Interview: Lawrence Wolfgang Beck

Although my family name is Beck, Lawrence Gundabooka is the name I prefer to go by. Gundabooka is a fabulous rock painting site in Australia, and I adopted the name for my aboriginal grandmother who I have a lot of affection for. I was born in Sydney, which is where my career began after casually enrolling in a sculpting night course when I was 17. The course and my professor were both fantastic, training me to think three-dimensionally in a similar way to architects or engineers. I immediately realised I was born a sculptor.

Shortly before settling in Spain in 1999, I spent some time in Paris. I was to meet up with a Polish sculptor there. However, upon arrival, I was stopped at French customs and questioned about the sculptures I was carrying in my duffel bag. They were determined to charge me for bringing my work into the country, but I came up with a story about having to present them to the French president as part of an upcoming project for a new bridge in Paris. After letting me into the country free of charge, my Polish friend informed me that my fib about building a new bridge was in fact true, and before long I was commissioned to produce several sculptures that would be erected along the Seine. Unfortunately, a new president was elected in 1995, and plans for the bridge didn’t go ahead. Despite this, I was able to hold several exhibitions of my work in Paris: a city that truly appreciates and invests in impressive sculptures and artwork, without hesitation.

Barcelona was also appealing to me, with many great artists and architects having created work throughout the city. However, despite its reputation and prominence in the art world, many of the works I’ve sold here were to international travellers rather than locals. While it is quite difficult to find commissioned projects and funding here, I have been fortunate in my experience and have held several exhibitions. I’ve also met many wonderful people. I spent some time in Sant Antoni de Vilamajor, where I met a shepherd, for instance. He had such an interesting face that I couldn’t help but sculpt it. I gave him the finished piece to display in his yard. Shortly after, he passed away and the sculpture was then bought by the Ajuntament and reconstructed in the village.

I also met one of the most interesting sculptors here, Rocio Sanchez Egoavil from Peru, who reminds us that some of the best sculptors in the world are women. Sculpting is one of the few disciplines where women are as prominent as men and acknowledged for their work. Rocio was only a student when I met her, yet she had the talent of someone who’d been sculpting for an entire career. We’ve worked on several projects together since, and she has been a great source of motivation for my work.

My travels have also inspired me in many ways. I’ve been fortunate enough to have directed or assisted in symposiums all over the world, including China, Córdoba and Australia, and have even taken a group of artists to the base camp of Mount Everest. My father worked as a professor in Syria for over 10 years, so I became acquainted with the country fairly well, too. I love Syria, and its people have always impressed me. Last April, I travelled to Greece to work in a refugee camp and began drawing the faces of Syrian families. I firmly believe in drawing over photography to capture the essence of the subject, as people have two eyes and the camera only has one. They were inquisitive about my work and people passing by offered me water and tea as I sketched. The refugee situation in Europe is shameful.

It is impossible to sculpt from photographs. The best way to sculpt is from real life. There is something organic that comes across when you sculpt someone or something as they sit in front of you, like a biological connection between the sculptor and his subject. One of my favourite sculptors is Rodin, who uses the human body as his stimulus. He focuses on the way the body mirrors a symphony orchestra in the simplest of movements, accounting for the incredible makeup of humans and animals. This is something you can’t find in still, two-dimensional photographs.