Keith Tyson: interview

Artists' studios are usually in inner-city warehouses. Why are you based in an anonymous seaside industrial estate in Shoreham-on-Sea?
'I'm quite immersive when I'm working so one of the reasons I'm here is that I'm not disturbed. It's still a large space but it was also a decision to downsize from my previous studio in London when I sensed that a recession was coming. Before I took over this unit 18 months ago it had been occupied by a company selling sex aids. I'd have thought that would have been a fairly stable business but perhaps it shows that not even sex is recession proof'.

You have a lot of industrious studio assistants, what's going on right now?
'I'm preparing for a big exhibition at Parasol Unit in London. Because my practice is about process and systems, it's very diverse - I've never bought into the idea that you pick your unique way of working and doggedly persist in it-so this show is a great opportunity to show several different bodies of paintings and scultpures together'.

I can see several paintings of clouds, not all of them white and fluffy. What are they about?
'The ìCloud Choreography Paintingsî are a new series. One painting called ìTime Travelling with Cloudsî Includes images of clouds from various points in history, culture and nature; clouds as tornadoes, from burning oil fields in Iraq, from the film ìGone with the Windî and so on. All these significant events are taking place beneath these particular clouds so they become imbued with meaning, not only of the event but of the time in which the image was made. The paintings are not about the clouds themselves but about how we can't look at any image neutrally. And a cloud is interesting as a metaphor because it doesn't have an edge and is constantly moving. It's a very effective representation of dynamism and the myth of things.'

You are also making new work called 'Operator Paintings'…
'There are two different elements to the ìOperator Painingsî; a textual description at the bottom, sometimes in the form of an equation and an image abve it. The equation appears to give some sort of description of how the image came into being but it's really a device to highlight how we use mathematics to model nature and how nature uses the structures of mathematics.'

Your work has been described as being very scientific but is it?
'It's interesting to me when people have said that my work is too scientifc because there's no didacticism or desire to talk about maths in there at all. My work has also been described as 'Pop' because I have made a lot of 'product', and some of it has been quite big and glitzy. But my work isn't a reflection of popular culture, it's about a more holistic experience of what it's like to exist in our contemporary cosmology and in relation to other beings.'

What is art about for you then?
'It's not art that's interesting or beautiful or overwhelming, it's the world that is and the best art gives back something of that complex viewpoint. When I think about what a painting is, I think about how a painting is described as being abstract or as an object with a contained edge but (just for example) if I were to pick it up and belt you over the head with it, it wouldn't feel very contained or abstract. It is about all these other things as well. That's really what I'm on about.'