British Council

Gary Webb was born in Dorset and studied at Goldsmith's College in London.
In an interview with Stephen Hepworth, the artist described his work: 'The materials are not the leaders, they are the suppliers. A piece is so tightly assembled - the plastic next to a piece of wood, the glass on the metal, the whole thing together - that I never really think of them as simply materials. I think of the material and the visual appearance as being very different and used in a very direct way. The materials are all there already and you need to somehow sort them out. They are put together for the reason of making them work, or not work. Instead of a piece of brass appearing like a small buckle or something with little significance, it's increased in size to a point where it becomes a presence along with the other materials - the copper, wood and plastic. When combined they seem to generate a sort of stubbornness, the material has been pushed to a glorious level. I suppose in some ways this relates to the way a shape or form is made, but I never want to fix things in my mind. I like to keep the possibilities. Materials inform the shape and the shape informs the material. I don't want to fix my direction; even fixing yourself to the materials sets things, in a way. The materials appear to be already there, in the same way that you go to a shop and you buy milk and coffee or you buy this or that. These materials have an immediate relationship with anything they come into contact with, it's a given really. Like with say, a plastic mineral water bottle and a plate of beans, these things are there already.

I have drawings, which I am constantly adding to and revising, motifs like an island reoccur throughout but get redrawn, revised and re-invented. The time that is involved between making the drawings and making the work builds a space where I can understand what something could possibly be. It allows a sort of a bleakness and obliqueness. The hardest part is deciding what to make from a number of drawings, committing to make something that doesn't imitate another piece. Assessing my emotional understanding of the drawing and interpreting it in terms of actual material. It is illusive, there's a nervousness and a desire for control. There are all these emotions that come up at the beginning of committing. Then there are the stories - it looks a bit like a sushi thing, or a pole dancing competition, or whatever. I've made these comparisons as a temporary form of reference to help me get closer to what the work could be.

In making them, I'm the middle machine, organising the production of the parts. Some guy will weld the copper, another will polish it, while someone else will make a perspex box. There are so many people involved and they all bring a fascination to the part that they make, maybe because of the material or a shape which they have never made or used in a certain way before. I want that fascination to carry through to the complete sculpture, which they will never see. But there's an anticipation on their part, an expectation, a fantasy really. I bring those parts and aspirations together, in a cold sort of way, like a one-person charity. It surprises me when it all gets assembled, when four or five parts come together. Every single time I've made something, I don't know what I'm looking for, so in a way I'm on exactly the same level as the viewer, except I'm responsible for this thing.

Even if you've made something that is very different from the last piece, you've learnt in making the earlier one how to make the new one both easier and more awkward. For me to be involved in anything that is political or social would be wrong. There is enough stuff already for me to make things that demonstrate themselves as being different from each other. Look at a glass, a bottle, a chair, book, a brick, a building, or a bus stop. These symbols and shapes give a location. The possibility of these co-ordinates can hypnotise you towards believing certain things. For me, the making of sculpture has to do with avoiding any kind of location towards anything specific. There's so much stuff which can't possibly be squeezed into an explanation of what this thing is, apart from giving it smaller subtitles: it looks like a pub or maybe it looks like this wine bar. It is easier for me to shorthand through these small locational places in the world rather than going into depth trying to describe a feeling or ambition, something that would be impossible to explain anyway. It's about me being able to communicate what they might be to people, rather than what they are.

My works are not the sort of thing which two viewers will get the same thing from. Certain pieces of work direct themselves towards saying a specific thing. With my stuff, people can appear to share the same conversation, yet find each is talking about something completely different, or at least have a different take on it. Talking about the work, the language, and the way that I describe the whole process somehow gets confused. However, the tonality of that language and description is very close to the nature of the way the work is made. So even my language - not really fully being able express the way that these sculptures are and what they're about - should be examined. It's hard for me to separate the two.

The last thing you want to end up doing is having any idea of stopping. My worst nightmare would be to find out something was actually working in an obvious way. What would I do then? It's so difficult making an object that stands up in the middle of a room and I often don't really know whether to trust them at all. Do they convince you whether they are sculptures or not, whether they're serious or not? I'm not sure that I am convinced, because the individual elements wouldn't make sense in the world outside, they wouldn't last as tangible objects. I am not spiritually invested in them; I'm a bit colder than that.
Tailsliding, The British Council, London 2001