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Interviews with Artists







Earl Gibson



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Interview by Dot Zhihan Jia

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Published in September 2026

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Earl Gibson is a multimedia artist who recently graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths. His practice investigates the psychological and architectural facades of the contemporary city, blending discarded urban materials with surreal, fictional world-building. In his recent degree show, ‘Dream of Total Illumination’, Gibson staged an atmospheric landscape of urban decay anchoring a haunting narrative about obsession, faith, and vanishing.                                    
We discussed billboards as sites of religious devotion, and what it means to mystify a city you grew up finding bleak.

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During your study at Goldsmiths, you worked as a commercial photographer traversing London, documenting billboards for proof of placement, which is quite a literal way of measuring the footprint of capitalism. When did you realise this job was actually a catalyst for your art practice?
Growing up in a city as vast and as bleak as London sometimes is, I think areas of the city that aren’t immediately accessible to where you live can feel walled off, especially when you’re younger.

When I started that job, not only was I pushed into new corners of the city but also forced to sit with them in detail as I travelled from site to site. Quite quickly, with nothing to look at besides the urban landscape and no one to talk to besides myself, an indifference my younger self might have had to my environment turned into a fascination. The city became almost mythical to me and I started to notice things that I had never thought about before. I would subconsciously make up stories, connecting images I would take on my phone of little bits that interested me; a faded missing poster, a scrap of graffiti, an open door of an electrical box. As well as the environment, the images on the billboards started to almost burn themselves into my head. I would get stuck on a certain expression or tagline of an advertisement.

So many of the details I’ve picked up on in the city I’m convinced no one has noticed or thought about before. The way nondescript things are built, the subtleties in the way things decay. That’s sort of what makes it exciting for me. So I think, in a way, before I started making art about them, I already felt I ‘owned’ these spaces and objects in a little corner of my mind. Not to say they were exclusive to me in any way, but to say I created a relationship with them by the way they tangled with each other in my head.

This all naturally bled into my art practice pretty quickly. By the end of my first year at Goldsmiths, I was making work about physical advertising. It became so much of what I thought about and I needed somewhere to put those thoughts.



Dream of Total Illumination, 2026, 6m x 4m, 11 Minutes (Sound), Installation, Photo Credit: Earl Gibson


You mention being drawn to things like faded missing person posters and subconsciously spinning stories around them. In your work ‘Dream of Total Illumination’ at your degree show, you constructed an incredibly evocative narrative of disappearance, featuring a collapsed, backlit billboard and a rusted vintage streetlamp. The installation functions almost like a crime scene or a theatrical set.
Looking at the material choice, are you aiming to expose the skeletal machinery behind these corporate structures, or is it more about recreating a specific psychological tension and mystery of public spaces?
I would say it’s absolutely both. Working with an installation of that size, the structural and material presence of the objects naturally became really important. I wanted the install to have a sort of monolithic presence. Particularly with the collapsed billboard, I tried to spotlight the relatively unseen physicality of a lot of structures in the city. That clunky, bulky, purely functional architecture that is mostly hidden to create a kind of polished mysticism to the city’s exterior. My practice revolves a lot around creating spaces where that ‘polished’ curtain is pulled away, and drawing attention to the physical structures behind it is one way to do that.

It’s an important distinction that all of the objects in the installation were fabricated by myself, no found objects were used. I mention this because I think in the process of working out the material decisions involved in that fabrication is where a lot of the feeling of the work was created, and the material discrepancies between my rendition of these objects and the real thing ended up being where a lot of the theatre and space for artistic licence existed. It wasn’t a question of how accurate to the real thing I could possibly make it, but more of how accurate I actually even wanted it to be. For example, a real streetlamp would never rust so severely in the way that I rusted mine, due to protective coating, etc. Yet, I felt the excess rust added to the world I was building, so I went with it anyway. I was quite interested in haunted houses at the time, as spaces that knowingly attempt to feel ‘hyper’ real, whilst also knowing you know they aren't real. That sounds a bit ridiculous but maybe you get what I’m trying to say. There’s a strange theatrical quality to them that I can’t quite describe that was definitely in the back of my mind when making the work.

I think the word ‘mystery’ you used is really relevant. There’s such a specific atmosphere that walking around and observing the city, particularly at night, gives you and I think a slightly haunting but exciting feeling of mystery or possibility is a big part of that. Intensifying and instilling that atmosphere into the viewer was such an essential goal of the work. The lighting did a lot of the heavy lifting in that aspect; the cold flickering blue light of the billboard and the warm yellow glow of the streetlamp. I’m really interested in the psychological effects different qualities of light can evoke.



