Lanark Artefax takes us behind his boundary-pushing installation, The Absent Material Gateway

The many talents of Scottish electronic artist Lanark Artefax are evident in a recent installation, The Absent Material Gateway. Created in partnership with the Red Bull Music Academy, it saw the artist exhibit for the first time in his home of Glasgow.

Previously praised by renowned experimental musicians Bjork and Aphex Twin for his sound work, Lanark’s latest work envisages his output as a “surreal space, sitting between vivid fabrication and blurry reality”. The installation was built to be viewed alone (with only 50 places available) and is described by the artist as an “multi-platform, transhistorical installation,” that expands beyond the exhibition space at Glasgow’s Glue Factory into a custom built website and culminated in a live performance by the artist in collaboration with LuckyMe production designer, Shaun Murphy.

To find out more about the hotly tipped artist’s latest work, below we have a chat with Lanark to find out the thought process and meaning of this multi-faceted piece of work.

Can you describe the thoughts and process that went into The Absent Material Gateway?

The Absent Material Gateway is the product of me asking if I could showcase some of the Gateway objects publicly. The installation itself is structured around some stuff I’d been reading at the time, a Raol Eshelman book, that talks about presenting worlds or environments that are ‘rigged’ off and self-contained; that sorta puncture reality a little bit or create a little notch in time.

Why did you decide that the installation should be experienced solitary?

I don’t like to experience art installs or exhibitions with other people. Experiencing stuff like that tends to create a lot of weird space between you and what you’re looking at or maybe listening to. If you’re alone it’s much easier to experience things you otherwise wouldn’t and that’s much better.

What do you think are the benefits of working with lots of alternate elements and counterparts?

For this project it’s about creating a sprawling network of connections, so it was important to integrate lots of different methods of documenting that. I’m quite obsessed with cataloguing strange ephemera. There’s also lots of bits left that can be filled in after the installation itself is over, this interview for example!

How does it feel to be exhibiting in your home of Glasgow for the first time? Are there people coming to the show who don’t usually get to see your work?

It’s great yes, as I’ve not really seen anything like this here before.

To those who won’t be able to visit the art installation, could you describe what feelings you hope it will evoke in its audience?

The objects stimulate quite a lot of strange energy and I think we’ve done a good job of cataloguing that for people to experience.