#38 Giorgio Sadotti, Another Ring

2 - 21 September

Giorgio Sadotti was born in Stockport.He took a BA in Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic, an MA in Sculpture at Manchester and an MFA in Fine Art at Syracuse, New York. Sadotti lives and works in London.

A continuous band of magazine pages runs around all four of the gallery's walls. On closer inspection each page contains an image of at least one ball, with the balls arranged in order of descending print size.

A discussion between Simon Liddiment and Giorgio Sadotti Outpost 1st September 2007.

SL: Hello Giorgio, you’re showing found magazine images in combination with an audio piece that’s been scored for human voice and due to be performed live on the opening night – with both these and other works I am aware of, it seems that some form of collaboration or (more correctly) interaction is a central concern?

GS: I would agree that there is often an interaction within my practice; I treat material in a mindful and systematic free way whether that material is time, space, or a person existing in the present, past or future.

SL: Ok, so another element within that, is that your chosen material is never ‘raw’ in a making sense, but typically carries or draws upon established identities, is that important?

GS: Actually I do think of the material I sometimes work with as ‘raw’ as you put it, but in the sense that the final outcome cannot be preordained or anticipated in most cases, it is no different to pouring paint onto a slope. There may well be some ‘baggage’ or historic noise connected to the material I collect but if the work is a success then the previously established and apparently familiar will be burnt off by the new.

SL:  so we are using ‘raw’ differently, but let me make a tenuous link from “historic noise” to your frequent use of sound in works. You have already suggested that you approach all formats (time, space…) as equally available to you, but do you accord any hierarchy or weighting to your use of the components of this exhibition, what’s the relationship between sound and image?

GS: A hierarchy of materials! - I’m a silver man, not gold seeing as you’re asking. I try to work in a non- hierarchical way, but obviously one thing follows another so merely through the process of living, moving and experiencing one thing is done before the other, but that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily more important or special. As for the relationship of the sound to the image, in this case the images represent a type of score that the vocalist’s will follow and so the sound couldn’t have been imagined without the process of ordering the images happening first. Also the relationship between sound and image is literal in that the sounds the vocalist’s will make are linguistically the equivalents of the images (true equality not hierarchy) they are words that describe the specific images and locate their differences verbally.

SL:  I think I was also thinking about the condition where ‘one’ is wedded to the visual but in awe of the total cultural penetration of sound (our collective emotional sound track) and had begun to understand your audio works as a respectful approach to that?

GS: Not too respectful I hope! Yes I would agree that I am in awe of the power of music / sound to move people in that formless but penetrating and emotive way. Like many people I have been and continue to be shaped by 45 revolutions per minute. What I am also aware of is that sound, is still because of its invisibility, a difficult medium to place within a gallery situation as a viewer is still ‘looking’ for a visual rather than allowing the sound to visualize itself.

SL: You’ve generously opened up my somewhat clipped question, so thank you and this is perhaps my closing thought ……OUTPOST trades under the legend of being an ‘artist-led initiative’ and you were involved in numerous ‘artist-led’ activities in London throughout the 1990’s (City Racing, curating ‘warehouse’ shows and opening your own studio as a gallery), so do you have any reflections for OUTPOST and Norwich?

GS: Yeah quit !

SL: That’s slightly less generous!

GS: Are you not familiar with the notion of killing by kindness !