Walkthrough Ken Unsworth's studio (~ 4 minutes)

Paul McGillick: I'm Paul Mcgillick, and I'm at the studio of Ken Unsworth, and it's July the 19th, 2023. Well, Ken, you're 92 years of age. And I'm just curious to know, even now, after all those years, how do you describe yourself? Do you call yourself an artist or are you a sculptor? What term do you use?

Ken Unsworth: Certainly not an artist. I think I prefer to use and I do use the word sculptor to cover a multitude of sins.

Paul McGillick: Well, we're surrounded by a lot of sculptures in your studio, which also acts as an exhibition space. All right, well, let's ... why don't we go back to the beginning just to start the ball rolling with a little bit of biography. So just tell us a little bit about your early life and particularly your education and your art education.

Ken Unsworth: Well, being an adopted child, three times, I had a very checkered upbringing and ... I know for a fact that I was fairly bright. So during my education I never studied. I just sort of sailed through until I hit a brick wall doing architecture and discovered that I couldn't handle calculus or stuff like that.

Ken Unsworth: But as a result of that experience, my ... one of my lecturers at the Gordon Institute of Technology, he inquired one day, What am I doing?, you know, because I'd left the college, what am I doing? I said, Oh, I'm working as a welder at Ford Manufacturing Company. He said, oh, you can do better than that.

Ken Unsworth: And as a result of his intervention, I finished up studying to be a secondary art teacher at Melbourne University and ... and Melbourne Teachers College and RMIT. And ... so that was the beginnings. But ... it didn't really it didn't really light anything inside of me. It didn't didn't make me feel as if this is what I want to do. Teaching, yeah, but art, no that was that was something else. The practice of art. That was something else that only came about later.

Paul McGillick: You also went to the National Art School in Sydney, I think, at some stage.

Ken Unsworth: Oh, that's some years later. [That was years later.] Some years later, Yes.

Paul McGillick: Cause ... reading the book, there's there's a little amusing anecdote where, when you met Elizabeth, your your wife, wife to be, you ... she asked you what you did. You said you were an artist, but you didn't have any art, so you had to rush home and make some.

Ken Unsworth: That's right. I went back to Dimboola where I was teaching and rushed out into the Wimmera deserts or ... and did terrible watercolours and brought them back to show her, you know, like like some sort of male bird bringing something to the nest to, to impress the female, you know. But she must have seen something there. She sort of always supported my ... or she nurtured she, she brought about this desire to study art or look at art more seriously. And, you know, to cut a few years out. That's how we eventually came to Sydney and I went to the National Art School..

Paul McGillick: Well, my understanding is that you initially saw yourself as a painter, but you became known early on for your sculpture, which was constructed steel and aluminium sculpture. So which of these pieces, looking back now, do you see as the key, key pieces from that time? And also, were there influences at work, people like Anthony Caro or somebody like that?

Ken Unsworth: Eh... now I've got to sort of recollect on ... on these questions that you're asking me. I mean, after I finished at the art school I was painting, I'd studied painting there, and I was working as a painter. And once again, Elizabeth was pivotal in ... in changing my direction because she remarked about one ... a lot of my paintings and drawings looking very biomorphic, you know, forms. And she actually said to me, You're having all this trouble painting them. Why don't you make it?

Ken Unsworth: And so that was that was my first sculpture, Kinkeebird in the Drawing Room, which was literally a three dimensional representation of the painting that I'd ... that I'd done and drawings. And that immediately had a bit of success for me because it was selected into the Alorso Sekers, travelling competition and Elwyn Lynn at the time referred to it as the moral winner. So it gave me impetus to, to, to work as a ... in a sculptural way rather than painting. So for many years I didn't paint.,

Paul McGillick: Because it's funny, when I asked her that question, I forgot about Kinkeebird and the Drawing Room and I was thinking of piece like Nike in Wollongong, which is sort of very...

Ken Unsworth: That comes later ... that comes much later. The ... I had this problem of being on one hand rather objective and ... and on the other hand intuitive, emotional and, and sort of detachment. And so immediately after I made Kinkeebird in the Drawing Room, which was a confection of all sorts of materials and brightly coloured and all the rest of it, as Elwyn Lynn referred to it as something from Carnaby Street.

Ken Unsworth: I immediately then did a very severe geometric sculpture called Saalam and ... and then another one called Blaze, which won the Bicentenary competition in Sydney ... So, and that's, that's still with me, you know, I get worried when I do something that's too ... too what? Fraught with emotion or intuition or all the rest of it. I like to sort of have it, have it working in a in a clear, deductive way.

Paul McGillick: Well, just looking around, the work in this exhibition space, structure is a very important element, right? All of this work, really, and even in the performance works, which we'll talk about shortly, structure and traditional sculptural issues like support and balance and volume and so on are quite important.

