TATE GALLERY: REBECCA WARREN: 'FROM THE MESS OF EXPERIENCE'

In the run-up to Rebecca Warren's All That Heaven Allows, the inaugural exhibition for Tate St Ives' new gallery, Tate Etc. visited her east London studio with the show's curator to talk about clay, steel, pompoms, Warren's wide-ranging influences (from Rodin to disco) and shaking off her art school training

LAURA SMITH Your work in sculpture is so varied, from your clay and bronze figures to your use of neon and collage, and the miniature worlds of your MDF vitrines. How does all of this begin?

REBECCA WARREN I don’t really know where it comes from. From a sort of strange nowhere. Then gradually something comes out into the light. There are impulses, half-seen shapes, things that might have stuck with you from decades ago, as well as more recently. It’s all stuff in the world going through you as a filter...

LS So, how does this filter deal with such a broad range of influences? When I look at your work I am thinking about Willem de Kooning or Minnie Mouse simultaneously, or about Alberto Giacometti and The Michael Zager Band (whose 1977 disco hit Let’s All Chant you’ve used as the title for one of your recent sculptures).

'I realised that I didn't have to fear things that I liked. I didn't need permission to like them.'

RW Things of any kind come up from below – much more than they are dropped from above by me. That’s how they have to work, otherwise they’re add-ons, dubious justifications... You discover what bits of the world keep nagging at you and fascinating you because they won’t leave you or your work alone. In my case, there are lots of things, including artists’ works from the fairly distant and recent past – Rodin, Picasso, de Kooning, etc. And there have been Helmut Newton’s photographs and Robert Crumb’s cartoons... and a whole lot of other stuff – the New York Dolls, Bowie... The Michael Zager Band’s Let’s All Chant probably surfaced because of its insane glam – overcooked to an unusual degree: ‘Your body, my body, everybody move your body...’

LS Yes, and these things often find their way into your studio, physically – from a picture of an enraged-looking Maria Callas to a photograph of a cat by Peter Fischli and David Weiss on the cover of Parkett magazine. What’s the importance of surrounding yourself with these images or objects in the place where you work?.........................................

http://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-41-autumn-2017/rebecca-warren-interview-from-the-mess-of-experience