Cathy Ward & Eric Wright E-terview (English)   

2010

• (I Can) Feel the Pulse
• Raamproject III
• Etcétera…
• Reclaiming the Street
• Window reportage II
• Muddguts Meets Homebase
• Window reportage I
• Colour your voice, come vote at MAMA's
• Don't Worry, Be Happy

ARCHIVE

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

Associated projects: Treehugger: Now/Romantic/Nature:

Ken Pratt e-terviews artists Cathy Ward and Eric Wright

EW: Any confusion over this seems to come about because of unlikely things that conspired to make it happen. We met while attending an arts residency program at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada in 1989, and as soon as people hear that and my accent, they assume that I am Canadian. I am actually American, from Ohio, but at the time we met I lived in New York. How I came to go to the Banff Centre is odd, in that I didn't even know what it was when I sent away for information.

There is a performance space in lower Manhattan called the Franklin Furnace, I was designing some costumes and helping out otherwise a friend who was performing there. I went to the toilet and hanging in there was this poster, which was just a picture of a snow-capped mountain, nothing else, and a tiny address at the bottom for the Banff Centre.

I was really into painting landscapes with mountains, which I did from imagination, as I had no experience of real mountains. So without knowing what the Banff Centre was I wrote off to the address on the poster, thinking, "I have to go there". Later that year I received a prospectus and an application form, but I didn't apply, I don't know why, but I put it aside and forgot about it. The next year they sent the forms again and this time I thought, well, if I can get a grant I'll go. So I applied and got a grant that enabled me to do it, what a surprise! I then prepared to go, all the time fearful of what it would be.

Just before the residency I went to visit friends in Cape Cod, Massachusetts which is about 4 hours north of NY by car. A friend agreed to drive me to Boston to get my flight to Canada a few days after we all arrived at Cape Cod. I got to check-in after assuring my ride that I was fine, and that they didn't need to wait. It was then that I found out that I was one day EARLY for my flight and all of my Boston friends we away. I was just eying up vacant seats to sleep on when the clerk offered to get me there that day. I agreed figuring, it was better to arrive early at Banff than sleep in airport. So I was put on a series of flights that had me changing in Denver and Dallas, finally arriving at Calgary in Canada.

It turns out that Cathy arrived a day before the official start as well, but she has her own story about that. Suffice it say that that was the beginning of a three-year London-NY relationship that finally brought me to London.

CW:: How I ever got to Banff was miraculous. I'd never even heard of the place, but a mate from Montana I'd been living with had applied there then returned to USA.

When the application plopped on the doormat I sent it in. It was a time of few residencies, and I'd not met anyone who had gone anywhere remotely like it, so I knew nothing. When I booked my flight it was departing from a brand spanking new airport. I was on one of the first flights out of an unfinished Stansted airport. As the place was a bit of a large shed & had few amenities I ended up buggering about in a photo-booth with my mate, Adam, and a bag of toys. I was still in there when my name was tannoyed to get on the plane as it was leaving. As I was so late and the last passenger No.13, I was ceremonially escorted over the tarmac to the plane with the pilot.

I've never before, nor since, seen such an empty plane, with no food on board but lashings of free drink! After an inebriated but somewhat starved 9-hour flight, with no films to watch but peppered by the intermittent wailing from a distraught passenger, we landed at the wrong airport.

But, by luck, I blagged my way into a chauffeur-driven car that was going my way to a conference, so rode with an eminent French film director and his assistants all the way to Banff.. It was just amazing arriving as the sun went down into this fabulous range of mountains - It was just grand! I hooked up with Eric and his sleazy-looking roommate, Doug Harvey, and moved in with them shortly after. Eric was travelling to Vegas after the residency, so I went too.

KP: So how exactly do your joint pieces of work such as the Transromantik pieces come to be made? Where does the inspiration come from and how are the decisions made about what finally becomes a completed work?

EW: Transromantik was our first full collaboration. Before that the extent of collaboration was very small. It was more of mutual understanding that developed out of our relationship and the fact that we always shared a studio anyway.

Cathy used to commission me to do a bit of painting in something she was doing, or we would do some computer-based work together. I suppose the main thing though was that we always talked about our work to each other and came to really know where we were with it. So, by the time we were in Bavaria the stage was set, even if we didn't know it. The inspiration for the Transromantik work came by accident. We love a bargain, and when Easy Jet was offering £12 flights (including tax) to Zurich, we got them. We didn't know much about Zurich or Switzerland or Austria, but we went to Zurich and rented a car.

Zurich seemed boring, so we left after 1 day and pointed the car to Austria. With no destination in mind we drove through the fantastic lower Alps all day and when it came time to find a room, we were out of luck. We left it too late and the only places we could find were expensive, so we just kept driving and ended up in Salzburg at 1:00 am. When we woke up the next day we looked at the map and realised how close we were to Neuschwanstein and the other castles of Ludwig, so that became out mission.

