British Art of the Long 1980s: Diverse Practices, Exhibitions and Infrastructures 9781350191532, 9781350191563, 9781350191549

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British Art of the Long 1980s

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British Art of the Long 1980s Diverse Practices, Exhibitions and Infrastructures Imogen Racz

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Imogen Racz, 2020 Imogen Racz has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Ben Anslow Cover image: Monument, 1980–1, Susan Hiller (1940–2019) © Tate All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Racz, Imogen, author, interviewer. Title: British art of the long 1980s : diverse practices, exhibitions and infrastructures / Imogen Racz. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020025530 (print) | LCCN 2020025531 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350191532 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350191570 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350191549 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350191556 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Sculpture, British–20th century. | Artists–Great Britain–Interviews. | Art and society–Great Britain–History–20th century. Classification: LCC NB468 .R33 2020 (print) | LCC NB468 (ebook) | DDC 730.941/0904–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025530 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025531 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-9153-2 ePDF: 978-1-3501-9154-9 eBook: 978-1-3501-9155-6 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Narratives and Contexts 1 Rasheed Araeen 2 Susan Hiller 3 Robin Klassnik 4 Bill Woodrow 5 Alison Wilding 6 Jacqueline Poncelet 7 Richard Deacon 8 Katherine Gili 9 Nicholas Pope 10 Roger Malbert 11 Jonathan Harvey 12 Mikey Cuddihy 13 Kate Blacker 14 Richard Wilson 15 Antonia Payne 16 Hilary Gresty 17 Veronica Ryan 18 Langlands & Bell (Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell) 19 Cathy de Monchaux 20 Laura Ford 21 James Lingwood 22 Karsten Schubert 23 Abigail Lane Afterword Select Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading Index

vi vii 1 25 37 49 59 67 75 85 97 109 119 133 145 157 169 181 195 207 219 233 245 257 269 279 292 293 297

Illustrations 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Rasheed Araeen, Sculpture No. 2, 2014 Susan Hiller, Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall, 1983–4 Richard Wilson, 20:50, 1987 Bill Woodrow, Pram with Fish, 1982 Richard Deacon, New Sculpture Gallery, Riverside Studios, London, 8 February–4 March 1984. Foreground: Out of the House, 1983. Back left: Art for Other People No. 5, 1982. Back right: For Those Who Have Eyes, 1983 Katherine Gili, Leonide, 1981–2 Nicholas Pope, The Conundrum of the Chalice of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues, 2016 Matta doing drawing with students at Kings College Cambridge, 1975 Ron Haselden, Working 12 Days at the ACME Gallery, 1978 Mikey Cuddihy with Rock, Scissors, Paper, 1985 Kate Blacker, Matterhorn, 1982 Richard Wilson, Turning the Place Over, 2007–12 Antonia Payne at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1986 Veronica Ryan, Defined Place, 1988 Langlands & Bell, Traces of Living, 1986 Cathy de Monchaux, Defying Death I Ran Away to the Fucking Circus, Part 1, 1991 Laura Ford, Buttercup, 1991 Richard Wilson, One Piece at a Time, 1987 Abigail Lane, Red Vertigo, 1995

24 36 48 58

84 96 108 118 132 144 156 168 180 206 218 232 244 256 278

Acknowledgements I would first of all like to thank all the interviewees. They were incredibly generous with their time and expertise, firstly with the interviews, then reading and correcting the scripts and in providing the images. They were also very supportive when replying to updates that I sent them. Some also lent me catalogues and out-of-print books for which I am extremely grateful. At the time of going to press two contributors have died: Susan Hiller and Karsten Schubert. I remember them warmly. Both were very kind, and we also had lively and engaged conversations outside the interviews. I would like to thank my colleagues and my line manager Nick Gorse at Coventry University who supported me in various ways that enabled this project to be completed. Lastly, I would like to thank many close friends as well as my husband, Mark, all of whom have lived with the ups and downs inevitable in a project like this and have been unerringly supportive.

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Introduction: Narratives and Contexts

This book presents the richness and cross-currents of sculptural and object-based practices in Britain during the crucial years from the late 1970s to early 1990s. This period marked a time of rapid change in the British art world, from a situation where there was little money, infrastructure or critical debate to one where there were commercially viable galleries and contemporary British art had become visible, collected and internationally celebrated. It was also a decade with a great range of sculptural practices that were made and exhibited but have been largely forgotten or only discussed within particular frameworks. During research for other projects that have already been published and for a book that I still am determined to write, I have come to realize the paucity of available material in archives, libraries or journals on which to build a narrative that is different from the existing, carefully constructed history. British sculpture during the 1980s has been framed by particular biases, and the wonderful richness of practices, the energetic development of networks and infrastructures, and the sheer dedication to keep going, frequently in the face of lack of money and an indifferent – at best – public and press, risks being lost. These interviews provide new insights into the sculptural practices and supporting infrastructures and exhibitions of the era and contextualize them within prevailing social, political and cultural changes. The established story of British sculpture during the 1980s tends to frame the decade with the exhibition from 1981 that was held at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol and the Institute of Contemporary Art London (ICA): Objects and Sculpture, which has been heralded as the main starting point of New British Sculpture, and 1988, which was the year of the inaugural exhibition of Tate Liverpool – Starlit Waters. British Sculpture: An International Art 1968–1988 and Freeze that signalled the start of Young British Artists (YBAs). Not only does this make the 1980s very short, but it also simplifies the narrative too neatly. Careers do not conform to strict dates. By encouraging my interviewees to start in the

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1970s if that is when ideas or situations emerged, and go into the 1990s if they graduated or developed particular ideas towards the end of the 1980s, I have been able to demonstrate a far greater fluidity of ideas across the long 1980s than is currently acknowledged. As the interviews also demonstrate, there are important networks of ideas that were independent of, expanded and intersected with, New British Sculpture and the YBAs. The standard, establishment narrative unravels on closer inspection. Sculptural practices of the period ranged from New British Sculpture to those that developed the ideas and practices of Anthony Caro, those that incorporated figurative elements, those that were making political and social comments, and those that overlapped with related practices including performance or fell between the usual demarcations of painting or craft and sculpture. The interview format has allowed for the juxtaposition of these diverse practices, and for the artists and facilitators to describe their different professional roles that frequently grew and developed in organic ways. The interviews also reveal, even across seemingly different areas of practice, the networks of ideas, working spaces and exhibitions. Presenting them in roughly chronological order by birth date has allowed these to be demonstrated. Many artists had rich and diverse careers. They wrote and published, collaborated with others, curated, initiated and ran artists’ spaces, were instrumental in forming support networks and undertaking outreach programmes, as well as making their own work. Their art, commitment and enterprise in all of these areas paved the way for the next generation of artists. Facilitators were equally innovative, energetic and enterprising, and crucial for the developing scene. Hearing these accounts first-hand makes riveting reading. We have lost many really great artists who worked with sculpture, objects and mixed media, including Helen Chadwick, Donald Rodney, Shelagh Cluett, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Shelagh Wakely and Edward Allington. We have also lost some of the major facilitators including Joanna Drew, all of whom enabled the art of the era, but they are less known because their legacy is more easily overlooked. However, these twenty-three interviews of artists and facilitators who worked during the 1980s provide a breadth of new knowledge about the era and, in some cases, bring those who have gone back into the narrative. All are by key people, who were chosen not only to explain their practices and roles, but also to expand on particular crucial aspects of the era. Readers of these interviews will note how some exhibitions, studio spaces, biases, educational and artistic ideas are repeatedly mentioned, but from differing perspectives. It is through these

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diverse but intersecting narratives that a more nuanced understanding of the decade has been created. The introduction that follows presents the back story to the interviews and an overview of the main forces on art of the 1980s.

Dominant narratives The narrative that has dominated the history of British sculpture from the early 1980s has been that of New British Sculpture. It was a carefully constructed grouping of artists who exhibited together in international exhibitions and gave a sense of a national school, that not only was an ‘answer to the previous “generations” who had dominated British sculpture since the war’, but was also a counterpart to other contemporary groups such as the Italian Transavangardia and the German Neue Wilden.1 Certainly the idea of a national school of sculpture was something that had been discussed for nearly a century, in articles by Edmund Gosse (from 1894), for instance, which were cited by Herbert Read in the early 1950s.2 The construction of this narrative can be viewed from three aspects: the need for a national school, money – both to create a viable art market in Britain and to gain sponsorship – and pragmatism. Groups of artists have dominated discussions during the twentieth century: Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, for instance. Like those grouped within New British Sculpture, they had distinct practices, but as groups they could be discussed and exhibited together suggesting shared concerns. There was very little money in the arts at the beginning of the decade and art collectors rarely came to London. Most artists never expected to sell their work.3 As Nick Baker and some of my interviewees commented, there was not a viable market for contemporary art at that time in Britain.4 Writing a review of British Art Now (1980) that was being shown in New York, Duncan Macmillan argued that Britain did not take contemporary art seriously and that the support structures were minimal in comparison to those in Europe or America.5 Thatcher’s government rolled back the support for the arts, so private sponsorship became much more necessary. With the expansion of business during the 1980s, this sponsorship became more available not only for New British Sculpture and later the YBAs, but also for smaller enterprises. However, in order to promote what was to become an important national group and

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to expand institutions into the provinces, this required serious sponsorship. The exhibition Starlit Waters (1988) attracted ICI & Polymers as the major sponsors, and in their foreword they praised the fact that these artists had gained international acclaim. The Henry Moore Foundation was the founding patron of Tate Liverpool, and over the preceding years had been supporting sculpture conservation of the Tate collection. The next major display at Tate Liverpool was to be British Sculpture 1908–88 – almost all selected from the Tate collection.6 The increased display space at this new gallery allowed for the chronological survey of British sculpture to be presented over three years, which again helped to establish a canon of the major figures and groups.7 The catalogue for Starlit Waters (1988) listed the exhibitions where the majority of those associated with New British Sculpture had showed in two long columns, and in the introduction, Lewis Biggs and Richard Francis wrote that the choice of artists for the exhibition was determined by the ‘most widely and consistently successful artists’ and that alongside those associated with the ‘Vocational Sculpture Course’ run by Frank Martin at St Martin’s School of Art in London in the late 1960s were those sculptors who had been showing at the Lisson Gallery from the early 1980s.8 Writing in 1988 about contemporary British sculpture in the Tate collection, Penelope Curtis emphasized the importance of New British Sculpture – their lineage, themes, the fact that they studied at the Royal College of Art (RCA) or Chelsea College of Arts, that they were supported by the same gallery – the Lisson Gallery, and that they had been exhibiting together since the exhibition Objects and Sculpture (1981).9 Even in the catalogue to that exhibition the artists were not thought to share close characteristics, although the selectors thought that they had particular concerns that separated them from other types of sculpture at the time.10 Lynne Cooke also warned against categorizing the artists through a shared iconography or aesthetic in her catalogue essay for Starlit Waters. From the early 1980s, she wrote that each artist had developed varying relationships between images and objects, process and materials, allowing intuitive decision-making metaphor and metonym to play a greater role.11 Both Cooke and Curtis wrote how the artists had been exhibiting together since 1981 in exhibitions both in Britain and abroad including Englische Plastik Heute – British Sculpture Now (Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1982), Objects and Figures: Recent Developments in British Sculpture (Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh, 1982) and Transformations: New Sculpture from Britain (XVII Sao Paulo Bienal, 1983). It was the exhibitions abroad – especially in Germany, Holland and Switzerland – and the subsequent

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discussions in art journals that helped to shape the group and promote it.12 In a special ‘Europe’ issue of Art in America (1982) for instance, Michael Newman saw Objects and Sculpture, the Venice Biennale and other international exhibitions as important New British Sculpture gaining more international attention.13 The catalogue for A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture since 1965, an exhibition that toured in the United States in 1987, discussed the main figures prior to the 1980s and then wrote: ‘The new sculpture of the 1980s is nowhere as strongly developed as in Britain, where remarkable and extensive activity has given rise to artists such as Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Antony Gormley, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Richard Wentworth, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow.’14 This exhibition, which was hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, only showed the work of six artists and gave the rationale for their choices through naming other exhibitions that had highlighted this group including Bern’s Leçons des Choses (1982), British Art Now at the Kunstmuseum Luzern (1982), the group show Transformations: New Sculpture from Britain at the São Paulo Bienal (1983), and many others both in Britain and abroad. The British Council was vital in transporting art and in promoting it at major biennials, like those in Venice and São Paulo, and in their support for other projects abroad. Particular Arts Council exhibitions also toured internationally, including The British Art Show (1983), which travelled to Australia and New Zealand in 1984–5.15 The power of these exhibitions not only grouped particular artists together but gave individual artists attention and took their profiles beyond what was at the time a parochial centre.16 Bill Woodrow for instance showed at Objects and Sculpture and British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, both in 1981, after which he was included in Aperto ’82, the biennials of Sydney and Paris in the same year, and many other exhibitions abroad in those and subsequent years. As he said, he frequently spent months exhibiting overseas.17 As well as the need for a national school, and the imperative of gaining sponsorship in Thatcher’s Britain, there is also a pragmatic view to consider about grouping the artists. Martin Kunz had been in London between 1969 and 1972, where he had spent much time visiting contemporary art galleries. When he became Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern, he no longer had the time to do this. So, when searching for who was to be included in Englische Plastik Heute – British Sculpture Now at the Kunstmuseum Luzern (1982), he had already met Tony Cragg and Stephen Cox, both of whom were living abroad, and when he came to London he visited British Sculpture in the 20th Century and Objects and Sculpture and made studio visits from recommendations. It is from these

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activities that he made his selection.18 Like critics, it is hard for curators to see all of the artistic scenes and evaluate their importance. Nick Baker’s research supports this.19 He argued that the art world is organized around the need to select and promote certain artists as there is limited space in galleries, limited attention that influential commentators can give and limited funds.20 In order to underpin his argument, he analysed the three principal, state-funded collections: the Arts Council, the British Council and the Tate Gallery, to see who was collected. He then analysed reviews of exhibitions, and six artists clearly came out as being the most visible – Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Edward Allington and Julian Opie, all of whom were known as New British Sculptors and all of whom were represented by the Lisson Gallery run by Nicholas Logsdail.21 Like Nick Baker, I admire the exemplary management of the artists into a group that became exhibited at global biennials and international venues. British sculpture moved from being barely considered on the international scene, where artists were unable to sell work and thought that it was almost ridiculous to think you would, to being collected, exhibited and reviewed. I also admire the work of the artists who became known under the umbrella label New British Sculptors, and indeed some are represented here. However, this was only part of the story, and their work is diverse. While the artists were happy that they were exhibiting and selling work, they were also aware of the limitations of this category. This narrative has continued. British Art Studies is a major new online journal.22 The July 2016 issue British Sculpture Abroad, edited by Penelope Curtis and Martina Droth, was organized according to decade, each of which had relevant essays. Those devoted to the 1980s repeated the narrative of the touring exhibitions that featured New British Sculpture, their promotion and reception.23

Infrastructure The predominance of London-based artists in this book is inevitable. The major galleries for contemporary art, including the Riverside Studios the Whitechapel Gallery and the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA), were in London. Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, the Ikon in Birmingham, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and the Arnolfini in Bristol were the other major galleries, and all were within easy reach of London. In the predigital age, personal contacts, going to openings and being seen were the fundamental ways of getting noticed and

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included in projects and exhibitions. In the preface to The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions (1984), Joanna Drew wrote that the selectors had chosen a broad range of art and that most of the artists included lived and worked in London.24 Money was tight at the beginning of the decade, which effected everything. However, there were some bursaries available for projects. The Greater London Arts Association for instance had £20,000 to spend in 1981and gave thirty-three bursaries of between £500 and £1000.25 Other grants of between £50 and £100 might be given to individuals. Although small, as some of my interviewees said, these amounts enabled artists to go abroad – travel was expensive – and once there, someone would put you up and you could make work with what you found. There were also residencies connected to galleries and universities and a burgeoning schools programme, which Veronica Ryan, Nicholas Pope, Antonia Payne and other interviewees discuss. Artist-run spaces were vital and were largely under the radar of reviewers and institutions. There were many, including Garage, Acre Lane, Unit 7, Elbow Room and the Ikon in Birmingham before it was supported by the Arts Council and the Chisenhale Works before it became the Chisenhale Gallery. Matt’s Gallery was and continues to be slightly different. It started in Robin Klassnik’s studio, and he has worked with artists since the late 1970s to put on exhibitions that have been ambitious and important.26 There were also numerous studio blocks, including Butler’s Wharf, where artists could work – and where they frequently also lived. These held open studios, which helped to get work noticed. William Furlong later wrote that in the 1960s, at the SPACE studios open days, artists would not really sell themselves, partly because they knew that there was no market.27 However, many during the 1980s, like the Open Studios in Wapping that were held until 1985, started to gain external funding in order to put on the shows and produce catalogues.28 The catalogues for these show the change in fortunes during the decade. Wapping Artists 1980/Open Studio Exhibition comprises typewritten, individual, hole-punched sheets of paper – one for each artist with a black -and-white image – held together with two toggles. The catalogue for The Last Wapping Show in 1985, which showed the work of seventy artists, was bound and printed, and had stylish graphics, short commentaries – including a reflection by Edward Lucie-Smith – a colour image on the front and advertisements at the back. It was clearly expected that the exhibition would attract attention and that people would buy the catalogue.29 However, this also showed how London itself was changing, as the fact that it was the last show was owing to forty artists

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being forced out of the studios because of escalating property prices and the redevelopment of the Wapping and Surrey docks.30 There were also live/work spaces that were primarily available through Acme studios that were let on short-term leases, as well as numerous squats. The sheer number of empty houses and factories in London that were due to be demolished for redevelopment was ideal for the needs of artists. Often streets, like Beck Road, were predominantly populated by artists who lived alongside and supported each other in various ways.31 Many artworks were only possible because of the empty properties. Because of the many strikes during the 1970s and early 1980s, combined with a greater ability to buy new goods, it was easy to come across materials of all sorts, from metals to household goods to bottles and bones either on the streets or as discards from shops and pubs. These became the raw material of numerous sculptures, including those by Rasheed Araeen, Langlands & Bell, Richard Wilson and Bill Woodrow. As Hilary Gresty has articulated, the facilities, infrastructure and audience for contemporary art in London were not the same in other cities. Cambridge, for instance, was only an hour from London, but it had no real art infrastructure and was inherently conservative, so it made sense for artists to live in London and travel out for exhibitions.32 There were new art schools around country, and frequently artists would travel to do their teaching. However, this also meant that the London-based artists could be inward looking. Karsten Schubert later wrote that ‘nobody in London thinks that anything outside London is worth looking at’.33 However, against this backdrop, there were also other initiatives and opportunities for sculptors from the late 1970s. The year 1977 saw the opening of both the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which has continued to be an important space for exhibiting sculpture outside, and the Grizedale Sculpture Project, where selected sculptors would work in Grizedale Forest in the Lake District to develop site-specific works that were on permanent display. This was to be followed in 1986 with a similar scheme in the Forest of Dene. Permanent, site-specific works are not the focus of this book, but many of the artists and facilitators interviewed here were involved in exhibitions of temporary work sited outside. The Sculpture Show of 1983 was a huge show of fifty artists that was run by the Serpentine Gallery and the South Bank, with works selected by Paul de Monchaux, Fenella Crichton and Kate Blacker. As well as the works sited in the galleries, there were also temporary and a few permanent sculptures sited in Kensington Gardens and along the South Bank of the River Thames.

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Artangel was a funding and initiating arts programme started in 1985 by Roger Took, which sought to present art in public locations that were frequently urban. Their aims were to work with artists, win new audiences away from gallery situations and support temporary works. Between 1986 and 1991 they did twenty-four projects with forty different artists.34 The intention was that the work should appear without any advertisement to engage the public and provoke reactions. This was part of a broader, international movement that was reacting against the commercially driven art market, and in Britain this included Platform, which combined art, activism, research and education about ecological issues, and Common Ground, which wanted to engage people with their local environment. Both were founded in 1983.35 From 1991 James Lingwood and Michael Morris were the co-directors of Artangel.36 Between 1984 and 1990, Sandra Drew staged an annual series of three-week projects that were to run alongside the Canterbury Festival in open-air, public locations.37 The third of these, Third Generation: Women Sculptors Today (1986), exhibited twenty-two women artists who were given a site for three weeks in which to develop and finish a sculpture.38 It claimed an art historical lineage for women sculptors and was a response to the comparative lack of available representation of female artists.39 TSWA 3D (Television South West Arts) (1987) was an important arts initiative that had twelve projects held across nine British cities. These were temporary, site-specific works made by internationally significant artists.40 TSWA Four Cities (1990) was held in Derry, Glasgow, Newcastle and Plymouth, and again most of the work was temporary. Like the previous collaboration, the aims were to present a range of possibilities about what public art could be. Unlike many commissions, the artists were invited to make proposals for imaginative works that spoke to the site. The organizers sought to create a climate of innovation and enquiry where the artists felt able to challenge preconceptions of art to be shown outside a gallery space.41

Marginalization From the late 1970s and through the 1980s there was a substantial resurgence of energy in sculptural practices. This was against a backdrop of difficult social and political changes that included industrial and social strife including, most prominently, the miners’ strike, the Falklands War with the sinking of the Belgrano, the renewed nuclear threat that led to the peace camp at Greenham

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Common, AIDs, the IRA bombings, and serious racial tensions between the police and black populations that led to the Brixton, Handsworth, Tottenham and Toxteth riots that started in 1981, continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s.42 So serious were the disturbances in Toxteth that government papers from 1981 showed that Thatcher’s Conservative government considered allowing a managed decline of Liverpool, as to put any money into the city would be like ‘making water flow uphill’.43 As well as serious inequalities of opportunity in art and society between those from non-European backgrounds and white populations, there were also gender imbalances in art, industry, and the political and social worlds, which affected all women regardless of class or race. Most exhibitions of the 1980s predominantly excluded women, including New Spirit in Painting (1981) – none; Objects and Sculpture (1981) – one; British Sculpture in the 20th Century, part 2 (1982) – five out of eighty-five, and The Sculpture Show (1983) – twelve out of fifty-two artists. There were also real cuts to arts funding, with Thatcher’s government making it a condition of public funding that arts organizations look for sponsorship and private money.44 Business sponsorship tends to support those who have established profiles and whose work is less experimental, which again militated against those artists with different agendas. Many of my interviewees commented that there was a uniting aspect in that the establishment was felt to be the common enemy. However, few were overtly political in their work and often they discussed the exhilaration and fun of making their work. Frequently there were wit and energy in the transformation of materials and their experiments with visual vocabularies. Against the backdrop of exhibitions that predominantly featured male artists, there were some vital shows during the 1980s that exclusively showed women artists, including at the ICA: Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists, Women’s Images of Men and About Time: Video, Performance and Installations by 21 Women Artists – all in 1980. Eight Artists: Women: 1980 was another key exhibition, held at the Acme Gallery in Covent Garden. The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham also held all-women shows, including Sculpture by Women (1983). These were contentious, not only among reviewers, but also with some women sculptors who were uncertain whether they wanted to be associated with exhibitions where the defining factor for inclusion was gender.45 The Hayward Annual of 1978 had attempted to mitigate the marginalization of women artists. Selected by Rita Donagh, Tessa Jaray, Liliane Lijn, Gillian Wise and Kim Lim, they controversially showed the work of sixteen women artists alongside that of seven men in an attempt to find a space for integrating the work of women

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into the practice of the day.46 Rasheed Araeen distributed leaflets at the opening asking, ‘Why are black artists always excluded from official exhibitions/surveys like the Hayward Annuals?’47 It was hard for women to make work at a time when the different factions of feminism were quite vigorous in maintaining particular positions, especially about the use of materials and types of imagery. One key debate was about depicting the female form. Griselda Pollock, Rozsika Parker, Lucy Lippard and Laura Mulvey argued that the historical and cultural domination of male ideas about the female nude meant that female artists could not simply turn the camera on themselves without risking objectification.48 Writing in 1986 Griselda Pollock suggested: Figurative painting is burdened with a history of meanings, uses, associations. For example, painting a figure of a naked woman to celebrate women’s power and fertility or sexuality, can easily be misrepresented and recuperated for the voyeuristic representation of the female nude.49

The similar idea expressed in Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ was critiqued by Frederic Jameson as identifying the pleasure of viewing films with ‘the symbolic expression of male power’ in the ‘right to look’, a right whose ultimate object becomes the woman’s body, or rather, ‘the woman as body’ was something that was very seriously felt.50 After seeing Helen Chadwick’s Of Mutability (ICA, 1986), a group of mature art students visited Chadwick in her studio and strongly argued against her use of her own body in art saying that it ‘would send men out to rape little girls’.51 Chadwick stopped depicting her own body at that point, and many of my female interviewees, including Kate Blacker, Abigail Lane and Laura Ford, commented on how difficult it was to represent the female form. Most of my female interviewees spoke of how they also felt constrained about being able to sculpt or paint, as these genres were the foundation of the patriarchal, cultural history, which was being actively reconsidered.52 Echoing the framework of the new arts centres, like those in Plymouth and Birmingham, which had areas for art, theatre, film and music, some women sculptors worked alongside those in related fields and used materials that frequently men would not have considered or that did not have the baggage of male-dominated art history. They worked in ways that were unfashionable or considered themes that were not part of mainstream debates. While active and rich in the work itself, when artists are less easy to categorize, they easily become marginalized from historical narratives.

