SlmOll StJrl,11Cj

CuttlllPS [Supplement]
What frequently links the macro in the sense of system to the micro in the
sense of elemental in Starling's practice is his recourse to multiple narrative
structures, which in turn frequently utilize the concept of journey as a trope
These journeys engage the artist in a process that determines the art object
or work-as in Tabernas Desert Run, or the traffic of the art object or its
constituent material as with Bird in Space, 2004 (2004), which refers to two
journeys, separated by eight decades; the first involving an art object, the
second involving a steel plate that becomes the central component of this
piece, The work typifies Starling's tendency to meld two or more stories, which
brings us to Starling's title: Cuttings (Supplement) , The title can be read in a
botanic sense, as sections of a structure available for grafting onto another;
or as rescued sections left out of a narrative-what is left on the cutting room
floor-the editing out of the Rhododendron in the Scottish nationalist story
for example. Both seem applicable to a reading of Starling's works Further-
more, and aided by the way both the 2005 Cuttings publication and this
subsequent publication are ordered, Starling's project appears to aim for an
epistemological and cosmological completeness The narratives multiply
and inform, and thereby are grafted onto, each subsequent work As an exhi-
bition Cuttings (Supplement) explores these overlapping concerns in Starling's
recent practice, taking the new commission Infestation Piece (Musselled
Moore) as its starting point As a publication Cuttings (Supplement) adds
further sections to an existing epistemology
Simon Starling's Regenerated Sculpture
Mark Godfrey
In the late 1960s and 1970s, a number of artists abandoned the practice of
object-making whilst rethinking the possibilities of sculptural production
Douglas Huebler indicated that sculptural concerns could be addressed by
taking photographs documenting spatial situations; Lawrence Weiner showed
that material transformations could be replaced by linguistic propositions;
Gordon Matta-Clark suggested that sculpture could involve the removal from,
and transformation of architectural containers; Mel Bochner, Hans Haacke,
and Michael Asher in different ways demonstrated that the practice could
address itself to new notions of space-not so much the space occupied by an
object in a gallery, but the space of that gallery or outside it , Sculpture, that
is, could scrutinize the ownership and control of institutional and other 'public'
spaces Today many artists choose to ignore or forget the debates of this
period; others look back to it and continue a sculptural practice that no longer
really involves object-making, and instead interrogates conditions of spatial
experience and ownership But for those artists who appreciate the seriousness
and ongoing relevance of these now-historical positions, and who wish to
return to making objects, what does it mean to resurrect sculpture as a practice
of object-making in a meaningful, rather than traditional or trivial way?" The
task is made all the more challenging when we consider changes since the
1970s in everyday relations with materials and objects-for instance, the fact
that new and newly obsolete things increasingly overcrowd our lives More
and more, these objects are manufactured in countries far away, and then are
transported to us in ways we never pause to consider This situation comes
with ever-worrying environmental and economic costs
1) Benjamin Buchloh has outlined The crises and predicaments facing
contemporary sculptors III two pArticulAr essays 'Gabriel Orozco: The
Sculpture of Everyday Life' in Gabriel Orozco, Los Angeles Contemporary
Art Museum, Los Angeles, 2000, and 'Cargo and Cull: The Displays
of Thomas H,rschhorn' In Artforum, November 2001
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Sl fYl on Slil rl lll g C l l l l l r ) g ~ Supolement l
Simon Starling's practice is an extremely compell i ng response both to
recent sculptural history and to this situation of contemporary object and
material relatIons. His activities emerged in the mid-1990s, and now include
numerous projects realized In museums and galleries from Sydney to Sao
Paolo However, Instead of tracing a chronological line of development, I
want to locate a number of recurrent tendencies or components in Starling's
practice As this text marks the occasion of his exhibition at The Power Plant,
and the premiere of a new work Infestation PIece (MusseJ/ed Moore), I will
start with this project to glean from it five associated aspects of his work
First, we can see that Starling often makes work by confronting another work
of art, architecture, or design, usually dating from and associated with the
modernist movement. A sculptural idea associated with a later period, typically
that of the 1960s and 1970s, IS then deployed In this case, the historical
work is Henry Moore's 1953- 4 bronze sculpture Warrior with Shield, an object
which Starling re-interpreted In steel, and the sculptural idea IS associated
with Marcel Broodthaers, who used mussels in his 1960s sculptures in part
because they were a cliched symbol of Belgian national identity If Broodthaers
quest ioned outmoded concepts of national art styles by using such over-
determined materials as mussel shells, Starling overturns similarly traditIOnal
ideas by implicating Henry Moore in global narratives rather than in histories
of Britishness in art By submerging his replica in Lake OntariO, Starling
also suggests Robert Smithson who allowed Spiral Jetty to be covered by
the rising lake in Utah
Second, looking at this new project, we understand qUickly why any given
work by Starling must be considered as an ongoing process rather than
Simply a finished object This paint is easily grasped if we compare a 'Moore'
with a 'Starling' A work of art by Henry Moore is usually understood to
be a completed metal sculpture A work of art by Starling, though presented
in an art gallery, includes research carried out prior to any Involvement with
materials; the transportation of materials from one place to another, often
(as here). the creation of a replica; a period when objects and materials are
subjected to some active transformation (in this case, the time underwater
during which the Moore replica became covered in zebra mussels); and the
subsequent display and documentation of the resulting object(s).
Third, the new project exemplifies Starling's tendency to conceive works
in response to the first context 111 which they are to be shown Here, Starling's
work developed from research Into two completely unrelated stories, both
connected to the city in which The Power Plant is located The first was that
in the 1950s and 1960s, vanous businesses and civic authorities around
Toronto invited Henry Moore to place multiple sculptures In the city The
second is the more recent phenomenon of zebra mussel infestation in the
Great Lakes These creatures were accidentally introduced Into the lakes'
ecosystem by cargo ships arriving from the Black Sea Starling studied these
Simon Sl.l rhng 's Regenerated Sculpture Milrk Godlr .. y
lWO local tales of invasion-one cultural, the other ecological - to conjure
the ideas for his work
The fourth aspect of Starling's practice apparent in the new project is an
attempt to address both historical and contemporary political, economic and
environmental crises through sculptural production Here, Starling is concerned
with an environmental phenomenon (the invasive spread of zebra mussels)
resulting from the globalized shipping Industry-an occurrence that while local
to Toronto, also chimes with other situations across the world Starling tends
not to address such crises as singular subjects, but. in his words, 'conflates' or
'collapses' narratives from two divergent fields of interest to produce his work
(here, art history and environmental history collide)
The fifth and final aspect of Starling's practice that can be evidenced in the
Toronto project is ItS absurdist streak In this case, we are confronted with
the extraordinarily peculiar fact that a pristine sculpture (albeit, a replica) has
been intentionally dropped into a lake and allowed to be smothered by shellfish.
This is all the more absurd when one considers the differing fates of Starling's
replica and that of the typical Henry Moore original The Moore will be taken
care of as it changes sJowly over time, oxidizing and acquiring a patina, in
a gradual transformation that is understood to enhance the work's beauty By
contrast Starling's obj ect seems to be doubly abused: first by being drowned,
and subsequently colonized by molluscs
All five features of Starling's practice could be located in any of his recent
works To illustrate each aspect more fully, I want to look briefly at five different
projects included in The Power Plant exhibition, each time focLising on one
of the five components Bird in Space, 2004 (2004) provides one of the clearest
examples of the way in which Starling engages art historical research. In this
case, he looked back to the history of Constantin Brancusi's 1926 Bird in
Space When this classic modernist sculpture was first shipped to the United
States, having been purchased by Edward Steichen, customs officials failed
to recognize the object as art, and treating it as a lump of metal, attempted
to levy the statutory import tax on the material This led to a court case which
established that the metal was to be treated as an art work, exempting Steichen
from the charge Starling linked the historical American policy on metal
importation to that of 2004 when in the wake of 9/11, George Bush introduced
a measure to protect the Amencan steel industry by charging a lax on
imported steel - a tax since deemed to be illegal Cognizant of these conditions
and glancing eastward to the country of Brancusi's birth, Starling shipped
a slab of Romanian steel to New York, and produced a sculpture in which this
weighty sheet was propped against a wall, held aloft on inflatable jacks
attached to a pressurized helium cylinder Though the key visual reference here
was to works by Richard Serra, there was a morphological affinity between
Brancusi's sculpture and Starling's since both were made of forms held up in
the air. However, Starling made sure that his solution to the problem of floating
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Simon Starling CUUi ngs' Supplement]
a chunk of metal in space would be every bit as clunky as Brancusi's was ele-
gant The visual contrast served to underline the fact that Starling's intention in
mining art history had nothing to do with an attempt to borrow a coveted form
Rather, Starling wanted to make use of the 1926 story i n order to provide a lens
through which to look at the economic policies of the Bush administration
A clear indication of Starling's approach to process is provided by Autoxy-
loPVrocVc!oboros (2006). The preparation for the work was a characteristic
combination of art historical and politic81 research . Starling looked at Bas Jan
Ader's Fall films and his fateful Atlantic crossing, and visited the Faslane
and Coulport naval bases In Scotland-home to Britain's nuclear submarines,
and the nearby peace camp. Reflecting on this research, and perhaps dreaming
of the possibility of Unilateral nuclear disarmament, Starling made a voyage
into Loch Long on a smal l boat The boat's engine was fuelled by a stove fed
by slices of wood that Starling hacked off the boat"s bows as it chugged
through the water Eventually the boat consumed itself and sank In the first
gallery presentation of the project, Starling displayed a slide show of thirty-six
colour photographs taken on board and from the shore But the work as a whole
comprises more than these Images and should be considered as a process
which includes the voyage, the slow destruction and eventual disappearance
of the vessel. and the method of the project's presentation In an associated
photographic edition, Starling produced prints of the boat, but burnt approxi-
mately half of each print away. By part-destroYing each photograph in this
way, and subjecting each one to the same process of destruction characterizing
the rest of the project, Starling insured that the edition did not merely serve
as a document or souvenir. but continued the logic of the work as a whole.
Just as B;rd;n Space, 2004 was conceived for its premiere at Casey Kaplan
Gallery in New York, and Autoxvlopvrocvc!oboros drew from Starling's stay at
Cove Park in Scotland, BV Night .. (2005) developed as a response to the geo-
graphic contingencies of the venue in which It was first shown: the Museum
fur Gegenwartskunst in Basel Starling wanted to produce a work which looked
at the relations between Switzerland and its various neighbours, and found out
that the Swiss had developed a cunning means of prOfiting from their country's
topography To quote from Starling's elongated title: 'By night the SWISS buy
cheap-rate electriCity from their neighbours which they use to pump water into
holding reservoirs_ By day they use the stored water to generate hydroelectric
power which they then sell back to their neighbours at peak-rate prices ' To
reflect on the situation described in this title, Starling looked back to a series of
photographs made by Christopher Wi lliams in 1993 showing views around
the Grande Dixence dam in Switzerland, a structure which Williams had been
drawn to because it was the subject of Jean-Luc Godard's first film. Williams's
series comprised seven images and was produced in an edition of ten. Starling
located three art institutions in the countries nearby Switzerland that owned
the series, and travelled to each to photograph Williams's works in the storage
Simon Slarllng's Re[lcncr!J l ed Sculpt ure Ml'lrk Godfrey
racks He then produced a series of platinum prints that, via Williams's previous
photographs, provided an image of the kind of structure used by the Swiss
to harness water and therefore to maximize the potential to create and sell
electricity By shOWing Williams's photographs in their frames as objects hung
on storage racks (rather than by simply re-photographing them In their
entirety or taking detail shots), Starling emphasized their Ident ity as editioned
commodities and as a consequence suggested a parallel between economies
of electricity trading and art trading Just as the Swiss economy is built
on the kind of strategy that his title described, so it is strengthened by the art
market (part based in Basel), by fairs and galleries through which Williams's
photographs might have been sold to the institutions where Starli ng found
them Supposing this. Starling's work also illustrated the axiom that the Swiss
buy cultural products from their neighbours and sell them back to those
countries at inflated rates
The fourth aspect of Starling's practice described is the artist's tendency
to address histOrical and current politiCS and crises through conflating various
kinds of information and archival matenal A recent project, Los Angeles,
3rd-5th March 796911 To ;ndeflnde expansion can be taken as an attempt to
reflect, albeit indirectly, on questions about the mediation of current events
prevalent both in the 19605 and at the present moment. Starling's starting
point was the presumed introspective nature of Robert Barry's Inert Gas Series
of 1969, works which Involved the release- in areas around Los Angeles-of
various quantities of inert gases. Made at a time of incredible political turmoil
in the United States, these works could be considered introspective because it
seemed that Barry was primarily addreSSing art-world politics (for instance,
making a kind of sculpture which could not be brought into a gallery) However,
Barry's works also provoked thoughts and questions about mediation and
trust Since the photographs accompanYing each short text showed an empty
space (rather than documenting Barry releasing the gas), there was no way
to know if the actions had in fact been executed: viewers had to decide whether
to consider the images as records of events, or fictional Barry - so Starling
inferred - was reflecting on the way in which news media altered the percep-
tion of ongoing events In order to acknowledge this previously unrecognized
pol itical facet of Barry's work, Starling collected a series of archival images
publ ished in newspapers in Los Angeles on the same dates as Barry's releases
The i mages were then subjected to the same processes of expansion as
the gases - each was blown up until the photographs became unrecognizable
These magnified Images were then installed covering entire walls Starling
underlined the connection between Barry's project and the mediascape of the
Vietnam era At the same time, his work prompts consideration of our own
relationship to images at a moment when our knowledge of wars is inescap-
ably filtered lhrough commercial news networks and to recall the setting of
the project, Hollywood films
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Simon Starling Cuttings [Supplemem[
Finally, 24hr Tangenziale provides a clear example of the absurd or ludic
dimension of Starling's work The project was executed in Turin where Starling
researched the activities of the designer and car racer Carlo Mollino. In 1954,