Ken Unsworth: When, after I ... when I've been in the Venice Biennale and after the Venice Biennale, I went to Paris and did an exhibition there and I called it Myth, Narration and Structure. And that was sort of, that was sort of putting words to these sort of vaguery or vague senses of where to go. Myth because I painted mythological subjects and ... and the narrative story and structure, structure had to be a part of it anyway. So that's...

Paul McGillick: Well ... let's now move on to 1975 and Sculpture as Ritual and Burial piece which was given two performances, if that's the right word, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sydney in September and October 1975.

Paul McGillick: And may I just quote you from a note you wrote for the performance "Although these settings of Sculpture as Ritual are in fact sculptural, the idea of the sculptural objects succumbs to ideas about what can happen to the object. What happens when something happens to the object? The exposure time becomes critical, for it's the after image that delivers, that evokes memory of things not quite grasped". So can you elaborate a little bit on what was driving this work, Sculpture as Ritual and its companion piece, Burial piece and the significance it had for the works which followed

Ken Unsworth: Can I just go back a little bit? [Sure.] To be able to get to the performance works because that actually was a result of after ... after Elizabeth and I had been to America and I discovered Arte Povera or Arte Povera.

Ken Unsworth: That woke me to the fact that one didn't have to use expensive materials or elaborate ... elaborate configurations. That one could one could use natural materials very simply and directly and yet create evocative responses. And so I just went through things like branches and forms and bandages and torn blinds and then stones and the stones led to that whole series that led to the Venice Biennale and all the rest of it.

Ken Unsworth: But then I realised too, and that's what I was referring to later. I also realised that the human body was a natural material. So why not use the human body? And that's what led to Sculpture as Ritual. And ... what I wanted to do in that was that I wanted to emphasise that ... that it wasn't, it wasn't sculpture per se, as it sat in a corner forever, but it was something that was to evoke something very, very deep inside the viewer.

Ken Unsworth: And the way to do that was to make some sort of image, that you saw it and then it impinged on the brain and stayed there. And I and I did meet people many years later who said, I still remember that show. [Yeah.] So that proves ... so each of those, each of those installations, if we call them that or what they call them, settings [settings], each of those settings was only a minute, just a very dramatic but only a minute for the audience to get it and grasp it. But it stayed.

Paul McGillick: But ... but those sculpture issues were certainly present, like suspension and tension, [yes] for example.,

Ken Unsworth: But using the body,

Paul McGillick: Particularly the five, set, the first five settings.

Ken Unsworth: Yeah, using the body as a structural element ... not ... I mean, at the same time, you know, people like Mike Parr and others were ... were doing interventions of the body and that ... that I had no interest in at all. I wanted to to move away from that humanness involvement and just using the body as a structural element.

Paul McGillick: Yeah. Well ... more animated installations followed Sculpture as Ritual, so you had A Different Drummer in 1976. Face to Face in 1977, Gunfire also at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1978, which was part of your Project Show, Project Number 28, and Rhythms of Childhood in 1982 for the Fourth Biennale of Sydney.

Paul McGillick: So I'm intrigued by the fact that you also did a work for the Art Gallery in New South Wales in 1995, the title was Face to Face, which I assume comes from Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians ... and ... if you will indulge me for a moment. Can I quote Saint Paul because I want to follow up on this. This is a very famous thing.

Paul McGillick: "When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now, we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now, I know in part. But then shall I know, even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity. These three. But the greatest of these is charity". Now, it seems to me, since you've used two quotes from Saint Paul, it must mean a lot to you. So can you tell me a little bit about how those titles came to be [I knew you'd ask me something] what the significance was?

Ken Unsworth: I knew you'd ask me some deep question [difficult questions]. And that's that's something that I have to clarify with you straight away. I'm not a deep thinker. I'm not a deep reader. And that's what I mean about this intuitive things. Things come to my ... I don't know where they've come, where they've come. They come out of the aether. And that quote that you're talking about Face to Face. I mean that just ... echoed in my head. It sort of meant something. And so I used it because I felt that it was a companion to what I was doing or a sort of sort of explanation.

Paul McGillick: Of course, at the time, if I don't know which years. But Ingmar Bergman made two films, one called Face to Face and one Through A Glass Darkly. So possibly you picked up on that. You were aware of those films?

Ken Unsworth: yeah, probably.

Paul McGillick: But anyway, that still doesn't let you off the hook. You still have to explain to us what the significance of it is and what you were trying to do with these works. Like, let's take A Different Drummer..

Ken Unsworth: Probably, probably ... you see, I mean, I have to clarify this for the camera and for you. I'm not one of those sort of people that has ... has worked it out philosophically and metaphorically and all the rest of it. You know, it comes out of me very intuitively, and I don't often look to try and explain it. I leave that to other people to do.

