London: chaos. The Isle of Harris: rock. Visual and auditory interference on all sides. You hear the radio even when it isn't playing. The shocked and affronted voices. Our eyes are scratched by bad loops of illegitimate videotape. But the voice of the sculptor Steve Dilworth, who lives out there, between road and sea, might be coming from a chair on the other side of my Hackney room. He wants me to write something about his work. We leave a lot of white space in our conversation; we play safe by confirming narratives of earlier pieces - the strange devices and containers Dilworth makes to honour and assuage a fear of death. We stay in the comfort zone of a shared past.

LRB 15 November 2001 | PDF Download