Dream of Total Illumination, 2026, 6m x 4m, 11 Minutes (Sound), Installation, Photo Credit: Earl Gibson


Right, that juxtaposition of the cold, flickering blue of the billboard and the warm, amber glow of the streetlamp really captures that nocturnal urban friction where light ceases to be just functional and becomes a form of psychological conditioning.
Let's get into the specific story you staged, which feels like an active forensic crime scene. If the viewer walks behind that collapsed billboard, they find the face-down body of a man inside the structure, the story behind which is told through a fragmented radio-esque sound piece being emitted by the streetlamp. The narrative is also extended outside of your degree show space; a rusted electrical box with a missing person poster cellotaped to it sits on the terrace of the exhibition building. You've built this highly surreal, almost manic world about a man who becomes religiously obsessed with a fictional electrical company and tries to ascend into their light by breaking into the billboard.
Why lean into the language of spiritual ascension? Why frame corporate advertising as an object of manic, holy devotion?
For a while I’ve been looking at a line of thinking that persisted throughout the 1900s, where there was a real strong sense of acknowledging the city as a constructed environment, and a feeling that it was necessary to maintain an awareness of it in a critical manner. Movements like the Situationists, and their slogan ‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’ (Under the paving stones, the beach!) fall into this band, as well as thinkers like Marshall Berman, Walter Benjamin, etc. This critique on the explicit physicality and architectural implications of a capitalist society I think is something that has become somewhat lost, not because people no longer agree or care about this subject, but because it has become such a commonplace fact to the point it is almost glossed over.

Rather than focus on reiterating the effect of these structures as a whole or directly reinstating the message of these movements, I found it more interesting to focus on the psychologies of individual cases, fictional or real, and how the condition of the capitalist city reacts with them specifically. Approaching it in that way allowed me to kind of work backwards; when looking at individualised cases, we can actually understand more about the picture as a whole and expose less mundane and more surprising realities about the subject, I hope. I think that's why the story ended up so personal to me in particular and why I ended up writing a character to be the narrative centre of the work rather than the objects.

When writing that character, the theme of religion crept its way into the story through research and decision-making. I intentionally sampled a lot from the real world in the creation of the work; the electrical company is actually named after a church on Old Kent Road called ‘The Light of the World Church’, and the company's slogan came after reading Laura E. Ludke’s ‘Nightmare of Total Illumination’ essay and discovering the latter part of the phrase had been used previously to describe a kind of religious enlightenment. From there, the link between artificial light, something my work has been concerned with for a long time, and the kind of holy light spoken about in religion became too tempting of a connection to pass up.

It's interesting because I think in relation to most of us, what we can call the ‘capitalist spectacle’ functions a lot less like an object of religious devotion or desire, where it's consciously at the forefront of somebody's mind, and more like some strange, slow-burning effect that most people believe themselves to have an imagined indifference or immunity to, but in reality do not. On the other hand, the actual methods of implementation and physical structures that lead to this slow-burning effect do tie more closely to a religious interpretation for me; artificial light, the backbone of the spectacle, in my eyes is probably the closest thing we have to a God in the contemporary city. This is mainly due to its near omnipresent nature, a nature I’m really interested in as both a subject of criticality for its role in enabling capitalist work cycles and heavily regulating other areas of our lives, but also as a source of allure, a kind of solemn beauty and as an object of appreciation.

All of that aside, I just love the idea of someone having a transcendent experience with a battered old warehouse district billboard that advertises something as mundane as an electrical company. It's so strange and really does something for me that I can’t quite put into words.



Dream of Total Illumination (Electrical Box), 2026, 40 x 60 x 20, Sculpture, Photo Credit: Earl Gibson


Walter Benjamin's idea of phantasmagoria—the deceptive smoke and mirrors of modern life—feels close to what you're doing here. By turning this corporate light fixture into a literal death trap, are you implying that our obsession with these polished, blinding urban illusions can be entirely consuming?
Yeah absolutely, his ‘Arcades Project’ as a whole has been a big influence on my thinking since I discovered it last year whilst doing my duo show with George Cripps. I think his framing of the commodity spectacle as something that creates a kind of dreamscape and a constructed, projected reality is really interesting and obviously relevant to my ‘Dream of Total Illumination’. Also the idea he brings forward of an incessant need for the modern city to appear perpetually new and as a reinvention of itself is important here too; that veneer of ‘newness’ is something I often try to combat in my work by staging my narratives through weathered and almost archaic forms of city infrastructure.

Of course, you’d be right to describe the character at the centre of my narrative as obsessed, overwhelmingly so, with ‘Light of the World Electrical’. Yet, I think his obsession is more of a symptom of the world he’s in, both physically and mentally. I’m not necessarily implying that we are all trapped in a kind of ‘obsession’ with these forms of illusion. As I touched on in my last answer, I think our position is less direct and less voluntary than an obsession. I think it's more that, off the back of what Benjamin says, the constructed city can be so all-encompassing that it begins to create a new reality for its occupants, one that is tethered to a real way of living but extends and isolates its facets until everything exists as a symbolised, simulated and marketed version of itself. This mediated city, where there are aesthetic and psychological filters at the forefront of everything we interact with, from architecture to advertising and even basic services, is where the ‘dream’ is created. In that way, I think what you’re saying about these facets of modern life being ‘entirely consuming’ is exactly the point; they are almost impossible to avoid and become synonymous with our existence and desires.