Mollino designed a racing car called the 'Bisiluro' which appeared like two
connected, streamlined torpedoes The driver's compartment was positioned
to one side of the car; and the engine was uniquely situated opposite rather
than under or in front of the driver, Another astonishing feature of the vehicle
was its radiator, made of a series of metal sections curving in arabesques
around the body of the vehicle For all its elegance, Mollino's design in this
case was unsuccessful, and the car was forced out of the Le Mans 24-hour
race after only two hours For this project, Starling used the body of the 750cc
Fiat Panda, the most common car in Turin, building and attaching a replica
of the Bisiluro's radiator to it He then test-drove the vehicle around Turin's ring
road for a full 24-hour period If this circular voyage was a ludicrous homage
to the race which Mollino had failed to complete, the vehicle that undertook
it was equally outrageous: on the one hand, the radiator was displaced from
the Bisiluro that set off its panache; on the other, the Fiat appeared pitiable
since its monstrous growth destroyed any aspirations its designers might have
had towards making a cheap vehicle with humble style Starling finally
displayed the Bislluro/Fiat amalgam at Mollino's Teatro Regio, a venue whose
grandeur made the vehicle appear all the more peculiar.
Having located five recurrent components of Starling's practice, and examined
how these components play out in a number of recent works, we can attempt
to situate each in an art historical and critical context, This allows us to appre-
ciate how Starling's practice amounts to a major contribution to contemporary
sculpture [By now it should be clear that in situating Starling in a sculptural
context, I refer as much to the objects he fabricates as to his photographs,
Starling treats photographs as objects, attending to the materials they are made
from, tracking them down as one does other kinds of objects, subjecting
them to material processes such as burning or enlargement as one would
burn or inflate a sculptural object,))]
Let us first then evaluate Starling's approach to art history, an approach
that instantiates a new model of how an artist might respond to and make
use of art of the recent past. Other artists of slightly older generations have
tended to use art history in more traditional ways Some have offered parodic
responses to 'fathers' who they attempt to 'kill' in order to entrench their
own practices in their stead; some pay oblique homage to older figures whose
practices they deem still to hold value Given the starting point of the present
essay, pertinent instances of these tendencies would be on the one hand Bruce
'I For more on StJrling's apprOClch to P'10tography, see my essay 'Image
Arlforum, February 2005
Simon Stclrllng's Regenerated Sculpture M,uk Godlrey
McLean's 1971 Pose Work for Plinths, a biting critique of Henry Moore's reclin-
ing figures, and on the other, the works Bruce Nauman had dedicated to
Moore some years earlier. (Henry Moore Bound to Fail and Light Trap for Henry
Moore, both 1967, works which came out of Nauman's belief that British artists
'shouldn't be so hard on [Moore] because they're going to need him')
Another kind of practice is to make work that mourns another artist, perhaps
one whose life was cut short, or whose work has been under-recognised An
example (to use again artists already mentioned here), could be Christopher
Williams's Bouquet (1991), which mourned the figure of Bas Jan Ader 1:
In contrast to these positions, Starling has rarely been interested in creating
parodic references"' nor is he particularly interested in homage or mourning
in his work. Instead, Starling's use of art history could be described as investi-
gative, revisionist, strategic, and activist Starling rescues from oblivion the
ideas of some of the lesser known modernists such as the Siovenian designer
Josef Plec;:nik, and the Austrian architect Simon Schmiderer, and the forgotten
stories that surrounded well known modernist works (for instance, the tale of
Steichen's Brancusi law suit) Starling revises what we thought we understood
about the modernist period, refusing to see modernist art as autonomous
Instead he demonstrates the connection of modernist architecture, design
and art to economic, environmental and political events, for instance by linking
Henry Moore's success in Toronto to its emergent economy as a shipping
hub Starling's use of art history is strategIc because he carefully redeploys
particular ideas and forms first developed by artists of the 1960s and 1970s,
making these ideas and forms function in new ways, somewhat counter to the
spirit of their original operations. (In the projects I have looked at, for example,
we could say that he puts to use ideas of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark
and Robert Barry- ideas of submerging, cutting, and expanding materials 6.)