Ken Unsworth: I can only say that I have ... I have, you know, a reaction to something that's I've heard or seen or felt and that, that can lead me in a certain direction. So ... but I, to try and answer your question, I think it was something to, to explore within myself that I felt had a, that had, could, could evoke the same sort of thing in other people.

Ken Unsworth: We all share ... we all share sort of, the same sort of deep ... emotions and feelings and all the rest of it, you know. And so if you can evoke that in in your audience, in the viewer, then you're giving that person a chance of interpreting it or experiencing it in their own personal way. And that has more meaning for them.

Ken Unsworth: There's nothing worse, in my opinion, than someone to go into a gallery and see a work that's so didactic and so, so self explanatory that they look at it and say, Ah, yeah, and move off. The work has got to somehow get inside the viewer and work its magic or otherwise so that the viewer then experiences something that you probably didn't even think of that you didn't intend. But it has a very lasting effect on the person, on the viewer.

Paul McGillick: Well see, the reason why I ask about these shows is that there seem to be preoccupations in your work. I take your point. This is intuitive and you don't and probably you don't want to spell it out. But there are issues which recur all through your career.

Paul McGillick: And let's take A Different drummer because this is a very kind of explicit thing in a sense, where there's a doll put on a beam, the doll crawls along the beam, it falls off, you ... went, picked it up, put it up, put it back on the beam and did it all over again. Well, this is sending a fairly powerful message, isn't it, about a vision of what human life is.

Ken Unsworth: ... cycle of human life. And I mean, I sort of missed saying that point, you know, that after, after the Secular Pierces, which were static, then it came to me that it was quite a sensible thing to sort of animate it, have movement in it, which led to Face to Face. And then and then the A Different Drummer and the Different Drummer, I have to concede, was actually as a result of Elizabeth's son being so ill, it set my thoughts moving on this cycle of life, of death and all the rest of it.

Ken Unsworth: And so that ... the image of that and how it could be represented was immediate in my head. Like, like the, the bouncing ball one that that came almost like a vision. So I can't explain them. But that ... that particular one, A Different Drummer, certainly came out of real life.

Paul McGillick: Also I guess going back to that quote, that from Sculpture as Ritual where you talk about the after image, because memory seems to be a very important issue in your work and. And the images you create are like fragments of memory, out of which what we construct some idea of our lives or...

Ken Unsworth: Yeah. well, we have to we have to add another little element in here ... that I've always drawn. And I've drawn thousands, I've made thousands of drawings. And I can almost remember every one of them. I can visualise them. And so sometimes an image or part of that image, of a drawing comes to me at a certain time and helps shape a work that I'm currently working on. And so this idea of memory is something that is a key in my work.

Ken Unsworth: I did, I did a work here in the studio, which you it's a pity you didn't see, but it consists of nine effigies of me, that I cast of my body, full size, and they were lined up and another figure in front of them that pulls a bell, a beautiful Mexican bronze bell that we bought. And it would ring the bell and the figures would shake. And then as it died away, they stopped and they stood there silently. And then the bell rings again and they shake. And it's called Memory. [Yeah] The bell evokes some sort of memory.

Paul McGillick: Well I think ... Charles Baudelaire, I think, who said that all art ... or for the artist, it all comes from memories of childhood [Yeah, absolutely] or something like that.

Paul McGillick: All right ... just, I don't want to jump too far ahead, but all these installations you've done over the years. Looking back on them, how do you view them today? Do you have a different view today that you had at the time you made them?

Ken Unsworth: The feelings and the ideas that motivate me, that push me in a certain direction to create something, that's constant, that that doesn't change with the vagaries of the present situation or any, any situation. You know, the cultural wars and identity and gender issues and all that, that that's just in the aether as far as I'm concerned ... as far as I'm concerned with my work.

Ken Unsworth: So the forces or or the or the yeah, the forces that are driving me to, to create new installations ... still come out of what we've been talking about and. But in the wider world, in the contemporary, wider world, they're irrelevant.

Paul McGillick: All right. Well, look, just looking around here, also, I just wanted to talk about your use of found materials. These found materials are sometimes from the natural world. You did at one stage, did a lot of work with just materials you picked up around the property at Arcadia, which you then owned. So this suggests sort of environmental or landscape art, people like Richard Serra, Richard Long, Michael Heizer, these sorts of people.

Paul McGillick: And sometimes it's just the detritus of everyday life, like banal fragments which sort of simply make up a picture of life like pianos, birds, chairs, children's toys, a metronome, hay, straw, wardrobes, rocking horses, along with soundscapes also of everyday noises. So can you tell me a little bit about these choices and how these things function in your work?,

Ken Unsworth: Well, I sort of realised after discovering Arte Povera and, and picking up these materials and all the rest of it, that I realised particularly with river stones, that they have a life of their own. The discarded object has had a life of its own and if you can bring it into another context where it where it reveals itself, that's what, that's what's behind Arte Povera. And that's what drove me to use those materials to explore them as far as I could. And I mean, for example.

