Goshka Macuga talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, after all, different artists—and the cultural experiences which have formed her life and work.
Macuga was born in 1967 in Warsaw, Poland. Her deep analysis into multifarious topics manifests within the type of installations, sculpture, tapestry, pictures, video and extra. In addition to making objects, she occupies a job that relates carefully to that of a curator and historian, usually weaving collectively her creations with current supplies, together with artworks and archival paperwork.
Place has huge significance in Macuga’s apply, whether or not it’s the museum or gallery, the town or the nation wherein she is presenting her concepts. After exploring her website and interesting in prolonged analysis, she fuses her personal subjective curiosity with goal materials, to supply absorbing and infrequently complicated environments that provoke broad meanings and reactions.
Goshka Macuga, Loss of life of Marxism, Ladies of All Lands Unite, 2013, wool tapestry, 560 x 290 cm
She discusses the transformative affect of seeing the work of Christo in an artwork journal; her curiosity in Paul Nash and Eileen Agar—and the private significance to her of a piece by Agar that’s in her studio. She additionally covers how the subversive methods utilized by Stanisław Lem when he was writing science fiction in Communist Poland have influenced her apply; and the way, throughout Covid, she created a membership for dancing in her studio. Plus, she offers perception into her rituals and disciplines and solutions our regular questions, together with, “what’s artwork for?”
Goshka Macuga: Born from Stone, London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, till 18 January 2025
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the humanities and tradition app.
The free app provides entry to an unlimited vary of worldwide cultural organisations by means of a single obtain, with new guides being added frequently. They embody a number of of the UK museums wherein Goshka Macuga has had vital reveals, together with the Whitechapel Gallery, Tate and the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE. In the event you obtain Bloomberg Connects, you’ll uncover that the information to London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE has in-depth options about Born from Stone, Goshka’s venture for the gallery. In a video, Goshka explains the venture and also you see behind the scenes at her studio. Then, in a sequence of audio options, Goshka explains the venture intimately, together with how the Roman Temple of Mithras beneath the gallery was a supply of inspiration for her work, how she addressed Mithraism and mythology by means of her set up, and why she selected specific works from the Imperial Battle Museum in London to indicate alongside her dramatic cave sculptures.
