For V&A East Storehouse, artist Es Devlin has created The Everythingists, as part of V&A East’s 6 month of rotating commissions programme New Work, in dialogue with Natalia Goncharova’s monumental backcloth for The Firebird. In this interview, Devlin discusses how her practice has been shaped by theatre, music and scale; how the collections and architecture of V&A East Storehouse informed her thinking; and how a conversation with the V&A East Youth Collective inspired making of her work.
Could you briefly describe your practise and the questions and ideas that guide your work?
My practice is rooted in the audience, because it began in theatre. The questions that guide it at every point are: how will this make me feel, and how will it make the audience, viewer or visitor feel?
I am also always responding to place. In this case, that means the place of this gallery; the experience of being adjacent to a work by Natalia Goncharova; and, more broadly, being on this particular spot on the planet, in East London. It is not only about geographical place, but also a place in time.
The work is time-based. All of my work is time-based: it is always a sequence and it is always underscored by music. Time is woven into the stitches of the work, and this work is itself woven into the time that has passed on this site, thinking about the history of work here.
How did you come to work in this way? Were there particular moments, individuals or experiences that informed your approach?
I think it began with playing musical instruments from a very young age. I played a string instrument, a wind instrument and a percussive instrument: violin, clarinet and piano. I would say the origins started there.
Then there is my engagement with materials at scale, which is particularly relevant to this commission. This is a large room, and the Goncharova backdrop that we are responding to is a very large piece. The object was designed to be seen from quite a distance. In this gallery, however, we are almost on stage or backstage with it: we are not viewing the painted cloth from the distance for which it was originally designed. There is already a compression of scale.
Over time, I have often experienced works from very different distances: from the back of an arena, stadium, theatre or opera house, and also from very close up. Perception at different scales has been an important part of my practice, and it really comes into focus in this work.
When you first received this commission, what was your starting point for developing the work?
The starting point was to stand in the space, and to sit in relation to the large hanging textile, really understanding the vocabulary of the gallery and the tensions that were already there.
The next step was a deep exploration of Goncharova, with whom, for my sins, I was not as well acquainted as I should have been. I discovered so many overlaps between her practice and my own. She was an artist and a stage designer, and her practice has been described through the idea of “everythingism”. She was extraordinarily prolific, and deeply engaged in drawing plants, species, birds and animals, as well as cities. I found many shared lines of inquiry.
I then researched The Firebird itself and Goncharova’s involvement in its design. I also spent time with Stravinsky’s music and its programmatic quality. The score is particularly readable as a text because Stravinsky annotated its sections and phrases according to what they expressed within the myth.
I looked into the history of the myth, which has been told in many iterations over time. The invitation of this commission was also to root the work in place: specifically in East London, within a particular radius of V&A East Storehouse, and to consider work, progress and process in relation to this site. It was a long research process.
Like anyone else, I am always building on the lines of inquiry in which I have recently been engaged. After doing a great deal of research, I wanted to connect this work to the films I had been making with dancers, and in particular to my work with Joshua Shanny-Wynter.
It is a very personal response. After so many years of making large-scale performance works in collaboration with others, when I make these works on my own in the studio, it is very important to me that they are made with my hands, in response to materials, and from a personal place. I wanted to make sure that, despite all the research, the work did not become too generalised or too documentary.
How would you describe your commission for V&A East Storehouse?
It is a ten-metre-wide work made from painted, cut-out plywood boxes, with five dancing figures. I made the figures by painting and drawing from film stills of the dancer Joshua Shanny-Wynter, whose movements were choreographed by Botis Seva. Both have been developing their practices in East London. I am drawing not only on the dance that is inherent in the proposition of Goncharova’s backcloth, but also on dancers who have been working in this area throughout their creative lives.
The figures are buffeted by, caught up in, contained by and escaping from a tension between rectilinear and circular geometrical elements. These forms respond to the evolving architecture of work in this part of East London.
The scale model I made for the rectilinear elements was constructed from iPhone boxes painted white. For me, the myth of The Firebird is very much about human hubris in relation to technology: the pursuit of something that is always out of reach. In a way, that is the nature of progress in Western culture, and I think I instinctively picked up those iPhone boxes and wanted their materiality in the work.
The sound derives from Stravinsky’s score for The Firebird. As the audience enters, they are thrown into the heart of a sequence. There is also an overlay of my voice, meditating on themes of work, progress, place, time and technology. It creates a mesmerising tension with Goncharova’s work.
In the rectilinear forms and boxes, are you thinking about storage, and about how the human body fits into storage and buildings?
That is crucial. More than any individual object in the V&A collection, it was the systems of storage and the arrangements of the collection that informed my thinking for this work.
The box has been a really important part of my practice since I was making drawings at the age of 18: the relationship between the human form and rectilinear architectural forms. A box is a storage device: a space for items relating to human progress, human artefacts and traces of the evolution of human thought.
Could you tell us more about your experience with the V&A East Youth Collective?
I was entirely unprepared for the meeting. I walked in, saw how young and cool everyone looked, and all of my unconscious biases came to the surface about what this group would want to see.
While we were preparing, I said to Gazella: put some pop music material in there. These people are young and cool; they are not going to want to hear me going on about species, porosity or the human. Let’s get some Beyoncé in there. So she filled the presentation with that kind of material.
I could not have been more wrong. They wanted to move straight into conversations about animism and about porosity between human and more-than-human species.
We changed the presentation there and then, put away the slideshow, and engaged in a very important conversation. It was challenging, but also incredibly provocative, nourishing and medicinal. It was one of the most meaningful parts of making this work.
What has been the most challenging aspect of making this work?
I have had to challenge myself because, historically, I am a responder to a brief. I am a designer as well as an artist, and I have had three decades of training in responding to what a play needs.
Because this brief is so multifaceted, there was a danger that I might simply serve it, and that the work might lose its own aliveness in the process. There are many elements to respond to: the space, Goncharova’s work, East London and the collection. But you do not have to respond to all of them at once, all the time.
That was a challenge to my usual mode of serving the request.
How has East London shaped and informed this work?
This area is personally resonant for me. During an earlier phase of its transformation, around the time of the Olympic ceremonies 14 years ago, I was standing in a very wet car park in Dagenham, rehearsing for the Olympic closing ceremony.
There is a photograph of me wearing a hard hat while the Olympic Stadium was being built, advising on where the lights should go. I feel very much a part of the rethinking of this area.
Earlier still, when I first started my practice in 1998, the renovated Sadler’s Wells theatre in north London was being built. I wore a hard hat to the opening night there as well.
If you meet young people today who say they want to do the kind of work you do, what would you tell them?
The first thing is to undertake a process of diagnosis on yourself: to find out where you feel most like yourself. Put yourself in as many situations as you can and pay attention to how you feel physically. Do you feel comfortable in this place?
Go into theatres and watch plays. Go into opera houses and watch operas. Go into museums and art galleries. Go into artists’ studios. Go into a rehearsal, if you can. Find out which is your place and who are your people.
You will not necessarily know immediately. Some people feel comfortable in a rock and roll environment. Some feel comfortable in an opera environment. Some really like the exhibition environment. You need to keep undertaking that process of diagnosis.
And it changes. Just when you think you have got the medicine right, you probably need to carry out another diagnosis, because you might need to change the medicine.