Ken Unsworth: When I do have an idea or when I'm working on an idea, I tend to to do as many drawings to exhaust the possibilities in that one ... not, not necessarily in one session, but over a period of time, to exhaust them. So, for example, all the stoneworks that I, which I just started off with tiny little stones and put them in various configurations and all the rest of it, from them. So the, the one that's in the Art Gallery of New South Wales now that was all done in the space of three years. [Yeah] But they just existed as drawings. There was no opportunity to do them.

Paul McGillick: Well, since we're talking about the stones that leads me ...

Ken Unsworth: did I answer the rest of your question?

Paul McGillick: Well sort of, but we'll come back to it, don't worry. We'll come back to it.

Ken Unsworth: You remember, I'm 92, I can't ...

Paul McGillick: The Venice Biennale in 1978, this was a big turning point you showed there jointly with John Davis and Robert Owen. And again, I want to quote, because Robert Hughes really talked it up big time in Time magazine when he said "Unsworth's stone pieces possess an almost crushing, iconic power. His circle of rocks hanging from a metal beam, but seeming to float a few inches off the floor, is the most impressive new sculpture in the Biennale this year". So looking back, what was the significance of this period, especially the Venice Biennale for you?

Ken Unsworth: To be quite frank, it was just another step... I'm not one that is given to overflowing, joyful emotions. Just because somebody wrote a good review about the work. It's the next work that you're thinking about is where you're going and the possibilities are yet to be explored. So I was, I was very happy that, that, that it did receive the recognition that it received. But ...

Paul McGillick: But it must have been a turning point because, well, one for example, that piece that Hughes singles out that I believe is now in the Kroller-Muller collection in Holland. And after that, you got on the international circuit. So it must have kick started an international career for you.,

Ken Unsworth: Oh it did. Yes, it did ... was his name? Stanislavski. From the Studio Museum in Poland? He he invited me to go and do a work there. Which, that one there is a is a copy of the work that I did. And then there was another one, a smaller maquette that they had as well. And that then led me to be invited into another Polish exhibition called Construction in Process in '81.

Ken Unsworth: And then René Block, you know, he, he had been sussing out what was going on in Australia and he saw my work and that led to various exhibitions in Europe and Berlin and yeah ... I mean, that that happens, you know, you someone, someone sees your work and thinks, oh, we'd like to see more of it and they give you an opportunity to do it.

Paul McGillick: Well, in 1979, you were in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and you saw the work of Joseph Beuys for the first time. And the impact was quite significant. And according to my research, it was first manifested in your work in the piece In Concert at the Art Gallery of WA in 1983, as part of a show which Tony Bond put together called Presence and Absence. So what was it about Beuys that fascinated you and how was it expressed through your work?,

Ken Unsworth: Well, it's hard to talk about it now, but when I first saw that, that work, which was the piano wrapped in the felt, I immediately, I immediately thought ... it's still alive and playing inside there. But we don't hear it. It's inner life is being denied to us. It made an immense impact to me.

Ken Unsworth: And so it spoke to me. And when I came back to Australia, I couldn't get it out of my head. So I thought of, in a way, I'm talking to Beuys, you know, because I tried to learn a bit more about him. I'm talking to Beuys and and what he's saying echoes with me. So this idea of voices in concert, communicating with each other, led to that piece called In Concert.

Ken Unsworth: So that the piano with the voice, with the ... the, you know, the the Beuys' Butter Chair, the chair with the butter. I replaced the butter with steel spikes on a slope. There was his cane, his hat and ... the cockatoo represented the Australian, Australiana if you like, and it was all in one circle. And so the cockatoo was squawking, the the piano key was moving. And in that, as an intervention, was this giant circular saw tearing into the back of the piano. So that cacophony was the conversation in concert. [Of course.] And of course, it's a play on words.

Paul McGillick: Cause that makes me think of pianos, because pianos have played and continue to play an important role. Are you able to talk about the significance of the piano? Because it seems to be more significant than a lot of other things?

Ken Unsworth: Well, I've always played the piano. Well, I mean, I ... I learned to play the piano by myself. You know, I didn't have a teacher. I never had a teacher. And in the, In the 40s and the 50s, I really taught myself how to play Beethoven and Mozart, just had a facility, but an untrained one, which I'm paying the price of that now. So I always had this love of the piano. You know, I'd spend hours playing at the piano in Hamilton.

Ken Unsworth: So. When I saw what Beuys was doing with it, and then, of course, I, I learnt more about Fluxus and how other artists were, were tinkering with pianos and other musical instruments and things like that. It really tickled me. You know, I thought, God, I wish I'd been in Germany in the 60s, you know, I would have been right in this Fluxus stuff. And so ... that's ... and Elizabeth played the piano. [Yeah.] And so, I mean, the piano still is a very important part of my of my life, of my living and of my thinking and dreaming. So that's the explanation.

Paul McGillick: So, explanation sort of has has multiple resonances, I guess, for you. [Yeah.] Image of the piano. All right. Let's see later.

Ken Unsworth: Of course, and of course, it also like, you know, the step piano, which I, which I call Radiant Radiance. I mean, that was a vehicle to to make a comment about Elizabeth, you know, and so it served that purpose as well.

Paul McGillick: Well, just a little bit later, the next year, in fact, in 1980, you had a residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. And then in 1987, a DAAD scholarship for the Berliner Kunstler program in Berlin. These residencies in Berlin must have been quite well, I think, were important for you. Is that right? And if so, how?

Ken Unsworth: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, the first time when Elizabeth and I went there, the Bethanien, that my little experiments there led to, to, to. I've forgotten the name of A Different Drummer. No, not, you know, the one with the bouncing ball ...

Paul McGillick: Yeah I was trying to remember the name. I can't remember.

Ken Unsworth: ... name of it, but ... Rhythms of Childhood, of course. And that came to me because we were in Kreuzberg. And, you know, I mean, communists were over the wall and there was a little communist cell living nearby, The Kunstler House, which we used to go and visit and talk to despite warnings not to. But the thing was that the streets were full of kids, you know, Turkish kids, and mainly Turk ... because it was a Turkish area. And this bouncing the ball, you could hear it echoing in the streets. So that's how that became ...

Paul McGillick: Kreuzberg, were living in Kreuzberg [yeah Kreuzberg], where all the Gastarbeiter and people lived ...

Ken Unsworth: Yeah, Yeah. The Kniepers always are really good. So that was important. And then the second time that I went there for a year, that didn't work out the way I'd hoped. You know, I mean, I thought, I hoped that I would sort of really find myself, you know, in a way. I always envy artists who sort of found a way of working and then just did that and in a way that made them always, always recognisable.

Ken Unsworth: You know, they had their, that, that's that artist, you know, whereas I was forever, betwixt and between, you know, put my foot here and I'd go into a swamp and put my foot here and I was somewhere else. So that's always been a ... a matter of concern for me, which I've not been able to solve or deal with. And so I've taken the attitude, oh, well, I can only do what I do and what I think, you know, I'm not going to tear myself up worrying about it.

Ken Unsworth: So the second time I was there was not as ... um, it didn't, it didn't lead to what I was hoping it would lead to. I did some good drawing, and I did one good installation called Tread Softly, which was then in another exhibition. And then I was in a group exhibition and things like that. So I was quite happy to come back to Australia and...

Paul McGillick: Okay. Yeah. Alright. Well, so you've mentioned drawings. You had an exhibition of drawings in Berlin, and so I'd just like to talk about the drawings a little bit because drawing has always been important to you throughout your whole career. You've done a wide variety of drawings, not just the ones which I find particularly interesting, the sculptural drawings. So can you talk a little bit about the function of drawing in, in your practice, given that there is a wide variety of drawings that you've done?,

Ken Unsworth: Well first of all, it comes out of a purely practical thing. I mean, if you if you have a concept of a work. You sketch it to try and give it some visual form that you can work on to, to make it materialise in actuality. So there's that process. Then there's that process where you're just exploring an idea from spontaneity to whatever the idea was and exploring that. And, and then deliberately trying to fulfil some object ... objective, like a public sculpture or, or a sculptural object or something like that.

Ken Unsworth: And then more latterly, more latterly doing drawings for performances. And you know, that's involving other people performances and the setting sets and things like that. With the pianos, I think, I think the ... no, that's not true, I don't have more drawings of pianos than any other, but I have a huge number of, about a thousand, drawings of variations on the piano.

Ken Unsworth: And I just wish that I had the time and the, and the energy and the capacity to explore all those, like, you know, one of them is a piano that's made in glass. Purely in glass. I'm never sure what else would happen, whether there'd be something burning inside there or something like that, you know? But that's just one example.

Paul McGillick: Because a lot of drawings are, the sculptural drawings, seem to me to be drawings for, shall we call them impossible objects. [Yes.] Aren't they? These are sculptures which could never be made, but so it's really for the viewer to create the sculpture in their own head.

Ken Unsworth: Yeah. It's funny you use that phrase because one of the dance works that I did here, I called it Seven ... Seven Impossible Pieces for Four Dancers. That idea of the impossible is always there. But ... once I was in Denmark to do an installation and also give a lecture to the the students at the art school. And Tony Cragg was there as well. And he gave a lecture and he said exactly what I've always thought. I didn't sort of say it anyway.

