youlikewelike.com:

Please kindly say a big ‘Hello!’ to Glasgow-based artist, Sue Tompkins, who was nominated for Beck’s Futures in 2006, and has featured in Learn to Read at Tate Modern. Tompkins plays with language and rhythm – a sort of stream of consciousness meets careful construction in the world of this ‘latter-day Patti Smith’.

If you see what we mean.

What's this we hear about you being in a band?

The band was called Life Without Buildings and included Will Bradley, Chris Evans and Robert Johnston. They did the music and I wrote the words and did the singing. The band formed from their three-piece. They may have stayed as music only; no singing, no girl thing, but they saw me do a performance at Transmission gallery in Glasgow in 1999. I think it was when I had been performing for the first time in front of an audience, with the all-women collaborative group I was in at the time called Elizabeth Go. This comprised of all artists and my good friends Cathy Wilkes, Victoria Morton, Sarah Tripp and my sister Hayley Tompkins.

Why did it end?

I saw it initially as a sort of art project, a temporary thing that might get bigger. I wasn’t really into the whole band way of developing - having a website, selling T-shirts, badges, having your photo taken. I never liked that bit. I did love the writing, rehearsing and performing though, and we all got on very well and laughed a lot; a perfect weird mix of personalities. I think I was quite naive about bands, and may have over reacted to being asked to do USA college tours. Maybe in retrospect I should have calmed down a bit!

Did your solo performances grow out of what you did with the band?
 
Only in the sense that a few years later, after the band broke up in 2001, did I think I can find ways to communicate my writing and again sing and talk and stand in front of an audience and it not feel too weird.

How does collaboration work within what you do?

Now I think about it, it has featured quite a lot. I really appreciate the privacy of working alone. I’m a complete hermit really when it comes to writing and recording and making things by myself, but I have usually said yes to all collaborative offers alongside as well.

How do you select what subjects and materials to work with?
 
I pretty much stick with a pencil, paper, and a typewriter to start with and music on or radio on, or just quiet, and that usually is the best way to get going.

What inspires you?

Feeling hopeful.

Do you find it easy to explain what your work is about?

No!

words: Mimei Thompson

tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions