Interview with Artist Jenny West

Lisa Gorton - When I viewed your work at YSP, for me it felt like some of the
pieces 'existed below the threshold of sculpture' but they didn't
feel like they were installations either, maybe because of the
size, I don't know. What do you think?

Jenny West - I think of the work as ‘sculptural drawing’, existing as a hybrid between drawing and sculpture.

L.G - What do you see your own work as primarily being? I.e. drawing,
sculpture, installation and would you define yourself as an artist
as being any one of these imparticular i.e. drawer, painter,
sculptor etc
J.W- I do think of myself as an artist whose main practice is drawing, but drawing that relates strongly to sculpture. Initially I made drawings to plan and to visualize sculptures before constructing in three dimensions, but found that the method of constructing drawings using perspective gave me the time to think through ideas, slowly and hesitantly, and allowed me to produce work which was visually slight but complex and highly structured at the same time. I do always think very much about the idea of construction – the drawings are built slowly and meticulously but, importantly, they allow for change and erasure, something not so easily achieved with sculptural objects.

L.G - From viewing your 'installation' pieces it looks like you have
an interest in line?
J.W - This is true, I am naturally excited and influenced by structures in the real world which are linear, (often thin and usually delicate and complex, especially those of architectural scale. I am less interested in mass and this has influenced my approach when making drawings and sculptures. When making drawings directly in an architectural space (to extend physically through the space) I have been interested in extending line spatially, very much in the same way that a pencil line is used to describe form upon the surface of paper or upon the wall.

L.G - What I saw at YSP was 'installation' would you call it anything
different?
J.W - It could be called site-specific drawing, as the drawing upon the wall and its extension through space was directly connected to the physical characteristics of the site. This has been the case with other spatial drawings too, notably in the chapel at YSP and at Leeds City art Gallery, 2006). In terms of the space in which the drawing is made the light, the limitations, the accessibility, the practical considerations, and the size, have been factors that have influenced the decision making process and the outcome. Influences such as Early Italian Frescoes, Egyptian wall paintings and the works of artists Sol LeWitt and Gego have been an important factor in the development of ideas.

L.G - What does it mean to you when you paint/draw/install a piece
of work?
J.W - I am not completely sure what you are asking here!
I usually feel a mixture of apprehension mixed with a strong feeling of excitement. This is more acute when making a site-specific work than when installing a series of framed drawings in a gallery!!

L.G - Even though there was no drawing on paper that I saw at YSP do
you draw before you make your 'installation', or make models, test
pieces, samples before the final piece and if you do how do these
relate to your final piece? do they act as a set of instructions?
or are they more experimental/ investigation pieces?
J.W - It varies, in the chapel at YSP the spatial drawing came about through experimenting directly in the space, however the chapel was not open to the public and so I was able to take risks and be less self conscious in terms of success or failure. In ‘Entrance’ I developed the work by planning carefully, first in my studio at home and through quite a lot of discussion with the curators and technicians at YSP. I tested the size of the drawn funnels in my studio first and made drawings, (sketches really), of how I would extend physical line through the space. I rarely make 3D models, although, for a sculptural installation for the British Embassy in the Yemen 2007, I did, but that was because it was impossible to visit the place beforehand, and so I made a scale model to help work things out (not so easy).


L.G - Would you say your work was site specific? Could you pick it up
and put it somewhere else and it still work? Does colour interest
you at all or have any importance to you?
J.W - Certainly the spatial drawings at YSP are site specific. And no, it could not be picked up and placed elsewhere. Infact the works are generally ephemeral, and are taken down after a period of time. I do, also, make drawings on paper and these are transportable. Colour . . . Yes colour interests me, though in a series of drawings I have been developing over the last 3 years I have purposefully excluded colour and worked upon a white gesso surface with pencil. A paragraph from Michael Craig Martins intro to ‘Drawing the Line’ was the catalyst for this particular series …. ‘How a drawing is made determines its character. Line drawings often reveal an immediacy and directness bordering on rawness. They show precisely what is needed, no more and no less. No other form is so flexible, responsive, or revealing.’
‘……In my search, I occasionally came across two similar drawings by the same artist, one of which had remained only as line, while the other had been coloured in or overpainted with coloured washes. The latter always seemed to me to have dated more than the simple line drawing, as though the colour was more particular to the period of its making, fixing the work more implacably in its own time. Line on its own seems capable of acquiring a quality of timelessness.’
I will probably work with colour again soon as I have withdrawal symptoms!!

L.G - I once went to a talk that was given by the artist Roger Burke
and he said something really interesting that never seems to get
out of my head! He said that no matter what medium an artist works
in, whether it is video, paint, performance, and clay etc all artists
fall into two categories, you are either a painter or a drawer. You
cant be both. What do you think?
J.W - I am not sure whether you can be so definite about this, I certainly think through drawing, and so fall into the drawing category, maybe others think through painting, I am always cautious about statements that are generalisations. Artists use drawings in many ways, and its fascination for me is in its modesty and intimacy.

L.G - As I said earlier, im interested in the idea of surface and the
idea of is a drawing still a drawing if it comes of paper? As Mark
Wriggley noted in one of his essays, Paper, Scissors, Blur (don't
quote me on that being the exact correct title!) that when
'drawings' are exhibited, the little card next to the work (that
says artist name, DOB,title of work and media) never states 'paper'
if its been drawn on paper, but if its on another surface i.e.
card, canvas etc it does, so one automatically presumes that the
drawing is always on paper, you could say to an extent that surface
can define the drawing? what do you think?

J.W - The AHRC Research fellowship, which I held from 2000-03, allowed me to investigate the process of drawing, by working directly upon the surface of the wall and extending line through space. ‘Drawing evolved from fabrication in the studio towards an increasingly reactive process determined by the architectural space in which I was situated.’- Jane Tormey, Entrance YSP Publication. I considered the approach I took throughout to be a drawing approach. Line was a factor here and also the materials I worked with – pencil, thread, a prepared surface to draw upon, in this case gesso applied directly to the wall, and drawing tools such as rulers, set squares, compasses etc. I rarely carried out a pre-arranged plan and so drawing here, was a process to think through, regardless of the surface upon which I was drawing.