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British Art of the Long 1980s

The 1980s was the decade when a new generation of artists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds graduated from British art schools and emerged with confidence onto the arts scene. Some were overtly political in their work, while others found that more complex. During the 1970s immigrants from various countries including India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Africa were all termed ‘black’ in the UK – or ‘black British’ – out of solidarity in the face of discrimination. They were not united by culture, but in shared opposition to European economic, social and ideological oppression, as perpetuated in the histories of colonialism and imperialism. Richard Cork noted that British artists from backgrounds as diverse as Africa, India, Bangladesh, the Caribbean and Japan were exhibiting in the face of frequent intolerance, but they helped to create the conditions where some black artists in the 1990s could thrive.53 While art magazines are absolutely vital for informing artists, curators and gallerists about key debates, institutional happenings, political decisions that have implications for art, reviews of exhibitions and so on, they were, and are, less adept at giving voice to and reviewing those who are not part of the system. Galleries have their specialisms and compete to dominate the network of information. Writing in Art Monthly in 1982, Lawrence Alloway gave an overview of the support system for the arts since the nineteenth century.54 As he complained, galleries had failed to take on board the women’s movement in art, realism, Black art or community art.55 This had implications for what was included in art journals. The result was that women artists and black artists sought to find other outlets for their news or founded their own magazines and journals. Susan Hiller and a group of artists and writers, for instance, founded a small magazine called Wallpaper. Rasheed Araeen, who had published Black Phoenix during the 1970s, started Third Text in 1987 as a serious, critical voice for artists from non-Western backgrounds. While there were a number of important feminist art journals in the United States that were started during the 1970s, it was not until the 1980s that the Women Artists Slide Library opened in Britain. It had been conceived during the 1970s as a repository for women artists to include slides of their work, but a space to house this could not be found and the collection did not open until May 1982. They held exhibitions, symposia about reclaiming art history and assertiveness training. They also teamed up with Feminist Art News (FAN), which was based in Kings Heath, Birmingham, and Women for Art Change (WAC). Although financially supported by Greater London Arts Association and Greater London Council, this was always tenuous.56

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The Arts Council specialized in collecting and exhibiting a broad range of contemporary art.57 There was an ‘arm’s-length’ policy between them and government funding. In an era when there was little support for culture in general and the arts in particular, this could be complex. However, they did support the exhibition programmes in their satellite galleries, which were mixed and innovative, touring exhibitions and a range of initiatives including the journal started by Rasheed Araeen: Third Text. The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain was curated by Rasheed Araeen and formed part of the Hayward Touring programme supported by the Arts Council (1989–90). The desire of Araeen was to contest the Eurocentric structures and narratives of art history.58 One aspect that is interesting to note is that the works displayed were mainly from the artists themselves, private collections, with only a few being lent from regional galleries. It was a contentious exhibition. As Kobena Mercer has articulated, there was almost an impossible expectation that this one exhibition – or indeed any exhibition – could include all who had been excluded so that for each artist there was a burden of expectation that they could be representative of the diverse cultures.59 Some artists, including Sutapa Biswas, said that there was not enough representation of work by female artists in the exhibition.60 It was also condemned in the right-wing press in ways that mirrored the tensions and prejudices of the era. In his review for the Evening Standard, for instance, Brian Sewell wrote that the artists had ‘no traditions of their own’ to draw on, so imitated ‘Western visual idioms that they do not understand’, which resulted in ‘third-rate imitations of the white man’s cliché’.61 Sewell was not alone in looking at the art from a Eurocentric, formalist tradition that drew on established ideas of ‘quality’. In a conservative country, insightful and sympathetic reviewing of any contemporary art was rare. Richard Cork, who had been active in viewing and reviewing a broad swathe of contemporary art exhibitions in a variety of venues, found in 1983 that the Evening Standard’s new editor Louis Kirby would no longer publish his reviews, except about a few ‘major’ exhibitions. His successor was Brian Sewell, who was not only prejudiced but contemptuous of the energy and adventure in much contemporary practice.62 He wrote that ‘[t]here has never been a first-rank woman artist’ and fulminated against a broad range of contemporary art, from Hockney to Banksy, and although loved by Evening Standard readers who were frequently bemused by what contemporary art was attempting, many in the industry were less content.63

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British Art of the Long 1980s

However, there were few art history degree courses where one could seriously study contemporary art. Most at best stopped with Modernism, and the critical methods used were narrow. This was mirrored in the foremost art history journal in Britain: Art History, which was founded in the late 1970s and which right through the 1980s had almost no articles on anything beyond Modernism, almost exclusively featuring art that could more easily uphold a connoisseurship tradition.

Institutional changes In the early 1980s, the Tate was perceived as having no declared policy on collecting or exhibiting.64 Sir Norman Reid had been the director since the 1960s and had strengthened the collection in works from the early twentieth century. Sir Alan Bowness had already been chosen to take his place when there was a meeting of established artists, including Tom Phillips and Anthony Caro, with Tate staff and the director, that followed on from a vigorous exchange in the press led by David Hockney who savaged the Tate for ‘sins of omission’.65 This institutional conservatism, which demonstrated a lack of sympathy for contemporary art, was part of the broader conservatism within much of the art history establishment, the political establishment and the country in general. However, the New Art History was important for younger artists and curators. Not only did this new narrative involve rewriting cultural history and how images could be interpreted, but in raising awareness of what had become normalized habits of marginalization it took a critical look at contemporary cultures. Reviews of major new texts were printed in Art Monthly, among other journals aimed at artists. For instance, in March 1985 while addressing contemporary ideas about post-modernism, Brandon Taylor reviewed Suzi Gablik’s Has Modernism Failed? (1984), B. Buchloh, S. Guilbaut and D. Solkin’s Modernisms and Modernity: The Vancouver Conference Papers (1983) and Hal Foster’s The Anti-aesthetic: Essays in Postmodern Culture (1983), as well as some related articles.66 Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker were important in reframing the histories of art to include the contributions of women and to offer alternate ways of viewing images of women.67 Many artists from non-European backgrounds, like Eddie Chambers, were curating exhibitions and writing articles that challenged the prevailing perceptions of the black population and Black art.68 The Arts Council prioritized living artists and created a group of funded galleries, including the Whitechapel and the ICA in London, and regional

Introduction

15

galleries, including the Ikon in Birmingham and Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge.69 All of these saw their remit as increasing the audiences of contemporary art. They had important outreach and schools’ programmes, in which artists like Kate Blacker and Veronica Ryan played active roles, held fast-changing exhibitions of different types of contemporary art and frequently supported artists who were not shown in more establishment venues. The ICA, under the auspices of Lisa Appignanesi, organized important symposia about the women’s movement, key theorists and different facets of contemporary practice.70 Other Arts Council galleries also had artist talks and related events. Artists and curators went to these, listened and contributed. Antonia Payne at the Ikon Gallery saw her job as enabling artists and developing the local audience for contemporary art. With the BLK Art Group, which was an association of black artists who were questioning what black art was, being based in Wolverhampton, as well as promoting women artists generally, she also felt that it was her job to promote local artists and make inclusive shows. She held group shows like Pan Afrikan Connection (1982), which had first been shown at the Africa Centre in London and which then toured to Nottingham and Coventry, and Conceptual Clothing (1986), which included a broad range of artists. She also held solo shows at the Ikon, including a retrospective of the work of Rasheed Araeen (1987) and a photographic exhibition by Vanley Burke about black lives in Handsworth (1983).71 Television was to play an important role in starting to put a more sympathetic slant on art that was accessible to a broad audience. Robert Hughes’s documentary series The Shock of the New (1980), while being overwhelmingly male and Western, was accessible and introduced the public to some more recent art. The Turner Prize was first awarded in 1984, which was presented as being glamorous, and the commentary gave the public a positive and informed discussion about recent developments.72 Many of the nominations were of New British Sculptors during the 1980s, with Helen Chadwick being the first woman artist to be nominated in 1987, followed by Alison Wilding in 1988 and the painters Gillian Ayres and Paula Rego in 1989. Anish Kapoor won it in 1991. Television channels were also opening up, with regional channels being franchised in the mid-1980s and Channel 4 starting in 1982, both of which led to opportunities for artists and curators. These included being much more open to receiving suggestions for programming as Susan Hiller discussed.73 Jonathan Harvey co-founded Television South West, and from this worked with James Lingwood and others to stage the major exhibitions of site-specific sculpture around Britain: TSWA 3D (1987) and the Four Cities Project (1990).74 Sandy Nairne’s documentary

16

British Art of the Long 1980s

State of the Art: Ideas and Images in the 1980s was an inclusive investigation into contemporary art that was filmed in Europe, America and Australia and was broadcast first on Channel 4 in 1987 and was then shown in over twenty countries.75 From the mid-1980s other changes started to become more apparent. Gavin Jantjes was appointed as a member of the Arts Council in 1986. The ICA held the exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid, A Thin Black Line in 1985, and in 1986 had a seminar on the dissolution of the Greater London Council and the linked report on imbalances in attitudes and policy of the establishment. From Two Worlds, curated by Nicholas Serota and Gavin Jantjes (Whitechapel, 1986), was also an important exhibition. It included artists from a variety of non-Western backgrounds, including Rasheed Araeen, Sonya Boyce, Lubaina Himid and Veronica Ryan. The bringing together of artists who were dissimilar in their aims and affiliations was perceived as being insensitive within the Black arts community, and much of the criticism was that it was an eclectic show.76 Like the exhibitions that were for women artists, these exhibitions separated out important works and artists, rather than allowing the work to be seen within the broader context of contemporary art of the time. Also, like some white women artists in relation to women-only exhibitions, some were uncomfortable about the overt political and curatorial basis of Black art exhibitions. Some artists, like Veronica Ryan, wanted their work to be seen as drawing on a range of different influences and experiences.77 There were moves in drawing together different voices and artists. Susan Hiller, for instance, ran an innovative programme of talks at the Slade in the mid-1980s, where she invited speakers from all different backgrounds to lecture, including Guy Brett, Lynne Cooke, Daniel Miller and Rasheed Araeen. These were later brought together in the book The Myth of Primitivism.78 There were also some group shows that proposed an inclusive history such as Shocks to the System: Social and Political Issues in Recent British Art from the Arts Council Collection (South Bank Centre, 1991). However, the number of inclusive exhibitions was small, and the visibility of artists from non-European backgrounds was not great outside the galleries that were organized by themselves.

Market developments As the decade advanced, foreign travel became more possible and normal as the economy developed, as suggested in the work of Langlands & Bell. In her

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17

essay for the British Art Show, Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton wrote that not only would contemporary artists probably have visited Documenta and the biennials but might have also travelled to see major exhibitions abroad. Indeed, going to live abroad was also not so unlikely as it would have been even a few years previously.79 With these changes and the opening up of the market in general, artists were gaining international recognition and selling work. As Lynne Cooke explained, no longer were emerging artists only seeing the previous generation, but they were being put alongside each other, which gave a certain parity.80 Another major influence on developing the prominence of artists was the emergence of major exhibitions of individual artists, which was a new phenomenon and set a marker for those in art school during the 1980s. Galleries like the Whitechapel had major solo shows such as those of Bruce Nauman in 1986, which was widely viewed. The ICA also held solo shows including that of Helen Chadwick in 1986. The Saatchi Gallery, which opened in 1985 in St John’s Wood, was also critical, not only in the huge, clean space, but also in the grand exhibitions that were shown there. Originally exhibiting predominantly American artists, during the early 1990s it began to show the YBAs, who had come to public attention in 1988. Freeze (1988) marked a real change in perceptions. It was organized by and exhibited the work of a group of students still studying at Goldsmiths, or who were recent graduates, including Damien Hirst and Abigail Lane, and was shown in the large Port of London Authority (PLA) building in Surrey Docks in the London Docklands.81 Held in three parts, it was ambitious in the professionalism of display and in the catalogue, which included an essay by the Head of Art History at Goldsmiths Ian Jeffrey and was distributed to bookshops and galleries. The BBC covered the exhibition and some of the important curators and art dealers were taken there to view it.82 The artists who showed at the exhibition who were later to be grouped as the YBAs were, like New British Sculpture, disparate in their forms of practice. They emerged onto the scene in 1988, when the art market was booming. Some were quickly taken on by different galleries, including Karsten Schubert, Interim Art and Waddington. The speed of this and the fast gaining of international exhibitions were new. However, their ambition and artistic qualities coincided with the increase in galleries, art collectors and the economic boom. For a short while there was money available from various new and expanding companies, like those in the London and Liverpool Docklands, which helped sponsor exhibitions. This was part of a larger monetary upheaval where many felt much richer, as was spoofed by Harry Enfield in his comedy sketches and his song

18

British Art of the Long 1980s

‘Loadsamoney (Doin’ Up the House)’ (1988) but came to an abrupt halt in the recession of 1990.83 It was to be more than a year before the economy stabilized again. The questioning of the culture of capitalism that was evident in much of the work by YBA artists – such as Michael Landy’s Market (1990), for instance – was not so much breaking rules but confronting them. Many socially and culturally normalized systems were investigated, from sexuality, to class, to monetarism. As well as Freeze (1998), The East Country Yard Show (1990) and Modern Medicine (1989) were all indicative of the changing visibility of contemporary art and of being open to sales and critical responses. These three exhibitions, together with the British Art Show (1990), which toured around Britain, were important for presenting the work of the YBAs and helped to establish their grouping. In 1991 Andrew Renton and Lynne Cooke discussed some of the dramatic changes in self-perception and international recognition of British artists that had occurred over the previous few decades. While there had been occasional important international exhibitions that brought together disparate artists prior to the 1980s, such as When Attitudes Became Form (1969), which started in Bern and then toured, and The New Art (1972) at the Hayward Gallery, this was to become a common phenomenon during the 1980s.84 From small but energetic, dynamic and ambitious roots, the art scene in Britain was transformed during the decade into being internationally significant. The level of ambition, imaginative thinking and sheer determination of the artists and facilitators along with changes to the infrastructures, major solo shows of contemporary artists in new, large galleries, the managing of careers and the booming art market were key. Art students were encouraged to see everything. They read the journals and were taught by practising artists. The level of ambition shown by the previous generation had significant impact. By the end of the 1980s everything seemed possible.

Notes 1

Lynne Cooke, ‘Re-Definition: The “New British Sculpture” of the Eighties’, in Richard Francis and Lewis Biggs eds., Starlit Waters, British Sculpture: An International Art 1968–1988, (Liverpool: Tate Gallery, 1988), 45–9, 45. The artists who were grouped together as New British Sculptors included Kate Blacker, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anthony Gormley, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Richard Wentworth, Alison Wilding and Bill Woodrow.

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3

4 5 6 7 8

9 10

11 12

13 14

15

16

19

Jennifer Powell, ‘A Coherent, National “School” of Sculpture? Constructing Postwar New British Sculpture through Exhibiting Practices’, Sculpture Journal (vol. 21, issue 2, 2012), 37–50. Nick Baker, ‘Expanding the Field: How the “New Sculpture” Put British Art on the Map in the 1980s’, British Art Studies, (Issue 3, Summer 2016), https://www. britishartstudies.ac.uk, last accessed 16 June 2020. Ibid. and see interview with Richard Deacon. Duncan Macmillan, ‘Exhibitions: “British Art Now” in New York’, Art Monthly, (March 1980), 13–14. Alan Bowness, ‘Director’s Preface’, in Francis and Biggs eds., Starlit Waters, 5. Nicholas Serota and Richard Francis, ‘Preface’, in Penelope Curtis ed., Modern British Sculpture from the Collection’, (Liverpool: Tate Gallery, 1988), 5–6. Richard Francis and Lewis Biggs, ‘Introduction: English Heritage’, in Francis and Biggs eds., Starlit Waters, 6–7, and 53. In some catalogues the artists are referred to as the Lisson sculptors – see Sarah Kent, ‘British Sculpture: A Thumbnail Sketch’, in Serpentine Gallery ed., Here and Now: Serpentine Gallery, 1970–1995, (London: Serpentine Gallery, 1995), n.p. The Lisson Gallery was vital for promoting a coherent school of British sculpture, including through repeatedly exhibiting solo and group shows that included artists who were being marketed as New British Sculptors, including Tony Cragg (1979, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1988), Richard Deacon (1983, 1987, 1988) and Anish Kapoor (1982, 1983, 1985, 1988, 1989), as well as supporting this group of artists to exhibit abroad together. Penelope Curtis, Modern British Sculpture from the Collection, (London: Tate Gallery, 1988), esp. 129–31. Lewis Biggs, Iwona Blaszczyk and Sandy Nairne, ‘Introduction’, in Institute of Contemporary Art and Arnolfini Gallery ed., Objects and Sculpture, (London and Bristol: ICA and Arnolfini Gallery, 1981), 5–6. Cooke, ‘Re-Definition: The ‘New British Sculpture’ of the Eighties’, 48. For a discussion of this, see Penelope Curtis, ‘British British Sculpture Sculpture’, in Penelope Curtis and Keith Wilson eds., Modern British Sculpture, (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2011), 14–27, 16–17 and 25–7. Michael Newman, ‘New Sculpture in Britain’, Art in America, (September 1982), 104–14 and 177–9, 106. Mary Jane Jacob and Graham Beal, ‘Introduction and Acknowledgements’, in Terry Neff and Graham Beal eds., A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture since 1965, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 7–9, 8. Greg Hilty, ‘Renewing the New: British Sculpture in the 1980s’, British Art Studies, (Issue 3, Summer 2016). For details of the working of the Arts Council and about touring exhibitions, see the interview with Roger Malbert. See Lynne Cooke, ‘Reconsidering the New Sculpture’, Artscribe, (August 1983), 25– 9, 28. See also Richard Cork, ‘British Sculpture in the Late Twentieth Century’, in

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Catherine Marshall ed., Breaking the Mould: British Art of the 1980s and 1990s: The Weltkunst Collection, (London: Lund Humphries and Dublin: The Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1997), 15. 17 See http://www.billwoodrow.com/dev/exh_group.php?sel_letter=a&page=1, last accessed 16 June 2020. Many of the interviewees spoke of travelling and exhibiting abroad. 18 Martin Kunz, ‘The British Avant-garde of the ’60s and ’70s. Witnessed on Location in 1970 and 1980’ (trans. Catherine Schelbert) in Biggs and Francis, Starlit Waters, 35–9. The artists he chose were Stephen Cox, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow. 19 Nick Baker, ‘Managing the Reputations of the New British Sculptors’, Sculpture Journal, (vol. 21, issue 2, 2012), 75–84. 20 Baker, ‘Managing the Reputations’, 75. For further insights into managing the careers of artists, see the interview with Karsten Schubert and Alison Wilding. 21 Baker, ‘Managing the Reputations’, 77. For further insights into this, see the interviews with Richard Deacon, Kate Blacker and Bill Woodrow. 22 British Art Studies is the joint publication of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC), London, and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), New Haven, https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk, last accessed 16 June 2020. 23 See Greg Hilty, ‘Renewing the New: British Sculpture in the 1980s’, Anthony Bond, ‘The British Show in Australia 1985’, Mary Anne Jacob, ‘A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture since 1965’, Julien Heynen, ‘full’n’empty – subjectobject – uhmm. Richard Deacon, Haus Lang and Haus Esters, Krefeld 1991’, Nick Baker, ‘Expanding the Field’, in Penelope Curtis and Martina Droth eds., British Sculpture Abroad, British Art Studies, July 2016. 24 Joanna Drew and Nicola Bennett, ‘Preface’, The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions, (London: Arts Council, 1984), 8–9. 25 See report in Art Monthly, (December 1981/January 1982), 15. 26 See interviews with Robin Klassnik, Richard Wilson and Susan Hiller. 27 Lynne Cooke, William Furlong, Liam Gillick, Maureen Paley, Andrew Renton and Karsten Schubert, ‘Discussion’, in Andrew Renton and Liam Gillick, Technique Anglais: Current Trends in British Art, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 8–41, 23. 28 The exhibition Wapping Artists 1980/Open Studio Exhibition was held at 172 Garnet Street and 82 Wapping Wall, E1, and showed forty-seven artists. It was supported by Imediaprint Ltd., The British Petroleum Company, Saatchi and Saatchi co. ltd. and the Greater London Arts Association. This latter was an important source of funding. 29 I would like to thank Alison Wilding for lending these catalogues to me. 30 J. R. Madge, ‘AIR & SPACE’, in The Last Wapping Show, (London: self-published, 1985), n.p. The catalogue and exhibition also received sponsorship from Regalian Properties PLC., Lightplan Consultants Ltd., Merc Sharp & Dohme (Europe) Inc., Christies, and assistance from other quarters. It is interesting to note that the

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31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45 46

47 48 49

21

sponsorship by Regalian Properties was recognized by an award under the Ministry for the Arts Bursary Scheme, administered by the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts. Many of my interviewees discuss this. For Beck Road, see Mikey Cuddihy and Jonathan Harvey. For living in squats and an insight into living in East London, see Langlands & Bell. See interview with Hilary Gresty. Cooke, Furlong, Gillick, Paley, Renton and Schubert, ‘Discussion’, 37. John Carson, ‘The Edge of Acceptability’, in Sandra Drew and Georgie Scott eds., From the Kitchen Table: Drew Gallery Projects 1984–90, (London: Café Gallery Projects, 2018), 18–23, 19. See the interview with James Lingwood. Carson, ‘The Edge of Acceptability’, 21. See interview with James Lingwood. Carson, ‘The Edge of Acceptability’, 22. See interview with Laura Ford. Thalia Allington-Wood, ‘Women Sculptors in the 1980s and the Drew Gallery Projects’, in Drew and Scott eds., From the Kitchen Table, 70–9, 71. See interviews with Jonathan Harvey and James Lingwood. Tony Foster, Jonathan Harvey and James Lingwood, ‘Introduction’, in James Lingwood ed., TSWA Four Cities Project: New Works for Different Places, (Bristol: Taylor Brothers, 1990), 8–9. See also interview with Richard Wilson Jonathan Harvey and James Lingwood. See the interview with Rasheed Araeen for some insight about the racial tensions of the day. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-16369447/thatcher-urged-to-abandonliverpool-after-the-toxteth-riots, last accessed 16 June 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/arts-funding-cutstheatre-galleries; https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/apr/08/margaretthatcher-long-shadow-theatre, last accessed 16 June 2020. See the interviews with Antonia Payne and Robert Malbert which touch on these. See, for instance, interview with Antonia Payne. For details about both the decisions made about the exhibition and comments on the reception, see Deborah Cherry and Juliet Steyn, ‘Putting the Hayward Annual Two Together’, Art Monthly, (Issue 19, 1978), 10–14. Cherry and Steyn, ‘Putting the Hayward Annual Two Together’, 14. Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject, (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 24–5. Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, ‘Fifteen Years of Feminist Action: From Practical Strategies to Strategic Practices’, in Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock eds., Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–1985, (London and NY: Pandora, 1987), 3–78, 5.

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50 Frederic Jameson, ‘Pleasure: A Political Issue’, in Tony Bennett ed., Formations of Pleasure, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 1–14, 3–4. 51 E. Cocker, ‘Indifference in Difference’, Transcript sent to Heidi Reitmaier. n.p. dated 2.12.95. In Women’s Art Library, Artist Box, Helen Chadwick. This exhibition was widely seen by artists and art students – see interview with Cathy de Monchaux. 52 See, for instance, Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010). This was originally published in 1984 by The Women’s Press Ltd. 53 Richard Cork, ‘Introduction’, in Richard Cork ed., New Spirit, New Sculpture, New Money: Art in the 1980s, (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1–24, 4–7. 54 Lawrence Alloway ‘The Support System and Art Galleries’, Art Monthly, (February 1982), 3–5. 55 Alloway, ‘The Support System’, 5. 56 Pauline Barry, ‘Report 1982’, Women Artists Slide Library Newsletter, (Issue 1), 1983, n.p. 57 See interview with Roger Malbert. 58 Rasheed Araeen, ‘Introduction: When the Chickens Come Home to Roost’, in The Other Story Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain, (London: Hayward Touring 1989–90), 9–11. 59 Kobena Mercer ‘Black Art and the Burden of Representation’, Third Text, (spring 1990), 61–2. 60 Mercer ‘Black Art and the Burden’, 61–2. 61 Brian Sewell, ‘Black Pride and Prejudice’, Evening Standard, (Thursday 4 January 1990), 25. 62 Cork, New Spirit, 12. 63 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/19/art-critic-brian-sewell-diesaged-84, last accessed 16 June 2020. 64 Pat Gilmour, ‘Page Two Talking the Tate Around’, Art Monthly, (October 1979), 2–3. 65 Gilmour, ‘Page Two’, 2–3. 66 Brandon Taylor, ‘Defining Postmodernism: Problems and Paradoxes’, Art Monthly, (March 1985). 67 See for instance Pollock and Parker, Framing Feminism. 68 See for instance Eddie Chambers, ‘Blackness as a Cultural Icon’, in Critical Decade: Black British Photography in the 80s, Ten.8 Magazine, (Birmingham: Spring 1992), 122–7, http://www.eddiechambers.com/archive/ten-8/, last accessed 16 June 2020. 69 See Claire Glossop, ‘Infrastructures: Formation and Networks 1975–2000’, in Penelope Curtis ed., Sculpture in 20th Century Britain, (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2003), 231–41. 70 For insights about the ICA, see the interview with James Lingwood.

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71 See interview with Antonia Payne. Rasheed Araeen’s retrospective was called From Modernism to Postmodernism: A Retrospective: 1959–1987 (November 1987 to January 1988). Vanley Burke’s exhibition was called Handsworth from the Inside (May to June 1983). Many works from these exhibitions were shown more recently at the exhibition As Exciting as We Can Make It: Ikon in the 1980s, (July to August 2014). 72 For a brief history see https://www.tate.org.uk/art/turner-prize, last accessed 16 June 2020. 73 See the interviews with Susan Hiller and Jonathan Harvey. 74 For details see interviews with Jonathan Harvey, James Lingwood and Richard Wilson. 75 Sandy Nairne, State of the Art: Ideas and Images in the 1980s, six programmes, originally shown on Channel 4 (1987). See also the interview with Susan Hiller. 76 See the comments by Keith Piper in http://new.diaspora-artists.net/display_item. php?id=145&table=exhibitions, last accessed 16 June 2020. See also Monique Kerman, Contemporary British Artists of African Descent and the Unburdening of a Generation, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–8. 77 See interview with Veronica Ryan, and also Kerman, Contemporary British Artists of African Descent, 20. 78 Susan Hiller, The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art, (Abingdon: Routledge, 1991). 79 See Allthorpe-Guyton, ‘Ministers of Misrule’, 23. 80 For a discussion of this, see Cooke, Furlong, Gillick, Paley, Renton and Schubert, ‘Discussion’, 12. She discusses two exhibitions at the Kunstverein, Cologne in 1984, where Tony Cragg and Julian Opie were shown. 81 Freeze was sponsored by the London Docklands Development Corporation and the property development firm Olympia & York. See http://www.damienhirst.com/ exhibitions/group/1988/freeze, last accessed 16 June 2020. 82 The artists included in Freeze were Steven Adamson, Angela Bulloch, Mat Collishaw, Ian Davenport, Angus Fairhurst, Anya Gallaccio, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Michael Landy, Abigail Lane, Sarah Lucas, Lala Meredith-Vula, Stephen Park, Richard Patterson, Simon Patterson and Fiona Rae. See the interviews with Karsten Schubert and Abigail Lane. 83 See the interview with Karsten Schubert. 84 Cooke, Furlong, Gillick, Paley, Renton and Schubert, ‘Discussion’, 8–41. When Attitudes Became Form, 1969, curated by Harold Szeeman, Kunsthalle Berne. The New Art, 1972, curated by Anne Seymour, Hayward Gallery, London.

