object and the Noumena, the object in its own right, that we can never fully understand, in OOO the Real Object. So, the façade element represents the phenomena or sensual object and the room element represents the noumena or the real object, hidden away behind the object we initially see. The deconstruction exaggerates this, and the piece becomes this series of layered spaces which the viewer can move through. As the viewer progresses, the spaces become more intimate and the openings in the walls encourage the viewer to look inward and outward, to see and also to be seen as they move from the public to the private.

INTERVIEWER: So, the viewer is a crucial element in the work?
INTERVIEWEE: Definitely. The viewer activates the work. I have always wanted to create work that engages the viewer. I want the viewer to touch and pick up and inhabit the works. When I was introduced to the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Tom Burr, as well being interested in their queer subject matter, their work totally relies on the participation of the viewer. This made me feel very connected. I also agree with both of them that art with a queer subject matter does not have to rely on the expected, explicitly queer figurative representations. It makes it too easy for a straight viewer to instantly dismiss it as not about them or for them. The great thing about Gonzalez-Torres’ work is how, with very simple ideas, he engages with all viewers, draws them in and creates empathy. It’s only when the viewer then reads more about the works, they understand the queer political statement he is making. But by then they have made their own personal connection with the work. So clever.

INTERVIEWER: You mention Tom Burr. Your work feels very similar to his.
INTERVIEWEE: Yes, it is. The first time I saw some of his work, I was amazed by how aesthetically similar my work is to his. Then when I researched him further and saw his use of models and photographs, I realised his approach to working was similar to mine too. There’s a queer British artist, Prem Sahib, his work is similar too. It could be a form of “appropriation-as-camouflage” as Tom Burr calls it, using these blank, aggressive, masculine forms of minimalism as a way to be accepted and also to subvert.

INTERVIEWER: The first piece the viewer encounters, almost blocking the door way to the gallery space, is masc4masc. It is a very aggressive piece.
INTERVIEWEE: Probably more aggressive than I intended. I chose rubber to clad the façade, once I had decided not to create a realistic representation of a building. Rubber is tough and industrial, made to be outside, but also has this sexual fetish connotation. It was the only choice for me. I also wanted to keep the screw head detailing on the façade that I had with the MDF. There was something kind of tailored I really liked about them. Using the screws with the washers was the most practical way of attaching the rubber to the MDF, but it meant that the screws were raised, like studs on leather. At this point, it started to work in a different way. The tactility and the smell of the rubber are enticing, but if you stroke the rubber your hand brushes against the screws and is sharp and repellent.
Once you are passed the façade, the internal spaces are warmer and more inviting. And also, very blank. It was so hard for me not to add an explicit narrative to the interior space. It was very hard to leave it blank. But luckily, I read an interview with Olafur Eliason while I was working on this. Talking about a show of his at the Kunsthalle in Basel, he filled a room with just a yellow glow. When he was challenged by the curator, Eliasson explained that it was not about what the visitors saw, but the atmosphere in the room. He said, when people have nothing to look at, they start looking at each other. This really focussed me on making the piece about looking, about seeing and being seen. So, I removed the funnel element, as this was a distraction from when the piece was about viewing in only one direction and also removed the cladding from the interior room element. I wanted to create as many opportunities to see and be seen as possible.

INTERVIEWER: And finally, in the artist’s statement you mention disturbing aspect of contemporary gay male identity. Tell me more about this.
INTERVIEWEE: Well, if the work operates as a way of seeing and being seen, a kind of cruising ground I guess, the individual elements signify to me a certain type or manifestation of gay man I have seen and encountered on online apps. In some ways, my interpretation of the work is really quite bleak. The façade, masc4masc, is outwardly, overly masculine and aggressive, but in an expected, stereotypical way. Conveniently conforming to an easily packaged and sold image. Gym fit and wearing the uniform. The twenty-first century clone who is only interested in attracting and being attracted to their mirror image.
The pallet, fetish, takes this further. For me, it signifies all the useless consumer items we surround ourselves with, to define ourselves and to worship. It’s the overlooked object that helps transport all those consumer goods to us. It’s the design classic, in limited edition orange ply, sold in high end retailers. And, of course, for the intelligent, savvy insider it is all of those things and the irony of knowing that is what makes it so desirable and so self-defining.
And the inner room, can accom, is empty and blank. This could be because, in Kantian and OOO terms, we can never really know the inner person. Or another way to interpret this is that everything personal is hidden away. Whether through shame of their sexuality, or a fear of revealing themselves and their flaws or just making themselves vulnerable, I don’t know. But who they really are, or even some aspects of an individual personality, is never revealed to you.
There’s probably more of me in this work than I would like to acknowledge too. But this is only my interpretation. And this is why I am glad I didn’t introduce an explicit narrative. I really want the viewer to inhabit the space for themselves and bring their own interpretation and you never know, catch someone’s eye through one of the windows and fall in love.