Liam Gillick on Serious Ink, Keeping Promises, and the Permanence of Art

is a key part of your practice: words often appear within your work, and you often supplement artworks with written pieces. How do you think the role of text has evolved in your art? LG: I always liked the appearance of text in art, from Renaissance paintings to the most contemporary work. But for years I tried to avoid using it. I deliberately set the desire to produce text to one side and confined it to books or other writing. Over the last few years I have introduced text into exhibitions. I tend to use text in direct confrontation to the other structures I produce. The texts are a reminder or an exception, a critique or a potential.