Figure 1  Rasheed Araeen, Sculpture No. 2, from the exhibition Rasheed Araeen: Before and After Minimalism, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2014. Rasheed Araeen, Courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation

1

Rasheed Araeen

Interview 20 February 2018 IR I wanted to start by saying that you have had such a rich and diverse career: as an artist, writer, curator and publisher. Do you see these as being interlinked? RA Yes. IR Is there one that feels more ‘you’? RA Primarily I am an artist. Whatever I have done, it was from the point of view of being an artist. IR So your curation started from the art itself. RA Yes. My main pursuit was for art, to make art, but with my experience of the art establishment in London I realized my work could not be recognized. This was the situation, I also realized, faced by most non-white artists. I had then no choice but to do something about it. So I began to collect material about their work to set up an archive, which eventually led me to do curation. IR Yes, you are right. In a recent statement in Apollo1 you said that there was an aspect of optimism in your art, and I thought it was interesting that you talk about the dominant culture and suppression, and thought that it was both brave and optimistic to take on a whole system. RA Yes. There were a lot of risks involved – career-wise. I was aware of that. But, for me, the pursuit of ideas and truth were more important than a career. When I came to Britain I brought some works with me, thinking they would be the start of a successful career here. But I decided to abandon this work so as to start with new ideas. That is how I became interested in sculpture.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR Thinking about that, you said that when you arrived in London you were interested in Caro, and you had a SPACE studio. Did you find yourself surrounded by artists with similar ideas? RA This was four years later. Before that I spent four years in isolation. I had then no contact with anyone in the art world. Even when I had moved to a SPACE studio, which I shared with an Australian artist Jeff Sterling, I did not have much communication with other artists. Everyone was busy doing his/her work. There were a few artists who were doing Carolike sculptures, but they were not interesting. I did though have some friendship with John Latham as we shared some ideas. But now I’ve no contact with any artist in the UK. But this was four years later. Before that I spent four years in isolation. I had then no contact with anyone in the art world. IR That must have been very lonely. RA No. I lived a full life. I excluded myself from the art world, as I was not ready for it. I was too busy earning my living, also thinking and trying to develop new ideas about sculpture. I can’t therefore say that I was excluded, because no one knew about me. But I had a full life. I regularly went around to see what was in the galleries and museums, and in the evening I was in the pub with my wife, drinking, eating, and so on. IR You started making these lattice sculptures, which is a theme that has run all through your work. What is it about them? RA  I didn’t know then. I was just looking for something new. When I came to discover the lattice structures and its role in the construction of modern sculpture, I was working intuitively. But now I can look at them, analyse them and can even place them historically within the trajectory of modern sculpture. But all this is obviously with hindsight. IR There is a rightness about them. RA  I don’t know about that. When critics and art historians now look at my work of this period, especially the pile of girders arranged symmetrically, and then the use of lattice structures from engineering, also arranged symmetrically, they always see them in terms of an antithesis or a confrontation with Anthony Caro’s work. But that was not the case when I started making these works. I was just looking for something different, something new, instead of following Caro, and I hit upon the idea of geometry and symmetry. That was all. IR I have seen them in galleries, and the audience is invited to move them around and rearrange the forms.

Rasheed Araeen RA  The work you are referring to was conceived in 1968, the beginning of my post-minimalist work. I then realized that there was something not quite right with fixed geometry, because it followed the tradition of art being something to look at. I wanted to do something more than that so that the audience could get physically involved in my work. I decided to break the rigidity of fixed or static geometry, which initially comprised four structural cubes, and allow the audience – spectators if you like or whatever you want to call them – to reorganize the work in their own way. That led to Zero to Infinity. IR I was also interested in the dialogue that you had with Richard Long’s work. One of his works was Walking a Line in Peru (1972), which was a photograph of a line he made in the landscape. In others like Stone Line (1980), he brought objects connected to his walks into the gallery. You made White Line through Africa (1982–8) and Arctic Circle (1982–8). How did you want the audience to relate to those? To see these in relation to those by Richard Long? To see the bones and think of an imperial past? RA  It was very obvious from the work itself. The line of bones. When you see the work from a distance it looks like a Richard Long. It is only when you are closer to the work that you see that they are not stones, but bones. IR Where did you get the bones from? RA  It was David Thorpe, who ran the gallery called the Showcase in East London. When I spoke to him sometime in the 1980s about my idea of making the sculptures of bones and empty beer and wine bottles, he became very enthusiastic. It was easy to go around and pick up empty bottles, but where were we to get the bones? He said, ‘Don’t worry – I will get them for you.’ One afternoon I got a call from him saying, ‘Can you come over?’ I went to the gallery, and he took me around the East London, where there was a big factory which collected bones from the butchers. It was so smelly. He arranged a small van, and we put the bones in it, and he took them to a hospital near Whitechapel, which cleaned them and bleached them. In the gallery we were going to do two works, a circle and a line. I myself arranged the line of bones, but he invited some people who went around the pubs and collected empty wine bottles and beer cans. I just asked them to make a circle, so they made the circle.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR What was it about Richard Long’s work that you wanted to confront or have a dialogue with? RA  I admired his work, particularly of the late 1960s, but I wished he had remained in Britain and engaged with his own environment rather than going around the world, by which he was following the footsteps of the imperial explorers of the nineteenth century. IR You also had a dialogue with Andy Warhol. I am thinking about Golden Calf (1987) in which you used his image of Marilyn Monroe from 1967. RA  A lot of time things happen in my work by chance. When I visited the Tate Gallery sometime in the mid-1980s, I saw the prints of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, which were being sold for £1 each. I bought four of them and brought them home without knowing what I was going to do with them and put them away. It was only sometime later when by chance I encountered other things that the idea of the work occurred to me. First, while looking at an Iranian magazine I saw in it a photograph of a dead Iranian soldier lying down in a pool of blood. He died in the war between Iraq and Iran, a proxy war started by Saddam Hussain on behalf of the West, which gave me the idea of the work in which the dead soldier and four prints of Marilyn Monroe by Warhol came together. After I finished the work I titled it Golden Calf and signed it ‘RA 87’. I also began to think about Andy Warhol’s relationship with Iran. In the early 1970s the Shah of Iran invited many American experts to build and establish the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran. He had spent millions and millions on American artworks. What interested me most was the interest of Farah Diba, the Shah’s wife, in American Pop art, and somehow it also came to my mind that Andy Warhol must have visited Iran then and that he probably then also painted a portrait of Farah Diba. However, there was no documentary evidence of this. But I kept on entertaining this until about six or seven years ago when I contacted a friend of mine in Tehran, who was interested in art. I asked him whether Warhol had visited Iran, and he said ‘yes’. Two years ago this was actually confirmed by a film about Warhol I saw in Dubai. He had actually visited both Iran and Iraq at the time. Whether he did do a portrait of Shah’s wife or not – there is still no evidence of it – is not important. What is important is the complexity of the work alluding to Warhol’s role in what Edward Said has described as cultural imperialism.

Rasheed Araeen IR It is an interesting connection. You also did a number of images and performances related to your experiences. One was Paki Bastard (Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person) of 1977. Clearly it was a performance as well as photographs. RA  There was a series of photographs with a commentary.2 In the 1970s I was very close to David Medalla. In fact, I would not hesitate to say that he played a major role in the politicization of my work in the 1970s. We would quite often meet together to discuss the relationship of art and politics. In 1977, in the summer, as I was sitting with him and talking, he said: ‘Look, Rasheed. I know that you have been interested in performance, although I haven’t seen any of them. I would like you to do a performance on the closing day of the exhibition at Artists for Democracy.’ I said: ‘Forget it, David. Everyone is now doing performances.’ But he kept on insisting. And when I went home after this meeting, I began thinking about what David had suggested. It was then the idea of this performance began to appear. I began to think about my visits to Brick Lane in the 1960s – I had a studio near there in the late 1960s. The racism and the violence of the skinheads were then endemic. Many Bangladeshi and other South Asian people died because of the skinheads. So all that began to appear in my mind, and I decided to do a performance based on this memory as well as what was still happening to Asian people. At that time, there were also Asian women on strike against the Indian owner of the Grunwick photo processing factory, which was actually just around here from my studio. I read about the strike in the Guardian, which was my regular paper, and one news story was that during a demonstration there the police had grabbed the testicles of men and the breasts of women. It was also reported that a policeman had called an Asian man ‘Paki Bastard’. So that became the title of the performance. IR Did you do many performances after that? RA  Paki Bastard was my first performance in front of an audience, and I felt uncomfortable. I can’t explain why. So after doing this performance at four or five places around the country and in Canada, I thought I would do something without the audience. I then did some performances in front of the camera. There is a work called Burning Ties of 1976–9, which was done without the audience, as well as I Love It: It Love I, which I did in 1978 in Karachi with the participation of my family there.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR  I also wanted to talk about the founding of Third Text, which must have been both brave and time-consuming. RA  Third Text was the resurrection of Black Phoenix (1978–9). I should therefore first talk about what I began to do in the 1970s, when I realized that I had to put down my ideas in writing. At the time I had no discipline of writing and had to struggle to make any sense in my attempt to express myself in writing. However, I managed to write Preliminary Notes for a Black Manifesto (1975–6), which I then wanted to publish. Studio International (SI) did promise to publish it, and it was published eventually. But in 1977, it was thought that SI was going to be closed down, and I was worried that it might close down before Black Manifesto was published. So I contacted a friend, Mahmood Jamal, who is a poet, and discussed with him about starting our own magazine. We had no money. I could only put in £250, and he said he could do the same, and that is how my publishing work began. We got together at the end of 1977, and I contacted people I knew to contribute. We thus managed to get enough material together to make the first issue of Black Phoenix, which came out in January 1978. Many people now see Black Phoenix in the context of postcolonial theory. But they are totally wrong, because in 1977 there was no postcolonial discourse. The first book of postcolonial scholarship, Orientalism by Edward Said, came out six months after the first issue of Black Phoenix and the publication of my Black Manifesto in it. It was actually Frantz Fanon who was a big influence on my thinking, which led me into understanding the imperial nature of British society. If there was, and still is, institutional racism, it is the legacy of the Empire. It was with this understanding that I started my publishing work. However I had to shelve Black Phoenix after three issues, as there was then little interest in the issues it dealt with. IR In the chronology given in the catalogue of The Other Story, it looks like time frame between 1985 and 1986 was almost a tipping point for publications, exhibitions and other things that made the contribution of Black artists more visible. I am thinking about a Thin Black Line at the ICA, the conference at the ICA that discussed the report related to the dissolution of the GLC, Gavin Jantjes being appointed a member of the Arts Council, Lubaina Himid opening Elbow Room … There seems to have been a sense of movement just prior to you starting Third Text.

Rasheed Araeen RA  You are right. In the 1980s things began to change. But the background to all this was also the mass uprising of black people – what the media called ‘black riots’ – in Britain’s major cities in 1981–2, which coincided with the emergence of the so-called Black Art. In 1982, Arts Council also announced its intention of funding the so-called ethnic minority arts, which were actually supported and funded in a big way by the then GLC. Although GLC was abolished in 1986, it left behind the kind of awareness which the mainstream art establishment couldn’t ignore. In fact, the Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher, taking advice from Lord Scarman who investigated the so-called riots, directed the Arts Council in 1986 to spend 25 per cent of its funding on the ethnic minority arts. However, my own work in 1980s began much before all this; it was a continuation of what I had begun in 1978. While publishing Black Phoenix, I also contacted the Arts Council and asked for its support for the research into the work of those artists who were ignored and had no place within the mainstream. My request was rejected, and I had to carry on with the struggle all alone in my own way, which actually led me in 1982 into establishing an archive of the work of African/Asian artists in Britain, again without any support from the Arts Council. I know I’m somehow deviating from your question about Third Text, but it is important for me to point out what has been missing from the generally known story of this time. So let me go back to your question about Third Text. Although all what you have described and my own description of the time are important in the understanding of what enabled the successful founding of Third Text in 1987, there is something very specific in this respect without which the story of this journal is not complete. As I have mentioned above, many things have happened in my life by chance. In fact, without a chance meeting with an Arts Council’s officer in 1986, there would not have perhaps been Third Text. Soon after the end of the GLC in 1986, when I was attending a talk at the ICA, I noticed Hugh Shaw there, who was an officer at the Arts Council. I knew him from the days of Artists for Democracy, as he was friendly with David Medalla. He also became friendly with me and had visited my house once. So I said hello to him. After the talk we went out together for a coffee, and as we were sitting together Hugh said, ‘I wish Black Phoenix was still there. We now need it.’ My reply was that I had

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British Art of the Long 1980s to stop it because we had no money, no resources. I could not even get a support from the socialist GLC to revive it. But I was still interested in it. He was surprised and said, ‘Are you serious?’ My reply was: ‘Of course I am serious.’ His response now was amazing, which I didn’t expect: ‘If you still want to do something, we will support you. Write to me at the Arts Council about your idea of reviving Black Phoenix.’ So I wrote to him and began thinking about what I would do if I got the money from the Arts Council. It was then that I realized that it was not a good idea to revive the old magazine. Things had changed. We now needed a theoretical journal rather than a polemical magazine. So I wrote to Hugh Shaw again and said that I had a different idea; it was going to be a journal called Third Text. I explained to him why now it had to be a different publication. He wrote back and said that the Arts Council would fund its first issue, to see what we could do. So I called Guy Brett and John Roberts and asked them if they would contribute to the journal. I already had my own paper on ‘Primitivism’, which formed the first editorial and set the basic framework for the future of the journal. With a small editorial board, and Desa Philippi as Associate Editor, we got the first issue out and sent it to the Arts Council. When they saw it, it seemed they could not believe that we could have produced such a quality publication, and we were offered the money for the second issue, and then the ball started rolling. IR  Isn’t it great when you start something and it works! RA  It was difficult, as we had no money and no office to work from. But I knew someone in the Camden Council who helped me get a small office near Camden Art Centre. I borrowed £500 from my wife and gave it to its tenant who wanted to leave, but we had no money to pay the rent, no money even for a typewriter or anything else. So I called someone I knew in the Greater London Arts Association (GLAA), visual arts officer Alan Haydon, who was always sympathetic to my work. It was he who gave us some money to pay the rent and for a part-time assistant. Desa Philippi brought in her own electric typewriter; she also got a friend to make a desk with a lit-up glass for layout work. In those days everything was done manually. After we had edited and typed the articles, we would take them to a place where they would put them into a computer. In those days, the only thing the computer could do was to produce corrected gullies, and we would then cut them up for each page, manually with scissors, and then lay them out on the lit-up glass.

Rasheed Araeen IR That was a huge job. RA  Yes, it was. But we succeeded. By the time I left Third Text in 2012 we had produced 110 issues. It is still going and is now one of the most successful journals of the publisher Routledge. IR  You must be really proud of that. RA  I don’t know. It’s now an academic journal, run by those who had nothing to do with the struggle which produced it. After I left, my name as the Founding Editor was kept, but now they have removed it. So Third Text is no longer the journal that I founded. IR Would you like to talk about the exhibition The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Postwar Britain?3 RA  The idea came to me with the show at the Hayward Gallery curated by five women in 1978.4 I then said to myself: ‘If they can do it, why can’t we do it as well.’ So I contacted the Arts Council to help research the work of African and Asian artists which was excluded from the official history of art in Britain. Although its response was not only negative but discouraging, I did not abandon the idea and did some research work anyway. I had some hope with the GLC, but it was abolished in 1986, and I found myself in a dilemma. I had no job, no money, and didn’t know how to keep the work going. But things in general had changed, as you said, so I thought maybe it was now the time to pursue the matter again, and when I wrote to the Arts Council again with a proposal for the show, the response was positive. Although the Arts Council had now committed to the exhibition of The Other Story, it was not easy to deal with its bureaucrats. While my aim was to show what was missing from the mainstream art history, the Arts Council wanted to do something different. It only wanted to address the so-called ethnic minority communities, to show them what it was doing for them. I had then no choice but to persistently stick to my guns, even to the point of abandoning the project if I could not do what I wanted to do, and it was this way that I eventually managed to realize my objectives. However, the media had the field day in dismissing the show. Almost every art writer of the dailies rubbished it. I was personally attacked by Peter Fuller, editor of Modern Painters, who once called me ‘Paki Piss Artist’. I was even accused of racism, for doing a show exclusively of non-white artists, by those who always supported and accepted the

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British Art of the Long 1980s shows comprised exclusively of white artists. All this, in fact, confirmed which I always said: the endemic racism of the art world. IR Are there any other things that you would like to add? RA  Although many things have changed since, what The Other Story wanted to achieve has remained unfulfilled. The institutional indifference and complacency remain the main obstacles. Let me give you an example. About ten years ago Tate Modern organized a two-day conference about the important exhibitions, with participants from all over the world. But The Other Story was excluded from it. Only very recently some people have started taking interest in it. There have been widespread misunderstandings and misrepresentations in this respect. My aim was not merely to show what African/Asian artists in Britain had produced and achieved artistically, but what was excluded and missing from the history to which they belonged, by first showing this exclusion and then to integrate the excluded with the mainstream art history, in order to thus revise and produce an inclusive history of art in post-war Britain. But this hasn’t happened, because of the institutional complacency and resistance to the change this would have produced. IR Yes. It is interesting that the lenders for The Other Story were largely individuals, with just a few works coming from provincial museums. RA  That’s right. It has been an institutional problem. The issue of institutional neglect of non-white artists is no longer there, although why and how they are now recognized is an important issue. But I don’t want to go into it here. What is still more important is the question of modernism: how is it still defined and who are recognized by its history? The history of modern art is still Eurocentric which recognizes only white/European artists as its agents. This must change. But this will not happen unless until art institutions begin to question and confront their structure inherited from the colonial/imperial past.

Notes 1 2

Christopher Turner, ‘Radical Geometry’, Apollo: The International Magazine for Collectors, (1 January 2018), 48–54, 54. See, Rasheed Araeen, Making Myself Visible, (London: Kala Press, 1984).

Rasheed Araeen

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Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, (London: Southbank Centre, 1989). 4 The Hayward Annual ‘78 had an all-woman selection committee: Rita Donagh, Tessa Jaray, Liliane Lijn, Kim Lim and Gillian Wise. 3

Figure 2  Susan Hiller, Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall, 1983–4. Installation. Sofa, armchairs, tables, pillows, lamps, artificial plants, rug. Each: 509 × 409 mm. Photo ©Tate

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Susan Hiller

Interview 4 October 2018 IR

Your work is diverse in the best sense of the word. You had your first exhibition in 1973 at Gallery House where you showed Transformer and Enquiries/Inquiries.1 I was interested in the idea that one seemed to be about subjective aspects of mark making and the other about cultural knowledge making. I wonder whether you would like to comment on that. SH  There were two elements in my practice at that time. At Gallery House I decided to bring both of those elements into the public view. Gallery House was an amazing place. It was in a wonderful house in South Kensington which was the Deutsche Academy. The man who started it was Sigi Krauss, who was a picture framer, and had a lot of artist connections in Germany. He wanted to do something in England to show what was happening on the Continent and to include British artists he thought were relevant. It was quite an open situation, and two other women artists and I decided that since Gallery House had not shown any work by women, we should suggest doing something there ourselves. We wanted to rectify the gender imbalance and discussed this with Sigi. He listened and said. ‘Let’s see what you can do.’ The rooms were beautiful, large and stately, and we did an interesting show. No reviews of course, except a mention in Spare Rib magazine. Spare Rib had a review section, which was good, as otherwise none of us would ever have had a single word written about our work. IR I was wondering about mark making and materiality, your interest in Surrealism and Freud, and the relationship between the inner mind and the material world, all of which seem to permeate a lot of your work. SH  Well, I have to go back to your earlier point about Enquiries/Inquires (1973–5), being about the social world whereas Transformer (1973) was not. What I discovered was that I was interested in things from the

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British Art of the Long 1980s social world that were being ignored, ridiculed and misunderstood, or even invisible, like dreams, reports of strange visionary experiences and the influences of ethnographic arts on Modernism. This, of course, chimes with the Surrealist ideas. It gave me a great deal of flexibility in my practice. For instance, I did a work about pregnancy, which was always presented visually in very conventional ways, and as an artist who is trying to deal with representation, I wanted to show it differently. So I made 10 Months (1976–7), a pregnancy work from an artist’s perspective, representing both internal and external developments. I also worked with postcards of rough seas. Rough seas and their imagery are a major cultural obsession in this country but were not taken seriously. I had been to Brighton on stormy days like the postcard images, and there were crowds standing, transfixed by the pounding waves. This work – Dedicated to the Unknown Artists (1972–6) – turned out to be a major project, not just in its focus in what was considered trivial, but because I took on the role of collector and curator in dealing with the postcards. Many of my works take seriously what would otherwise be trivialized. Then I try to make the medium match the original starting point. So my work evolved, transforming what you perceived as a dualism into a dialect. IR These interests in social and individual negotiations with the world and in creating a focus on the overlooked and trivialized continued in your work into the 1980s. SH  The 1980s were a really important decade for my practice, and for the development of the British Art world in general. By the end of the 1980s, there was so much unprecedented attention given to the YBAs by press and politicians that many of the interesting, somewhat earlier developments, which made their practices possible, were virtually erased … IR One of the really interesting threads in your work is about language. I think you started this with some automatic writing experiments in the 1970s, intended to explore the notion of extending individual identity into something more collective, which you later analysed. SH  In 1983 I decided to go public with Sisters of Menon, which was an experience of automatic writing I felt pushed me beyond the bounds of conceptualism and expanded my practice in many ways. I had made Monument over the Christmas holidays from 1980 to 1981 and in the process invented installation as a format. On one level Monument looks at the social construction of heroism so perhaps considering these two works together seems reminiscent of the supposed duality between

Susan Hiller subjectivity and so-called objective reality that dated back to my earliest works at Gallery House. But what really mattered, what was important, was my realization that beneath the surface of the cultural and subjective areas I worked with were deep similarities. My practice had matured and as I said, elements I formerly perceived as dualisms had evolved into a personal dialectic. IR So where do you start? SH  I never start with an abstraction, or an idea, unless it is a cultural idea, which is already a representation and not a thought of mine. The starting point does not have to be a material object either; a dream is not a thing. Then I try to find a way of looking at it or rather looking into it. That is what artists do. They look and communicate what they see. Something that helps me to make work is my personal belief that we all share large aspects of subjectivity, as we all grow up in a certain language and particular contexts, and therefore what art can do is mirror that back to people so that they see things in ways they did not before. IR Thinking about some of your photomat images, some, like your series Midnight Self Portraits (1980–9), which had automatic writing over the top of the imagery, seemed to subvert the idea of objectivity within photographic portraits. SH  Well, that is exactly what they are meant to be doing. It is about having a so-called subjective language matched against a so-called objective language, because photography is a convention that presents and represents us in a very codified way. This isn’t what we look like because we are in motion all the time. IR  Or we pose in order to present ourselves in particular ways. SH  Exactly. So it is the two things together. IR How did you want people to see the automatic writing over the surface? SH  Well, it is more like a tattoo. I don’t know whether it cancels out the image. It suggests a secret source of utterance which the viewer does not necessarily understand, but it is not obliterating. Most women artists since Modernism have wanted to subvert the conventions of self-portraiture. One of the important things about women being artists is that obviously there is an important struggle in terms of self-representation. IR You did an installation in Matt’s Gallery in 1980, where you took apart a painting of yours thread by thread and made the threads into little garlands, braids and tassels.

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British Art of the Long 1980s SH  Matt’s Gallery was an exciting artist-run space in Robin Klassnik’s studio. What it did was to draw together artists who could not find exposure in Cork Street-type galleries. Once it announced itself, everyone started going there. There were only a few galleries that were interested in mixed media, conceptual or experimental work, including Nigel Greenwood, the Lisson and Jack Wendler’s gallery. Very gradually places like the Hayward and Serpentine Galleries began to show non-categorical art – not painting or sculpture. My exhibition was called Work in Progress: Seven Days of Undoing and Doing. I wrote: ‘[S]he dreamed that [Meister] Ekhard’s opinion – and it was only his opinion – was that only the hand that erases can write the true thing.’ I wanted to subvert painting and show it as a material practice. I took apart a previously exhibited painting of mine thread by thread and then turned the threads into something else. IR The braiding and the making of these soft shapes was rather a female thing to do. I am not sure whether you would agree. SH  Maybe. It does have some references in that direction. But my intention was conceptual, turning painting into sculpture. The thread drawings or doodles are simple shapes made by braiding, craft-based techniques that we all know, and were really fun to do in an art gallery. IR So did you propose that to Robin? SH  No. I didn’t know him well at that point, and he had only had a few shows in his studio. I had gone to them and thought that it was an interesting situation. Some of the artists who made the previous shows had built things in the space, which was very new at the time. Rather than bringing things into the space, they were making things in the space. Art is a conversation, so I decided to do the opposite. I brought things into the space and unmade them and then made them into other things. The show was only seven days. I took apart one previously exhibited painting of mine, which was slow and very meditative, then I put the bunches of threads onto the floor: one heap for every day. And then, on the last day I looked at them and just quickly made things. It was like ‘you have threads now, what do you do with threads?’ Oddly enough, those things, which are only relics, have been in a number of different exhibitions, which is ironic. They were so quickly made and they just barely keep their shapes. On the day before the exhibition, Robin and I cut up other paintings of mine. I had previously cut up some paintings and made them into blocks. So he and I together cut up some others, made some more Painting Blocks, and the exhibition was of all these relics or ruins.

