Ruby: The original concept Sabrina gave me to work with was to explore the idea of what it means to collaborate and have a creative partnership. I thought of a few musician friends and some poets that I knew as I wanted to create a music piece with spoken word over the top of it. I thought it would be more dynamic and interesting to instead have a ‘lecture’ on a piece of art history, which is a subject that I’m very interested in. This gave me the idea to co-create a piece about Cezanne and Zola, which is a topic which my friend and colleague from the Whitworth, Dominic, is pretty much an expert on due to his project Queering the Whitworth. Since the project was about collaborations, I thought about the fascinating, and at times volatile friendship between the Zola and Cezanne, and how that might be translated as an artwork. I approached Dominic with this idea and he was interested in collaborating on this project. Originally I was going to be present when he was to record his part of the work but it was too difficult, due to the nature of our workload at the time to do. He instead sent me a phone recording of him doing a short lecture on Cezanne’s relationship with his sexuality, which was actually recorded at the gallery where we both work. One thing to know about Dominic is that he’s a brilliant storyteller, so after I received the recording I approached the actual musical composition as if I were composing for film. I was also inspired by the artist Elizabeth Price as she uses a combination of sound, music and words in her films; this attitude she has towards making art helped me with my own process. The style of the music came pretty naturally as I wanted to make something that was emotive, yet maybe slightly removed and distant so I used electronic sounds which mimic orchestral musical instruments, like harps for instance. I then edited some of the lecture, mostly editing out silences and background noise (as much as I could- the Whitworth is a busy gallery!) and worked in a drum beat, again using electronic sounds. After some editing I showed it to Dominic, who liked it, and I then finalised it. Dominic and I worked remotely, so a lot of the work relied on emails and messaging which was an interesting approach which I hadn’t done before; but I think it worked as we’re both happy with the final product.'

Dominic: I was approached by Ruby who asked if I would be interested in working with her on a collaborative piece of work about Cezanne’s male Bathers, which the Whitworth is currently displaying in the aptly titled exhibition Cezanne at the Whitworth. I wasn’t sure at first what the collaboration would entail but Ruby asked me to record a two minute section of a talk I have developed called Queering Cezanne. Queering Cezanne developed from a project I have been working on for some time at the Whitworth, aptly called Queering the Whitworth.

Initially it was a little difficult to arrange the time together to be able record the talk as Ruby wanted to be present when I was talking however, I recorded the talk stood in front of the works in question on my own and then sent it over to Ruby. I was given the instruction to record two minutes of my talk but I found this to be really difficult because I talk quite slowly and to get all the information that I needed to squeeze into those two minutes, so the piece made sense and flowed, was impossible. It ended up being about three minutes in the end.

The recording was sent over and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on its return but when it was sent back and I listened to it, I was surprised at how talented Ruby was at putting together my talk on Cezanne to music.  I wouldn’t know where to start at doing things like that. So, I was really impressed at how good it came out.

What I did not like was how camp I sound. I really do not like listening to my own voice, it’s the worst. I also thought I sounded like I knew what I was talking about and that too shocked me. I was shocked because I’m from a council estate in Leeds and here I am talking about post-impressionist artists like I know what I am saying. So, the collaboration has made me realise I’m not that boy from the estate anymore (or at least I don’t talk like him anymore).

I really enjoyed working with Rub on this project and I really hope you like the piece that we worked on.