Sarah and I were thinking that it would be a good reversal of the usual practice if, instead of the resident writer (me) asking questions to everyone else, I instead became the person who everyone interviewed…

Here are the questions that Jock and Mia asked me (I will be grilled by Sarah and Steven next week).

Questions from Jock:

Have I told you that I love you?
Yes, but not in the last 24 hours. Was it something I said?

What is the worst question I could ask you and why?
Who is the best out of the three artists?

Who’s best? Mia, Steven or Jock?
Oh… This reminds me of those times at school when the bigger kids would come up to you and prod you on the shoulder and shout: “Oi, if your house was on fire and you could only rescue one of your parents, would you save your mum or your dad?” (Maybe that means I should answer you with: “Whichever one of you gives me the most sweets.”) Anyway, I think you have rearranged your space in the most interesting way during the exhibition; almost every day the space seems to have a different feel, with new works and new arrangements and the paint-splattered drying rack showing that it can be split up and rearranged in an almost infinite number of interesting ways. I think Mia is experimenting most widely with different media – painting, drawing, film, sculpture – and I like the way she is really engaging with the space and using the oddities of the architecture (lots of pillars and glass) to her advantage. Steven has been an art-generating whirlwind in his time here: he seems to have created the most raw material to work with (all pretty good from what I’ve seen). It will be interesting to see how many works he creates in the future that have been inspired by his time here, as the footage he has taken – about boxing, about boxers, about trauma, about treatment – would appear to lend itself to quite a range of different projects.

Questions from Mia:

Do you think that you have ownership over your section of ‘Laboratory’ (the text for the blog) in the same way as we, the artists, each have a designated space?
I think that Sarah has given me the same freedom as she has given the artists – there really aren’t any fixed rules about what I can and cannot put on the blog – so it is an area that I can use to express myself however I wish. At the same time I feel that the blog won’t make much sense (or be very useful) if it doesn’t report on what is happening during the show: asking the artists about their work, asking Sarah how the exhibition is progressing, gauging visitor reactions, documenting one off events such as the discussion evening, etc. The blog also has photographs taken by Magnus and Paul, while Sarah and Jock have been blogging their thoughts and feeds have been coming in from Twitter (some of them rather wonderfully random), so the blog hasn’t been solely my little fiefdom, but then this hasn’t impinged on the amount of space available to me – I can still write and write to my heart’s content about whatever I choose…

As you are also an art critic, how would you review this show if you were asked to?
OK, so you know that I’m going to say that my review would unequivocally state that the show is BRILLIANT, but I think examining why, as a critic, you are generally pre-disposed to praise a show that you have been closely involved with is an interesting exercise too. The more you get to know the artists and curator of an exhibition the more difficult it is to be disparaging of what they have done. This isn’t just because you almost invariably get to like them as people and want them to do well, it is also that you have gained a deeper understanding of the thought processes behind their work. Quite often they have thought of a wider range of issues than was first apparent on viewing their work and something that you maybe thought was quite simplistic or crass probably has depth to it that you hadn’t considered. I don’t mean by this that the only criticism that is valid is criticism that is born from a month-long engagement with the work. Art can’t always be engaged with over such a long timespan and other reactions that you have to an artwork – the initial hit it gives you and also its relation to other artworks you have seen – are interesting and valid too. Having said all of that I have always enjoyed exhibitions that are willing to try something unusual and aren’t afraid to put their mistakes as well as their successes on show, so I think ‘Laboratory’ is the sort of exhibition I would have enjoyed anyway.

How experimental do you think you are being?
I think I have the same internal dialogue as the artists: to what extent should I treat ‘Laboratory’ as a time to try something totally different and to what degree should I treat it as a time to develop and gradually extend the work I already do? Also, is there a danger of just being experimental for the sake of it? I think I’d like to find some sort of balance between all of these questions that I am happy with. Asking the artists to interview me as the resident critic, rather than the other way around, feels like a departure from what you’d expect in an art catalogue or an art bog and I’m hoping to try a few more things in a similar vein next week. As I mentioned before, there is a danger of just being experimental for the sake of it, but for me this danger isn’t too great. One thing that I have found in ‘Laboratory’ so far is that even the failures have generally failed in an interesting way. And I often find that when you read a piece of critical writing that has a very odd take on an exhibition – perhaps analysing the show in a way that you strongly disagree with – you do nevertheless end up discussing it for much longer than you would otherwise.