Debbie Lawson

Debbie Lawson’s sculptures are an uncanny mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar, in her recent work she has given everyday household objects quite unexpected qualities. Her tables collapse, her books fly away, her rugs explode and her doors have panels which are inlaid with scenes of packs of wolves and copulating couples from the pages of The Joy of Sex. Here she talks to Ferdinand about her influences, working process and her love-hate relationship with mediocrity

Who or what were you main influences when you began making art?

Ana Mendieta, Bill Woodrow, Brian Griffiths, Fischli and Weiss, early Mondrian and a particular painting by Cezanne called The Cardplayers.

Can you describe your working process?

It usually starts with me messing around with materials, or walking around town, and I’m gripped by an idea and want to start making it immediately. Process is a very important part of my work and often the making of one piece leads to the idea for the next. I seem to spend a hell of a lot of time sticking stuff on top of other stuff and can be quite impulsive and impatient. I have tried less direct ways of making work and they drove me mad. There is always a point when I stand back and reassess what I’m doing, trying to put someone else’s head on.

Do your sculptures communicate a narrative in any way? It was the panel inlays that first made me think about this possibility but would you also consider your work in this way?

I used to be anti-narrative, and coming from a literature background I would still prefer to make work with a lyrical rather than a narrative edge. The perfect balance for me would be work that is laid out like a picaresque tale along the lines of Candide: a loose narrative landscape punctuated by dramatic moments. I think Mike Nelson does this really well.

Can you tell me more about the wolves and the copulating couples, populating the laminate landscapes?

When I was seven or eight I spent a lot of time waiting in the panelled hallway outside the office of my mum’s shrink. The magazines were boring so I made my own entertainment by imagining images in the woodwork. A few years later I discovered The Joy of Sex and started making my own drawings of copulating couples, though I didn’t really know what they were doing! The wolves came out of my interest in the psychoanalysis of dreams: especially those of teenage girls, where the ‘threat’ of sexuality is often represented by the wolf. Wolves, incidentally, are remarkably similar in their social behaviour to humans, so in my panels humans and wolves are in some ways interchangeable. It seems more effective to convey insecurity, aggression or existential angst using images of wolves rather than humans. I think the panels represent something quite innocent and even banal.

One of the things that I am interested in, in my own work is the drama of the domestic, or more exactly the potential of drama, and I was drawn to your work because of it; one thing that struck me about the sculptures is the sense of the mediocre, or indeed the lack of it, is this because you want to draw attention to these mediocre objects or because you would like to remove the sense of mediocrity from the everyday altogether?

Both, probably. Like all teenagers I loathed mediocrity and felt I was above it. Now it’s a love-hate relationship. There is something deeply comforting about embracing mediocrity – it feels like a British thing, like supporting the underdog. There is an innate nobility in some everyday objects and I like to heighten it, as if they are trying to throw off their mediocrity and aspiring to be the greatest possible version of themselves. I think it’s important to still believe you can change the world, but of course there is always the possibility (even probability) of failure, and the drama comes out of the tension between those two states of mind. I enjoy seeing certain objects and pieces of furniture as quite pompous and grandiose, but tinged with humility or utter boredom.

I am intrigued by your inclusion of Cezanne’s ‘The Cardplayers’ amongst the people and works that have influenced you. Can you tell me a bit more about how and why this particular painting interested you so much?

The painting depicts two working men in a wood-panelled bar, playing cards at a small table. They are both completely absorbed by the game, so much so that the reflective silence between them is palpable. It’s a very sculptural painting; the two men have a solid, architectural presence that heightens the space between them, which is punctuated by a glistening bottle of wine, right smack in the middle. The colours are muted and understated. I love the ad-hoc feeling of the painting, and although it is probably quite considered it looks like it was knocked up in the space of an afternoon.

I think it was Jean Luc Godard or Jean Cocteau (I’m sorry I can’t remember which, probably both) who talked about the surprise of finding yourself suddenly facing your own name as if it belonged to someone else, seeing its form and hearing the sound of the syllables, without the blind and deaf habit which a long intimacy provides. Do you see your work as being an attempt to defeat this deadening nature of habit?

I’m not sure if I understand it fully, but I don’t think I make work to reaffirm to myself my own existence, though it certainly always surprises me that I begin the process of making something with a very particular idea of why, and how it will turn out; and in the end the finished work is quite shocking, and more revealing than I would have liked. It sounds a bit romantic but I’m often amazed at how the work reflects something quite hidden in my mind so that, for example, a piece I thought would be quite light hearted appears to other people as melancholic or even slightly malevolent!

Debbie Lawson is represented by The Nettie Horn Gallery 25b Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG, 
 http://www.nettiehorn.com info@nettiehorn.com

All images courtesy of Debbie Lawson/Nettie Horn Gallery, London

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