This week we connected Gilles de Brock to Babs Bleeker and Babs to Gilles. They answered each others questions about guilty pleasures and deadlines.
What’s your earliest art related memory?
Nice question! But I have a few answers, because my art related memories are quite numerous!
I remember when I was a 5-year-old, sitting in the back garden underneath a parasol (it was raining cats and dogs). My mom had given me a hammer, some wood and nails and I made several wooden stacks-object-thingies. I think this was the first time I experienced my ‘Hyper Focus’, while making work.
Museum-wise my first memory is the Dali Museum in Spain.
Also, when I was about 4 years old, my aunt and uncle were living in a quite big house, and they had some sort of sculpture on a pillar in the living room. I was always really fascinated by it. About 8 years ago, I realised it was the most ultimate camp thing you can have in your household: David’s statue by Michelangelo on a white, high pillar.
What’s your worst food guilty pleasure?
I love everything with banana flavor.
Banana Sweets, Banana Milkshake, Banana Liqueur, Banana Ice Cream: you name it. I always feel bad afterwards, but if there’s something to choose with banana, I pick banana.
If not this profession then what profession?
I think as an artist you always have some side jobs, but if I could choose a profession I would love to be a teacher.
Babs Bleeker ‘Sunrise Express, The Editions Nr.14′ (2021) Picture by Jasper Timmermans
If you have a deadline: describe to us your procrastination behavior (while working at your studio).
Watching YouTube tutorials to learn skills I will most likely never need. This has only two outcomes, the first being that every once in a while, I’m confronted with a new problem when I’m building or designing something and I actually already know how to solve it and I get to pet myself on the back.
But usually, it only makes me an annoying person when I see someone doing the thing from the tutorial and I can’t stop asking them questions about obscure details of the process that I’ve learned in depth in theory but have never seen in real life.
What exhibition, piece of art, or performance would you love to experience again?
I think the last time an art work made a lasting expression on me is when I saw a movie by Jordan Wolfson at Sadie Coles gallery in London.
I really like his movies but the room was also filled with pink carpet and I remember how it made me realize I should start making carpets and don’t bother with the conceptual movies that I was trying to make at the time.
It’s significant to me because making carpets gave me the confidence to start making ceramic tiles (that and at least a 100 hours of YouTube tutorials on how to build CNC machines).
Is there something within your artistic practice you would immediately give out of hand?
Everything if possible. Don’t get me wrong I really love my job but I love walking in the mountains and sitting in front of a mountain cabin at least 10 times more.
Gilles de Brock ‘Black and white test composition’ (2021) Picture by Abel Minnée
These interviews are part of an ongoing series of short interviews between Unfair artists, originally published through our mailings. Check the overview to read the other interviews or subscribe to our mailing list through the button below:
These interviews are part of an ongoing series of short interviews between Unfair artists, originally published through our mailings. Check the overview to read the other interviews or subscribe to our mailing list through the button below: