Ahead of his first institutional show at Camden Art Centre, the artist discusses how London’s architecture shapes the eroticism in his assemblages.
Edward Gillman Your forthcoming show at Camden Art Centre features a new site-specific installation, The Reward [2024], which is on a larger scale than anything you’ve ever worked on before.
Jack O’Brien The Reward is comprised of two ten-metre-long suspended spiral staircases, each wrapped in a skin of knitted stockinette – they are modelled on those staircases commonly found in commercial warehouses around South London – that serve as the show’s central motif. This form of industrial architecture has been hugely influential in my thinking and practice over the past decade – a period in which the city’s built environment has rapidly collapsed, expanded and transformed due to aggressive real-estate development.
The show considers the fraught nature of my social, economic and sexual experiences in London during the 2010s – an energy that has kept me plugged into the city’s art scene. I’m looking to evoke memories of my time in these post-industrial areas and the places that have continuously opened and closed around me: the studios I’ve worked in, the homes I’ve lived in, the bars, clubs, toilets and warehouses I’ve partied at.
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