Ken Unsworth: He was exhorting the students of the art school and he said, every day you should do 10 or 20 drawings, every day. And then perhaps one day a work will come out of it. And it's true. You have to keep the mind churning over. That's what the drawings do. If you if you if you're not doing that, if you're not constantly trying to get the brain to sift through things and and find, coalesce them into some sort of idea, well, then you become brain dead.

Paul McGillick: Well, I notice in your book, at the back, in the acknowledgements, the name Godfrey Miller. I'm just wondering, what influence did Miller have? Because I'm just thinking maybe to do with the drawings. He was [huge] a prolific...

Ken Unsworth: ... A huge influence. When I went to the art school, which to me was a total disaster for me, because I mean, I'd already making paintings that were intuitive and mythological and based on Aboriginal things, and I was probably be really put down now. But ... but you know, these, they were my own explorations and ... just coming under...

Ken Unsworth: So when I went to the National Art School, there was the house style, and the house style was this sort of heavy, dull post-impressionism that was sort of pushed a lot by John Passmore, you know, who is a good painter. But I mean ... and we were required to do life drawings, so I attended life drawing classes during the day.

Ken Unsworth: And Dorothy Thornhill was there, who was married to Douglas Dundas, she was my teacher. And I mean, she was forever trying to get me to do it in a certain way. You know, there was one of the things I hate about teachers who try and get people to do things a certain way or think in a certain way. You have to draw out what's there in the individual. And that never happened with her.

Ken Unsworth: So, I don't know how it was. I think I had heard of Godfrey Miller and he was a revered figure. That he was doing live classes at night. So I went there. It was a revelation. First of all, he hardly ever spoke. He'd sit up the back and have his little pad and he'd be drawing. And then sometimes he'd sort of ... pass around and have a look at people's drawings. And then one day he came up to me and he said, "What's the little fella's"?

Ken Unsworth: And I wonder what he meant by that and what he meant by that were these silly dot marks, the things that Dorothy Thornhill used to teach, you know, a dot here and drawing and dots here and, you know. And anyway, I've still got ... I've still got a very big folder of drawings that I did under his tutelage and that, that made me realise .... in fact, he said that, he said, you you draw what you know, not what you see. He was a terrific influence.

Ken Unsworth: And we fortunately, we knew him quite well because he lived down the road from us. And sometimes I used to bring him home for a night in the car and he'd come and have a cup of tea on Sunday afternoon.

Ken Unsworth: One day he came and it was the, it was the week that John Kennedy got assassinated. And on that weekend, I said, well, I'm going. And he was sitting with Elizabeth and this tiny little, tiny little, what do you call it, stable that we were living in. And I said, oh, I'm going to go and have a look at some exhibitions. And he said, Why do you want to do that for? Get something. It was lovely, man.

Paul McGillick: Alright, let's see ...

Ken Unsworth: Its very severe. [Yeah] Don't you think? He was a jolly old thing? Oh, no, he was very severe.,

Paul McGillick: Well, I just the other day I was speaking to Geoffrey De Groen, and he said exactly the same thing as you about both Godfrey Miller and Dorothy Thornhill.

Paul McGillick: Well, since we're talking about drawing, let's talk about painting, because you began as a painter, but in recent ... and you've continued painting. But it seems to me in recent years, you've gone back to it a lot more.

Ken Unsworth: I stopped painting. When did I stopped painting in? In the ... when did I go to Bathurst? ... 60s. In the 60s. I stopped painting. Shortly after the art school. When I did Kinkeebird, after I did Kinkeebird, I just did drawings and didn't paint and all the rest of it.

Ken Unsworth: And then after spending, what ... Chris [Axelsen] is not here, so he can't remind me. I think, I think we did performances in here with dancers and musicians and all the rest of it for about 14 years, 13 years. And ... I eventually got sick and tired of this, you know? The dancers were getting old. They couldn't. Sort of. No, seriously ...

Paul McGillick: Well, we'll come back to that.

Ken Unsworth: So I thought, Oh, God, I'm going to go back to doing installations. And so I started doing installations. And then because I was doing installations, I was doing drawings of them. And then that led me to do some painting. And then I kept on painting.

Paul McGillick: You did. But you did that show in New York in the 1980s, [Ah, the Kaldor show] you did for that didn't you?

Ken Unsworth: The Kaldor show. What do you want me to talk about that. You want me to talk about that?,

Paul McGillick: Well, no, I'm just saying, you said you'd stopped painting, but you did, you did ... you must have done some intermittently.

Ken Unsworth: Kaldor show was, you know, sort of out of the blue. I wanted to do installations, and he quite rightly pointed out to me, he said, Ken, you know, your installations have a habit of breaking down. I want you to do some painting.

