Interview: Peter Liversidge

Ingleby Gallery booth at Art Statements, Art | 38 | Basel featuring Peter Liversidge's proposals

Tell me what you're project is about

The project for the booth in Art Statements is a group of proposals, and all the proposals have their genesis in one proposal, and that is a proposal where I propose to write all the proposals for the booth. And all the work that's in the booth comes from the proposals.

The floor is made out of pallet wood, it's the wood, when work arrives here from all over the world, pallets on forklift trucks distribute it, so all our work arrived on pallets and that wood is being used to make the floors.

And the packing case which doubles up as a box to place the books on is made out of the same wood, but on the inside it's with beautiful beach line with felt, and all of these proposals fit into that one case.

There's a lot of proposals...

135 proposals, so everything - like the neon piece "touch ~ and ~ go" - that is one of the proposals. This is a dictionary quotations of the words touch and go, and with the tilde in-between each word - which is like a pause - so you know that it's "touch" and with the tilde going of it means that you carry on "and" - and then again "go". It's got transformers in it so the words goes on and of, so it's suggesting the speach pattern. The pretzel tree, witch doesn’t have any more pretzels on it...

What happened to them?

They where eaten. I got them fresh every morning. The tree is made out of ash, witch the original pretzel trees are...

And that of course was also one of the proposals...

Absolutely. And the same with the owl piece. These are tawny owls, and the skeleton on the left is from the bird on the right. Except the claws. The claws go with the skeleton, so these claws are from another bird.

Peter Liversidge: Proposal no.63 - Pretzel tree, dimensions variable Ash and pretzel recipe		Peter Liversidge: Winter Drawing 8Vs7 12 January 2007 + Winter Drawing 9Vs10 23 April 2007, 2007. 37 x 45.5 cm (framed size)(each) black masking tape, watercolour on paper

Everyday you make these...

Everyday we make these projects, from fishing the Rhine on the first day, and all of ... there are 8 frames hanging on the wall with details of each proposal.

And you actually did this...

Yeah, we fished the Rhine the first day, and the next day proposal 27; collecting branches. We were out in the big thunderstorm and got soaked. And proposal 45 is owl boxes, and what we do is we put out 8 owl boxes around Basel. And then we put fish in fountains. We put fish in fountains outside kindergartens and schools and we left them fish food to feed them. That's proposal 39, and proposal 21 is wildflower seeds. We got endangered wildflower seeds - they come in these little packets - and I distributed them around playgrounds and broken grounds and areas there are somehow in between. And Friday we did gin stand, which is proposal 31 where we changed the packing case into... well into a gin stand.

Peter Liversidge: Proposal no.7 - Pair of owls, Taxidermied tawny owl and tawny owl skeleton on cast branch		Peter Liversidge: Proposal no.7 - Pair of owls, Taxidermied tawny owl and tawny owl skeleton on cast branch

How did this project come along? Did you start with " I think I want to make..."

No, no, I've been making proposals like this for about 10 years. On and of. I also make paintings, films and used photography. So it's just a certain way of working. And all the proposals are not prescriptive, they are not descriptive, so it allows people to read them and hopefully nor be to influenced by how they are written, but just imagine how it could be. In this proposal I propose to escape to the mountains, and people can imagine how it is to escape on a train and just go of to the mountains. In another proposal I propose to go to Basel main station and just take the first available train and go to the end of the line and see where it goes... just see what happens.

Peter Liversidge: Proposal no.1 - Fair proposals, 135 framed proposals in pallet wood packing case + 100 books