Ryan Gander and Will Self in conversation around Gander's commission for 'One-Twelfth', Great Yarmouth
10 July 2019
On the evening of Wednesday 10 July, Ryan Gander will be in conversation with author and journalist Will Self to discuss Gander’s recent commission for the ‘one-twelfth’ project in Great Yarmouth. Ryan Gander’s Really bad thing seen from a different perspective (The pet giraffe of the thief that stole a Barbara Hepworth sculpture from Dulwich Park), 2019, is the inaugural 'One-Twelfth' project - a new series of 12 annual 1:12 scale public art commissions organised by originalprojects; artist collective. Each one will be sited at the Merrivale Model Village for one season, and then at a public location within the Borough of Great Yarmouth, leaving a trail of miniature artworks that explore ideas of scale, transformation and relationship to place.Gander's work is a recreation of a giraffe that was first made in plasticine by his daughter, after she was told the story of the theft of a work by Barbara Hepworth from Dulwich Park (she imagined the thief would have had a pet giraffe to help carry the sculpture). An imagined, invisible alliteration of the sculpture was situated previously at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Belgium, the evidence of which manifests itself through a visualisation. The work made for Great Yarmouth is therefore a miniature version of a work that was never produced, conjuring para-fictional realities and travelling across scales and locations.
Will Self was commissioned to produce a text to accompany the artwork, and conducted an interview with the giraffe. They discussed ideas of transformation, scale, art, and the ridiculousness of interviewing a plasticine giraffe.
