Adam & Eve

Liam Gillick

Liam, you're in Chicago?

Yeah, absolutely.

What are you up to?

I'm working on an exhibition that opens here next October. We're doing the initial work, looking around figuring out how to approach things, talking to people and getting really cold in the snow.

It's snowing there at the moment?

Yeah, it certainly is. It's great to have this combination of High Modernism and snow. If you're lucky enough to be here when it first snows you really get the full extent of the rigorous geometric Modernism with the white snow, it's great.

I can't imagine that at all because I'm sitting here in Sydney with blue skies and looking forward to a surf down at Bondi this weekend.

Well, great. I hope you fall off your surfboard (laughs)!

(laughs). So Liam, how did you meet Sarah?

We met in New York in the mid nineties, around 96', in an art context through other people. It wasn't as though we new each other as artists, we met as individuals and then the art thing came up later on. It wasn't like meeting someone through a show or going to school with them, we met in a different way, we met as part of a conversation which is a very particular way of meeting someone. It always starts as a conversation rather than an encounter and I always think that's an interesting way to meet.

That's interesting you mention that, as Sarah, in her discussion with Hans Ulrich and Daniel Birnbaum, talks about the 'never ending conversation' that seems to be derived from Chinese thought. It is also a very Los Angeles thing, you never say no, you keep the conversation alive.

Exactly, sometimes that just comes from the starting point of how you meet in the first place, like, you have a very different relationship with artists that you met because you were working together, it starts you off on a completely different dynamic. So artists and other people you've met through working together - meaning that you really started discussion while being in the bar - is very different from the idea of starting through a discussion.

That's right. The discussion is more open ended, more fluid.

And it's sort of non-committal, it doesn't place you in a very clear cut power relationship.

You stand side by side, rather than standing face to face confronting each other or confronting someone else.

That's a lovely way to answer the question of your first meeting with Sarah.

Yes, two people standing side by side looking at something else and thinking about it rather than looking at each other.

And you and Sarah have a son, Orson?

That's right, he's six.

I imagine Orson's at the top of his art class at school?

Well, the difficulties he has in relation to that is of course - it's like living with a 1950's abstract expressionist - he has ideas about the difference between art and making pictures. And in school what they do is, they encourage kids to draw, and then use that as a judgement of how sophisticated they are in the face of the world. But Orson makes a really cool definition between art and doing a drawing or making a picture, and I think it's really interesting that he turns out these definitions. I've always encouraged him to make art, he brought it up not me. I say, "What are you doing?" and he says, "Oh, making art", and if he was drawing a building I'd say, "What are you doing?" he'd say, "Making a picture of a building". For him they're totally separate activities. The idea of being at the top of the class or being the best doesn't really come into it, because in fact the terms of making for him are slightly different from the other kids, so he'll spend time doing drawings that are abstract or something. It's very funny. Also, not so long ago when I asked him what he'd like to do when he grows up he said the same thing that kids say, and it usually involves a service, like being a garbage man or fireman. At one point recently though, he looked at me and said, "You know what, I want to do nothing, just like you". I was quite offended.

(laughs) I wouldn't be offended at all. I think Orson is completely on the level.

(laughs) Yes exactly... I'm just walking down the street with a face full of snow, Jesus Christ! It's like horizontal snow, pretty cold but not as bad as yesterday.

So, both you and Sarah move between New York and London regularly, how do you make that work?

Well, we tend to do it separately and for various project reasons. We'll only go together a couple of times a year. But it's our daily life which is now more and more in New York and less and less in London. But Europe, as you know with art and design, having all these countries squished together geographically is a lot of reason to be in Europe. I always view it as a Europe thing rather than just Britain. It's more that London becomes a gateway to the rest of Europe rather than a place that you're really living in on an everyday basis. It's a very convenient hub in a way. That's what we tend to do, but the way it works is that we tend to split things up, so she'll go and do something and then I'll go and do something and then she'll go and do something. It's not a completely integrated way of being. Of course some people are very together, they always go as a team, or as a family, or a double act or something. We actually leave a lot of space between each others work, a lot of gaps, otherwise I think you sort of implode. So a lot of it is about crossing paths than going together. Historically it's how people retain their identity...

Their sanity...

Exactly! It sounds very pious or dull to talk about but it is the one thing you're very vigilant about is the power relationship between a man and a women, especially with artists as there's not a great history, it always gets complicated. That's the thing we keep an eye on and that's why we do keep a lot of separation between how we move around, and we're not always there for each other in certain situations. It sounds wrong, it sounds terrible, but often the way to respect someone is to give them distance. We're quite different and there is this constant flow of new ideas and images that I see which she produces that obviously influences what I do in a way. It's never quite the way I would do it, that sounds like a truism, of course that must be true, but it's not always the case. Sometimes you lose the interest, you lose the interest in what they do, in what they produce, and that can be really hard. Like in this case, Sarah's approach to things, the way she produces work, the methods, and even the way she works in the studio with all these people is completely the opposite to the way I do it. I always tend to work alone, much closer to the way a designer or an architect often works. While I'm travelling or working on sight I'm meeting people, I'm tracing new strange temporary relationships. Sarah's always had this organised way of working that is endlessly fascinating for me.

I know that you and Sarah have collaborated with Peter Saville in the past and of course you created the soundtrack for Sarah's film Los Angeles. Can you tell me briefly about the process, or how you and Sarah approach a collaborative project?

It's interesting you mention Peter Saville because the way Factory Records works, the label he co-founded, was very much to do with this idea of autonomy again, you know the designers did what they did, the bands did what they did, the producer did what he or she did. That's the way they do it. This idea of a community of individuals who wouldn't interfere with each other, they'd trust each other, that's the way we do it. Effectively I go away and do what I think is right, not like this classic idea of a collaboration where two people are in each others pocket or standing there side by side day after day. The reason why it works when it works, and of course that means there is the potential for failure, is that I'm given complete freedom to do what ever I think is appropriate. Sarah obviously has her own ideas about what would be right. But the way it works really well, following that Factory Records model, is that I go off and do the music and she goes off and makes the film. But at some point she gets the final say, she's the one sitting with the producer, she's the artist in this case, and its always about who gets the final say. It's actually a much harsher way of working than most people would tolerate. I go and do my thing and she goes and does her thing, but she gets the final say on everything. Most people would resist that in life because if you start on a collaborative project with someone you feel you need to keep an eye on it, checking it, and asking what the hell's going on, and you feel nervous and anxious. In this case I trust her. I'll make 28 tracks of music, give them to her and I'm sure she's going to do something interesting. I don't need to see every step, she just needs to do the right thing for herself. This is the mode of collaboration I like best. It's one of the main misunderstandings about certain kinds of art in the last 15 years, they've been much more relational or much more social, but the feeling is that it's suppose to be much more of a collaboration where everyone is sitting side by side deciding everything together. In fact it's like a weird community of individual ideas that all kind of dwell under a frame work. But someone always has the final say, they're trusted to have the final say, and that's the way we do it.

Are there any new projects you and Sarah are working on at the moment or plan to in the future?

At some point we'd like to do a house together. I don't know how we could ever do that, but ironically the idea of me doing one on my own or her doing one on her own I'm not so sure. That's what we're thinking about at the moment, producing some kind of architecture. The way we've worked together over the years alongside each other, may lend itself to some kind of architectural outcome, because she has got a very certain way of approaching things structurally and I've got a certain way of working with other people, and maybe between the two of us it could work out quite well. But I think you'd end up having a house that looked like a Sarah Morris house or a house that looked like a Liam Gillick house, I don't think it would be a merging of the two. One person would win, there would be a decision at some point if it was going to be one or the others house.

So, who would get the inside and who would get the outside?

I have a feeling it would be all Sarah's, the inside and outside. (laughs) Cheers, think of me in the fucking snow!

(laughs) I will, think of me on the beach ...

You bastard!