‘I first made that video on my own in the studio in 2020 when everything closed down,’ the artist says. ‘Looking back, maybe there’s something about masking — certainly about interiority versus stuff spilling out.’
Share this article
Clay the Fool
William Cobbing works with clay. Sometimes, as in the series that began with Will.je.suis, he sticks his head inside a boulder of wet clay and slices chunks off it with cheese wire. Vivid gloop oozes out of eye and mouth cavities like some kind of mad Cadbury’s Cream Egg.
"We’re all really just lumps of flesh careering around in space"
William Cobbing, Grog Cave, 2024. Mixed media. Exhibited on a 24" screen inside clay wall-based sculpture, dimensions variable. Duration: 5 minutes 33 seconds. Courtesy the artist and Sid Motion Gallery. Photography: Daniel Browne
You don’t need a B in GCSE French to hear the play on ‘I am’ in the title Will.je.suis. But you need to be either an existentialist or partial to silliness to not freak out when Cobbing says, ‘We’re not made of clay, we’re all really just lumps of flesh careering around in space.’ Look past the bright, dripping paint, and you might see a skull.
Still from William Cobbing, The new flesh, 2023. HD single channel video. Exhibited on a 50" screen. Courtesy the artist and Sid Motion Gallery. Photography: Daniel Browne
"You're focused on sensory things, the sound of the squelching, its weight, the sensory deprivation when you’re inside it"
Clay, as Cobbing points out, is cheap, accessible, democratic. It is as familiar to primary school art departments as it is the world over to religions and mythologies, which tell of miraculous births, life breathed into clay. Of course, we all someday return to it, too.
Cobbing’s work is as easily parsed as it is passed around. Its idiomatic quality is satisfying in sculptures like Grapnel (2023), which sees celadon hands extending from a mouth to clutch its own eye sockets, humorously recalling phrases like get a grip on yourself. The hands are hook-shaped, as if the sculpture is climbing or slipping down its own surface. ‘Grapnel’ has nothing to do with ‘grog’, Cobbing’s preferred type of clay, but there are a lot of Gs flying around, really old Germanic words, such as a video work called ‘dumbmud’, which add to a suspicion that Cobbing’s works have always been around. His material certainly has.
Installation view of The Darling of Reflection. L-R: Index (2023), Jini (2023), Grapnel (2023). Courtesy the artist and Sid Motion Gallery. Photography: Daniel Browne
Grapnel’s ouroboros logic resonates not only with Cobbing’s looping video works (and their palindromic titles), but with the paintings by Emerson Pullman and Liorah Tchiprout; together, the three artists make up The Darling of Reflection at Sid Motion Gallery, an exhibition exploring the constructed portrait.
"Cobbing’s work continuously refers you back to its own sensuousness, pulling the viewer quite literally back down to earth"
And at the gallery a couple weeks ago, Cobbing constructed a ‘portrait’ of me as part of the live performance So You. In this work, the artist makes 10 clay heads for 10 different sitters – the twist being Cobbing can’t see any of us, what with his head enclosed in another wet boulder. In his videos, the artist likes to crop the angle so his figures could be TV newsreaders, and oddly the effect translates live: in person, the big lump of clay has the proportions and slapstick energy of a kid pretending to be a newsreader with a cardboard box TV on their head.
Detail of William Cobbing, Headspace (Reflection), 2024. Mixed material. Exhibited on a 24" screen, dimensions variable. Duration: 5 minutes 50 seconds. Courtesy the artist and Sid Motion Gallery. Photography: Daniel Browne
Wet clay is important because it's meditative. ‘You're focused on sensory things, the sound of the squelching, its weight, the sensory deprivation when you’re inside it,’ Cobbing says. Often, we place more value on a finished work, whereas here what’s emphasised is ‘the process, and not even making with purpose – absent-minded making.’ After artists such as Bruce Nauman, Cobbing’s work affirms boredom as an essential part of the human experience. ‘I think it's quite good to spend time not doing anything productive.’ Of course, there is a critique of capitalist production in there too – a questioning of who makes what, why and for whose profit – but Cobbing’s work continuously refers you back to its own sensuousness, pulling the viewer quite literally back down to earth.
"that's where the humour comes in – not to take ourselves so seriously"
In its ‘knowing regression’, as Cobbing puts it, his work recalls Phillip Guston, who towards the end of his career likewise reproduced countless lumpy heads and hands throughout his work like absurdist hieroglyphs. After all, ‘there's quite a big amount of absurdity in our lives,’ Cobbing says, ‘and that's where the humour comes in – not to take ourselves so seriously.’
In reference to his work, In reference to his work, ‘it questions that idea of us working towards a destiny or a meaning, and that if we could find that then our lives would be really enriched. Instead, he prefers the more everyday routine of simply being or doing. ‘I’ve been thinking of the role of the Fool in a Shakespeare play, who tells the truths you can’t hear by being told straight.’
Exactly. Sometimes silliness or a little knowing regression is the perfect form for delivering some existential truths. It can be difficult to admit how much we resist mess, feel discomfort in the face of meaninglessness or lack of closure.
But one thing’s for sure
By Sammi Gale
Cover image: still from 'Will.je.suis' (2020)