Conversation: Rachel Withers and Lucy Gunning

This text was commissioned by Matt's Gallery on the basis of Withers' previous experience in recording conversations with artists and preparing them for publication, including Mike Nelson (2002), Roman Signer (2004) and Susan Hiller (2004). It evidences her interest in sustained dialogue with individual practitioners and in working with artists whose reputation is of international significance, but whose work is not backed up by a substantial scholarly literature. It therefore forms essential reading for any future study of Gunning's work.

This text was edited from a transcription of 16,000 words following extended recorded conversations with Gunning in 2006. The shape and contents of the final edit were decided by Withers in close consultation with Gunning. The piece aimed to convey direct factual information about the nature and history of individual works and the artist's work processes; to articulate and investigate the artist's sense of a significant tension between her works and her own commentary; and to organise the raw material of the transcription such that the final text stylistically reflected the artist's formal and processual approaches.

While exploring the difficult fit between verbal language and Gunning's art works, the text was edited to reflect aspects of Gunning's stylistic, processual and imaginative preoccupations. Paradoxically, it proved possible to endow it with the character of a Gunning artwork. The text's deceptively simple final form retains strategic evidence of the complex negotiations it entailed.