Susan Hiller IR There is a really strong tactile element to these, as in other works like My Kind of Guy (1984). I wondered whether you wanted to talk about this work, as it involves sitting/lounging on the sofa covered in men’s ties … SH  That work was in Imaginary Women (1986, Channel 4), a very interesting film made by Marina Warner and Gina Newsome about women artists. Obviously, this work of mine was meant to be affectionately and humorously critical. There were a lot of works by women artists that were humorous and critical, alongside protest works and theory works and painting and performance and, and, and … . There was not one single dominant type of work by women. The complexity and variety of works produced by women artists were hard-won and was barely registered by academics, the press or the gallery world. IR Yes. Women artists were in a difficult position. If they used traditional media or represented themselves, then some feminists would say that they were continuing with patriarchal frameworks. If they used new media, or those that could be described as ‘decorative’ or ‘soft’ or came close to ‘craft’, then they would frequently not fit into the parameters given for group exhibitions of contemporary art. It can be hard to gain a foothold in established narratives if your work does not align easily. SH  Yes. For instance, in the late 1970s there was a major exhibition about British Art sponsored by the British Council at the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York, without a single work by a woman. I happened to be there for the opening, and Martha Wilson, who was running a very important alternative space in New York called Franklin Furnace, came up to me to ask, ‘Where are the women?’ She then invited me to curate a show of women artists working in Britain using video, film, photography, performance and installation which took place in 1981. IR It must have been very frustrating, when you knew that there was really interesting work being undertaken and that it was not recognized. SH  Although in this country most women were not being acknowledged by the galleries and institutions, the UK was a good place to work. We were not burdened with the expectation of earning a lot of money, so we had an incredible freedom … IR  Thinking about Monument (1981), there seem to be a number of versions. SH  Oh yes. There are three versions. There is the ‘British version’, which is very large and now owned by Tate. There is also the ‘colonial version’ made for Canada, Australia, United States and other former British colonies, which is about half size. Then, there is what I call the ‘foreign

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British Art of the Long 1980s version’, which is smaller. I made sound tracks in many different languages. My idea is that the work and the ideas in the work decline in importance as they get further away from the source. IR  It is interesting how the work addresses you individually – ‘You are sitting as I imagined you … ’ and you are sitting there with your back to the work, facing the gallery, listening to this voice addressing you. SH  Yes, and people are inevitably looking at you, so there is a level of self-consciousness. It is participatory. You become part of the work for other viewers if you choose to participate. That is all built in. One of the things I am happy about is that it is an installation, a format that did not really exist at that time. You either did painting or sculpture, and to feature a visitor to the exhibition who becomes the key figure in the work and brings it to life was an innovation as was the combination of photographs with a sound track, plus, of course, the park bench for someone to sit on. The photographs are the backdrop to the living figure on the bench, who is alive, while the people in the photos are all dead. The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, which was then run by Antonia Payne, was the first venue. The idea came from visiting Postman’s Park, in the city of London, where they had the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, in a run-down park in a neighbourhood which was then derelict. That is where the graffiti in the work came from. The memorial had been conceived and funded by the Victorian artist George Frederick Watts. After I saw it I went back again with my camera. I thought the ceramic plaques, designed by William de Morgan, were fantastic. I was struck by the skilful storytelling of the heroic acts in just a few words. But they were arranged in long lines on a brown background, which I thought was boring. I photographed them, just thinking about this as being part of an artists’ sketchbook. But people were eating lunch on the benches and probably did so every day although the memorial plaques went unnoticed. Whenever someone sees someone else with a camera, they always like to look at what’s being photographed. So they turned to look at what I was doing, saw the plaques as though for the first time, and began to talk about them. IR The way that the text is written is quite culturally specific. SH  Yes, and it’s also coded for class. I wanted to subvert the romantic idea of heroism as well as drawing attention to it, and also to draw attention to a gender imbalance. My favourite hero is Mary Rogers the stewardess who gave her life vest away, but there are only four or five women in the whole bunch. When I show this piece it usually brings up a discussion

Susan Hiller about the ideology of heroism – whether it is human nature to want to save others or whether it is cultural, personal … The paradoxes are worth investigating. IR I also wondered about Belshazzar’s Feast (1983–4), where again different photographs of the installation show it being quite different. SH  There are two versions. There is the living room version and the campfire version that was shown at the ICA in 1986. At the Lisson Gallery (2015) I did it as a bonfire rather than a campfire. The image on the screen in all instances is of a bonfire that I filmed, which of course looks much smaller on TV sets. So the living room version came first and encounters Freud’s concept of the unheimlich, which is the eruption of something disturbing in a domestic setting. The somewhat later campfire version references the experience of sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories which can be quite terrifying. The living room version changes according to where it is to be shown. In Norway I had an all-white living room with furniture given to us by Ikea. In Colombia, after I had visited people in their homes and realized there was an abundance of leather furniture as there were so many cattle there, I used furniture from a shop that gave us a black leather sofa and armchairs. IR Being nuanced to different countries draws in the viewer and helps them see it as an extension of their home. SH  Yes, and it is always fun to let people use the furniture in an art gallery. I like to create an empathetic environment. IR I believe that the installation was also filmed. SH  Yes, it was shown in a series of documentaries made by Sandy Nairne called State of the Art, transmitted in 1985–6 on Channel 4 and accompanied by a major book. This was a really interesting look at numerous new tendencies that had emerged and co-existed in the arts in the 1970s and 1980s in various countries including Britain. The video on its own also appeared on television. At around the same time, Channel 4 was doing a compilation of short extracts of artists’ videos. They wanted to take a section out of Belshazzar’s Feast, which would have destroyed the structure of the work, so I declined. Then I walked over to the Channel 4 building. There was a very nice receptionist, and when I said that I was an artist who had made this video which I thought would be good on television, she offered to give it to the Arts Commissioning Editor, Michael Kustow. The next thing was that I received a phone call saying they wanted to screen it. That was in 1986. It was perfect that this work about some of the effects of television

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British Art of the Long 1980s was returned to television. It shows how open things were. I wonder if this would be possible nowadays. As a result of the screening, Belshazzar’s Feast was selected to be discussed on a weekly television programme on BBC called Did You See … ? Of course, they made fun of it. The presenter showed a clip and introduced it by saying, ‘And now for something from the nutty fruitcake school of art.’ I’m mentioning this because it demonstrates some pervasive attitudes that meant doing anything unusual as an artist was bound to meet with ridicule from some quarters. IR Did you feel part of a group? SH  In many ways I was an outsider because I did not go to art school here. In the States people studied art as part of a university course and did not expect to have a career as a result. So I did not have that typical UK art background and resulting support system, but I had friends doing art and other kinds of work that I was interested in. My partner is a writer, and he had a lot of poet friends, which was a big influence. Feminism became important to me and involved me in numerous groups. I never saw myself as part of a group with a name, but I never felt isolated either. For example, I was part of the editorial group that started a little magazine called Wallpaper in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. It lasted as long as it needed to and then everyone went in their own direction. IR How did you find an audience for that? And how was it run? SH  It was really a little, little magazine. There were eleven of us – four poets, five visual artists, one musician and a mathematician, and of course we did all the work ourselves. We did a bumper guest issue where we each invited two guests. Then we did a small one that was all guests. People were interested and did buy it. The British Council was putting together their first tour of British artists’ books (including my Rough Sea postcard book). They acquired copies of Wallpaper and toured it around the world as part of something bigger. We probably only produced two hundred copies per issue so it wasn’t too difficult for an entire issue to sell out. But we weren’t very interested in the money from sales and more inclined to give away copies to interested readers. There were two technological advances that made it possible to do a project like our Wallpaper magazine. One was the sudden appearance of neighbourhood offset printing shops, which were really cheap, and produced a clean look. The other thing was that one of the instigators of the magazine had an electric typewriter, so we could quickly and cheaply do professional-looking printing and layout. We would buy end rolls of cheap wallpaper, which made gorgeous covers.

Susan Hiller IR Writing was an important part of your work during the 1980s. Your book The Myth of Primitivism (1991)2 was published after a series of talks that you organized at the Slade during the mid-1980s. It was a series of essays by a wide range of artists and writers, including Rasheed Araeen, Jimmie Durham, Jean Fisher, Lynne Cooke, Guy Brett and Daniel Miller – which does speak of the diverse angles on the question. What was your initiating idea for this collection of lectures and essays? SH  Quite suddenly, or so it seemed, towards the end of the 1980s the art student body became very diverse. With students from many different backgrounds, discussions about race, culture, colonial origins and influences began to occur spontaneously, and I decided to create a situation where a range of people who had been thinking about these topics for a long time could propose their ideas. Art historians, critics, anthropologists and artists provided a very wide range of approaches from very different perspectives. Their talks were lively, often controversial, and were extremely well attended. So I decided to include them as the core of the book you mentioned, which has been reprinted several times. IR An Entertainment (1990) – the work that shows the Punch and Judy show – I found awe inspiring and quite violent … SH  Punch and Judy was scary when I was a child. My father told me that I ran away from a show in a park. I think that the discovery I made about family violence being enacted was fairly obvious, but people seem surprised. IR How did it come about? SH  It came about in a similar manner to Monument. I had a Super 8 camera at a Punch and Judy festival in the 1980s and was fascinated by the different variants, but also their similarities. I started filming clips for myself as I was really interested, and only later decided to make a work that would be, for an adult, as strong an experience as the miniature stage for the child. You are in the centre and the stage surrounds you. IR  So again the audience is put into quite an interesting position. You are not an outsider, but completely surrounded by the sound and moving images. You can’t move outside its sphere in the same way as in a puppet theatre. SH  I think that works well. I was really intrigued by the Punch and Judy story and the way that it had been censored over the years to get rid of as much violence as possible and to give it a happy ending. I wanted to show the core version. There are a few older puppeteers still performing the original version in the park or on the beach.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR When I saw it, I was intrigued by how you played with time and scale. Sometimes it felt that the tension became greater because the action slowed down. Also, the puppets appear bright and enlarged – partly because of their proximity. We are so used to glamorized violence in the media, but there is something that feels very raw about a Punch and Judy. SH  It goes back a long way into folk traditions. Mr Punch’s grotesque voice, the exaggerated facial expressions and the loud stick noise are very frightening. A lot of people think that it is too violent, and I always tell galleries not to let children go in. But also a lot of parents want to take their children in, which I think is just wrong. IR If you think about folk tales like those by the Grimm brothers, they are really horrible, and there is a lot of violence in nursery rhymes. SH  Yes, but we become so habituated we pay no attention to any of that. IR It strikes me that in your work there is a tension between eloquence and mute-ness. How does one bring out something about the overlooked? Your Rough Sea postcard book, From the Freud Museum or the J Street Project, for instance, include a lot of things that one would not normally notice. SH  This is one of the functions of art. When Cézanne does a plate of apples, we are looking at those apples through his eyes in isolation. They are not there to eat, just there for us to look at. I am always interested in that function of art. IR At what point for you does the thing become art? SH  When I have done something with it. It is material to work on and with, in a kind of collaborative relationship. I bring something to it, which tells its story differently. It already has a story of sorts, but it wants to say something else, which I am helping it to say. IR When I hear you speak about the 1980s, you often, in spite of the issues, seem to have really enjoyed working then. SH  There was an openness in the 1980s. For instance, no one now could go to a receptionist in the Channel 4 building and hand over a video for screening, and for that to happen. But there were also quite reactionary people who did not understand. The reaction to Belshazzar’s Feast on the programme Did You See … ? was fairly normal (laughs). IR I am glad that you can laugh about that. SH  Well, what else can you do? It was typical of the era. There were a lot of art critics back then who laughed at contemporary art, and particularly art by women. Brian Sewell’s vendetta was loved by the newspapers as it increased their circulation. Someone else said in a response to a question

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about the lack of institutional collecting of work by women artists – and I had this quote pinned up on my studio wall for a long time – ‘Paintings are like women. You may desire many, but you can only have one.’

Notes 1 2

For images and further details about works discussed in this interview, please see http://www.susanhiller.org, last accessed 17 June 2020. Susan Hiller ed., The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art, (London: Routledge, 1991).

Figure 3  Richard Wilson, 20:50, 1987. Installation view, Matt’s Gallery, Martello Street. Photo: Edward Woodman. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery

3

Robin Klassnik

Interview 26 January 2018 IR You Graduated from Leicester College of Art and Design in 1968 and then gained a studio in SPACE studios. What were SPACE studios like? RK  Well, it is fifty years old this year. I am a survivor of SPACE studios and was one of the first to take one in 1968. I was twenty-one then. I have no idea how I found them. I graduated from Leicester School of Art and came back to London where my parents were living. At Leicester I studied painting with Harry Thubron and Jon Thompson, who was my personal tutor. He scared the living daylights out of me, because he was so flash and clever. He was a great painter who exhibited widely, but we used to run away when he came up from London as we could not understand what he said. I knew him for the rest of his life. He was a good friend. I was a very bad painter, but no one ever said to me, ‘You are rubbish at painting’, and I knew nothing else. I painted sub-Matisse or Malevich paintings. I graduated, came to London and found myself in a SPACE studio at St Katherine’s Dock, with about a hundred other artists, including Bridget Riley, of different ages and nationalities. We set up this studio complex. It was a collective venture – we ate together and space was unlimited. I had a studio that was so big that I had to rethink what I was doing. Without SPACE, I would have done nothing. It was a wonderful place. Artists still are in need of studio space, and they continue to work in disused buildings. I don’t actually remember paying any rent, and I do have the odd letter saying, ‘You owe this number of pounds.’ Now if you don’t pay your rent you would be thrown out. By the time we got to the 1980s it was something else. But without SPACE I would never have done what I have done. I have always been a SPACE artist; I have two SPACE studios at the moment. I also have had premises in Acme spaces as well.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR  Early on you were a mail artist and set up networks of mail artists … RK  Well, I moved to Martello Street, which was also a SPACE studio, with thirty to forty artists. Becoming a mail artist happened by accident. I had to unlearn everything that I had learnt at art school. I was pretty naive. All it taught me was to grow up. I learnt everything from my SPACE studios. What I learned from SPACE was something environmental, that something had to be made for the space. I only think in 2D, but everything I have done since leaving art school is 3D. I had quite a lot of shows in the early 1970s, in shops, in windows, and had three or four shows at the ICA, including being part of Summer Studio in 1973 which included Ian McKeever and Peter Dockley. It was a time when you could go to them, and Peter Cook – of Archigram and Director of the ICA – would say, ‘Have you got anything interesting?’ and I would say ‘yes’, and he would say, ‘How about a show next week?’ So I showed there a number of times, was in the group show Blow Up at the Serpentine (1971) of inflatables and flying sculptures, another at the Whitechapel Gallery and various other places, and also, in the early 1970s we went away and did a big SPACE show in Berlin. I made a very big sculpture on the floor that used everyone else’s work in the show. I cut up their work as photographs, so you could play a game of joining together a work by Bridget Riley with one by Stuart Brisley. I did not really know what I was doing. I think I have always been described as slightly maverick. In 1973 I went to do some performance art in Munich and was driven there in a Mini by Elizabeth Rhodes, the film-maker, who was going on somewhere else. She came back to pick me up and take me to Paris. I found myself in the Biennale Internationale des Jeunes Artistes in Paris. I had all of the documentary evidence of the work that I had shown in the Serpentine, the ICA and other places with me. We parked outside a police station with everything in the car, and we were burgled. Everything was in a briefcase – video films – everything. There was a guy there, who was also from SPACE called Scottie, who was also showing at the Biennale. He did not need to be invited as he made interventions. He went around the world showing an inflatable, polythene prick. He would blow it up, people would come and look, and he would then move on. I was highly impressed with that. He said to me, ‘Don’t worry, we will set up an investigative agency in Paris to look for your work, and I will write it up.’ Every day he would write this stuff about how we were investigating the case of the missing briefcase. He made it all up but put out daily bulletins. This was exhibited, and believe it or not, it got set

Robin Klassnik up in the window at the Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris. No one ever believed that we had actually lost anything. When I got back, I got a phone call from Sylvia Cooper at the Midland Group in Nottingham, and she said that she was doing an exhibition on Fluxus, mail art and so on, and would like me to be in it. I said that I did not have any work, as everything had been stolen. After I put down the telephone I thought that I didn’t need any work, so I phoned her back and then went out and purposefully lost things. If you found anything of mine, you were to send it back to me. In the first instance, there was a little bit of paper and an envelope and you cut it up, made it into a cube, put it in the envelope and sent it back to me at the gallery and I would make a sculpture. That is how I got into mail art. Then I asked people to put things into envelopes and send them back, which I would assemble in the window. Then I realized that I had to sort this out better, and I did one for the ICA, which I still think is the best one. (Shop Window, Summer Studio, 1973). Alistair McAlpine sponsored five mahogany windows. There were five of us, and I did one that was purely yellow. Every day I would go into the ICA with the yellow things that people had sent back to me and it would just build and build. It was recently shown again in Poland. Jarosław Kozłowski from Poland sent me some yellow cotton. He had an unofficial gallery in his house in Poznań, in which many artists showed: Susan Hiller, Joan Jonas, Richard Long and many others from all over the world, and also me. You showed for six hours, and you could only have six people in there. I was one of the first, and it was not in his house, but in a room in the Students’ Union in the University at Poznań where he was a librarian. It was open for two hours on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, after which it would revert to a being room in the Students’ Union. We would show our work, about fifty to sixty people would see the show and be really interested, and that was it. It played a big part in my life. I showed three or four times there, including the yellow sculpture. Alexis Hunter and I had a SPACE studio together and decided to do an open studio in 1975, without any understanding about how to do it. We spent nine months or so of our lives organizing this, raising money etc. It is very important to have a studio, and artists need the space, and go there every day. The open studios were really important for them, but it was an outmoded model. I changed my mode of working then. I am an artist; I think as an artist but one that works collaboratively with other artists. I also find things, and I feel fulfilled.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR So you started the gallery in your studio space, and what is really interesting is the breadth of who you showed and the extent to which you let the artists get on and do whatever they wanted to do. RK  I think I do what I learned in Poland from Jarosław Kozłowski and his gallery. I didn’t think that I was going to run a gallery, but thought, ‘Why not?’ There was nothing in the UK – there was the Whitechapel, the ICA and the Serpentine, but few other galleries for contemporary art. I had just been given a job at the London School of Printing on the Foundation course. I had not really done much teaching, and Philippa Beale told me to come with my ideas. Her husband was David Troostwyk who was a conceptual artist. He had shown at Waddington Gallery, and has work in the Tate, and is a very clear-thinking artist. I said, ‘Why don’t we make a work of art together in my studio?’1 We spent a few months getting the studio right, painting the floor, finding some money, and we put it on a show at my studio in Martello Street. It was called Supreme Object (1979) and was basically about a washing machine. And then I did another show with Joel Fisher. After that, it just escalated and escalated. We work collaboratively with artists. They can do what they want, but in collaboration with me. This is what has kept me going. I see running my gallery, studio, or what you want to call it, as (a) being an artist and (b) as being a grown-up art school. I suggest things, and people either take on board ideas or don’t. IR Have you ever turned people down? RK  It is hard work. We work together for two or more months to put together a show. I think there were only one or two shows, where the chemistry was so bad that we looked at each other and said, ‘No, this is not going to work.’ It has been an exciting journey and is one that I am still excited about. IR You had so many and varied exhibitions. I was thinking of the one by Hanna Łuczak, who brought over the cacti from Poland as part of her exhibition in 1985. RK  Well, she brought over one from Poland. She was a student of Jarosław Kozłowski, who believed in drawing – he was head of drawing. Kozłowski moved from being librarian of the university to Rector of the university during Solidarity. Hanna Łuczak came from Poland with a little cactus, two pillows – one here and one here – and a piece of string. And then she drew all over the walls in charcoal. I don’t think that she was the first to paint on my walls – the first was Kozłowski himself. It was the third show that I did. Because these guys came from Poland and could not bring anything with them and had no money, it had to be

Robin Klassnik simple. Drawing is a simple tool that you don’t need money for. You can get a piece of stone and bash it on a piece of paper – that is a drawing. I could make a mark with my finger – that is a drawing. IR How did they get out of Poland? RK  Well, I would have to sign for their visas and say that they were going to go back. I would pay for them and look after them. When Kozłowski came, he made white lines on the wall. I was keen on drawing on the walls – it was easy. We went from those to enormous and complex installations. IR I was just wondering how you chose the artists. Did they come to you? RK  No, they were chosen instinctively. I have always taught all my life. I have spent fifteen years of my life teaching at the Byam Shaw School of Art. I taught art history and complementary studies. I ran a programme there. My staff were made up of Michael Newman, Tony Godfrey, Jean Fisher, Michael Nyman, Guy Brett and Patricia Bickers. I employed them to teach on a course that we put together collaboratively. I am quite good at inventing, relatively good at organizing, and I have had a nose for finding the right people. I have taught at universities for so long that I just got to know artists and could spot good ones. One of the few who came to me was Willie Doherty. Richard Wilson came to me at a private view at the Serpentine Gallery in 1984. We were doing a Matt’s Gallery show I think. He said that he would like to do a show with me and invited me to his studio. I went to his studio, which had models of my space. He is a very charismatic character who fills you with confidence, and he said that he wanted to do this and that. It was so much easier then. You did not have to worry about money, as expectations were slightly different. I said, ‘Let’s do one in a few months’ time’, and we did. That was Sheer Fluke (1985). We spent time collecting and casting the metal, and the partnership between us was a marriage made in heaven for a few years. In my opinion he made his best works in my gallery. We can read each other. I know what he is going to say, and he knows what I am going to say. But as I say it was wonderful to work with him, collect the aluminium and cast it into a beam. We had to cast it in the space as it was too big to get in and out. The idea was based on his childhood memories of going to the Natural History Museum and seeing the huge whale in the space and wondering how it got in there. That piece is conceptually what he made thirty years later at Heathrow, but for millions of pounds. We did it for nothing.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR Where did you get the metal? RK  We just walked around the streets of Hackney. At that point there was lots of metal just lying on the streets, so we went there and picked it up. I don’t know how many weeks we had spent on casting it, but then we looked at it and said, ‘But it’s wrong.’ However, because we did not have a specific opening date, we could take part of it down, melt it down and recast it bigger. IR You also did 20:50 with him in 1987. RK  He went on holiday in the Algarve, and I had said, ‘How about we make another show?’ after the first show. He sent me a model that he had made out of a cardboard box that he had found over there and said, ‘I think I will fill the gallery with oil.’ He was over there by the swimming pool, and he does love to tinker with his car so knows that sump oil is very reflective and a beautiful black. He put that forward and I agreed. He said that I was terrified, but I don’t think I was. IR I was going to ask you about that. It is fairly dramatic to put oil into a gallery. RK  We were innocent. I know. We did it. It was enthusiasm on his part and enthusiasm on mine. I have to say that half the time I have no idea what the different artists are on about, except that it is exciting, and if we proceed, then we might learn what it is about. Sometimes what I think it is, is different to what they think it is, but if it is interesting, then why not? But with Richard Wilson I think I know. I have a really good instinct for what works and is good. I have very catholic tastes. IR You have shown a really broad range of work, from drawing on walls, to cacti, to filling the space with oil. Are there any others that you remember from the 1980s? RK  Yes. Ian McKeever, who painted on the walls in 1982. I think they were the best paintings he ever did until his last show with us, about a year ago. He was showing at the Nigel Greenwood Gallery at the time. He also had a studio at Martello Street when I was there, and he was in a squat where I lived, which was turned into a housing association house. He did three paintings that were sort of forest-like and wrote a manifesto called Black and White and How to Paint with a Hammer (from Nietzsche’s How to Philosophize with a Hammer), and that was his first manifesto, which has been republished many times, and that he still uses. It is why he chose to be an artist as opposed to being a practising Catholic. We published it, and he still stands by it. I remember Nigel Greenwood walking into the gallery, saying, ‘Thank God he painted these on your walls – they look like Christmas cards.’

Robin Klassnik IR  Rose Finn-Kelcey also showed at your gallery. RK  She did two shows. That was important and has been especially so since her death. We did a performance Black and Blue in 1984, and there were all these radios on tensioned metal cables from below the ceiling to the floor. It was a live performance. She followed this with Bureau de Change (1987). It was quite a show. Often artists follow up a first show with another, and sometimes the second show is better, because they are used to the space and working in this way. I recently saw Bureau de Change at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, and it was a disaster. I am so angry about it. The whole piece was based on coins, the guard, authority … The coins were there, the platform was there, but there was a very personable invigilator instead of the guard, and when I asked them about it, they said that they did not have the money for a guard. I wrote to the Tate, as I had sold the work to them with the instructions. They said that they had been through the archives and could not find anything about it. I said, ‘I am alive and here.’ They thought that the guard might be intimidating, but that was the point. It was such a great show when she showed at my gallery. It is dispiriting when you have worked so hard on something. It was a great show that she did with me. IR Richard Wilson’s She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (1989) was also a really important show. RK  The MoMA in Oxford and the Arnolfini also wanted to do a show with him. Chrissie Iles was the first person who came to work for me as an administrator. She was with us for a few years, moved onto the MoMA Oxford and is now Senior Curator at the Whitney. I think that she was at Oxford at the time, and Stephen Snoddy was at the Arnolfini. We did a show together, and we received money for it from the Henry Moore Foundation and Becks Bier. My mother used to come to the gallery, and when she saw the work she said, ‘That’s a bit like something that you once made’ and I said, ‘I know.’ I had been given a show in the library in Hornsey around 1970. It was a glass gallery. I saw an eighty-foot privet hedge outside a man’s prefab house that was his pride and joy. I knocked on his door and explained that I was an artist and said that I wanted to buy his hedge and it would be going into an art gallery. He got really excited about it. His wife had died, he was being moved out and his house was going to be knocked down. So we dug it up, labelled it, moved it, and divided the gallery in half with the hedge, turfed the whole over with grass, and the hedge went through the gallery glass wall into a courtyard beyond. There was forty feet inside, forty feet outside. The hedge was my second best show.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR You did a number of collaborative shows for different artists, with the Third Eye in Glasgow and the Mappin Gallery, Sheffield, in the early 1990s, with Susan Hiller. How did these work? RK  We decided to work collaboratively. We did that for the show with Susan Hiller, which was a good show. I knew Sandy Nairne and Andrew Nairne. I had always worked without any money and always believed that these other spaces had more, which might or might not have been true. I wanted to do this Susan Hiller show, called An Entertainment (1990), and I persuaded Andrew into putting money into it. I had no money, but he did, and recently he said that he was so glad that I had persuaded him. It was a brilliant show. The Richard Wilson shows, the Mike Nelson shows, the one with Susan Hiller and the Willie Doherty shows, they have all been seminal shows for them. I have worked with Susan since 1980. Rose Finn-Kelcey’s Bureau de Change, Richard Wilson’s She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and the Willie Doherty’s The Only Good One Is a Dead One (1993) were all bought on the same day by the Weltkunst Foundation. They had a great collection that had been lent for ten years to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He subsequently donated some things, like works by Damien Hirst, I think, and the Richard Wilson to the Tate, but he offered us back the Willie Doherty for quarter of a million pounds. We had sold it to him for six thousand. We offered him sixty-five thousand, I think, knowing that the Tate wanted it. He refused. So he has not yet offered it to the Tate. These were all seminal works that we showed. Lots of the artists that I have worked with have been able to make work that I would never have been able to articulate. They have become a vehicle for me to survive. At night I believe that I have made it all. IR Clearly it is a collaborative thing between you and the artists. How do you see your role over the years? Was it the same as at say City Racing, which was an artist-led gallery? RK  I see myself as myself. City Racing was an interesting project. It lasted ten years, but I am not sure who had ownership of it. I have ownership of this, and I have been funded, and I just think of this as my studio. My wife Kathryn Klassnik says to me, ‘Why are you still going to the studio. I have retired, why can’t you?’ But what else can I do? When I started this gallery in Martello Street, the other artists wanted me out, because what was I doing having exhibitions in my studio? It was ground-breaking. Other places were spawned, and maybe they have a better model. But this needs me. Without me, this changes dramatically. City Racing,

Robin Klassnik Cubitt and Chisenhale were all doing an interesting job. Many of these other places made curators. Emma Dexter was at the Chisenhale Gallery, as was Jonathan Watkins. It was a stepping stone for many. No one can step into my boots. This space is a project for me and my son. He is thirty-five, an architect, and he designed this space for me. His seminal experience was walking into the 20:50 aged six or seven, and he could not understand how the space had doubled. His thesis at Cambridge was on that piece. The oil was a shock for both Richard and myself, and neither of us realized what we had done. It was great, but I don’t think anyone else would have allowed him to do it. I have allowed artists to do what they wanted. We could not get any funding. We had to do it all by ourselves. We had no money. But we went round garages in Hackney and collected old oil. It cost us nothing to do. It has been a journey.

Note 1

For details of this and other exhibitions, see https://www.mattsgallery.org, last accessed 17 June 2020.

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Figure 4  Bill Woodrow, Pram with Fish, 1982. Pram, enamel paint. 90 × 50 × 120 cm Unique. Sculpture © Bill Woodrow, and image © Bill Woodrow

4

Bill Woodrow

Interview 4 July 2017 IR I was looking at some of your work from the 1970s, which incorporated photographs, trompe l’oeil and objects from the natural world that played into the gallery space.1 Then you moved into what appears to be a slightly more urban vocabulary around 1979, with works like Hoover Breakdown (1979) or TV Breakdown (1979). What made that change? BW  That was due to me coming from a rural – or semi-rural – background in Hampshire. I was at school at Eastleigh and then I went to Winchester School of Art for my Foundation course, and I was very much connected to what I call a rustic, rural environment. So my materials tended to come from that – or the backgrounds were to do with those environments. When I left Winchester and came to St Martins, I carried on with that rural influence, as that was what I had in my pocket so to speak. That was what I was working with. So that carried on for a year or so … almost the whole way through St Martins, which is where the photographs and the trompe l’oeil things that you were talking about happened. I think that the last ones I made were in my postgraduate year at Chelsea. IR What year was that? BW  St Martins was 1968 to 1971, and Chelsea was 1971 to 1972. And, at the time Richard Long was very influential, because he left St Martins the year that I arrived. He was – together with Gilbert and George and Bruce McLean – a little beacon of hope, or slightly bigger than little, well to me anyway, because they were saying that ‘there is something post-Caro’ and ‘you can do things out there, and some people are interested’. That was very interesting to me because I was not interested in a post-Caro continuation, either of him or his disciples. I met many of them and respected what they did. Actually their disciplines and formalism fed into all sorts of aspects of my work.

