I was adopted by those charming, friendly people and taken on a threeday, non-touristy tour. When I entered the abandoned slate quarries, I experienced a sensation of real fear (that might be because, the night before, we were discussing how often they collapsed unexpectedly), but the attraction to go deeper was much more powerful than the fear itself. It was only later in the evening that I dared confess that I’d never experienced such an odd desire to run away while simultaneously wanting to keep on going into those caves. Everyone was laughing because they were so used to them. So, in comparing these massive pitch-black slate quarries to Gothic Cathedrals – signifiers of seductive attraction and danger mixed with a power of a political manipulation – the title appeared, along with the intention to reinvent a sacred space, or a place of solitude, in which to reconstruct your own self. Also this idea of a delusional collapse was taken on board with heavy steel rods suspended overhead on invisible diagonally-inclined planes. In daylight they appear to be flying over the hill because you don’t see the Perspex.
EG: Was the project a continuation of existing themes in your work, or was this a new departure for you? UA: Somehow my Japanese Syu Iro is inspired by the thousands of Torii Gates in Fushimi Inari Shrine, which are actually sacred. Then, in London I made nine installations, which are sited inside a sacred space. That Side Where Real Is, was in the crypt at St Mark’s Church, Kennington. One of them, Vertical Immersion, is still there. Steve Coulson is the vicar of St Mark’s. He invited me to the crypt and became an extremely supportive host and a good friend, for which I’m still very grateful. We discussed religion all the time and I constantly tried to persuade him that God didn’t exist. Luckily for the Church, he was never really convinced. EG: Did the project pan out the way you’d expected it to, or did it change over time? UA: With each project I try hard not to expect anything – there are