Ken Unsworth: So. Well, we were living at Arcadia at the time, so we went out there and I thought, God, what am I going to paint with? And. Well, I'd been doing ... I'd been doing drawings with bitumen because when I went to Japan, I saw this incredible series of Geikie paintings in the Tokyo Museum.

Ken Unsworth: And so I did quite a few with tar. So I did his show using tar to paint with and, and I was with Roslyn Oxley Gallery at that time. I got an ... after the show in New York and and in Washington I got an offer for him to do an exhibition at a ... I can't remember her name now ... gallery in New York.

Paul McGillick: Yeah I've forgotten too.

Ken Unsworth: And I came back here to Australia and Roslyn said to me, you know, we want you to do a painting show. And I foolishly wrote back to her and said, look, can I do it next year because I've got a show here in Singapore. So it never happened, which is just as well. Yeah. Anyway, that's ... painting is an indulgence. It's not. Yes, I'm not. I'm not a painter. I don't ... I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I, it just hither and thither and anon. But at least it keeps me occupied. It keeps me from doing untoward things at home.

Paul McGillick: All right. Let's move on. We talked a little bit before about the role of memory in your work. I'm just also curious a bit, because this, just last week, Milan Kundera died and [I didn't know that], yes, he did. He died last week, aged 92. And I don't want to put the mozz on you, but just ... [just as well I'm doing this interview] Literature has played quite a role. For example, Rainer Maria Rilke, a Ringing Glass which you use from his Sonnets to Orpheus. What about can you say anything about the role of literature and it's import ... how it's worked for you?

Ken Unsworth: I mean, when I was a kid, I was absolutely enamoured of books. You know, I'd go to the library and, I'd go through the books. And I was always attracted to, to authors with strange names. And so that's how I read and didn't understand Dosteovsky when I was about 12 and Tolstoy and people like that.

Ken Unsworth: So I've always had this love of books and I used to read about four books a week and, and I was still reading up to the time that I was in very much enamoured with, with the Japanese writer, what's his name, who committed hari kari, wrote The Sea of Fertility, which you haven't read, you should read.

Paul McGillick: So I get all the Japanese writers names mixed up. I get them all mixed up. The Japanese.

Ken Unsworth: You see, this see this is where my memory is bad. Salman Rushdie. I read all his books, The Mann Brothers, Thomas Mann and all the rest of it. And Thomas Mann is a huge sort of voice in my head because I've done I've done numerous drawings of an installation called The Magic Mountain. [Yeah]

Ken Unsworth: Because of all the, you know, the political, the emotional, the psychosis or the psychology in his work, is just amazing. But my sight. As you probably know, is deteriorating rapidly. And I haven't been able to read because it's just too difficult. You know, it gives me a headache. So I've been lost to literature.

Paul McGillick: Well, you know, I mentioned that Milan Kundera died, and so I got all my...

Ken Unsworth: Milan Kundera, all his books I have.

Paul McGillick: Well, yeah, because that interest me. I mean, I have a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. And when I opened it up, there's a dedication in it from you and Elizabeth. [Oh, really?] It was a present. So what about Kundera? Why was Kundera so important?,

Ken Unsworth: Oh, I was struck by the ... the otherworldliness of it. It's... it's hard for me to remember now, you know? It's not as if I'm a literary giant talking about literature. It just had that ... other quality, you know, that, that lifted it into another another plane. That's a very banal way of putting it. But yeah.

Paul McGillick: Well, anyway, let's we can say that literature in its own way has had quite an important role.

Ken Unsworth: And, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke love his poetry and you know. In fact, poetry has always been very important to me. I mean, I was reading Shakespeare's sonnets and, and Milton in my teens.

Paul McGillick: Well, you write a bit of poetry or used to. Didn't you?

Ken Unsworth: I wouldn't call it poetry.

Paul McGillick: Alright. So, now we come to this kind of long phase where you're working with Australian Dance Artists, with Patrick Harding-Irmer and Anka Frankenhauser and Susan Barling, Ross Philp, Norman Hall. There's quite a long association, [Yeah] Can you tell me how did it come about and what were you aiming for with this collaboration?

Ken Unsworth: Well first of all, you know, that's another thing. I mean, I've always loved dance. [Yeah] And and I've always been drawn to contemporary dance, you know. I'm utterly bored to go and watch Swan Lake or Nutcracker, even if it's beautifully done. No one, you know. And when I came back from, oh God, I can't remember, it was, there was a dance group called One Extra. Do you remember that? [Yeah, sure] And what was his name? The...

[cross talk] Kai ... Yes... I forget the other. But yeah. know who it.. I think. Some reason or other, he rang me... Kai Tai...