We saw Neuschwanstein, Lindehoff and the one on Chiemsee and were really impressed and inspired. We had been to these castles and were wondering what to do next, we were looking at the map and like magic a name popped out. The name was "Berchtesgaden". It took a moment to realize where we had heard it, but we soon realised that it was Hitlers' mountain retreat and drove there immediately. It was there, sitting in a Hofbrau Haus that the inspiration came, we started writing things down on napkins just like in some cliche movie or something. But the inspiration never let up for the years we have been working on it, it just gets deeper and more profound for us.

As far as making the work, we end up just being intuitive with it and don't ever map out a plan for the making. We talk and get inspired about the ideas, map those out, but then just make the work. Cathy has been the leader on the sculpture front as that is something she is best at; she is quicker to find the right materials and the best way to use them. I am still better at painting; so we try and let each other do what we do best, as that is best for the work.

CW: As soon as I saw how Eric painted, I knew that there would be areas we could work together. Artists just didn't collaborate then in 1989 but my work was a very free and open affair and very broad in attitude and medium.

It's true; I do a lot of sculpture & installation, working on large series then switching into another mode. My strength lies in using materials in different ways, in turning things on their heads. I had started painting on trees before we fully launched into Transromantik in 97, but working with Eric made it grow into a new dimension as his paintings worked so well with what we were trying to convey.

The inspiring night in Berchtesgaden was my birthday, and it was just a magical amazing night with a full moon. It just seemed that we'd found the right vehicle with to work in an unconstrained, very creative way together.

KP: Both of you have careers as independent artists and produce quite different work from the joint work. How do you balance the priorities between making your individual and joint work?

EW: Unfortunately, priorities are often dictated by who is curating, but we try not to let that happen too much. Making joint work can be a strain, especially when you live together, so we go and do our separate work often enough to keep from neglecting other things we are doing. Our joint work has always been about big universal themes and we do it large scale to fit that. So we don't belabour it by making new work just to try and get another show or something.

CW: What we make individually always leads back into an idea what would work together but different. Our work together is never forced, it can't be. What we make has got to fit and feel natural and right. We are coming to a stage where we have known each others work so long that we know what the other can do and try to extend the limits of that to keep it fresh.

KP: Could you each tell us a bit more about individual work you're currently making?

EW: I am continuing a series of portraits of country music stars that I started years ago. I have a long-standing interest in the music and the people.

CW: I draw a world of hair, which started 7 years ago. It's something that I get great pleasure from. I have found a language that can convey all sorts of my emotions and ideas in a very simple and pure way. I've also have an interest in the land and making sculpture with it. I've just had a design I was commissioned for, built in Kent, England on a 'Gyratary Circus' with knapped flint walls and "cats eyes" . It's a sort of Neolithic cog!

KP: Would you like to tell us a bit about the history of the Beau Roque piece? I understand it's first incarnation wasn't too far from the smell of sweaty jockstraps and male bonding….

EW: 'Beau Roque' was inspired by the film "The Decline of Western Civilisation, Part 2 - The Metal Years" which was made by Penelope Spheeris. It's a documentary about the "hair metal" scene of the mid-80's in LA. This has an obvious connection to Cathy's work and the music angle has been important in my work. We had been thinking out doing something about this amazing film when we decided to go to LA to visit a friend.

As we were coming, our friend said,"Why don't you do a show? I know this space." So we said yes.

It turns out that the space is a part of a corridor between the mens and ladies locker rooms in the Downtown LA YMCA, so we can answer truthfully that it did smell like sweat, but we didn't witness any bonding, male or otherwise.

KP: I understand that Cathy has an interesting Internet photography project. Could you give us a bit of background on that?

CW: I started photographing fairground art and amusement sites back in the early 1980's. I was attracted to the lurid off world they inhabited which had an exciting edge and a lurid vulgarity. I also understood that the fairgrounds reflected a lot of what was popular at the time so would change, and the look and art would vanish to be replaced. I felt it was important to document this change. I progressed into photographing the mobile food wagon along side the fairground art, because some were as spectacular as the stalls & many are owned by fairground workers.

When the CJD epidemic ('Mad Cow Disease' -ed) kicked in, I looked at the roadside vendors with more interest. My interest has just grown because it's a culture in itself & often overlooked and ignored. I have found it to be a diverse and somewhat comic addition to Britain's social landscape and they are found in amazingly strange locations. Wherever I travel in the world, I photograph them, so it's become a very personnel diary as much as a document of these food stalls. Its called www.wagontrain.org

KP: So what's next for each of you, individually or jointly?

EW: We are making a large-scale collaborative oil painting (15.5m by 3m) for the fulfilment of a project we started last June. We embarked on a long road trip across America from Nebraska to California following the failed wagon train of 1846 of the Donner-Reid Party. A story of great tragedy etched into the annals of American pioneering history, it was a haunting trail to follow. We have so far called the project "Destiny Manifest". It is the logical conclusion of the Transromantik work and traces the cultural influences we have been interested in to pioneer America.

We've made 2 small films that were shown in "Romantic Detachment" at P.S.1, MoMA New York, and Chapter Arts, Cardiff. This will be shown in July at Gallery by the Lake, Cafe Gallery Projects, London.