I try to use the tools that everyone can use. I don’t want to be a specialist in a technique that is very difficult. I prefer be a beginner… even like I think when I do the ceramic it’s like a hobby for me. It’s more like ‘yeah I like ceramics, it’s nice, I want to learn a little bit’
Gabriel Orozco, Art21 2003
In the course of researching around this artist, who I find very intriguing, it struck me how his words here surprised me. I tried to imagine these words coming out of my own mouth, but couldn’t. I certainly see this as a way in which I do approach materials and processes, and his way of interacting with ceramics seems to be similar in some ways to my own. But until now I have not thought of it as a particular approach, more a personal failing! I think this might speak to a tendency towards Impostor syndrome.
For Orozco, the process of making is another way of stimulating his own thought processes, in this way it seems quite meditative.
When I feel that it should be ready it’s a kind of subjective thing, but it’s just that the shape should represent what just happened before.
Gabriel Orozco
I was also surprised to learn that in his early career particularly he eschewed the artist’s studio, favouring instead a derive or flaneur style of wandering in the urban environment, photographing things that took his interest, and using the camera as a way of focusing his own attention. He would interact with found objects and intervene to create photographs also. So much of this is related to what I have done in my unit 2 work!
