Angela de la Cruz
Clut­ter

‘As part of the process, I often use every part of my work: every bit of every paint­ing can often be used in anoth­er paint­ing, so I kind of recy­cle. In the most recent work the dif­fer­ence is that I have used the paint­ings as con­tain­ers, so none of this work will be recy­cled any more; they have become con­tain­ers of oth­er paint­ings. Like body bags. They imply an excess of production.

When you have paint­ings in a tra­di­tion­al frame they have a cer­tain dis­tance. With my work it’s kind of demo­c­ra­t­ic, there isn’t a cor­rect or spir­i­tu­al dis­tance from which you look at or expe­ri­ence the work… you can come and touch: it makes the paint­ing phys­i­cal­ly more avail­able in a way. But I have to be very care­ful because I’m always wor­ried that it will appear like I’m doing gym­nas­tics with the work. The work treads a very fine line between being a work and being crap. In a way I am always fight­ing against the work itself.

I’m inter­est­ed in the phys­i­cal­i­ty of the object, the illu­sion and the fig­u­ra­tion. My recent series of works is based on paint­ings that were stand­ing out­side my stu­dio for a cou­ple of years. I cov­ered them with a very new can­vas and I called it Clut­ter with Blan­ket. Anoth­er piece is made of a met­al box in which I put twelve com­plete ​‘paint­ings in wait­ing’. I went round the stu­dio and I took every sin­gle paint­ing that was as a real object, put it back in the frame, fold­ed it, and then put it in a box. The work was self-con­tained. There was noth­ing bro­ken. It was just the whole issue of pick­ing up an object. I called the entire series Clut­ter, which relates to paint­ing, the absur­di­ty and excess of paint­ing… There are all these stu­dios in the world with paint­ings and more paint­ings and more paint­ings, and writ­ing… That is excess, and with that excess you can do what you like. You can recy­cle. I’m not look­ing for any kind of spir­i­tu­al sense of being for the paint­ing. But the excess, the abject, is beautiful.’

From ​“William Fur­long inter­views Angela de la Cruz” in Pat­sy Craig (ed.), Mak­ing Art Work, Trol­ley, Lon­don, 2004.