Ken Unsworth: Kai Tai. That's right. He rang me up and said, look, we'd like you to come and do something with the dancers over in Palmer Street, you know, in that church. And I thought, what will I do? Oh, I know. So I've got a whole lot of rope. This is way back. This is '79. Or is that. Is that his period? I forgotten. I told you. I warned you. I'm terrible with dates. Anyway, so I took all this rope. When we go there. And I dumped it on the floor and I said, do something with it.

Ken Unsworth: They scratched their bottoms and their heads and they didn't know what to do with it. You know, I mean, it was. And so, Kai Tai, I never got in contact with. [Okay] And then, I mean, a few years later, dancers are swinging on ropes and doing things with ropes. You know, I mean, it just so.

Ken Unsworth: Now, when was, when did Norman Hall get in cont...? Anyway Norman Hall got in contact with me and said, I work with a group of dancers and they rehearsed down at Lake Burley Griffin, not Burley Griffin. What's the name of the lake on the way to Canberra? So it was the what's the name of the lake on the way to Canberra.

Paul McGillick: Oh, Lake George.

Ken Unsworth: Lake George, yeah. So with trepidation, I went down there after this other experience and they were all mucking about on Lake George. You know, at that time there was hardly any water and was all muddy. So we spent about 3 or 4 days mucking about with mud and bits of timber and stuff and going up into the ... And then that led to our first collaboration that the photographic centre in Canberra.

Ken Unsworth: And then, then we did. Well, you know, they're all listed there. We did one of the Art Gallery of New South Wales called Mr. Out and About, which was, when I when I look at it every now and again, I think there's some really good moments in it, really, you know, really nice.

Ken Unsworth: So we just got a bit more serious about it because we used to rehearse, this wall, used to be about half of this size and we worked in that and we had big mirrors up there for them to be able to enjoy their bodies. And so eventually I made it much bigger like this, this space. And then we had the idea that we'd actually do the performances here. So we put a stage up there and used the pews for the audience and all the rest of it and went on from there.

Paul McGillick: So how, how what was the nature of your relationship to the dancers? Because you're not a choreographer.

Ken Unsworth: Oh, I stick my bib in ...

Paul McGillick: Yeah, to a certain extent. But [yes, yes]...

Ken Unsworth: I hate ... I hesitate to talk like this, but I have to ... I have to. The dancers. The group came with, with, with their own memories. And their own. Their own ...

Paul McGillick: What you call embodied cognition.

Ken Unsworth: Name is, the word has slipped my mind. Their own vocabulary. [Exactly] Of dance movements and things so that you know that they've used endlessly in, in different performances, whether it's been in London or whether it's Sydney or wherever they've been. And I could see those movements appearing every now and again. So I'd get a bit impatient about it and, and try and steer them in a different direction.

Ken Unsworth: So it was a ... it was done very gently. You know, I didn't try to boss them, tell them what to do in the beginning, but towards the end I ... was beginning to say, you know, do this, but ... I better not say much more about it because they're all alive, and probably see this, but Restraint was the last one we did. And. And that was a real disappointment to me there.

Paul McGillick: Alright. That just about brings us to the end. But, so I now need to ask you, though, what, what you're doing at the moment. I know you're painting. Are you doing any sculptural work at the moment?,

Ken Unsworth: No, well you I see. I mean, the fact that my eyes are so bad. [Yeah] I really, I really can't do anything very fine. And ... I'm just getting, I mean, I'm still doing drawings for sculptures or installations. Like, I've got my eye on the on the Oil Tank of the Sydney Modern, but I'll probably never get asked to do something there. But I do different. I draw up certain different proposals for that. So I'm still, I'm still working on the idea of and maquettes and things like that and get Chris to try and make some of them or get them made.

Paul McGillick: Well, yes. I was saying in next door in the workshop, there's Chris and Victoria working away there. What are they working on? Well you've got.

Ken Unsworth: Oh well, at the moment we've been renovating, Teaching Three Pianos to Sing in Unison because the Art Gallery [of NSW] supposedly want to have it ... I'll believe it when I see it. But anyway, we have to do that to make sure it was all in working order.

Ken Unsworth: So I just go home and I paint and draw or. And that's becoming difficult because, I mean, I don't want to sound, I don't want to sound like some sort of hypochondriac or an invalid, but it's true that unfortunately, if I'm up close, the painting looks very different from when I'm back further. So it makes it very difficult for me to know what's going on.

Ken Unsworth: So that's what happens when you get old. I've joined the DBB Club. Deaf, blind and batty.

Paul McGillick: OK. Alright, Well, we'll call it a wrap. Thanks, Ken, for your time.

Ken Unsworth: Pleasure.

Credits

Interviewer: Dr. Paul McGillick

Producer & Videographer: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & Assembly Dr. Bob Jansen