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British Art of the Long 1980s But those younger people were saying that there was something outside this country that was international. They were interested in other things, and I realized that I was working with similar materials and sensibilities in how I was looking at things. It is probably easy to say in retrospect – at the time I just did it I think. I did not want to be out in the environment like Hamish Fulton or Richard Long. I wanted to bring that back into the studio, the gallery or the showing space. And my work was connected to making, whereas theirs was much more directly a result of conceptualism – the American influence – but that in a strange sort of way influenced some of the things that I did at the time. It was a sort of rich soup to get hold of. And the change was that I realized my city environment was becoming more important than my former rural one. I was in an urban situation. I was becoming interested in urban materials. Materials generally, in those days, had to be free. One had very little money for buying them. That is when the change occurred. I thought, ‘This is where I am living now; this is it; use what you have around you.’ So that is when the change occurred from rustic things to urban things. IR Making is a thread that goes right through your work, with some being finely made, like Untitled (1978), where oak blocks have been inlaid with pine and others that have the appearance of being slightly more informal. Portrait of a Friend (1984) is an example of this. I was wondering whether there is something that determines how you make. BW  I think that I have always been prepared to put in as much time and as much effort as I feel is necessary into making something. So, for example, if I was going to build a boat I would make sure I paid real attention to certain things because I would not want it to fall apart when I got in it. And different things demand very different approaches. Some things can look informal. The cut-out things in the beginning look what you term ‘informal’. But in terms of material and how they are made, they are really quite precise – really – although the method is not one of instrumental measurement; it is to do with eye. It was an instance of ‘I have to make this with my hands, and that is all I have got, basically a few tools’. So the inlaid marquetry demanded a different level of attention. I enjoyed the different skills. Actually that term ‘skills’ prompts me to say that I am not interested in craft in its own right. I am just interested in getting what I want from a material. I don’t care how I get it. There are no rules. I just want to get it right. So if something needs a lot of precision then I will do that, but if it does not, then I will go for the quickest route.

Bill Woodrow IR That is really interesting, because inevitably the time involved in making something, especially in the cut-out works from the 1980s, like Spin Dryer with Bicycle Frame including Handlebars (1981), becomes a lot of what the viewer takes on board when he or she is looking. You see the juxtaposition of things that create a narrative or scene, but simultaneously there is the visibility of making and the implied embodied time. BW  Yes, I think that work from the early 1980s – the cut-out work – actually allowed me to make things at the speed at which I was thinking – or pretty much close to it. And that is like making a drawing. A drawing is instant. It is there, and you work on it. It is a very satisfying way of working as there is an instant reward. Sculpture can be the opposite. It can take months to make some things. So those early 1980s cut-out works were pretty great, because things appeared in front of you as you did it. You did not have to wait for some foundry process or something like that. IR When you are making, you are also editing, constructing and deciding that some things are not going to happen. Do you start with an idea? BW  I think in the 1980s and even now – I don’t think things have changed that much – I do not have one way of working. There is not a set of rules. Let’s start with the 1980s work. Sometimes I had an idea of making a particular thing and I would try to find a material that would allow me to do that. But on the other hand I would always be collecting stuff, whether I knew what to do with it or not. And the material would sometimes suggest something: the colour of it, the texture – something about it. And that suggestion would sometimes be a total sculpture, and I would think ‘yes’ and I would make it, but always it would change. Sometimes not very much, sometimes a lot. That is, for me, the really exciting part. Everything you start is open-ended. You don’t really know where it is going to go. IR For the viewer also, simultaneously with the drawings in the air – suspended lines, different shapes and forms; for instance in Twin Tub with Satellite (1982), one is always conscious of the gallery in between those linear facts. Does that environment matter when you are putting the works up, or when someone is putting something up for you? Are you saying I want that closer to the wall or … BW  Oh yes. It is not arbitrary – not only within the showing space, the gallery space or wherever it might be, but also in the actual layout of the work. Sometimes it appears to be quite random, but it is not. It is always very considered, for various reasons. How the pieces are seen; if it is visually exciting or not; whether it reads in a narrative, linear way; how the pieces

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British Art of the Long 1980s go together, and how the formal composition works. Some arrangements are just more interesting than others. All those are worked at. IR So who were you looking to? You have been written about in relation to New British Sculpture for obvious reasons, but I am wondering whether you were conscious of that at the time, or was it something that was put onto you? BW  New British Sculpture. We would – when I say we – we were a group who came through almost together – more or less at the same time through shows like Objects and Sculpture (1981), and they were key points. There were lots of group shows about British sculpture. It was great for a while. It was not a name that any of us chose. It was something that the press or critics and curators used, and it was useful for a while. But there was a point when most people in these shows started to think, ‘God, if we have to do another of these group shows … ’. It is not that we mind seeing each other – we get on really well together and have a great time – but we are individuals, and at a certain point that starts to show. The rock band breaks up. IR Yes. You are all quite individual. BW  Yes. It was a very useful marketing tool to start with. I don’t think that anybody had any complaints about it. But it had had its life, and people started going in their own directions, which they were doing anyway. We had all had individual shows right from the start, but this umbrella term that connected you to them was no longer relevant. It disappeared, as do all these things. IR So who else were you having conversations with, looking towards, feeling artistic affinities with, or … BW  I think what was really important for me – during the late 1970s and 1980s – was travelling and meeting artists from other countries. Because when I was at school, when I was student, we obviously knew there were artists who were internationally known, but it was never really talked about or discussed. One just didn’t think of travelling or meeting people. You were basically English, and that was it. Then when I came to London as a student, I met Jean-Luc Vilmouth at the Royal College of Art and Daniel Trombley. They were both from Paris. Wolfgang Koethe was influential for me by including my work in shows he organized in Germany. Tony Cragg went off to live in Germany. The great thing for me about all this was understanding the cultural differences in how these artists approached their work and spoke about it. I found it fascinating. I really enjoyed meeting different people and encountering different languages – some that I could speak a few words of, and others that I did not have a clue about.

Bill Woodrow IR So was it a different paradigm of ideas or a different type of vocabulary or … What was it that you picked up on? BW  Well, a story that I tell sometimes, which I think sort of answers your question in a slightly flippant way, is that sometimes in Paris or in France, you would spend the evening with French artists and French curators, and you would have a really fantastic evening. You would eat well, drink well and have these amazing conversations that would go on all night. And then it would finish and you would be walking home and think, ‘I don’t have a clue what we were talking about.’ It was more about semantics and more about talking, and the evening, and the ideas didn’t really matter whether they finally came together or not. On the other hand when I was in Germany, you would go out and have a meal with German artists, and it would always end in a fight. Not necessarily physically, but a verbal battle about who was the best. I mean banging the table, and shouting, and real aggression. Trying to establish some sort of pecking order within the group. And that was quite tough. As an English person you would come back to England, go out for dinner with your artist friends and have a nice quiet evening. You would not dare talk about each other’s work. IR How interesting.! So you would keep quiet about it. BW  Well, everyone knew what each other was doing, but there was never a critical conversation in the sense of how it was in Germany or even in France, where things like ‘I don’t actually think your work is very good’ or ‘I think it’s rubbish’ or ‘You should change this’ were said. Here it was never like that. It was ‘You are getting on with it’ and ‘I can see what you are doing but I am not going to say anything.’ Those differences always amused me. IR You had many international residencies during the 1980s, for instance in La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (1985) in California. According to the catalogue, you collected things from around the gallery.2 BW  From the wider locality, yes. That was a model for how I made exhibitions at that time. I would go to different places, people would ask me to do a show and I would go and stay there for a few weeks or months and find a studio space – it could be a studio or a garage, and then I just worked in that environment. IR Did you find that the things that you were picking up varied according to cultures? BW  Yes, very much. The smaller French and Italian cars at that time were basically made of paper. They were actually made of metal but it was like paper. At the same time in New York or in different parts of America, they were like tanks. They were really tough to work with.

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British Art of the Long 1980s The Cadillac hood – bonnet – was quite a nightmare really. It was literally three or four times thicker than in the European cars. So there were material differences like that, but there were also cultural things that were influencing my ideas. I wouldn’t know what I was going to make before I went there. So the sort of things that I saw around, different types of objects and materials, definitely made a huge difference. IR So the culture fed into the gallery space in many different ways. BW  Yes. In Italy I made a piece called Albero et Uccello (1983), which is now in the Kröller Müller Museum in the Netherlands. That was made from olive oil cans, which were picked up from the side of the road in Italy. You would not find them like that anywhere else. You may have found Italian olive oil cans in America, but you would never find them in that situation, in that sort of number, and in that sort of size. And the imagery in that piece was very Italian too. That was a very enjoyable part of it. In Sweden, I found agricultural implements for digging out dykes and things, which again you would never find anywhere else, because countries have different weather patterns and conditions. IR How did you get these residencies? Was it through the Lisson Gallery? Did they suggest certain opportunities? How did it work? BW  No. Most of them were by invitation. They would come to me and invite me. It ranged from universities or public spaces n Australia (Brisbane, Sidney and other places), to Canada (York University), to California … And then private galleries would invite me to make a show and I would say, ‘Yes, I’ll come for a month beforehand, and you sort out a space for me.’ IR Were they quite happy with the fact that you would not come armed with objects, but you were going to make them there? BW  Yes, they were quite prepared for that. Which was good, because there was no guarantee that anything would appear. But I think that after you do a few and they work out OK, the word gets out that you can just about trust this guy to produce something in the end. It was exciting times. It was good. IR The 1980s was not really a time when most people travelled that much. It is an interesting thing that you got to all these places. BW  Well, there was one year when I was at home for half the year and the rest of the time I was just travelling. The kids used to say, ‘Yeah, we met him at the airport, said hello, waved goodbye.’ But you know … travelling on one level was a lot easier, although there were lots more landing cards and visas and that sort of thing. But I travelled with a bag of tools as cabin

Bill Woodrow baggage, which now would be absolutely unheard of. You simply could not think of travelling like that today. Things have changed drastically. IR Just going back to making … When you went on to use bronze, the work retained the feel of a cut-out. That is really subversive, I mean, painting the metal and suggesting the lightness and linearity of a cut-out.3 At the time bronze still had a particular sculptural baggage. BW  Up to that point I was not interested at all in using bronze, because of the historical baggage that came with it. But there came a point when I dropped the cut-out work and just thought, ‘There are no rules. I can do what I want – I will try things.’ I made one or two very small things in bronze when I was in Seattle for a residency there. I made the originals in wax but they were very small – just little trials. And then I had a show at the Imperial War Museum in 1989 and I made a lot of work in cardboard, gluing it together with a glue gun, which was a very quick way of working. Things grew in front of you. And I really liked what they turned out to be and how they looked. But there were real problems. You can keep things made of cardboard, but they are very fragile. They don’t travel. Materially they are difficult to deal with. So I thought about how I could make these in another material but make the same thing. That’s when I started to cast them in bronze. I liked the results, but they are very different – they look like cardboard, but they are bronze; different feel, different weight, different temperature. So it is an interesting material dilemma all the time. And the visual deception is quite interesting – something that I am always interested in. I mean you think it is one thing but it is actually another. It is quite an old thing with bronze anyway – nothing new with that. IR Are there any particular works from the 1980s that you would like to include in the interview, that you think, ‘This summed up something’, or ‘This was about something that felt really important at the time’? BW  I think that it is quite difficult to select out things. I mean I have favourites from each group, and there are some things probably that I am not so fond of now in retrospect. They did not work out as well as they should have done or … But, no, I think I would not like to pick things out really. There are certain things that I enjoyed, and sometimes making an exhibition in a space that was not a gallery was quite interesting. Italy was always quite rich in those possibilities, because of all the ancient buildings, very beautiful buildings, where you could exhibit work, where you could place your work next to an eighth-century something or other, or even earlier. That interplay was really exciting.

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Notes 1

2

3

See, for instance, Untitled (1971). 2 photographs, each mounted on a wooden panel, a stick, 185 × 198 × 190 cm. For images of works and further details, see http:// www.billwoodrow.com, last accessed 17 June 2020. Lynda Forsha, ‘Natural Produce: An Armed Response’, in Bill Woodrow and La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art eds., Bill Woodrow, (La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California,1985), 6. For instance Covering Ground (1989). Bronze, gold leaf, enamel paint. 52 × 128 × 21 cm.

5

Alison Wilding

Interview 31 July 2017 IR You studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in the early 1970s. What was the training like? What was emphasized? AW  Training? IR Was it a training? AW  No. It was quite a hard lesson in how to be a woman student in the sculpture school. I was the only woman in my year. There were two in the year above and none in the third year. I had come from Ravensbourne, where it was about 50/50 male to female students. Despite that, the tutors there were all male, maybe with one exception in sculpture. At the RCA the sculpture school was run by Professor Bernard Meadows, who did not appear to want any women students to be in there. It was very misogynistic, and in retrospect, full of eccentricities. (Although not fully versed in feminism, I had read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch when that first came out.) The studios, which were in old Napoleonic war era stables in Queensgate, were beautiful. I don’t remember any women tutors. But, having said that, I absolutely loved it. For me, the only way to get by was through being one of the boys. IR So there was nothing taught? AW  No. Students were expected to be self-motivated. You got on with your work and were subjected to criticism from tutors and your peers. It was a really competitive place, which I loved, and I thrived on it. There was a tutor called Peter Atkins, who later became Peter Kardia. He taught at St Martins as well, on the ‘B’ course. He was a very, very tough questioner. It was like having a weekly interrogation about what you were doing and why. It was hugely challenging. At first I was intimidated by him, but I grew to look forward to our conversations. Bernard Meadows would come in, stand over you and watch you doing

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British Art of the Long 1980s something badly, and then tell you how rubbish you were at making things. But I don’t think it bothered me that much. IR So were they emphasizing the making, the materials or the subject matter, or … ? AW  It was nothing like that – you simply got on with whatever it was. You were expected to work hard, and I worked fantastically hard. I made a huge amount of work and I really, really enjoyed it. Leaving was terrible. IR How do you move on from a place like the RCA? AW  That was very difficult. Partly, I think it was because it was such a male establishment, although I am still friendly with some people who were in my year. We were never, or I was never, part of a group of artists in the way that students are now, which is hugely to their benefit. They go on and make shows and do things together. But I didn’t really do that. I was in a couple of shows with others, but I felt very isolated. I eventually got a studio but had to give it up after a year because I got unhappy working on my own. I was also in a relationship with an artist who was a year below me at the Royal College. He became amazingly successful while he was a student, which was destructive to me as an artist. Not because I was undermined by that, but because I got more interested in what he was doing rather than in what I was doing. I felt very unsupported, so it was easier to get involved with the way that he was working, and obviously it didn’t work out. I gave up making sculpture, which I can see now was a huge mistake. IR The earliest work that I have seen of yours is from the late 1970s, which was an installation of a desk and a chair – an assemblage of the everyday. AW  There was something of a preoccupation with tables and chairs in the 1970s. Both my table and chair installations (1975), which I made in my first studio after leaving the RCA, in Stepney Green, were met with total incomprehension by everyone at the Open Studio show there. Being over reliant on technicians at the RCA, I felt that I had no skill set and used whatever materials and stuff I could forage. Now when I look back on those works I can see in them the seeds of almost everything I have done since. But stupidly, it was then that I gave up my studio and worked at home, and that did not work out either. Only when I split up with my partner and went to live in a SPACE studio at 82 Wapping Wall did I start to make sculpture again. I got a job as a barmaid in the Prospect of Whitby down the road, and I started working, and I never looked back. It was at that particular studio complex where the Open Studios first kicked off. They ran for

Alison Wilding a couple of days each summer from 1979 to 1985. They were brilliant because people really came, and that is when my work got noticed. IR Who else was in Wapping for these Open Studios? AW  Shelagh Wakely had a studio next to me, and there were two women, Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykas, who made videos and conceptual work and were showing both here and in Holland. They were quite successful, and I was friendly with them. Lesley Smith, who was Richard Tuff ’s partner, and Janet Nathan, who was Patrick Caulfield’s partner, were there, and also John Copnall. There was a whole range of artists in our building and in another building further down the road: Metropolitan Wharf. Shelagh Cluett was in Metropolitan Wharf. It was fantastic. It was an artists’ community and is probably the best that I have ever been involved with. It lasted (for me) maybe three or four years. There was a really bonkers pub that we used to go to – the Three Suns in Wapping. It was a time of people just getting terribly, terribly drunk, behaving badly … There was an artist called Keith Reeves, who was very, very funny. There were quite a lot of blokes with enormous egos who probably weren’t that great as artists, but it was a time of feeling really alive as an artist. It was the early 1980s, and I was married and also living in Wapping. It was good. That went on till about 1983–1984. We then had to move out of Wapping because all those warehouses started to become developed. My studio was probably turned into somebody’s bathroom. So I went to Dace Road – another SPACE studio – on Fish Island, and that was interesting. There was a different group of people there. IR In a funny sort of way that can be quite liberating, because it gets you out of certain ways of thinking and certain types of conversations. AW  For me it was working in a completely different studio, because my studio in Wapping had a really low, eight-foot high ceiling, and almost no daylight. So, moving to Dace Road, where it was a different shape and had a twelve-foot high ceiling, was great. I had a workbench and had shelves put in! The work I made really changed. IR So the space itself effects what you are making? AW  It does. My last studio was two thousand square feet, and then I moved here and have not been able to make anything big. In a way, being constrained by the space is quite liberating. You realize that it does, to an extent, determine where you are going. IR One thing I was wanting to ask you is about materials. So much of your work from the 1980s involves a whole range of different techniques and

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British Art of the Long 1980s materials – from the patination of metals, to firing ceramics, to working different types of stones. Were you storing materials in the studio and then picking things out? AW  In my first studio I used a lot of brown paper and glue and just used the things that I could find. Obviously, when I was at the Royal College it was possible to weld and work with all sorts of materials. When I moved to Dace Road, access was much easier. I was on the second floor but there was a hoist to lift stuff. I started using a lot of sheet metal. Over the years you build up an enormous portfolio of how to do things, who can help you and where to get stuff from. At that time, in that area, there were lots of very small workshops where people were making things from wood and metal, and small casting workshops, and there were so many ways of getting things done all over East London. You just build up confidence in making, and your ambition about doing things grows. I remember the first sculpture I made that was about two metres high that actually stood up. That was a real marker: making something that stood that was bigger than I was. IR I was thinking about some of the works of the 1980s that involved techniques like rolling and cutting, which were included in Richard Serra’s Verb List. Were you aware of that, or were you just looking at the materials and thinking about the possibilities? AW  Well, I was aware of what the American artists were making and writing. I was in an exhibition in 1980 at the Acme Gallery called Eight Artists: Women: 1980. I think it was that exhibition which showed that the way that I was using materials was quite different from the wrapping and binding techniques which were in evidence then from some other women. IR Was that because of the gender association you saw? AW  Probably, I could be very judgemental. IR So were you were thinking about materials as materials? AW  I think so. And also discovering ways of making that did not necessarily tick any boxes. I know that over the years I have used a huge amount of materials. I said recently in an interview, ‘I’m not obsessed with materials and, if I’ve used a huge variety of stuff over the years, it’s because there’s lots of it freely available in the world. I don’t believe in a hierarchy of materials. All materials, however mundane, can be transformed.’1 I’m not really hung up over materials. I am just interested in what it is possible to do with something that you don’t really know anything about.

Alison Wilding IR When you juxtapose different materials they each take a different range of possibilities as well, because they are juxtaposed. AW  Yes. I always like putting unlikely things together. There is something perverse about putting something unsuitable with something else. I do a lot of that, but I don’t have any favourite materials. IR Sometimes there are some really light things, like say ceramic flowers against quite visually weighty things. But they suggest different associations and remain open-ended. Is that what you are hoping for? AW  Probably. I don’t know. It’s hard to say really. IR Sometimes, a title such as Nature: Blue and Gold (1984), Grey Beak (1983) or Pond (1983) sets one in a certain direction. Do you want the title to act as a nudge towards some way of thinking? AW  I think it is a nudge. That piece called Pond was very watery. God knows what it looks like now, but when I made it, the patina of the metal was very watery. But also, Pond had a circularity and another, different dynamic, that of two objects in opposition to each other. I also like ambiguity. IR One of the things I love about sculpture is that we all have an inherent material and spatial vocabulary within us. Sculpture pushes or pulls you to a certain extent. There’s a piece called Untitled from 1980 with bags inside a demarcation. It sets up its own space. I am interested in the notion that you’ve set the parameters. AW  I have always been interested in boundaries – in the amount of space an object can hold. It’s possible that very small objects, say on a wall, can command an enormous amount of space. That particular piece started with the two brass bags. When I was a student at the Royal College there was a builders’ merchant called Farmers, I think, and everything that they sold came in a really beautiful black paper bag with serrated tops, and I made (when I was a student there) at least one piece using these bags. When I left I had a collection of the bags. For Untitled (1980), I remade the bags but in very, very thin brass shim. The bags are glued together. Then I crimped the edges, as the paper bags were. I realized you could make them stand up on the floor if there were two facing and leaning against each other. I wanted to know what sort of space they would command. So the circle of zinc strips that surrounds them describes that amount of space, and also, the zinc strips that were riveted together became an object in themselves. They became the equivalent of a base or a plinth. I realized that this really was a piece of sculpture that was quite an important piece of work for me. IR It does seem to be one that marked a changing point.

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British Art of the Long 1980s AW  All the very disparate components came together in just these two things: one, the zinc circle, although it’s a very irregular circle, with the two bags in the centre. The Arts Council bought it for £350, which in 1980 was a huge amount of money. IR Thinking about subjects, were there any areas you felt you particularly wanted to engage with during the 1980s? AW  I was thinking a lot about bodies: about vessels as bodies. I was obsessed for a while with The Cult of the Black Virgin by Ean Begg (1985), a book which describes images and the origins of black, pagan goddesses that pre-date Christianity but are nevertheless found as Madonnas in churches all over the world. I made a sculpture titled Vestal, which clearly emerged from this preoccupation. This is a work that I really reacted against much later on. I was making work mainly with sheet metal, where the interior of the sculpture was inaccessible. You were aware there was an internal core, which was the engine of the work, and yet it was not possible to see beyond the outside surface of the object. There is also a piece Immersion, which came from quite a different time in the 1980s, which I regarded as a self-portrait. I have stopped calling it that. At the very beginning of the 1990s I started to reject the way I had been making a lot of my work. IR What caused that reaction? AW  I think I felt I had reached the end of something. I wanted a different way of working. I discovered polypropylene – a cheap plastic in sheet form. It opened up ideas of transparency, and at the same time I discovered the monocoque method of construction, which entirely changed the possibilities of seeing the interior of an object – of opening it up. That is a banal way to describe it. I have made about nine sculptures using that method. For me it has just freed up ways of making work. Now I am not obsessed with this way or that way. There are a number of ways of making work open to me now, which doesn’t preclude anything else. IR I was interested that certainly in the 1980s you were in many exhibitions in Britain, like The Sculpture Show2 and the British Art Show, as well as shows in Europe and the Americas. I was thinking of exhibitions like the São Paulo Bienal and British Council shows. Would they have been written up? AW  Oh, I think they were. But that was in the 1980s. Because I was in all those British Council shows, and actually they were all (my god) male-dominated shows. IR That was something I wanted to ask you about. AW  There was a lot of politicking going on in every way. The Lisson Gallery was very powerful. I was not with the Lisson Gallery. At the time I was

Alison Wilding with Anthony Reynolds. It wasn’t until 1987 that I was with Karsten Schubert. I remember being totally elbowed out of things. I remember being in one of those British Council shows in Madrid and being there to install the work, and they had put a piece of mine at the front of the gallery, which looked fantastic. But that wasn’t allowed to happen. Funnily enough, I think Antony Gormley was in pretty much the same situation. We were both with Salvatore Ala in New York. Salvatore Ala first met my work when I had a show in Venice that Anthony Reynolds had put together and Salvatore came to see me, and he was just completely passionate about my work in a way that was very rare – both then and subsequently, in fact. I had three shows in New York with him, in 1983, 1985 and 1986. He had such beautiful space in New York on West 23rd Street. IR How does it actually work with a gallery, or at least work then? Did they find you exhibitions? AW  Karsten had been in this country for a couple of years and he was working with Nicholas Logsdail. While he was still with Logsdail he came to see me. Then he left Nicholas Logsdail and joined up with Richard Salmon who was, and still is, a private dealer who initially became his backer. They opened a gallery in Charlotte Street or somewhere around there. I have been with him ever since. It has been through all sorts of changes. He had a gallery until about five years ago. So I showed in his spaces every year during the late 1980s into the 1990s. IR Who do you think were your main inspirations during the 1980s? In the catalogue to The Sculpture Show (1983) Fenella Crichton suggested Brancusi and Hesse. AW  I was really interested in Brancusi at the beginning of the 1980s because of how he put things together. I always wanted my objects to be very overt in the way they were made. I didn’t want to have any hidden fixings. I wanted it to be a cup in a saucer situation without any disguised pinning or gluing. At the time that was quite important, but less so now. I put things together in whatever seems the best possible way. I think glue is now fine, but glue was not fine back then. Who else did Fenella Crichton say I was interested in? IR Well, she mentioned them in particular, but I also noticed you were quite often teamed up with Richard Deacon when she was selecting an exhibition, and I didn’t know if that was just because that was her choice or because that was where you felt comfortable. AW  I don’t think I’ve really been influenced by anyone. I used to worry that I was making things like other people. I used to try and undo that. I think as a student I was quite interested in Carl Plackman and Martin Naylor.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR  I was wondering about Carl Plackman, because of the way disparate elements fit within a particular space with some of his work. AW  He was a brilliant teacher, and I remember talking to him when I was a student at Ravensbourne. His way of working was just a revelation to me at that time because I didn’t know very much about what was going on. What he was doing at that time was very important to me. Less so subsequently but it was then. He just exploded the idea of what sculpture could be. Objects didn’t have to be something on a plinth. You could fill a room with anything.

Notes 1

2

A conversation between Alison Wilding and Sarah Whitfield, ‘Beauty/Speed/ Devastation’, in Acanthus, Asymmetrically, (London: Offer Waterman in association with Karsten Schubert, 2017), n.p. Kate Blacker, Fenella Crichton, Paul de Monchaux, The Sculpture Show: Fifty Sculptors at the Serpentine and South Bank, (London: Arts Council of Great Britain). Alison Wilding’s sculptures were shown at the Hayward Gallery.

