Ahead of his first institutional show at Camden Art Centre, the artist discusses how London’s architecture shapes the eroticism in his assemblages.
Edward Gillman: Your forthcoming show at Camden Art Centre features a new site-specific installation, The Reward [2024], which is on a larger scale than anything you’ve ever worked on before.
Jack O’Brien: The Reward is comprised of two ten-metre-long suspended spiral staircases, each wrapped in a skin of knitted stockinette – they are modelled on those staircases commonly found in commercial warehouses around South London – that serve as the show’s central motif. This form of industrial architecture has been hugely influential in my thinking and practice over the past decade – a period in which the city’s built environment has rapidly collapsed, expanded and transformed due to aggressive real-estate development.
The show considers the fraught nature of my social, economic and sexual experiences in London during the 2010s – an energy that has kept me plugged into the city’s art scene. I’m looking to evoke memories of my time in these post-industrial areas and the places that have continuously opened and closed around me: the studios I’ve worked in, the homes I’ve lived in, the bars, clubs, toilets and warehouses I’ve partied at.