Image credit: Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan
A Proposal To Ask Where Does A Threshold Begin & End (2018), commissioned by Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
Biography:
Joanne Tatham has worked in collaboration with Tom O’Sullivan since 1995 after they met on the MFA program at Glasgow School of Art. Recent projects include The Bitter Cup, published by Book Works, London (2019), A Proposal To Ask Where Does A Threshold Begin & End at MIMA in Middlesbrough (2018), and A Successful Proposition for the Great North Exhibition at BALTIC in Gateshead (2018). They are currently completing their first permanent commission, The Institute For The Magical Effect Of Actually Giving A Shit (a note to our future self), for the public toilets at Studio Voltaire in London. Joanne gained her Ph.D. from Leeds University in 2004 and is a Reader in Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in London, having previously worked at Northumbria University, Newcastle and Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.
1. Could you explain your practice? Only you know why you do what you do.
I will explain what I do very differently depending on who it is I’m talking to or writing for. Because I work in Higher Education, I sometimes have to adopt quite particular, even odd, approaches to do this. These are different approaches to those I might use when I talk with a visitor at an exhibition, or a curator, or an artist – or indeed here, where I write more to myself and for my own satisfaction. All this may go without saying – but in choosing to do so, I can hint at something that is foundational to the way I work.
One of the things I love about what I do is the access it grants me to go elsewhere, although usually only briefly. I try to observe the languages and behaviours that might occur in an organisation, its built environment, its people or the statements it makes about itself. There are processes here of adaptation, assimilation, or perhaps even awkward complicity. From there I can leap to tell you how such acts, perhaps accompanied by a certain sort of analysis, seem to be one of the persistent qualities within what we (or I) do. This goes way back, and I should say that when I talk about behaviours, I also mean the ways in which art itself behaves, or to put it another way, its aesthetic grammar.
This is a position that makes it hard for me to believe that only I know why I do what I do. And perhaps here, it’s worth saying that I don’t work on my own, at least not most of the time. I’ve worked in collaboration with Tom since 1994 or ‘95, depending on when you count from. It’s long enough to know that we would both answer these questions differently.
Alongside all of this, and possibly, but not necessarily, in opposition, a quote from Paula Rego caught my eye: ‘Making a painting can reveal things you keep secret from yourself’. This is a joy for me within my work, even if for no one else. So, as much as I like to try and to explain clearly, to scrutinise intent and deeds in pursuit of clarity, I also like to recognise that I’ll most likely fail.
2 - Is art relevant today?
Thinking about art is always relevant.
3 – We are always asked what other artists influence us, we want to know what art you don’t like and which influences you?
I could say that I’m interested in art as a class of objects and leave it at that, but I want to be more generous. There are artworks that I have become obsessed with for years, and it’s usually because there’s something I don’t yet know about them. I might listen as others talk about these works and I’ll nod despite knowing that there’s a knot as yet to be drawn out. Tom mentioned Jeff Koon’s ‘Puppy’ the other day, and we laughed because on the one hand, you could say: “Oh! Big animals!”, but we also knew that this was a reductive analysis of what made this work important to us 30 years ago. It’s not necessarily about what I like, and if it is, then that’s something to pull apart. So, the artists I return to will often unsettle or surprise me, and often the work they make will seem to perform an awkward relationship to its own appearance.
Off the top of my head right now I’m thinking of someone like Pádraig Timoney. He works with the same gallery as us, The Modern Institute in Glasgow, and recently I’ve noticed I can feel a sense of shame that the artists that co-existed within the formative years of our practice continue to act as points of reference. That’s not to say I like all their work, not at all. Perhaps it’s best to think of it as family. So maybe it’s more important to understand the dynamics that frame our relationships with other artists and their works than it is to worry about who played which part in such dramas! Lately, I realised that I’m not happy being a fan and I’ve found that helps to know. There are also those artists whom I admire irrespective of the art they make. I can respect the rigour, to borrow a word from academia, but not wish to see the same conclusions which I would arrive at.
4- If you could go back 10-20 years what would you tell your younger self?
Probably all lies.
5 – If you could go forward 10-20 years what do you hope to have done or not done?
Surprising things! Different things.
Web: https://www.themoderninstitute.com/artists/joanne-tatham-tom-o-sullivan