31 Bruce Nauman Interviewed by Willoughby ShClrp, 1970, in Janet KrilynJk
ed, Please Pay Attenllun Please: Bruce NaulTliin\ Words, MIT Press,
Cambridge, 2003, p 127 For diSCUSSion of NJulllan's approach
\0 !\t1oore, see Jo Applin, 'The Encrypted Object The Serret World of
Sixties Sculpture', PhD thesis, UniverSity College, London, 2004
4 In a rp.cent ess<lY all Tom Burr, George Baker hCls looked at Susan SontClg's
theOlY of CClmp to put iorwClrd Cl completely different model outlining
how a contemporClrY ClrtlSt mighT refer to the MlnllllCllist work of the
1960s Soe 'The Other Side of the Wall', OCTOBER 120, Spring 2007
An exception to thiS rule is the way Starling targeted RlctlClrd Serra In
Bird m Space, 2004 Whilst leaning iJ sheet of metal against <I wall
rec,;llcd look of SerrJ's work, clishlofling both wall Jnd floor with
the use of IllflCltClblc jacb [Jove Starling's work an air ot Clbsurd dellcClcy
the effect WClS to paroriy whilt StJrllng saw as Serra's 'deeply romanti-
Cized view of heavy Industry' Kaiser, 'Interviel,fl, with Simon
St<lrllng' in Cuttln.Qs, p C7 I
('1 It IS also pOSSible to argue that in By Nighl, Starllll(l lllaKes usc of one
of the strllctur,ll pmlClples of Williams s work the rilsconnection of
photowaph anri caption Williaills accompanies hiS Images With
unWieldy iJnd unusually 10l1g captions StClrling's cClptlon IS similculy

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Simon S1arllng Cuttings [Supplement]
Finally, Starling's engagement with art history is activist because these ideas
and forms from the 1960s and 1970s are used to reflect on current political
questions
To move onto the second component of the artist's practice numbered
above, what critical potential lies in Starling's approach to process? Previously
I mentioned that while Starling presents objects in the traditional space of
the art gallery, the viewer understands that the entire work comprises more
than the object before them: it involves a series of activities connected to
this physical form, As viewers learn the process or 'back story' of the Object,
their thoughts may be deflected away from the gallery, and as a consequence,
the present-tense experience of the object becomes somewhat less crucial
to the total understanding of the work than expected The critical aspect of this
point is highlighted if one recalls how much the discourse on minimalist art
in the mid- 1960s centred on presence-on the importance of the real-time
phenomenological encounter between mobile spectator and sculpture
Starling's insistence that his works are temporal processes serves to cntique
this minimalist premise, which it should be noted, is alive and well in much
writing on sculpture which still privileges the phenomenological encounter as
the summa of spectatonal experience 71 Starling has also indicated at interview
that his works in a small but significant way defy the expectations of the
market. since many collectors desire sculpture to be completely present before
them, and are disturbed to discover that the work has a crucial life both
before and after their encounter.)
The criticality of Starling'S approach to process becomes more acute if we
consider the moment in sculptural history immediately following Minimalism,
In the post-minimalist discourse of the late 1960s, 'process' referred to the
activities to which artists subjected materials in the studio, Richard Serra
melted and hurled lead; Eva Hesse threaded rubber tubing through perforated
metal boxes; Joel Shapiro repeatedly moulded clay balls between his palms_
These activities could be inferred by the viewer since the final sculptures
over-long, and allows the images to be read in an unexpected way
AlongSide Ihe prevIous artists mentioned above, Starling has also made
use of the work of Michael Asher and Lawrence Weiner Starling'S
most obVIOUS deployment of an idea of Michael Asher's was his 2002
Portlkus project J<ak.teenhau$ when he parked a Volvo outSide the gallery
and had ItS radiator extended inside and around the gallery space
so as 10 prOVide sufficient hea1 for a caclus to thrive: the relevant Asher
work was hiS 1992 installation at the Kunstmuseum In Bern, where
Asher posilloned all the museum's radiators in its cennal space,
threading pipes along all its walls to keep them connected Weiner's
work appeared to Inform Starling's early practice of including tex1ual
'recrpes' of the primary material transformations alongside hiS displays
of obJec1s
7) For Instance, conSider much recent writing on Richard Serra's Torqued
Elhpses (1996-9)
8) Simon Starling Inle(\/lewed by Ross Birrell, WINW artandresearch org uk
consultad January 2008
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