William Cobbing
Who are you?
I’m an artist, often creating performances with clay. Recently, my friend joked that I’m a ‘Clayfluencer’!
What gives you the most joy?
Smoked artichokes.
How did you find yourself?
Ha! I guess that’s an ongoing process, realising I wanted to be an artist was important though.
Do you have a real-life situation that inspired your work?
My work often emerges from quite mundane experiences and observations. I like to create the impression that normal people are somehow in an uncanny situation where they’re performing with these strange clay forms.
What makes you angry?
Our far-right Prime Minister Boris Johnson, don’t get me started …
What is/are the strangest thing that happened to you?
The evening of my birthday three years ago I was getting ready to go out, when suddenly a few plain clothes Police officers appeared in my garden pursuing a suspected criminal who then climbed onto my roof and stayed there for several hours until the fire brigade managed to persuade him to climb down onto a crane … My friends saved me some birthday cake for the following night.
What do you think about the interpretation of art? Do you want your art to be interpreted?
I like the idea that the viewer brings their own subjective experience when engaging with art. Rather than being interpreted, I hope that my work creates some kind of sensation or disturbance, maybe even confusion or laughter. I’m also interested in a spontaneous reaction to the work, and if it resonates over a longer time frame.
What do you think of the Susan Sontag’s phrase: ”In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art”?
I couldn’t agree more! We’re conditioned to say what art makes us think rather than how it makes us feel. I hope my clay performances tap into more sensuous emotions, and a mix of attraction and repulsion.
What would be your perfect environment for making art?
I have a studio on Fish Island in east end London, which I love working in.
If you could choose a historical period and be there with the help of a time machine - what kind of time and place would it be?
I’d love to go back in time to about 1910 to hang out with Constantin Brancusi in his studio in Impasse Ronsin, Paris.
What is your dream project?
My own claymation sitcom on Netflix.
What is your favourite place that inspires you the most?
I was lucky enough to visit the Bamiyan Buddha monuments in Afghanistan (that were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001). With the Hindu Kush mountains in the background it was one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been to.
What jobs have you done other than being an artist?
As a student I had a summer holiday job on a kibbutz near Haifa, doing nightshifts in a pickled onion factory, to earn enough time off to travel across the country.
What are your favourite books/movies/persons/games/poems etc? Any recommendations! :)
Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’, ‘Woman in the Dunes’ film by Hiroshi Teshighara, and the amazing sculptures of Huma Bhabha.
How do you come up with the things you want to create? How does your creative process looks like?
Often by imagining quite strange or funny scenarios, thinking ‘what if I could do this?’. I make a lot of quick & crude drawings, it helps develop my ideas.
What advice can you give to young artists?
Be original, take risks, see as much art as you can. Make what’s important to you, rather than what you think others expect from you.
What kind of people inspires you?
People with imagination or are idiosyncratic, those who see things in a new, exciting or fairer way.
Do you come up with some stories when making your pieces? Could you tell one if so?
I’m working on a public artwork now, incorporating texts from people’s stories who once lived on Fish Island. One of them is about a boy who in the World War II heard a Doodlebug bomb flying above him so dived into the canal to escape it, and heard the vibrations of its impact as it hit the other side of the water.
Where do you want to travel to and why?
Anywhere outside of UK right now, as have cabin fever from being cooped up due to Covid travel restrictions!
What is your strength?
I can balance 100kg of clay on my head