Two-stroke of genius
Richard Goodwin surprised even himself when he started blowing up motorbikes, he tells Richard Cooke
Goodwin on the art of steel steed dismantling
Richard Goodwin is a hybrid: part sculptor, part architect, and it's impossible to tell where one discipline ends and the other begins. His architecture is art - one of his house designs has Messerschmitt wings as a roof - and his art is architecture. He designs what he calls "parasites", large scale sculptures that leach on to existing buildings. A lecturer at COFA and the winner of the 2004 Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, he's produced some of his most exciting work in a major Australia Galleries show.
So why motorbikes? A lot of the work in this exhibition is about the smallest architecture, where the body stops and architecture begins, and I've always been interested in machines, prosthetics, motorbikes, helicopters - you name it. I've played a lot with those machines, and so the motorbike is a logical one. Where this work is different is that in the past I've used material that has some memory of what it was. This show is startlingly different because I've taken brand new objects, virginal, unused objects, and dismantled them - and then reassembled them in the form of an explosion.
How did you arrive at this point? My training is as an architect and I work as a sculptor, and I left architecture. I arrived at this point because I was interested in minimum architecture - where does the body end and where does architecture begin? - so if you're sitting on a motorbike, it's a kind of prosthesis for the body. And I think small architecture makes you think about what it could be, it makes you question the body,
What was your departure point from architecture? I was always going off to art school, but I got sidetracked doing a seminar when I was at school and found it very interesting (it was actually with Harry Seidler). I was convinced that art and architecture were together; now I am further convinced, but I studied architecture and used that as my art training really, and was exhibiting when I did that. Then I practiced briefly and went straight into working as an artist. And now I believe my work is part of one big spectrum of art, and architecture is just part of that. So I just choose on that spectrum of art, to inhabit a fair bit of the territory. The gallery is my laboratory.
Where did the bikes come from? I bought them new from Sydney City Motorcycles.
That's a huge financial commitment for an artist to take. I was hoping Honda would sponsor me. It's interesting, I didn't just use the new bikes just to make the work look slick - it really is a very different concept, when you take something that is meant to do something, and it never gets a chance to do that, and you explode it. It has a lot of implications, hasn't it? And the other interesting thing is that when you explode something new, it wants to be itself again. It's a bit like a big bang: it explodes, gets back, contracts. Because it's not a destructive explosion, things aren't ripped apart, they're just literally blown apart.
You mean that even if you do this to a motorbike, it still looks somehow like a motorbike? Yeah, that's the great thing. This has something to do with the newness: if you take something old and blow it up, it's then a wreck. If it's absolutely virginal, and you blow it up like this, it wants to be itself again, and it looks like it could be, so it's begging to be the bike again.
Were the results unexpected? Seriously, yes. Certainly feeding the images in and blowing them up on the computer was... it was endlessly fascinating for me. In fact the film shows in the gallery, and I can't take my eyes off it, or the prints of the process. So I didn't do that, I'm just fascinated by that. And that's what you want as an artist; you just want to be taken beyond.
Is that part of the reason why you're into machines because in some sense, they're beyond the self, a different kind of self? Yeah, in a way, although the machine is not so important, it's what it's holding or disguising. My core interest is humanity and the body, the social. I'm not just a rev-head dismantling things, it's the implications that are interesting. Even to use explosions in the current climate of terror means something: it challenges our bodies, so here's this former ex-skeleton blown up, to me it's a type of body, it's type of architecture but it has implications on the flesh.
The work in this show left me more quickly than any other exhibition. What I mean is that these things stand alone without me, in a way even startled me. And you want your work to stand on its own, and these ones seem to be in control of themselves more than anything I've ever done. And that's weird.
Richard Goodwin's poroplastic shows at Australian Galleries until 3 May.