Artist William Cobbing is known for work that focusses on the interaction between the audience and clay sculpture, video and performance. William’s ‘Janus Seasons’ is a triptych of sculptures that ask us to look both inside and out.

Tell us about collaborating with Selfridges. 

William Cobbing: I’m keen on having art in unusual places. I know Selfridges isn’t an unusual place for art, [it has] a fantastic collection, but it’s not necessarily where a lot of people go to see art. I don’t think art should be so niche that it’s only about going to a gallery or a museum, it should be everywhere. The Art Block is public art, and I want everyone to engage with it. They don’t have to though; they can totally ignore it. That’s the other thing, if you put art in an unusual place, you’ve got an audience that you have to win over.  

What inspired ‘Janus Seasons’? 

When I was commissioned, I was thinking about the time window from January to October. So, really thinking about the new year and what it means, and sculpturally connecting it to Janus, who is a Roman god of whom there are sculptures of two heads back-to-back, looking in opposite directions. Researching more into Janus and thinking about beginnings, transitions, openings, pathways, doors – I love that idea.  

How did the idea of looking in opposite directions show up in your work?

The ‘Eyes Spies’ work most embodies Janus. As you come into the store, you’re greeted with the double finger arrangement, and it’s looking at you, and you have the video inside the eyes. As you walk through the store, you look back and see the mirror reflection of you, so you get the doubling.

What do you hope the audience takes away from ‘Janus Seasons’? 

A really embodied experience; for them to really feel they could be part of this, they could be enveloped by this earthy material. I want them to have that earthy, earthy experience.  

What is an earthy experience? 

I cover myself with earth all the time. So maybe I’m trying to help people, like I’m an earth therapist. I’m wanting to help people get back to the earthy ground that we’re all from. We spend so much of our time on clean surfaces of mobile phones, which is obviously important and inherent in our lives, but I think it is good to get back to earthy stuff; to mud, dirt, the stuff we used to love when we were kids.  

Tell us about your practice.  

Clay is so plastic, and one of the things it lends itself to is that you completely define what you want to do [with it]. What I try to do is go, “Hey clay, how are you? What’s going on? What do you want to be?” And allowing it to have its rough edges. [I work with] the unruly clay, the mischievous clay, it’s clay that doesn’t want to turn into a pot. So, I don’t throw or make pots, I’m really on the other side of the spectrum. And I’ve been developing that dialogue, learning about clay, finding out about its personality nuances over time.  

Your performance pieces go viral on social media. What is the reaction to your performances usually like?  

In terms of the way my art appears online and on social media, it’s always been an accident. [The most popular are] the clay head videos. I have a cheese wire, and I cut through this gloopy clay mask, revealing these misshapen eyeholes, and multi-coloured paint starts oozing out. So, it’s double sensory overload in terms of physicality, because the clay’s got a texture and then the painterly material is oozy, gooey, much more liquid. Thinking about the sense of the body boundary being breached somehow. It’s got a strange set of references. It’s part horror, part wow, I kind of like this, but I also feel really repulsed by it. It’s totally about conflicting emotions. One nice thing about social media is that you get a lot of feedback and comments. You get a lot of people confused about whether they really like it or really hate it. Some people do have both emotions at the same time, and I quite like that.  

See ‘Janus Seasons’ on The Art Block at the Duke Street entrance of the Accessories Hall on G until the end of October 2025.