ARTISTS IRATXE JAIO & KLAS VAN GOORKUM INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTIONS’ Around their show on AMIKEJO annual exhibition series 00:11 00:14 00:16 00:21 00:28 00:35 00:45 00:53 01:02 01:07 01:13 01:20 01:31 01:38 01:42 01:48 01:59 02:08 02:22 02:27 02:33 02:46 02:50 03:00
My name is Iratxe Jaio. And this is Klaas van Gorkum. We have been working as a collective since 2001 We are here in the Laboratorio 987 space taking part in the Amikejo exhibition cycle organised by Latitudes. Our project is based on the contents of a box belonging to Klaas’s grandfather where he collected clippings from magazines and sketches of objects that could be made with a lathe, which is something he did in his free time, after he retired. He made them with a lathe which his former colleagues at the helix factory he worked at made for him. With this project we wanted to establish a relationship between the work Jos van Gorkum, Klaas’s grandfather, did during his retirement and the work he did as a wage earner and our work as artists, which in one way cannot be seen as remunerated work nor as leisure time work. So, we have put together three videos in which you can see, let’s say, normative images of work, represented by a promotional video of the factory where Klaas’s grandfather worked plus a video showing us at work with the original lathe which Klaas’s grandfather used. And another video where we scan the content of the box and all the grandfather’s magazine clippings, sketches and notes. Besides, we made an inventory of the objects that Klaas’s grandfather sold or gave to family and friends which we photographed in their normal domestic setting, and we have brought some of them here to show them on this pedestal. With them we wanted to reflect on the process that an object that we see everyday must undergo in being transformed into an art object. With out project, the idea was to work and we have taken it literally, and so we set ourselves the task of making wood legs ourselves. We made around fifty legs which we numbered one to fifty.
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In one way you can see it as a diary of apprenticeship. The first were poorly made and the final ones a little bit better As we had to do them in a short period of time, the work experience was also an experiment in itself. Tiring from the job, getting boring with doing such repetitive tasks and ending up with a collection of products which then have to find their place in the world. In this case we did not want to exhibit them as art objects. They play a functional role in the exhibition supporting the platform on which we exhibit my grandfather’s works MUSAC MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN Press and Communications Department Avda. de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 24008 León - Spain T. +34 987 09 00 00 F. +34 987 09 11 11 www.musac.es prensa@musac.es