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Jacqueline Poncelet

Interview 12 January 2018 IR In The British Art Show 5 (2000)1 you said that you were a fine artist who had started as a ceramic artist. When did you feel that the change happened? Or did you feel that they were inter-related? JP There definitely was a break. The turning point was my Whitechapel show in 1985. One of the things that I found difficult, which is not necessarily something that is cured by putting yourself into a different context, are the parameters of what you are allowed to do, where you are allowed to do it and the level of debate that surrounds the different genres. At the time I was very close to Susanna Heron, who said that we must make a point of leaving the craft world, which we did. Since then I have completely accepted my past and value it, but it is something like leaving home. It was very difficult. IR Was that because of what others said or because you found it difficult to be accepted by either camp? JP In life, most of the way that you interpret things is to do with yourself. You are the person who is doing the deflecting or absorbing. I was doing a lot of listening, which was forming the basis of my own evaluation of my situation and what I was doing. It was very difficult, because within the craft world, and particularly within ceramics – which is something that I absolutely loved – I had a framework, and in choosing to move away from that I lost something. It was like becoming an amoeba. You can just flow in every direction. IR There seems to me to be some key points in your work. One was 1977, one was the mid-1980s and one in the early 1990s. You moved from an almost Bauhaus purity, with vessels that were beautifully surfacedecorated but without any colour, to a period where your work seemed

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British Art of the Long 1980s to be related to architecture through suggested grid patterns, using several types of clay. Then your work became much more open in the mid-1980s, and by the 1990s you were using a range of materials. Do you want to talk us through those points? JP Yes, well, it comes back to the kind of person I am. I am always questioning received wisdom. I am always looking for an interesting discussion, within my head, with other people or ‘with the world’ as I find it. I left the Royal College of Art at the same time as the formation of the Crafts Council. So we – the ceramicists – were immediately picked up by them and promoted. It is interesting how, in the early days of your career, very small things give one a bedrock of confidence. I remember showing my work in the ceramic department in Heals, where you could buy a plate for £5, and there was a small piece of mine for £25. People were in there saying, ‘Mildred look at this – it’s £25.’ It was very awkward. One had to learn about context. With my bone china pots, no one ever said anything about the forms. I wanted people to say, ‘Oh, what an interesting form’ or ‘So interesting that she was doing that’. All they said was ‘They are so white and so fine.’ I gradually got angry. I have noticed over the years that one needs to be very careful about one’s relationship with one’s audience, and it wasn’t something that I had always considered. I was teaching at the time, and certainly in the early days, I was only ten minutes older than my students; you were learning as much from them as they were from you. I had never been a hand-builder, but there was a student at Farnham College of Art2 who was doing some handbuilding. Much as I loved plaster, and modelling and mould making in plaster, I could see that it had its limitations, so I started to slab-build. The minute I did that, there was a whole new range of possibilities. In some senses they were the same as the moulded pots: an interest in balance and how things meet the ground, but suddenly also an interest in what happened both inside and outside the pot. That carried on right until I stopped making pots. I did not want to deny the existence of a single part of my objects. It is something that I was aware of even in my flirtations with design. When you pick something up to wash it up, you turn it over. The underside is as important as the inside, or the handle or the rim. That was my philosophy for making objects. Some of the time your relationship to the world is predigested – you are learning from other things. I was learning from Japanese prints. The relationship of pattern across them – for me – is to die for. My only point of reference was to look at Japanese prints and Persian prints, and I moved onto Indian miniatures a bit later.

Jacqueline Poncelet IR What sort of date are we talking about here? JP We are talking about mid- to late 1970s. Then I got the British Council Bicentennial Arts Fellowship (USA) in 1978–9, which changed everything. It changed Richard’s [Deacon] life, my life, and that of our ten-month-old son. We went to America as a little family unit, and we had money each month. I had never understood what it would be like not to worry about money. We did not have a lot of money to spare, as we always went in at the top end of the market if we were renting, but we knew that we had money coming in every month. We were poor until we went to America. Every morning we would wake up and decide what to do. There was a great sense of freedom. We took it in turns to look after Alexis. You might be looking after him and working as well. We had this studio in Manhattan – he had the floor, I had the tables and Richard had the walls. The weather was wonderful, but the fundamental thing was that we were being fed by the environment. The streets of New York were like falling into heaven. And then we started travelling around America. I could not have anticipated my reaction to the landscape because I am a city person. But the American landscape was just amazing – the colour, the secrecy of it. It just fed into the idea of the inside and outside of pots. I was never a technical potter. I went out and bought packet glazes and was using a beautiful but quite limited palette. It was Carol McNicoll who came around one time when we were back in London, who said, ‘I don’t know why you never use colour.’ And I was so shocked, because I was brown, blue, a bit of pink and yellow, but I was not really using colour. IR Of course her use of colour is so wonderfully vibrant. JP Yes, and always those sharp industrial colours. I went out and bought a glaze book and mixed some glazes, but in the same way as you buy paint. I was not going to do ten thousand tests – it either worked or it didn’t. One of the things that I wanted was the richness of Islamic pots. I used to love going into the British Museum from the rear entrance, because you saw those wonderful pots from Iran and the glazes were fat, they were thin, the colour was applied in different ways. I wanted that kind of vocabulary. And one of the differences was between an image in a book and the reality of the object. The shock of seeing a painting or object in the flesh when you have been used to seeing it in a book is great – you have to make an accommodation in your thinking. IR It is really interesting what you are saying about the differences between a photograph of a three-dimensional object and the real thing. There

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British Art of the Long 1980s is often a flattening and one-dimensionality with a photograph. You don’t get the richness, you can’t walk around it, and you can’t see how something develops into something else. JP No. You can’t get the awkwardness or the sensuality of something. It is interesting that you say that. When we were living in New York we got to know Susanna Heron, who was married to David Ward at that time. David was a very interesting photographer, and he started to photograph my work for me when we got back to England. In New York I had already started making pots with a very particular relationship to the ground. They would only have two points of contact with the ground – they would stand on a point and an edge. You could come across those pots, and from a particular angle they would appear to be standing on a point. They would look absolutely extraordinary – like they were defying gravity. And then I realized that you could make a photographic image rather than pretending that you were showing the actual object. And that was what David Ward’s pictures of my work were, images rather than documentation. A lot of people were working with David Cripps, and I didn’t want that. David Ward did all the pictures for the Crafts Council catalogue for me and carried on taking pictures for me for another ten years or so after that. On return to London I continued to make pots, which were becoming more and more colourful, bigger and more awkward. I had had a studio in Kings Cross that I shared with various people, but I left that when we bought a house in Brixton, and I worked at home. Richard had a studio very nearby, and I would fire my pots in the studio – I had a kiln there. Then we moved to a house just outside Peckham, next door but one to Janice Tchalenko, who had a gas kiln. I asked her if I could fire some pots in her kiln, and all the colour disappeared because it was a gas rather than an electric kiln. That was a big shock and led me to start making very different work. There are things that happen in your personal life that change everything. Richard, from the early 1980s, had become very successful. I was trying to fit in around him. We had two small children and it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to work. But I would have gone mad if I had not worked. The work began to express some of the difficulty in my life and became quite awkward and figurative. And then with the loss of colour and the questioning of aesthetics, they started to have low relief surfaces. I was thinking a lot about tattoos, which were not fashionable then. But it was about the aesthetics of the body. All of these things were coming into play when I had the show at the Whitechapel in 1985. I had had other smaller shows in other spaces. For

Jacqueline Poncelet instance, I was artist of the day at the Angela Flowers Gallery (1985). People were starting to question what I was doing. When I had the show at the Whitechapel I did an interview for television, during which they asked me whether it was art or craft. And I said, ‘It was up to other people to decide.’ I had been at college with Alison Wilding, and she said, ‘It is not for other people to decide. It is for you to decide.’ It was like somebody flicked a switch, and I thought, ‘OK I decide. I am a Fine Artist, and I am going to see what happens.’ I then embarked on a very difficult few years, because I don’t care what other people’s opinions are about the differences between art and craft. It is a fundamental difference. IR It is. It is a different set of rules, and people are very protective of their own turf. I also think that this is a British thing. In so many other countries there is much more of a continuum. JP Yes. But this is my context. My point is that it is not a value judgement. An artist has an attitude to craft in their own work. A craft person has ideas within their own work. I hope that I value people’s work for what it is, not for the label. But the label is very important for the parameters that you are giving yourself, and everything to do with material, how I handle material, whether I handle it, whether someone else handles it … I can’t think of any aspect that it does not effect. When I was making pots, that was my point of reference. IR There is a very strong sense of roots in ceramics. JP Yes, a whole history. There is a whole history of making sculpture, of wonderful figurative objects of every scale imaginable. But in the end you are choosing the way you want your work to be judged. It was very interesting when I was one of the curators of The British Art Show 5. I was interested in going to view the work of a couple of people who worked in ceramics, and one of the other curators said to me, ‘What do they call themselves?’, and I said, ‘Potters’, and he said, ‘We are not going there.’ He was right, because they were making a statement about their context. IR So Alison Wilding was right. JP She was right, yes. It is interesting when other artists show in a craft context, they are very clear that they are not craftsmen. IR Presumably then, when you made the change, you started to look at different work. There were quite a lot of artists who were using ceramics or forms that echo crafts. Who were you looking to? Was there a change? JP I wasn’t looking to anyone. Friends have always been very important to me. I was and am very close to Lisa Milroy, and if I went to an exhibition

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British Art of the Long 1980s with Lisa, we could spend an hour in front of a painting. I had never been very good at looking at paintings, and when you have small children it is very difficult to stand still. She taught me to stand still, to take time, to look at and to assimilate things. When I showed in the Venice Biennale (1986) I had only been making ceramics, and then later I branched out into lots of other materials, which gave me a huge understanding about the freedom that ceramics had given me. All the other materials that I was using at that point were difficult to dispose of. What I didn’t understand about ceramics was the phenomenal freedom that being able to smash something up gives you. But I think it was Alison again who said, ‘Why do you use clay?’ And I had gone home and thought, ‘Yes, why do I use clay?’ And the only way you find that out is by not using it. It is only recently that I have started to use it again. I really had to turn against it. IR That is really brave – materials are such a touchstone. JP I always call it leaving home and saying, ‘I will never come back.’ But the things that I went on to do fed me for years. IR What sort of things? JP Well, the relationship to materials where I could ask other people to make things. Painting, where you no longer had to deal with gravity. You could paint a fictional three-dimensional object and not deal with any reality at all. IR So a bit like a painting by Lisa Milroy depicting the shards of a pot. JP Yes, but mine were object objects. It would be more like her painting of a pot rather than a shard. I have an image by her of a dress on the wall, and there is no gravity there – it floats. There was a huge breakthrough for me in the 1990s, when I started to really think about the difference between painting and sculpture. I believed that painting, traditionally, always came to an end. With sculpture, however, you can’t say that ‘this is the end of a field of influence’. Of course a painting will have an influence on an environment. But a sculpture can activate the space around it. Well, first of all I made a sculpture that sat on a piece of fabric like a painting, called Clay, Bronze Wood and Fabric (1988), which is now owned by the Tate. It is a piece of Sanderson fabric, and it has two objects sitting on it. After that I started working on sewn things, and when I showed them to people they said, ‘This is transitional work.’ What that means is ‘We don’t like it.’ I am sorry that they said that as I think all my work is transitional. Then I started to work with carpet in the early 1990s. It took

Jacqueline Poncelet me a long time to work out what I was doing. What happened at that time was that Richard bought a studio, and I worked on the top floor of that. I had the space, and space makes a huge difference. IR It does. You can leave something and come back to it. If it has space around it you can judge it in different ways. JP Exactly. You can walk around it. In some sense people found the carpets indigestible. People were forced to confront their taste, and some people have an allergy to carpet. It was a very uncomfortable time for me, as people reacted too severely to them. Some people just could not look at them at all. IR They were in the exhibition the Decorative Sublime at MoMA in Oxford (1995), weren’t they? JP Yes, and the ones that I sold went to very good homes. One went to the Arts Council, another to the Stedelijk Museum and one to the British Council. I am fantastically grateful for that. It has been a great source of sadness to me that I have never been able to make people quite understand what I was doing. I was certainly dealing with taste. I was absolutely talking about plinths. I was dealing with the role of carpets in interiors. I was talking about English history. I was talking about our relation to other cultures. I was talking about contemporary views of what is possible. There was so much embedded in that work. I was also painting at the same time. I asked David Thorpe, who was at the South London Gallery at the time, to come to the studio. He came in and looked at the paintings. I am sure that he won’t remember but he said, ‘Thank God you are doing something else.’ He certainly could not deal with the carpets. IR It is partly to do with resonance. It is a bit like pattern being ‘female’ and carpet being ‘domestic’. Is it design? Is it art? They apparently sit between genres. JP It is also about history. Some people would come in and say, ‘I can’t stand pub carpets.’ They associated them with smell. They associated them with uncomfortable situations. It was not anything that they wanted to deal with, but I only used new carpet. IR How do you want people to view your work? JP I know that I have been to other people’s exhibitions and can’t cope with them, so I do understand that that is the case with some things that I do. I am not sure that I can answer that one. IR I wonder whether it is also about titles. Looking at some of your work of ceramics: Interlocking Form (1985), Horn and Claw (1985), they act as

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British Art of the Long 1980s nudges to the viewer and allow the viewer a way in. With those works I have always been interested in the sense of a held moment. JP Yes, and those objects can sit in different ways. They are not meant to settle. They are meant to be moved and be turned over. Some will balance in different ways. Some will sit on their backs or sides. Some will have at least three possible positions. It goes back to the notion of sitting on a point and edge. It is not a building. They do not have to stay in one position. IR I was also thinking about the carpets in relation to sculptures by Carl Andre and the related ones by Rachel Whiteread, where again you can walk across them. Were people worried whether they could walk across the carpets? JP Yes. I left it up to them if they had bought them. They are very different if you are standing in the middle. I also thought that it was fine if you did not. Certainly children flung themselves onto the carpets. They were very different from the paintings. Those were bought fabric, photographs and painting. They were a huge cultural mix as well. There are some things that you repeat. You believe in them. I don’t want to make work that is not as complicated as I find life. I want it to feel like a manifestation of what I am digesting all the time. I want all that complexity. IR Thinking about difficulty, you started by using modernist vocabularies, as many ceramicists of the time did. But during the 1980s, and certainly by the 1990s, in art – probably more than in ceramics – postmodernism and an open-endedness that people could read into a work of art, and art’s reaching out into everyday life, were to the fore. I wonder whether the ambiguity and multilayered aspect inherent in postmodernism that played out in your work also played into the viewer’s response. JP Yes, people have started to talk about my work in terms of postmodernism. Well, you are a creature of your time. I think America changed my life. I also think that growing up in the time of the Beatles, and the fashion of that time, when ten or twenty patterns at a time were just fine helped to make me. What you are doing is absorbing and responding to what culture throws at you. IR Fashion was very rich at the time – thinking about New Romantics, Punk … JP It was fabulous. My friends and I loved fashion in different ways. IR I am thinking of all the male sculptors and object makers, and very few in the art world at that time seem to have picked up on that decorative aspect – the lushness of material.

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JP  Well, Richard did. He has gone on to work a bit with ceramics after we split up. Well, he did before, but certainly he has gone on with it wholeheartedly now. The catalogue of the show that is coming to the Fitzwilliam, Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery (2017–18),3 talks about sculpture and ceramics. It is about this group of sculptors who were associated with a group of ceramicists, and Richard and I were the link for that.

Notes 1

2 3

British Art Show 5, curated by Pippa Coles, Matthew Higgs, Jacqueline Poncelet, (London: Arts Council and Southbank Centre, 2000). For images and further details of what is discussed in this interview, see http://www.poncelet.me.uk/cv.php, last accessed 18 June 2020. Now University for the Creative Arts. Glenn Adamson, Martina Droth and Simon Olding eds., Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, (New Haven: Yale Centre for British Art and Cambridge: Fitswilliam Museum, 2017).

Figure 5  Richard Deacon, New Sculpture Gallery, Riverside Studios, London, 8 February–4 March 1984. Foreground: Out of The House, 1983. Back left: Art for Other People No. 5, 1982. Back right: For Those Who Have Eyes, 1983. Photo: Richard Deacon, courtesy of Richard Deacon Studio

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Richard Deacon

Interview 9 May 2018 RD  I left the Royal College of Art in 1977. In my last year, I was looking for a studio space and found part of an empty factory in Acre Lane, Brixton. It was deserted, formerly the home of Knightsbridge Meat Pies. It had been bought by the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) as overspill for Santley Street School, next door. But, in the 1970s, school rolls were falling, and the ILEA was left with all sorts of pockets of land and property that they did not necessarily want to get rid of, but which they needed to make available for commercial use, and this fell into that category. I felt that some of the factory would make very good studio spaces, but I couldn’t have taken on the whole building. I contacted the valuer at the Greater London Council (GLC) and asked them about it. He was very sympathetic and said that they would be interested in a use like that, could offer a very reasonable rent, but we had to take the whole building. So then I contacted Acme Housing Association and said that I knew that they did a lot of live-work spaces, but would they be interested in running a studio block as well? They were interested and had just been discussing moving into that area. So a lot of my third year at the RCA was spent organizing the conversion of 52 Acre Lane into studios. On the back of that, after I graduated, Acme offered me a part-time job as a manager for the housing association. IR It is really useful as an artist to have some sort of guaranteed income. RD  Yes. Income was quite a problem at that time. This was a period of very rapid growth in Acme, and I worked very closely with David Panton and Jonathan Harvey on securing houses that the GLC had notified them were available, and also in selecting artists for them: Helen Chadwick, for example, who I had known before from when she applied to the Royal College from Brighton. She did not get in, although she should have done, but went instead to Chelsea. I gave her a house. Maureen

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British Art of the Long 1980s Paley also. Genesis P’Orridge was the most active person – Jonathan and David would agree with me. In spite of his exterior, he was the most effective one-man squat and secured many houses in Beck Road. Richard Wilson had his space on Banyard Road. I knew a lot of the artists and spaces and spent a lot of time cycling around London, securing spaces. In setting up the studio block in Acre Lane one thing I insisted on was that it should incorporate a gallery or a project space within it. I argued that the site was big enough. One would just add a little bit to everyone’s rent, and the space would be available as a non-assigned space that could be used. Anthony Gormley used it to install a frame made from his shredded clothes. Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Wolfgang Koethe, Bill Woodrow and I used it in 1980 for the Spring Programme. It functioned as an autonomous gallery space. From my point of view, it meant that as an artist you were independent. You had the possibility to make shows without having to work within a commercial gallery system. You had some control over your destiny. I was in the States with Jacqui Poncelet (we were married) between September 1978 and September 1979, and we were in New York during the winter of 1978. I did a body of work there in drawings (It’s Orpheus When There’s Singing), which I showed in a studio show in Brixton in 1980 and just after that at Winchester School of Art. Although they were not particularly recognized, I knew they would be of importance to me for how things went on. IR Thinking about that exhibition that you had in Brixton, you showed the large Untitled sculpture on the floor and the series of drawings on the wall. The sculpture was really large and open, and it is hard to tell from photographs the relationship of the viewer to the drawings.1 RD  In some places it was hard to stand back from them. When I showed them in Winchester it was a slightly bigger room. Then again, in 2014 we made the connection between those drawings and a group of sculptures. When I did the show at the Tate in 1985, I tried to tie the drawings in with the sculptures that I had been making before. Martin Kunz also showed the drawings in Lucerne in 1982. Then they did not actually drop out of sight, but … IR How did they feed into the sculptures? RD  They are a vocabulary. They are predictive rather than descriptive. I was not necessarily thinking of the drawings when I was making the subsequent sculptures, but when I look at the sculptures I can see that they belong together. They are not drawings for a particular sculpture, but they do have a repertoire of shapes that I used, which fuelled a lot

Richard Deacon of the work that I subsequently did. I was very lucky to have a year of thinking time at a crucial period. While we were in New York I thought that the art was more interesting in London than in New York, but that was a question of hidden scenes really. It would have been possible for a New York-based artist to have come to London and think that it was more interesting in New York. That was because the scenes or organizations were organized around do-it-yourself activities in slightly alternative venues. It was only when Sandy Nairne, Lewis Biggs and Iwona Blazwick got together with New British Sculpture that it started to take off for me. This largely developed through exhibitions both in Britain and abroad. Objects and Sculpture was in 1981. Leçon de Choses, a touring show (in which I was not included), started in the Kunsthalle Bern in 1982, and then there was Aperto ‘82 at the Biennale in Venice. (Again I was not in that show.) Finally there was English Sculpture Now, in which I was included, which was Martin Kunz’s show that ran between July and September 1982 at the Kunstmuseum Lucerne. Tony Cragg had done his Lisson show in 1979, where he had shown New Stones, Newton’s Tones, and was then included in the second part of the Whitechapel Show: British Sculpture in the 20th Century in 1981–2. Nicholas (Serota) was running the Whitechapel then, and Tony, along with Bill Woodrow and a number of other sculptors who became affiliated with New British Sculpture, was included. In 1980 Tim Head and Nick Pope were exhibited at the Venice Biennale. There were also some alternative gallery spaces. Tony Stokes had a gallery and also ran Garage. Nick Pope exhibited at Garage in 1976–7. So, along with the Acme Gallery, there was Garage, which was a semi artist-run space, and Tony Stoke’s gallery, which were all in Covent Garden. So there were little spurts, and then big spurts – Venice starts to be a big thing. Then there are jumps, which are partly to do with artists, but also with critics – Richard Cork in the Evening Standard, for instance, and I should also mention Sarah Kent at Time Out. Artscribe and Art Monthly also started during the 1970s. They think that there is something worth looking at and start grouping people together. IR How did you feel about that? You were quite disparate artists. RD  In the beginning I was extremely grateful to have the opportunity and the ability to do something. I made my first show at Lisson in 1983, and I think I had sold one work up to that point. We sold two from that show. There was no underpinning economy. I remember Nicholas Logsdail running me home afterwards – there was no dinner or anything. It was all very much lower key.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR  Did the Lisson represent you? RD  I had the show with them in 1983, which began our association, but I had never wanted to ask them. I always thought that they should ask me and that it should be a mutual thing. It was a recommendation from Tony Cragg, Lewis Biggs and Sandra Miller that made Lisson offer me a show. I don’t think that Nicholas had ever seen my work. Lynne Cooke was also a supporter. The components of a healthy situation are a good critical dialogue, the availability of work spaces and showing spaces, and information or connections. A functioning market is also needed, but that was absent in the 1970s. It was all grant based for individually funded projects. Acme did miracles and did some fantastic performance work in their gallery, including Kerry Trengrove’s performances, and those by Stuart Brisley, Kipper Kids and Rose English. Steven Cripps was an extraordinary performer – terrifying. Fireworks going off everywhere – it was pretty full on – but also with some quieter things as well. Really the art scene could only get so far because there was no economy. Making temporary things works up to a point, but in the end, everyone needs to earn some money somehow. Teaching is great. For many between 1965 and 1975, teaching was the main source of income. From 1975 on it gradually started to change. By 1975 to 1980 there were more artists thinking that they could act independently. There had been a commercial scene in the 1960s, with Pop art, but that had collapsed. There was European support for some artists during the 1970s – Art and Language, Richard Long, Gilbert and George were all helped. Here, Nicholas Logsdail and Nigel Greenwood were basically it. Nicholas was supporting himself by selling 1930s antiques. Nigel … I don’t know how he got on. Alex Gregory Hood at the Rowan Gallery was another one. It was very secretive. The art magazines – Art Monthly and Artscribe – particularly Art Monthly – did increase the dialogue. I went to Ljubljana in Slovenia to do an exhibition in the late 1980s at the Moderna Galerija, and they all knew an enormous amount about British art, because Art Monthly had been circulated by the Slovenian artists, which was a very lively community. They would have been particularly interested in the performance aspect. Marina Abramović comes out of that tradition. And that was all because of circulation through magazines. Now, in the days of the internet, you forget that distribution through printed paper would have an effect on how things were understood. One of the things that I thought about in the early 1980s was that the distribution of images was really important. So for the shows that I

Richard Deacon did, whether it was one I was organizing myself or through a gallery, I always had an image on a card. If people got an image through the post and liked it, they would stick it on the wall, and it would stay there quite a long time. That image of Untitled (1980) was on people’s walls for quite some time. If it had just been a name, it would not really have done it. Although typography is nice, it does not really tell you anything. Saatchi was starting to be an important component, internationally, in the late 1970s. He had not established a gallery here yet – that happened in 1985. IR I think he bought quite a lot in America. RD  He bought a lot in America, and in Italy. I was the first British artist he bought. He was very down on the British art scene. For a powerful collector like that, it was serious. Nicholas said that the market had changed. Money talked in ways that it had not before. So from a powerful collector that was a considerable headwind. If you look at Arte Povera in the 1970s, that was gallery based and collector based, and there were opportunities for artists. Whereas, the situation here was that it was artist cooperatives and an artist-run situation. It needed a jump-start to get going. IR I also think that the situation in France changed, with decentralization and EU money coming in, and this also fed into the changing British market. RD  Jack Lang was critical. The collection of British art from the 1980s in the FRACS (Fonds régional d’art contemporain) is better than anything here. The combined collection of FRACS is really very good. That is mainly thanks to Catherine Ferbos Nakov, who was the British Council representative in Paris. But also Jean Louis Maubant at the Nouveau Musée in Lyon/Villeurbanne. Unlike in Germany, where you still needed a doctorate before you could be a professional in the museum world, Maubant managed to set up the Nouveau Musée and communityfinanced it without a doctorate. He created a whole new idea of the museum. The New Museum in Brooklyn was set up on the same model. If you look at his shows between 1978 and 1985, there were quite a number of British-based artists involved. Tony Cragg’s Factory Fantasies (1981) was an important show for him and also for the Nouveau Musée. I made a show there in 1983, partnered with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh that Mark Francis was then running. The British Council was also important, as they had started to give travel grants – the Grants for Artists Scheme. They were very small – just £100 or £50. For a time I was on the committee; it was just Lewis Biggs,

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British Art of the Long 1980s Teresa Gleadowe and myself. One forgets how important those little seed money grants are. If you have no money, then £100 makes all the difference. If you can get there, then someone will give you somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Some of the changes in the 1980s were about big things like collectors, but also small things like little grants being available. These enabled things to happen, which started to attract attention and to get things noticed. It became a snowball thing. IR Do you think the Turner Prize was part of that? RD  The Turner Prize started in 1984. It was also another leg up, but it was not the prize itself. What was important was the TV coverage. The selections in the first two years were quite varied and also included non-artists. Declan McGonagle from the Orchard Gallery in Derry was in the shortlist in 1987. There was no prize in 1986. It was initially shown on Channel 4 with Waldemar Januszczak as the presenter. What you got was quite a sympathetic thirty-minute film on each artist, which was positive and supportive, rather than Fyfe Robertson-ish fart stuff and the extraordinary negativity that had been around. In fact, it turned out that the British population was less censorious than the critical cheerleaders had led them to believe. It was well managed. The Turner Prize is not quite as good as the Booker Prize. With the Booker Prize everyone can buy the book and make their own judgements. With the Turner Prize, it is a coterie of specialists who make the choices. There was a disconnect at first between what was shown and what was the base on which the prize was awarded. So sometimes it was hard for the population to understand why x or y should get the prize. They have improved that a lot and made the show more important. IR Did it make a difference to you? RD  It made a huge difference. It made a big difference in 1984 when I was shortlisted, because before that I was completely invisible/unknown. It made a big difference for collectors, so it had a big economic impact. Saatchi had already bought work, and for collectors and museum curators it was important that I was on the shortlist. I was really quite surprised that I was on that shortlist. Had I won it in 1984 the surprise would have derailed me. I could see no basis for it. I was grateful for the opportunity and the exposure, but I did not think that I had done enough to win it. In 1987 I was fairly clear why I was on the shortlist and happy to win it. I had been really active and felt I had done sufficient in order to warrant it. 1984 to 1987 was quite an important period for me.

