interviewed by Catharine Lumby
David Godbold is a young English artist who, at 26, already has an impressive list of collaborative and solo works to his credit. Like his Biennale piece, Captive, most of his work to date has been made in collaboration with John Wood. They work in installation using photographic techniques and simple mechanical devices to create visual illusions.
CATHERINE LUMBY
The works you made between 1985 and 1988 claim the authorship of Godbold and Wood, "artists in Collaboration". Can you explain the role of John Wood within this partnership and the reasons for the emphasis on Collaboration?
DAVID GODBOLD
In 1984 John Wood and I found, as independent artists, that we were following many similar lines of investigation although using quite different approaches which we thought could be enormously complementary.
Thus, after the production of several experimental performance and installation works, ideas and work practices began to emerge in which our own individual skills developed distinct roles, but the combination of them started to produce challenging works, defined mainly by the demand for direct audience confrontation/involvement. This and the reaction to these works excited us. We also discovered that in Collaboration we were able to produce complex works which exceeded either of our individual capacities at that time.
The installation in Soho, London – Levate Gravitatem Uteri Mei - The Enticement of Weightlessness – is presumably one of the works you refer to as "demanding a direct audience confrontation/involvement". Can you discuss this piece and give a description of the response on both the critical and popular level?
Firstly I would like to stress that this work was commissioned by, and could not possibly have come... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Godbold & Wood, Detail from Endangered Species, 1987-88. Mixed Media Installation.
