REGISTER - MAUD COTTER

Register - Architecture & Landscape

In this episode we are joined by the sculptor Maud Cotter. Maud's work, frequently exquisitely made from every day materials explores space, and the relational potential of space beyond the closed question of resolution. Her ability to articulate 'open questions' in her work and work process makes her an inspirational critic and speaker, who gets to the heart of what is involved in producing a sustainable creative practice in art or architecture. Writing of her work to date she says "We exist in a network of relations, one that allows formation in pattern in order to engage with its force. In this field of play, in which things carom, my practice lies. Sculpture as an action is critical to our understanding of this mercurial game of randomness and order. I understand the human condition as being, not just tentative by virtue of our vulnerability, but one that is necessarily so, in order to retain our closeness of connection with a changing world. We exist in a network of relations, one that allows formation in pattern in order to engage with its force. In this field of play, in which things carom, my practice lies. Sculpture as an action is critical to our understanding of this mercurial game of randomness and order. I understand the human condition as being, not just tentative by virtue of our vulnerability, but one that is necessarily so, in order to retain our closeness of connection with a changing world. Moments in which one thing resonates with another are special. This gather, or coupling, of elements is at its most profound when a feeling of the found is retained in the final mix ; when aesthetic boundaries are not forced. Corporate culture limits our relationship with matter into measurable units, offering us only an impoverished understanding, a limited relationship, deactivated matter, captured and dead. Within the intangible lies the aesthetic glue that allows units of matter to reach a transcendent whole. Recognition and activation of the void provides a deep level of integration of idea and matter. Making in this arena of presence and absence, within the full context of the work, offers continuity, live engagement - a propagation of form and idea. Achieving this level of live engagement within the work is my primary goal. I seeks to assert such spatial sequences, movements in time, as the viewer moves around the work in a commitment of seeing, allowing the piece to reach completion in their perception of it. The strength of the work lies in its ability to hold intangible moments, to capture a part of the void, like a ghost within the work." http://maudcotter.com Credits: Register is brought to you by the Department of Architecture & Landscape at Kingston University. fada.kingston.ac.uk/al/ Head of Department: Eleanor Suess Register Editor: Timothy Smith Interviewer: Andrew Clancy Audio: Justin Howard