In the midst of all the autopsies on the Copenhagen COP15 summit, which I have been ploughing through this morning in the papers, I came across a nice article on artist Gabriel Orozco, whose ‘Mobile Matrix’ – a whale skeleton decorated with graphite from 6,000 pencils – I encountered in New York’s MoMA a couple of weeks back. (See it during installed here.) At the end of the article, in the New York Times section that is now my favourite bit of The Observer, he admits that he “gets bored easily” – something I have often said against myself. But he then goes on to explain:
“… I don’t like a big enterprise of people working for me. I don’t want to be a master. I want to be a kid. To keep making art, you have to put yourself in the position of a beginner. You have to be excited by a stone on the sidewalk or, like a child, the flight of a bird.”
Reading that was to recognise my own style of thinking and working. I have often said that I am happiest when I don’t know what I’m doing, when there’s a real element of surprise. And have always been fascinated by flight. Hence, I imagine, Volans.
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