Funnily enough, I didn’t intend for the character's body to necessarily be a corpse, although understandably that's definitely the way it was received, so it kind of just became that. I think my work often comes off darker than I expect it to.



Dream of Total Illumination (Electrical Box) Detail, 2026, 40 x 60 x 20, Sculpture, Photo Credit: Earl Gibson


Has the way people have read the piece—darker, more final, more literally a death than you intended—changed how you think about it, or how you might stage the next one?
Not too much. I quite enjoyed it being perceived that way in the end. I think often the most rewarding part about making art is the way a work develops once it’s been completed and is left to the eyes of viewers. For that reason, I like to not 100% know how my work will turn out whilst I’m making it, otherwise you’re closing off so many opportunities for experimentation. The body was actually an addition I made a few days before the deadline, and as such, I was prepared for it to resonate in unexpected ways.

That being said, initially I was a little hesitant to include what ended up being such heavy themes in the work. It’s easy to get caught up in whether you have a place to speak on them or not. In the end, I tried to treat the work almost as a film, and just did what I felt fit the narrative and excitement of the work. I think that really ended up working to my benefit. Sometimes considering something less creates a more exciting and surprising result if you can do that in a way that doesn’t undermine the critical thought that is present. When you make music, you don’t stop and consider if the sound you’re adding to the track is ‘right’ or not. If it sounds good it sounds good. I want to work that way with art more in the future.


Where does this narrative go from here? Are you continuing the story of ‘Dream of Total Illumination’ or is the next piece a clean break? And where can people see your work next?
I think there were so many things I hit on in ‘Dream of Total Illumination’ that really resonated with me and what I’m trying to achieve. Themes, criticality, techniques, ways of making and presenting an idea. I don’t think my next work will directly continue the narrative, I like to think of each work as its own world. But I’ll definitely be taking pieces of the work forward with me.

Not to sound too mysterious, but I’ve actually been told I’m not allowed to officially announce my next exhibition yet. It’ll be formally announced by the institution in around a month I believe. But it's safe to say I’m very excited about what's next. If you want to keep posted, my Instagram is probably the best place to do so.


Dream of Total Illumination Detail, 2026, 6m x 4m, 11 Minutes (Sound), Installation, Photo Credit: Earl Gibson


Your work clearly draws a lot of fuel from critical theory, urban history, and fiction. Can you share some of your favourite references?
I’d love to. I suppose what I’ve mostly discussed so far is this band of ‘modernist’ critical theory about the city's construction. Included in this but not limited to is: a lot of Walter Benjamin's writing, but primarily ‘The Arcades Project’; Marshall Berman's ‘All that is Solid melts into air’; a lot of Jacques Ranciere, particularly ‘The Politics of Aesthetics’; Pierre Bourdieu; Mark Fisher, of course, etc. Also previously mentioned, the Situationist movement and especially their ‘Sous les paves, la plage’ slogan.

Naturally that thinking is reflected in a lot of fiction, again particularly mid to late 1900s stuff. I’ve got a special love for future dystopias from that era; George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, for example; Jacques Tati’s ‘Playtime’ or later movies like Terry Gilliam's ‘Brazil’, which in particular has been a big influence on my work.

Getting away from the academic stuff, certain video games I played growing up I think actually had an influence on my artwork, especially the way I perceive atmosphere and value world-building. To name a couple: COD Zombies, Shadow of the Colossus and Bloodborne.

And honestly, probably most relevantly, the aesthetic and auditory worlds that certain music artists create are something that’s always really inspired me. I started making music long before I became interested in contemporary art and the love I have for it naturally affected the way I approach making my work. When I began making visual art, I was mainly working in moving image, almost as an excuse just to put my own music and sounds into the videos. Burial, King Krule, Mk.Gee, Aphex Twin, Leon Vynehall, John Martyn and many more have been the defining artistic loves of my life. I’m constantly listening to music whilst I’m travelling the city and what you choose to listen to has such a powerful influence on how you perceive your surroundings. I used to take really long walks around the area of my parents' house nearly every night and I’d just listen to really spacey, minimal, experimental ambient stuff. It made my familiar surroundings seem really new and interesting all of a sudden. Actually, looking back on it, maybe that’s the first time I started to mystify the city.



Portrait of Earl Gibson, 2026, Photo Credit: Earl Gibson


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