ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #9

Catherine Yass @ Tate Britain

Descent: HQ5: 1/4s, 4.7°, Omm 40mph, 2002
Ilfochrome transparency, lightbox, 164 x 129 x 13cm

Catherine Yass is one of the four artists short-listed for this year's Turner Prize and was nominated for projects such as her participation in the Indian Triennial. Yass established her reputation with photographs in which she employed a kind of double exposure to achieve intense colour effects -- but her recent work includes some new departures. When Mark Sladen met the artist he asked her about the new photographs on display in Tate Britain, where distortion has been achieved through movement.

MS: How were these images made?

CY: The photographs were taken from the top of one of the building sites in Canary Wharf. As the shutter clicked I would move the camera downwards as though it was falling. I also did different lengths of exposure: quarter second, half second and one second. I was imagining that if you dropped something it would fall faster as it went down and you would get more information being received.

MS: What the resonance of the site important?

CY: I was just looking for a high building, but I'm sure it was no coincidence that the highest building that I could find was also the centre of the stock market. I wasn't setting out to make a comment about the City but I think the location adds another aspect -- the stock market does go up and down.

MS: What other significance is there to the idea of falling?

CY: I remember once riding downhill really fast and enjoying it, but as I was riding I thought: but I could crash, and it would turn from enjoyment into something terrible. When things are going really well there's some fear that everything might just collapse and disappear and it was to do with those kinds of feelings. I was also thinking of the way lots of people have dreams about falling or flying.

Mark Sladen is a curator at Barbican Art Gallery

Turner Prize 2002, until 5 January 2003
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, 020.7887.8000

Image © the artist, courtesy Alison Jacques Gallery, London


Artworker #9 conculdes Sladen's Turner Prize shortlist interviews. The three other artist interviews are viewable by clicking on the names below:

Keith Tyson
Liam Gillick
Fiona Banner

© 2002 KultureFlash Limited