Richard Deacon IR In what way? RD  In terms of shows. Up until 1984 I sold almost no work. After 1984, I started to sell work and was able to earn a living. I carried on teaching but started to be able to afford to ask people to make things for me. IR I wanted to ask you about that. It is always interesting to speak to people with very particular and specialist knowledge. Did that help to expand your vocabularies? RD  Yes and no. For example, when I started to work with steel fabricators, I had started to work out things to do with bending steel, and I was pleased and surprised to realize that the vocabulary overlapped with what they could do. With technologies concerned with fabricating wood however, that had more or less been my studio practice. IR Things like laminating you would do yourself? RD  Yes. We worked out how to do that ourselves. In 1987, for instance, I was introduced to a fabricator in Münster, Germany, who was laminating wooden structures. He was quite an old man, but he had made laminated wooden structures in the 1930s, and they were very close to what I was doing. Since I understood what a laminated structure is doing, it was very possible for me to have a conversation with him. IR So much modernist furniture also has a laminated structure. RD  Well, I knew Gerald Sumner’s daughter, Lindsey. She was at the Royal College with me. I had already been doing some laminating at St Martins. She showed me some of his drawings for his plywood chair with arms and we talked about it. That was really interesting as, at that time, he had become invisible. Then there was also aircraft design, which I knew a bit about, as my father was in the air force. And boat building. I had always been interested in boat building. IR There is a touchstone of collective memory when one looks at that material. RD  Yes. Personally, I had known quite a lot about how to treat wood without carving it. I knew less about steel, but I did know quite a lot about ceramics, as I used to fire Jacqui’s kilns for her. And I was interested in tailoring. I made clothes for myself in the 1970s. All that cutting that you do in tailoring was very close to what I was doing in sculpture. IR I was going to ask about that. To get a flat cloth to work as a three-dimensional form is a real skill. RD  That’s right. There are crossovers between processes. I am not necessarily particularly skilled in many processes, except perhaps wood, but I am aware of the way that crossovers work.

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British Art of the Long 1980s IR Thinking about some of the vinyl works, where vinyl is juxtaposed with steel or whatever, and to make the vinyl wrap around a form, seems not to be an easy one. RD  It is not particularly difficult. IR Did you have a store of materials? RD  I am interested in materials anyway, and I have some sort of stockpile that I collect and add to. I have a sample shelf – over there – which has lots of different kinds of materials on it, and I continually look for materials that I can use in my work. People used to throw a lot of things away. Now they recycle so that there is less of that haphazard discovery. You now have to go out and actively search for something. IR Yes, many people have said that they would just pick things up on the street. RD  That was a common trope of 1970s art, although you would not want to make it too accidental. It is a delicate play between the haphazard and the intentional, and if you only work with the haphazard, it is hard to know whether you end up with what you want or what you get. There are many artists who are very insistent on the purity of an idea and sticking to what they intend. Where materiality becomes an issue, things become more complicated. IR How much is iterative? RD  I’ve always liked repetition! There is always some planning involved. In the 1970s, a lot of the work that I made was continually remade – cut up and remade and reconfigured. Post those Orpheus drawings I became slightly clearer about what I wanted. That Untitled sculpture from 1980 grew quite organically from a circle outwards, and it never really had a drawing for it. It was made as big as it could be in the various places it was made in. IR Why was the scale so important? RD  Because it was to do with decision-making. I thought that most of the sculpture I had made in the 1970s ended up large furniture size, which was not so big that I could not handle it, but not so small that it became precious. I thought that you should make decisions about the size you wanted to make something at. So the two Untitled works at the beginning of the 1980s were made deliberately as big as I could make them in order to have size as a significant component. Likewise, in 1982 I started making smaller works. They were deliberately made smaller. It is important to decide the size, rather than just chopping bits off and it ending up that size. That became interiorized over time. But

Richard Deacon the two works from the early 1980s and Art for Other People (1984) were conscious decisions about size as being part of the meaning of the work. It is a dispute with Henry Moore’s blowing something up until it gets to be the correct size. I thought that you ought to know how big it should be. Then as one inevitably does, one turns it around and I have made a lot of models since, both in relation to constructed sculpture and as part of the process – particularly with the ceramics. But at the beginning of the 1980s, I thought that you should know what size something was before you started it. IR It is one of the things about sculpture that I love. As a viewer you can look up, look through, walk around – it is a perceptual dialogue that you have with scale. RD  It is to do with subject–object relationships. IR I was also thinking about the relationship to ground. RD  That was also important. I wanted things to have a curved relationship to the ground rather than a rooted relationship. It was to do with autonomy and the work being self-contained. I have talked about this at various times and in different ways. I talked about the relationship to aircraft and cars. Cars are built from the ground up, whereas aircraft are built all the way around. IR Sometimes there is almost an implied movement. RD  Well, then it has a different relationship with the space it occupies. I think sculpture contains the space within itself, which is separate from the space it is in. So the fabric of the sculpture becomes a membrane between these two types of spaces. And the permeability of that membrane becomes what allows a conversation about meaning to take place. IR Some of your work is sited outside. Does that change things for you? There they are site-specific and permanent. RD  There was a period when I really resisted putting things outside. I did put a work outside in a show in Cheltenham in 1982, which I thought looked horrible, because being outside seemed to make it shrink. I decided on that basis that if I was going to do anything outside it had to be site-specific. Indoor spaces are kind of generic – they are not, but you can think they are. And the scale thing is less critical. 1985 was the first time I tried it, with the work that was outside the Serpentine. I had been unsuccessfully involved in a competition for a work for the Euston Road in London and had been in contact with the fabricators I later used for the work outside the Serpentine. This was the first time

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British Art of the Long 1980s that I had tried to make a work for the outside. For this I decided that what I wanted to do was to draw something. Imagining it seemed to be a way around the limitations of size. Imagining it seemed to get around the issues of model making. It doesn’t, but artists tell themselves these fictions in order to get by. The idea was that I would draw it so that someone else could make it. I set about teaching myself to draw in such a way that I could pass it over to fabricators for someone else to make. The occasion was a film with Richard Rogers called Wall of Light that John Tchalenko directed, where he put myself and Richard Rogers together to discuss Pierre Chareau’s building in Paris – Maison de Verre. Richard was building Lloyds at the time. The way that I worked on the Serpentine reflected some of what I had seen in the Maison de Verre, and some of the things that Richard was doing with glass in the Lloyds building. My sculpture Blind Deaf and Dumb had two parts: one inside and one outside the gallery, separated by a window. For the outside structure I wanted it to be entirely out of my head, and for the inside I wanted it to be entirely out of my hands. So it was partly industrially made and partly made by me. But it was also an education in outdoor space and imagining. IR Also shadows start to take on a real importance between outside and inside. Outside there are the vagaries of weather. Inside, say for some of the photographs of the sculptures at your Tate exhibition, the shadows are visible on the walls. RD  Inside I really don’t like shadows. With natural light it is fine, but with artificial light, really I prefer it to be shadow-free. Overdramatic shadows can start to narrate all sorts of stories about the sculpture that are superfluous to the thing itself. IR I gather that you are interested in phenomenology. RD  I read Husserl at St Martins and Merleau-Ponty at the Royal College. IR Was it more from the maker’s point of view or the perceptual ideas that you were most interested? RD  I started reading Heiddeger because I was interested in linguistics and then went through Lenneberg to Chomsky to Merleau-Ponty to Husserl and back to Heidegger, and the role of language in perception. When at St Martins, I wrote an extended essay on how the relationship between language and perception – how the way that you describe things – affects the way that you see or hear. IR At what point does the title happen then?

Richard Deacon RD  Mostly at the end. Sometimes I have had slogans that I work to and sometimes I do not have titles. But it is much easier to remember things if they have names. I think giving titles is about naming, and my getting interested in names, and in how names connect to things.

Note 1

For further information and images discussed in this interview, see http://www. richarddeacon.net, last accessed 18 June 2020.

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Figure 6  Katherine Gili, Leonide, 1981–2. Forged mild steel, burnished paint. 157 × 92 × 94 cm. In the Collection of Bradford Museums and Galleries. City of Bradford MDC. © Michael Duffett

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Katherine Gili

Interview 21 November 2017 IR I saw some photographs of some temporary abstract sculpture that you set up at Corsham that are open and linear and wondered what had initiated them.1 KG  It was half way through my third year at Corsham, in 1970, that I became interested in the idea of structuring sculpture through every part being dependent on every other part. I was very suspicious of compositional sculpture which I felt, at the time, relied on taste. With this approach there were very few of what I saw as ‘taste decisions’, and it enabled me to build large things and move into space in a way that I had not done before. I found it liberating. If any part was taken off, the sculpture would just spring apart literally. So it really was to do with things pressing down on one another – the weight of one part making the next go down. I made a lot of sculptures like that. Previously I had been interested in American minimal art and I had made things that were illusionistic but geometric and carefully made, of single colour. Most were painted white. Eventually I found this way of working to be very austere but this new approach felt like a more physical way of making, and it had a logic to it that was very different to the logic of minimal or compositional art. It also enabled me to make many more pieces without getting bogged down in craft. IR What sort of materials were you using? KG  Mixed materials. Steel, to provide an initial support structure but interleaved with wooden planks whose length and thickness allowed them to flex. I used big pieces of stone and sacks full of sand and heavy pieces of steel that weighted the planks down. IR So you could get curves and other types of shapes?

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British Art of the Long 1980s KG  Yes. IR These sculptures look like a fundamental beginning to what came after. KG  Yes, I think they were. I was aware of Caro’s work, particularly Prairie and of sculptors like Peter Hide and the way they used steel to span space. But when I went to St Martins, in the first year I used mixed materials, again with a logic or principle that kept things very simple. I was trying to get the maximum I could out of the minimum of material. I went to America in the summer of 1972 – I was at St Martins for two years – and I saw David Smith’s work at his Bolton Landing studio and at Storm King Art Centre in upstate New York. He seemed to offer another approach to building sculpture and he had a particular feeling for material, which was something I really responded to. So I came back and started making exclusively in steel. I had made one piece in steel at Corsham, which was minimal and illusionistic. Smith opened up an area for me which I felt had huge potential. That’s how it all started, but I found my way into working steel slowly. My early sculptures were quite simple – no extraneous bits. IR What do you mean by that? KG  Well, I wanted to make things that had to be that way – they could not be turned on their side or upside down. IR There is an internal logic about them. KG  That’s what I hoped for. When I set up my studio at Stockwell Depot in 1973, I began to explore what construction as a principle could really deliver in terms of sculptural expression. As a student I had accepted steel plate and sections as they came and welded them to make a whole, which to a large extent resulted from how they were placed together. But now I started, rudimentarily at first, to make parts that would fit together. A structure would develop based upon the articulation between them. This is evident from my first Depot exhibition in 1974 (Stockwell Depot: New Sculpture). If we look at Shift for example the parts are cut and shaped and then interlocked in such a way that they articulate into and away from each other. Splay is another example but it works in a more complex folding and unfolding manner. Judy Marle reviewed the show (Studio International, October 1974) and wrote something that I thought was very interesting. I only recently came across it again, and she said: ‘Whereas all the works discussed above’ – that would be the pieces of others in the show – ‘take hold of a portion of space and contain it, Katherine Gili’s sculptures work their way up off the ground, and activate

Katherine Gili or imply extension around a central axis.’ I thought that it was really interesting that someone had seen this in my work quite early on. I realize I have not said much about my experience at St Martins. There were a large number and variety of tutors there who didn’t necessarily agree with each other, so there was always debate and discussion and many points of reference to choose from. But the really important thing was that so much sculpture was brought into the department. Professional sculptors put their work on show in the main hall for discussion regularly. Work that was not necessarily being shown in galleries was shown at St Martins. Over the two years I saw so much sculpture and in retrospect I think that was hugely important. IR Did that continue then with the Stockwell Depot? KG  Well, there was certainly informal discussion about sculpture. We were all very committed and talked about each other’s work in front of it. IR That’s very good at honing ideas and perceptions. KG  Yes, absolutely. IR It must have been really stimulating being with a group who were engaged with similar ideas in different ways. KG  Yes, but it wasn’t just Stockwell itself. Work was being made by others elsewhere who had an interest in moving steel sculpture forward, but the shows became the focal point of that interest. Gradually people left to set up studios elsewhere, but the shows carried on and the sculptors brought their new work in for the exhibition and discussion each year. I was the last to leave, moving to Greenwich in 1978. IR What brought that about? KG  I was offered a studio that was better than the one I had. It was on the ground floor. At Stockwell the studios were on the first floor and everything: the steel, the oxygen and acetylene bottles had to come up two flights of stairs, and the sculptures had to be lifted on and off a flat roof at the back of the building by crane. It was a huge endeavour. We generally went to the scrapyard together to buy steel; we shared the cost of lorry hire and helped each other with moving the material. It took three days to get everything up to the studios. At Greenwich I built myself a gantry with a chain block so I could lift heavier steel and sculptures. The studio was a large Nissan hut with industrial sliding doors and the light was much better. At the Stockwell Depot I had two windows high up on the wall, and that was it. I needed a stick to open

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them to get air in. I could not see out of them. Greenwich had space around it and I could put sculptures outside. IR Was your new studio with other artists? KG  There were many other artists, painters and sculptors spread over three buildings on the same site, so there were quite a lot of people about but it was not like the Stockwell Depot. It did not have the intensity. IR How did you go about getting the steel from the scrapyards? KG  Well, we hired a flatbed lorry that could carry three tons. We would go to a resale scrapyard and climb the piles of scrap looking for usable plate, sections or shapes and throw the stuff down, or ask the crane driver to pick them out and load them on the lorry. It was paid for according to its weight. These days you are not allowed to do things in that way because of health and safety. IR Would you be able to get pieces of steel today to that thickness and size in a scrapyard? KG  I think you would by prior arrangement and stipulating what you wanted beforehand. But you are not allowed to just turn up and wander around. I got to know the people well at the ones that I went to. The piles were enormous. IR Would you go looking for something in particular or would you just see what was there and use them as a starting point for a sculpture? KG  There were the standard things, girders, U sections and different thicknesses of plate. Sometimes I found offcuts that were interesting shapes. As I said, one of the things that I was really interested in was changing the steel – not accepting it as it came, but making parts, not just shapes. As I went on I started to manipulate the steel more. I cut holes, heated and bent sections and bent thin sheet around more rigid pieces and welded them together. I was trying to find ways of using the material to express a more powerful feeling of physicality. That began with the sculptures at the Summer Show 2 (1977) at the Serpentine Gallery. It was a wonderful place to show. I had the whole of one of the galleries, with glass doors all the way down. Two sculptures sold: Roundalay (1977) went to Lugano; Cobra (1977) went to Chicago. In Cobra you can see I was bending the steel around and making a volume and constructing it in such a way that it would flow and move. IR I am also interested in surfaces. When sculptures are outside they gain a different patination. Would you stop this from happening? KG  Rust is a huge problem with steel. Cobra was varnished. It was on show outside so it had to be re-varnished every few years to prevent rust

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breaking out. Serrata (1994) is hot zinc sprayed, so it can go anywhere. A zinc coating does not change the surface detail; it prevents rust but it also changes the colour. Zinc is pale grey but can be patinated in different ways. I seem to prefer blue-grey patinations. IR So you said that you decided to make a change in your work towards the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s. KG  Well, my over-riding ambition was to find an ever more powerful means of sculptural expression, and that was why I was interested in the discussion that was going on at Stockwell and elsewhere. I moved away from constructing with planes towards using mass and volume because it seemed to be a natural step for me to take if my sculpture was to become more physical. So that’s really what happened. Blow (1978–9) is constructed in such a way that the volumes really relate physically to one another, and the way that this part comes off the ground also sets the whole thing off. I do like Blow and how it is working, but you have to move on. One important question I had was: ‘What is informing the volumes?’ I was in fact interested in articulation and the dynamics of form, not the look of things. I wasn’t interested in the idea of extending the use of organic-like forms in steel or copying nature in any way. At St Martins where I was teaching, Tim Scott took over as Head of Sculpture and wanted to change things. He wanted a focal point for the teaching, something that could be studied and explored before opinions were formed. After a lot of experimentation with principles derived from architecture and sculpture from the past, the idea of using the body as a source of physical principles seemed to offer the greatest scope. This amounted to a challenge for the teachers as much as the students. These changes coincided more or less with the questions that had been posed to me by the direction of my sculpture as I have described. At this point I have to say that my career had been building up in the sense that I had shown at the Serpentine, the Stockwell Depot exhibitions (1974–9), The Condition of Sculpture (1975), the Hayward Annual (1979) and I had a show coming up in New York in 1981. Blow went out with Rise and Stem. There was a certain expectation in the art world as to the direction my career was going. The early work done with life models indicated that the body could be seen and responded to in terms of its articulation and dynamic structure. Which was a far cry from the way life models were traditionally used in art schools. I found it to be very exciting; intuitively I felt that working from the body was right for me.

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I also felt that in order to take on that challenge, I had to make a complete separation from what I had been doing in the past. I did not want to abstract from the body, but I did want to find a new impetus for making sculpture. So I shut the door on everything that I had previously done. IR That is really brave. KG  I was aware that this was big risk. It might have been the end of it all. I had no idea what my sculpture would look like. I wasn’t alone in working from the body but I don’t know how the others felt. I felt that there was no point in taking this on unless I completely immersed myself in it; this had to be my solution. There was a period when I worked in clay. IR  I wanted to ask you about that. Some of the forms would have been easier to make in clay – at least as starting points. KG  Standing (1980), Shoulders and Neck (1980), Stretching (1980) were made in clay worked directly in front of a model. I did not see them as a maquette for a steel sculpture. They were about trying to put down what I was seeing and experiencing, trying to reinvent in terms of the material and what I was interested in structurally in the body. At the same time I started to forge. Somehow my previous way of using steel appeared inadequate when confronted with the body’s physicality and power of expression. It was just not good enough. There was no point in going to a blacksmith and asking, ‘How do you do this?’ The purpose was different; it all had to be worked out through trial and error. I can tell you that the first few times I tried to forge with hand-held hammers I hit the anvil more often than the steel. It was all completely new. IR I suppose that starting afresh with a completely different technique was a really good way of making a cut with your previous ideas. KG  I think so. As an alternative to clay I also used paper and glue as a construction material that could be worked with while in front of the model. This had been developed from teaching, but I found it useful. IR I suppose that a speedier way of working was needed because the model would not be able to stay still that long either. KG  Yes, and obviously it would be dangerous to hammer steel – with sparks and so on, with the model there. I referred to Gray’s Anatomy and I. A. Kapandji’s The Physiology of Joints. I also had a skeleton; I was trying to gain an insight into what propelled the body’s movement. I really did not

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know what was going to happen in terms of sculpture but I was trusting that something would come out. Foot (1981) was an attempt at making something about a foot. It is rather rudimentary, but there are things that I like about it. I like Aqui (1981) more. It is based on a pelvis. IR There is a lot of implied movement. KG  In the pose there is a build-up to the movement that starts with the model taking up her foot from the floor and swinging it around. It builds to a crescendo and then it’s gone. There is no way that a model could hold the pose for the traditional twenty minutes of a life class. In a way, for me it was about understanding what came before and what came afterwards. There is a fluidity about how the body moves and balances itself, takes the weight as the raised leg goes out, starts to push out, and the shoulders pull back. The experience was not of a rigid or frozen position, but more one of a series of weight transfers and tensions. The models I used were trained dancers and they could work the series of movements better than and longer than anyone else. Also, they were very interested in what I was trying to do and brought something of themselves in terms of expression. They could add to my understanding by discussing which muscles they could bring on at certain stages of the movement. They contributed a lot and got a lot back for themselves. We did hours of work. Hours and hours. I wish that I had made a record. The Laban Centre was a good source of models. I always explained what I was trying to do before they came to the studio. So there was all this work with the body, looking, working around, absorbing, working in paper and then came the business of making the sculpture: trying to reinvent some of the feeling, the tension and the articulation in terms of the material. It all took a long time. I did not exhibit for two years. I was being criticized from many quarters; there were people saying, ‘You call yourself a sculptor, where is the sculpture?’ And in America they were not at all pleased. They were hearing the rumours about what was going on. IR At least you were part of a group. KG  Yes, it was good to have sympathetic people whom you could discuss things with and share ideas and experiences. Have You Seen Sculpture from the Body? (1984) at the Tate was the result of various different people who took this on. It was a very interesting exhibition.2

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IR Yes, the catalogue showed that there was a range of different approaches, but there was a core of trying to understand the inner workings of the body. KG  Yes, I think that is right, but everyone was at a different stage in their careers and experience, certainly in terms of making. I now realize that without having made all those sculptures in the seventies I don’t think that I would have got Leonide (1982) together, because it utilizes a strong logic of construction in the way that the shoulder is made, the way the parts come together, not just at the junctions between parts but also the spatial relationships around the raised foot, and the way the shoulders pull down into the back. It is a constructed steel sculpture. After Leonide and for the next two years I carried on using a very similar pose, but developed it, with the leg right out. Leonide was about a controlled, big move forward. It goes way out there, and you really experience that sense of movement and balance. But Dendres (1982–4) swings right out to the side and sets up completely different sets of relationships with the shoulders and back. Also, the steel is worked differently. It’s dug into and opened out much more. IR What did this way of working steel give you? In Leonide you can see the force going through the leg with the one line, whereas in Dendres it is slightly more complex. KG  Yes, that is true. The way of handling the steel helped to bring that difference out. The shoulders and raised foot are very different in the way they are felt. The raised foot is pointing and rotating as well as pushing out, which again changes what happens in the arm. In many ways the parts are fuller. There was so much to look at in the pose and getting hold of that made it worth staying with and developing it. IR One of the things that interests me is the surface of your forged works – the hammer blows, the mechanical hammer blows, the way that the steel has moved outwards and created a groove, and the different types of edges. The making, with its evident time and energy, becomes really important for the viewer. Is that important for you? KG  I think that the working of the steel is very important, as it is what creates the form that you are looking at: the tensions within the form and the sense of time. That is what forging gave me. You really feel the material moving. It brings the subconscious into play and I think that heightened the sense of physicality and how it could be expressed. This way of working is still very important to me. Whereas the parts in these sculptures are made with one whole piece of steel, like the pelvis to knee in Leonide, I am now using construction along with the forging to make up the parts, which offers a different range of form.

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Obviously you have to feel for the material in order to express anything with it. It is not about the awful phrase ‘truth to materials’ because I think that all the time you are pushing, not accepting. You are stretching what it will do as much as you can and you have to have a feel for the emerging form. The form and material are interlinked. I really like steel. It is not easy to work but basically I really like what I can get out of it, what I can express through it. So I just keep going. IR I was thinking about titles. Sometimes they seem quite obscure, and in some catalogues there seems to be no titles. What do you think their role is? KG  They serve a purpose to identify the sculpture. That is one thing. You could say ‘Number 1’ or ‘Number 20’ would also identify it, but numbers are unmemorable. I never choose a title until I have finished the sculpture, but they need to feel right and this can take time. I have changed titles, and I don’t see any problem with that. I generally try to choose a word that seems to chime with what the sculpture feels like but is not descriptive of it. I would like people to look with an open mind. With Llobregat (1989–90), for instance, the sound of the word sort of fits with what is going on in the sculpture. But Leonide was made up from the names of the two models I worked with: Leonora Lobo and Edie White. They were physically totally different. Leonora was a dancer. She is still teaching dance in Brazil. She was small – smaller than me – compact and strong. I found the pose with her. Edie was an American dancer, tall and thin; she helped me develop it. It’s a tribute to them. IR When you are setting up an exhibition, how much does it matter to you exactly how it is set up? For some artists every last detail really matters …. KG  I am not quite like that. It is very important that you can see the work clearly and get all round it; I would expect that from anyone putting up an exhibition. I find that the sculptures can exist in different places. For example, Roata (1993) has been shown inside and outside. What I learnt in each case was what mattered was the nature of the ground. Grass was no good – it interfered with what you could see; neither was parquet flooring. The thing that has changed for me is the need to separate the sculpture from the floor. It has taken on increased importance, gradually. IR Yes. When you see sculptures in photograph you see the whole of one angle, but when you see sculptures in exhibition, you might see all around them, but often the bottom does not quite register in the same way as the parts higher up.

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KG  Well, often the lower part of a sculpture is not used very well. But I am interested in the relationships of all the parts from the ground working up throughout the sculpture. I had Angouleme (2006–9), Serrata (1994) and Ripoll (2010–11) in the Botanical Gardens in Leicester. I wondered how they would work in the setting alongside huge trees. But actually they worked really well, because they had their own space. They were on low bases; it emphasized their identity, their own structure separate from the trees. So I am quite interested to see them in different spaces but I suppose the smaller ones I would prefer inside. In my solo show at Felix and Spear in 2016, the sculptures were very well lit. Although the space was small compared to some of the galleries I have shown in, each sculpture could be seen crisp and clear. It is interesting, but it is not something I consider when I am making. I talked about how important it is to work with a principle towards a structure but you have to let it guide you, not control you. You need to respond to what is happening in front of you. You have to let things happen without fully understanding. You have to take leaps in the dark. I don’t think that you can ever really know your sculpture totally while you are making it. It also takes on another life when it has left the studio. You forget everything that you have been through, or you were thinking about, or whatever. You get some distance and see it afresh. I find that when I go to the V&A and look at Rodin’s work I see new things each time. I am sure that is to do with what I have learnt through my own work. My eyes have been opened further to what he has done. It’s not that I am trying to copy what he did; it is just that my experience is greater. I started looking at sculptures from the past in the late 1970s, and certainly saw them in a totally different way to the way I see them now. I think the idea of what three-dimensional expression can be in sculpture is difficult to grasp. It is achieved in different ways by different sculptors but you can also see where it is absent and that it is not a simple matter of taking up a lot of space. That is why I think making is key; it is about learning. In the early days I thought I needed to know what I was doing, that I needed to know what I had achieved in order to be able to take on a bit more, but that was a controlling principle. It was the right thing to do because I was so inexperienced. But I always felt that I needed to do what was right for me. This was important when I came to take on the

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body, but here I sensed there was an altogether different principle to be grasped. There was a general excitement about working from the body among other people. But I had to know that this was right for me. It was instinctive, though quite scary.

Notes 1 2

For images of works discussed in this interview and further details, see http://www. katherinegili.com/art.php, last accessed 18 June 2020. Vivien Knight and Alan Gouk eds., Have You Seen Sculpture from the Body? (London: Tate Gallery, 1984).

Figure 7  Nicholas Pope, The Conundrum of the Chalice of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues, 2016. Glass. Overall height 103 cm. Photo: David Williams, © the artist

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Nicholas Pope

Interview 6 July 2018 IR When you studied at the Bath Academy of Arts in the early 1970s, did you go there thinking that you would be a sculptor? NP  No. I applied thinking that I would do ceramics, but when I got there I wanted to do sculpture. IR What made that change? NP  No idea. I think it was an opening up. I went into Foundation thinking I wanted to do interior design, and if you want to put it like this, it degenerated down to sculpture through ceramics. Sculpture was breaking down into all sorts of things in the 1970s, so it was looking more exciting. IR Yes. It was a really interesting time with Land Art and … NP  All sorts. And the contemporary art magazines, like Art Monthly (founded 1976), were just starting, and they joined others like Art & Project (founded 1968). Bath was very good – I just slipped across. IR After Bath, did you stay in the regions or go to London, or … ? NP  No, I left Bath and went back home to live with my mother in Hampshire. I did not apply to a postgraduate course. I thought I might as well get going and see what I could do. I got a job as a postman and made sculpture in the garden shed in the afternoons. IR I can see that working really well. It gives you time, you do not need to bring your work home with you and you gained space to do your own work. NP  I only did the morning delivery, and as soon as I could get back I was free. You went in at five and sorted, and after I would pelt around my walk as fast as I could and get off home. I was offered a job by the postmaster in Liphook, who said I would go far in the post office. I declined. They gave me a free bag when I left, which I took when I went as a student to Republica Socialista (R. S.) Romania (1974–5) on

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a British Council Overseas Scholarship. They sent people all over. I decided I could make sculpture on my own, outside the nurturing of the art college. It was a rude awakening. But then I found I could do it and applied for a scholarship for two reasons. One was because of the politics – I wanted to see what left wing or socialist politics was about. The other was because of Brancusi, the Dadaists, and the peasant woodcarvers and weavers – the peasant culture. ‘Peasant’ was not a rude word in R. S. Romania – just a factual one. Also, I had an idea that it would be easier to get a scholarship there than to America, as more people would want to go to America than Bucharest. I discovered the other evening that my wife Janet did exactly the same thing. We met in R. S. Romania. She was also a British Council Scholar, but I had not realized that she also thought that it would be easier to get a place there. IR Was it a really good experience? NP  Terrific! It was great for both of us. My daughter later said that when she went to Romania to teach in her gap year, she came back understanding much more about us having been there and seen what we enjoyed. IR In what sort of ways? NP  It was so different from life in England. Being a student under Ceausescu we were affiliated to the Institutul de Arte Plastice ‘Nicolae Grigorescu’, which was the main art school in Bucuresti. We could choose our own programme. I learnt the language for three months and then chose to live in a village for three weeks every month and work with the local craftsmen. I would get an adiverentia, which was the permission to travel and stay in the village. As a foreigner you could only stay in a hotel, and there were only hotels in the main towns. But I wanted to be up high in the mountains or away in the town with the local workers. So I made spoons, wooden tiles for the roofs, got to know how to make a house, how to saw wood into planks – various activities in different villages. In the end I stopped being given permission to travel. So I left. I had also received word that I had been selected for the major exhibition The Condition of Sculpture and came home excited about that.1 I came back via staying with my father who was in Naples. So I went from Bucuresti to Naples, and from being a student to … My father was in the Navy and was Chief of Staff to the NATO organization in the Mediterranean. I had seen the chauffeur-driven Mercedes of the apparatchiks shoot through Bucuresti with all the police stopping the traffic. I was collected by my father in his official, chauffeur-driven car, which was the complete reverse. I am never quite sure whether being the son of an admiral in NATO effected some of the things I did in R. S. Romania. In my final

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travels in the country, I had met the same person in quite different villages geographically. So they were keeping an eye on me. IR You had a solo exhibition at Garage in 1979, and I wondered whether you could tell me a bit about that. NP Garage was run by Tony Stokes. Tony was a gallerist in the mid-1970s and 1980s. It was a commercial space, and a nice space in Covent Garden close to the Seven Dials, and was an early version of what all spaces then became – white walled, grey floored, opportunity spaces. For me it was a real fillip to get an exhibition with Tony. He was the partner of Theresa Gleadowe then, who was in Southern Arts. She had seen my work and suggested to Tony that he came and saw my work. I remember him coming down – there was a lot of back and forth beforehand as there was no email then – it was letters and phone calls. Anyway, he came down. I had put a large sculpture called Large Chalk in the garage at my mother’s, with other sculptures arranged around. I remember Tony coming, being positive and nearly running away because he was so busy. So I had my exhibition. Early on, Sir Norman Reid came and the Tate bought a sculpture. I remember Sir Norman telling Tony to put a note on it saying, ‘Bought by the Tate Gallery’. We were all rather pasted to the wall by them coming and just buying it. There was no committee decision or anything, just ‘I will have that one’. That kicked me off. Having been told that we might sell one or two, we sold quite a lot of the exhibition. I had money in my pocket. So the idea I had set out with of being a postman and seeing whether I could do it, and which continued through the great experience of going to R. S. Romania, worked. IR I wanted to ask you about the Venice Biennale in 1980, when you represented Great Britain with Tim Head. The British Pavilion is large; how did you organize it? NP  I recall visiting the pavilion early on, with Janet – my wife – who is a botanical artist. (Of course, the wild flowers in R. S. Romania were just fantastic.) We looked at the space and then met Tim at Tony Stoke’s gallery in Covent Garden – around the corner from the Acme Gallery. Tim wanted a dark area for one of his spaces. We just sorted it out. I think I had the front room, and he had the rooms curving around the main room, and I had a side room and the balcony at the front. IR Yes, I saw a photograph of you on the balcony with someone else. NP  That would have been Adriaan van Ravesteijn and Geert van Beijeren, who ran Art and Project in Amsterdam, which was a key gallery for contemporary art.

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IR I was going to ask you about that. You had many exhibitions in Amsterdam. NP  Adriaan and Geert had exhibited Richard Long Hamish Fulton, and Carl Andre, and they exhibited a number of Zeitgeist painters from Germany including Anselm Kiefer, and the Italian, Francesco Clemente. They were fundamental to my progress as they sold so much of my work. Tony sold steadily, but it was limited to the UK. IR So were you with Tony? NP  Yes. He had a stable as it were. I can’t remember who else was in it. One of them was the photographer Simon Reed. Tim Head was great friends with Tony but was not with his gallery as he was with Rowan, which was also a really important space run by Alex Gregory Hood in Lowndes Street. He supported lots of people. There were a few galleries and if you could get in with them, it was good. Getting back to the Venice Biennale, Tim and I split up the space and did not choreograph the show. It was like two separate shows. It was not a group show that made a statement together. Theresa Gleadowe was the British Council officer in charge. IR From that you had a British Council Grant to Zimbabwe and Tanzania. NP  That was a bit later, in 1982. I had a British Council grant to go to Tanzania to see the carvers of the Makonde tribe in the East Coast. The West Coast is more famous for its art, but the East Coast has been rather maligned for its ‘airport art’. I can remember arriving at Dar es Salaam airport and the road into town was lined with Makonde carvers. The Makonde used to pass on their beliefs, ideas and history through abstract carving – that was before their work became bastardized by the airport art. I went down to the Ruvuma Valley where some still worked, and a bit like I had done in R. S. Romania, I found someone I could work with, and worked with the Makonde for some weeks. I was helped by an old preschool friend Bob Connor, who was a vet studying the Tsetse fly in Mtwara – a coastal town south of Dar es Salaam. He knew the local set-up, and I went to stay with him and Anthea. IR Is that how you found out about the carvers? NP  No, I knew about the carvers before. I had been looking for how I could improve my work. I had been impressed by how much Kiefer and Baselitz put into their work. I was doing abstract work, but it was about material, about it, and not about anything else. I wanted to make work about something else. I still wanted to make abstract sculpture, and the Makonde people naturally did it. So I went to see them. That was the brief that I gave to the British Council for the grant to go there.

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IR There was an exhibition that you had prior to that, at the Kröller-Müller Museum, in 1981. It looks extraordinary with large abstract sculptures placed around the gallery and large abstract drawings on the walls. NP  The main sculpture in that exhibition was Odd Lumps (1981), which was a big sculpture, big lumps of elm standing together.2 I was teaching at the Brighton School of Art at the time. They did a terrific spoof, of a small box with a glass front, and peanuts stuck like the Odd Lumps. It was great – I loved it. It was a vibrant place, and things like that were seen as good – to puncture the ego of the teacher with a cartoon of his sculpture. It was perfect. IR Thinking about the exhibition, did you want people to walk in among the works? NP  No. I can’t remember whether they were barriered or not. But there was a famous collector in Holland who was famous for buying work – the Saatchi of Holland – Frits Becht – who bought a lot of my work from Art and Project. He walked around the exhibition with me and asked me what would happen if he pushed one over. They were all standing carefully and precariously. I said, It would make a lot of noise, Frits’. He gave one a whack and it did not fall over – fortunately. It was a line of sticks. The Kröller-Müller have bought a lot of my work, including drawings. IR What was your relationship with drawing? There was an exhibition of Sculptors’ Drawings in 1983, in which you showed a piece of chalk that you had carved to look like a flint and another three-dimensional work.3 Then I saw the large, two-dimensional, coloured drawings in the KröllerMüller that were abstract, which made me wonder about your drawing. NP  Then they were related to the sculptures. IR Were they references for the sculptures or part of a continuous idea? NP  They were done after the sculptures. They were not seen as investigatory. More recent drawings are done before. It has changed over time. It used to be sculptures first; three dimensions first. IR So you would work through a series of maquettes, or did you find a piece of material and just work on it? NP  It was one sculpture to the next, some in wood, then try in stone. But then through going to the Makonde, I tried to put more into my work – more interest if you like. The finale of that is like these recent glass works, which were made by someone else, from the drawings.4 They are sort of architectural drawings for the end object. In the end the team of glass blowers were measuring off the drawings to get the proportions right. I moved from drawings in the wake of sculptures to drawings ahead of sculptures, and the reason I went to Tanzania was to effect that change and make the content more interesting. Like Schnabel and

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Kieffer – their work is barrow-loaded with content. Every detail is more content. The Biennale exhibition was no content – three stone slabs and that is all. Now it is The Conundrum of the Chalices of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues. It all has stuff in – ideas. That is what I set out to do in Tanzania, and it has taken me years to get there. IR I was also interested in how long it would take to absorb the ideas from a very different culture and make it work for you. NP  Well. I caught a virus in Tanzania, which has produced what is called post-encephalitis Parkinson’s disease. So the process of digesting and processing what I learnt there has taken slightly longer. I can remember falling ill on the plane coming back. Then I was screwed physically. I went in 1982 and finally stopped working in 1987. We had our daughter in 1981, and family life has to carry on. So I kept working longer than I probably should have done. Finally I had to stop, and I then restarted in the 1990s, when it was fully apparent that I wanted to cram more in the work. My coming-back exhibition was at the Tate: Art Now (1996), with The Apostles Speaking in Tongues, Lit by Their Own Lamps (1993–6). Full of content. That is John the Baptist pointing the way. IR Before we come onto that, can we go back a bit? As well as the works for gallery spaces, you also had quite a number of commissions for outside. NP  Yes. The Festival of Sculpture (1984) was in the gardens in Liverpool. I had a stone sculpture, which was made by a stone mason called Barry Baldwin, with whom I was at art school in Bath. IR I wanted to ask you both about working with someone else who makes work for you, and also how you considered your work for the outside as opposed to the gallery space. NP  That is a key question. By that time I was ill, and I was making smaller things with the hope that people could make them for me. The recent glass works like The Conundrum of the Chalices of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues, the glass makers got it bang on. They measured off the drawings. But with Barry I was still learning how to direct something that would allow the skill of the craftsman to be absorbed into it while still remaining my work and not his. I was not quite good enough in explaining or in making the model to get it quite right. So it was a bit lumpen in my view. That is why I eventually stopped working as I could not make something that held what I really wanted. I had used hard materials before, and I could no longer hack at them myself. Afterwards I used soft materials that I could squeeze, that could be fired afterwards. IR Clearly scale, working for the outside and then making smaller works working with soft materials are all completely different.

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NP  Yes. With carving you whittle away at something, but with clay you build it up. That was an exciting change too. Your first question was ‘What did I go to Bath to to study?’, and I said ‘ceramics’. So I was going back to school, where I had made pottery in the studios. The school that I went to was the same as Anthony Caro and Bill Pye’s – Charterhouse. At the opening tea party my housemaster said, ‘We don’t do art and we don’t do scouts.’ It did have a good art department, but I never went upstairs to it. I remained downstairs with the ceramics. Probably that is why I went back to work with clay, and the first thing that I felt was successful was The Ten Commandment Pots (1994) in the HMI collection in Leeds. Penelope Curtis came down to see me soon after I started work again, saw it and then bought it from Art and Project, who had supported me throughout illness. IR Art and Project was an actual gallery or was it something more fluid? NP  It was a gallery, which was spot on the money, with the shaved-down aesthetic, and no shadow lines – what galleries are now. A nothing space that is filled. That is the real difference to what I was making in the early 1980s, which was stuff for shaved-down spaces like the KröllerMüller – which looks great – and stuff that now can be shown anywhere. The Apostles have been shown in Cathedrals and can be shown in architecturally different spaces. They are self-contained and have content. I have managed to wheelbarrow in a bit of stuff – maybe not as much as Kiefer and co. – but I am getting there. IR Yes. If you are reliant on the formal aspects to create a sculptural landscape, then you are reliant on a particular type of space for it to be shown in. If you are making work with internal content, then they can speak in different environments. NP  Yes, like Kettle’s Yard or museum environments where all sorts of things are shown. So the space is not tuned for that type of work. Hauser and Wirth is tuned for a particular type of work. The Ashmolean and the British Museum are tuned for everything. IR Thinking about the Ashmolean, you had a residency in Oxford in the mid-1980s. NP  Yes, just as I was thinking that I was going to have to stop work. I thought that if I could work somewhere else, I could see whether it was the studio and lifestyle. We were in crisis. I applied to the Artist in Residence spot and got it. I remember taking a small sculpture out of my pocket at the interview, and I think that clinched it. That was a really good time. I did a lot a drawing there, and I decided to stop working and sort out the problem with the virus, which at the time was not known in the Western world.

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IR How did it work? Were you given a studio? What was the relation between the university and the Museum of Modern Art? NP  We were meant to have a studio with the Museum of Modern Art, and it was a lovely space up the stairs, but I could not have climbed the stairs to get there. I would also have been very cold. So I declined the space and used a room in the flat that I was given at Wolfson College. Janet and Mary were going to come too, but then we discovered for the first time that we should listen to our daughter. She went to the playgroup there – she was three – and said, ‘I’m not going there again.’ We realized that she was right. It was not a good playgroup. So she continued with her playgroup in Much Marcle, and my wife had to commute. We had weekends together in Oxford and they had the weeks in Marcle, and we learnt how good it is to listen to your children. IR  Which was not normal in the 1980s. NP  No. It is extraordinary how things have changed. And for me and my wife, from Romania to now, has been such a dramatic change that effected my work so much. We met some artists there. They were all about ideas, beliefs and stories in the work, which is what the Makonde were also about – ideas, beliefs and dreams. My work is now about some of my dreams, not recollected dreams as in sleeping, but what the future can be. That is a long way from lumps of chalk in a gallery. IR That is an exciting journey. NP  Thinking back through your questions, I remember Alison Wilding saying that we were supported when we left art school. People wanted your art. I had chosen not to go to London. All artists who left college seemed to go to London and find different spaces. A lot chose to live in an Acme house, which was a great deal. I decided to buy a house, get a mortgage and be self-sufficient. I wanted to be dependent on my art to live on. I never had a job apart from three years at Brighton, a day a week, which I smashed into a longer visit every month and stayed down. It is so different now. There are galleries and collectors everywhere. Then there were few galleries and few collectors. But there were grants. I remember people gave you money. I got a Gulbenkian award of £3,000 which was a year’s living money. I was chairman of the Southern Arts Association Art Panel in the late 1970s, and artists would apply and we would give them the money. There were no forms to fill in, no reports, no audience participation – not that reams of stuff that you have to complete now. One artist went to Spain and blew his money. Another chewed gum and made sculptures from that and took pictures of them. It was so loose – but the whole period was. It was an exciting time.

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Notes 1 2 3

4

The Condition of Sculpture, 1975, Hayward Gallery, London, UK, curated by William Tucker. For installation view, and images of works discussed in the interview, see https:// nicholaspope.co.uk/gallery/, last accessed 18 June 2020. Tony Knipe, Drawing in Air – An Exhibition of Sculptors’ Drawings, 1882–1982, (Sunderland: Sunderland Arts Centre and Geolfrith Gallery, 1983). Nicholas Pope showed Soap Stumps and Little White Lump. The Conundrum of the Chalices of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues, Nicholas Pope with James Maskkrey, 2015.

Figure 8  Matta doing drawing with students at Kings College Cambridge, 1975. Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge

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Roger Malbert

Interview 21 September 2018 IR I just wanted to start with the question about what made you think of going into curating and your involvement with Kettle’s Yard in the 1970s? RM  Well, I hadn’t thought of it as a career path. I had done a year of an illustration course at Cambridge School of Art and really wanted to continue with that, but I had previously done a degree in philosophy, had no financial support to carry on, so I needed a job. I rang the bell at Kettle’s Yard, and it turned out that Paul Clough, the young curator who had taken over the house and collection from Jim Ede when he retired to Edinburgh, really needed help. I started off doing odd jobs around the house, then hanging pictures, and gradually got absorbed in the day-to-day running of things, in the house and the gallery. A part-time job became full-time and semi-permanent. There were only two of us there and a few volunteers. The gallery was separate from the house; the house required a live-in curator; that was Paul, who was obliged effectively to embody the spirit of Jim Ede (an impossible task). We both showed visitors around in the afternoons. I started to get a handle on hanging and taking responsibility for touring exhibitions coming in – we had a few Arts Council exhibitions, and then I had the opportunity to come up with some concepts for shows and organize them from scratch. There were three or four exhibitions that were very much mine. One was called Reflected Images, which introduced me to the world of conceptual art. It started with the notion of portraits and self-portraits, and then I started to explore the idea and travel to London to meet people. I met Nicholas Logsdail at the Lisson Gallery. He fed me several artists and it grew from there. There was a Barry Flanagan with a cello on a sofa

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reflected in a mirror on the floor. And works by Gilbert and George, Tim Head, Marc Chaimowicz, Susan Hiller, Richard Hamilton and Giulio Paolini. There was a Michael Craig-Martin piece, Self Portrait, which was I believe the first of his reversed canvases, which I remember him bringing down from London in the back of his car, and another work of his called Society which was a series of small vertical mirrors hanging in a line on the wall, each with hand-written text underneath like ‘I have an idea of what I am like … I have a different idea of how I appear to others … . Part of what I appear I intend … Part of how I appear I do not intend.’ And so on. Someone on the Kettle’s Yard committee apparently grumbled that this looked like an Arts Council exhibition – in other words fashionable. So, without really knowing what I was doing, I was bringing together a group of artists who were actually very good and working in cool ways. IR I think also that Cambridge is conservative with a small c, and Kettle’s Yard was quite a particular place, with a unique vibe and audience. RM  It was quite a precious place, and I did some shows that I thought might counter that genteel, polite aesthetic of the house. I thought that one of the things that the gallery could do was challenge that aesthetic with shows that were a bit provocative and anarchic, and speak to different audiences, beyond the cultivated realm of the university. IR In your Kettle’s Yard interview1 you said that you felt your creativity could be stretched by the gallery and what it could do. RM  I enjoyed – and still do enjoy – doing group shows. One of those was called Food Art, in 1977, about art relating to food and consumption. It included Bobby Baker who produced a series of reproductions of famous paintings in piping, and a piece by Dieter Roth consisting of a framed slab of mayonnaise and butter on paper, teaming with live bugs. Roland Miller and Shirley Cameron did a performance and Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce did two performances in the market square. One of the things they did was to set up a little stand displaying children’s books with sentimental illustrations of farmyard animals, outside a butcher’s shop. It was a vegetarian protest. Then they did a performance there called Spaghetti Polonaise, where Jill danced around while boiling up a huge vat of spaghetti, which was then spattered wildly across the square. And David Medalla did a performance, though not involving, as had been rumoured, his swallowing a live fish. One of the best things from my

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point of view was Daniel Spoerri’s response to my letter of invitation. He sent a recipe from Switzerland – he was a great food artist – whose slogan was ‘When all the arts go under, the noble art of cookery remains.’ Anyway, his recipe required me to get an old, upright, black typewriter, pack the keys with dough – he sent a recipe for that which included glue, dough and a high proportion of yeast – and put it in the oven. It was a very splendid object that had pride of place in the show. That exhibition was both popular and mildly subversive and completely antithetical in spirit to the atmosphere of the house. The distinguished anthropologist Mary Douglas – the author of Purity and Danger (1966) – wrote a catalogue essay for which I’m ashamed to say I think we never paid her. I had no idea what I was doing and printed a ridiculously small run of catalogues on a tiny budget. Then in 1978 I did a show of Chilean art, called Chile Venceremos: Dedicated to the Victims of the Junta. There were a lot of Chileans living in Cambridge. Pinochet had murdered, jailed or driven into exile many leftists and there was a network of Chilean solidarity committees across Britain, and Cambridge was accommodating to Chilean academics. I got to know some of them, and also Dr Virginia Spate, who was the one art historian in Cambridge who was interested in the twentieth century (I also worked with her on a show about Simultanism, called Time and Space Died Yesterday). She and I hatched this exhibition together, of artists who were in exile from Pinochet’s Chile, or in some cases had already been living in Europe and wanted to express solidarity with their compatriots. Kettle’s Yard was a department of the university, so such an overtly political show was tricky, and questions were later raised. I met a lot of very interesting people through this exhibition. The graphic designer Edward Write became a very good friend, as did Marco Valdivia, a Chilean graduate student at the Royal College studying photography with Bill Brandt. He designed the catalogue. The most exciting and important person artistically that I met through this show was the Surrealist painter Matta, who was living in South Kensington, was incredibly friendly and supportive, and made a triptych of pastel drawings on paper mounted onto canvas, which he gave to us for the exhibition. These and a powerful painting of his from 1957 that we borrowed were the highlights of the show. Matta came to the opening and Roland Penrose gave the opening address.

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The Chilean project was very nerve-wracking in a number of ways. Firstly, there was the politics: it was a real issue within the university whether the gallery should take such an overtly political stance. From a personal point of view there were two other aspects that were stressful. One was reading so many first-hand accounts of torture and persecution in Pinochet’s Chile, which haunted me. The other was the practical problem of an overspend on foreign transport, which I had no previous experience of. I needed to ship some pictures from France, and the costs exceeded the budget by £2,000. We made an appeal to the Arts Council (which funded the exhibitions programme). Joanna Drew, the Director of Art, came down to Cambridge with her partner Peter de Francia, the painter, who was at that time Professor of painting at the Royal College of Art. They were extremely sympathetic, both about the spirit of the exhibition and the overspend and they generously bailed us out. Peter came back and gave a talk during the exhibition and offered Matta a studio in the RCA. I may be wrong but I believe the exhibition was the occasion for Peter and Joanna to meet Matta for the first time, which was the start of a deep friendship. Matta made a profound impression on me. What was so inspiring was that he was still in his sixties a Surrealist and a revolutionary. He was full of passion and energy, wild humour and mischievous wordplay. He was a rebel and an outcast from that Greenbergian narrative of modernism as an inexorable march towards abstraction, flat materiality and the elimination of imagery, which I too found so oppressive. ‘The imagination is a feast,’ I remember him telling me. He gave me the courage ultimately to quit my job and leave Cambridge for good, getting a one-way ticket to San Francisco. After I left Kettle’s Yard I lived in Berkeley for six months, drawing and doing odd jobs, and then went up to Vancouver (I’m a Canadian citizen by birth) and did an MFA course in drawing at the University of British Columbia. I came back to England in 1983 and was lucky enough to get a maternity cover job at the Arts Council, largely on the strength of my record from the Kettle’s Yard years. (Joanna Drew was still Director of Art at ACGB.) IR What was your first position there? RM  The title was ‘Art Officer’, which of course amused me greatly. The job entailed travelling around Britain visiting clients – galleries and museums and artists that had received or were applying for funding

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from the Arts Council. Our offices were at 105 Piccadilly, overlooking Green Park. It was strange for someone who had been mostly alone in a studio or cycling around Vancouver for the past five years. To come out of Green Park tube station in the mornings and walk along Piccadilly to this really palatial building was extraordinary. And there were so many remarkable people there, starting with Joanna Drew herself, who was truly inspiring. The Art Department was much bigger than any of the art-form departments at the Arts Council. It not only had responsibility for giving grants to artists, projects, museums and galleries around the country, but it was also producing exhibitions and running the Hayward Gallery. Joanna had two Assistant Directors: Andrew Dempsey, who was responsible for the Hayward, and Michael Harrison, who managed the regional touring shows. Isobel Johnstone was Head of the Arts Council collection. It was a very creative department, with Catherine Lampert and Susan Brades organizing shows for the Hayward, and a film section, run by Rodney Wilson and David Curtis, who were producing films about art and funding and also producing films with artists. Artists working in film were coming into the building often to discuss ideas with David and his accomplice Michael O’Pray, including people like Jane Parker and Rose Finn-Kelcey, whom I met through the British Art Show. There was a very hands-on approach in the department to working with living artists. The Arts Council in those days was the Arts Council of Great Britain, with semi-devolved sections for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. IR How much overlap was there between the different regions? There did not seem to be much. RM  I don’t know about that time. Later they were separated into Arts Council England with fully devolved Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Councils. Logically the expectation might have been that since touring exhibitions were funded solely by Arts Council England, we might have been pressed to limit our circulation of exhibitions to England. However, we never did that. We never wanted to do that. It’s just common sense. I’m not really aware of any division. The exhibitions went everywhere, with the same fee structure for Scotland and Wales. IR If you have a touring exhibition, every venue is going to be different. Does that come into play when you are choosing artworks? Do you just think of the first venue, or … How does it work?

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RM  Well, that is part of the pleasure of the job. You remake the same exhibition three or four times. It does look different in each gallery. The relationships between the works and the spaces change and you find different correspondences at each showing. Reinventing exhibitions is always fun. Space is elastic. You unload everything into the gallery and it’s laid out around the walls. There is a moment when you think it is never going to fit, there’s far too much work, and then another moment a little later when it looks rather sparse. In the early days we did not really make much of a plan; we improvised on the spot. However, this has changed as shows have become more complex. For the recent exhibition opening in St Albans, an international drawing show, the curator working with me, Antonia Shaw, worked out the installation in detail in SketchUp. We needed a plan because we needed to build walls and projection spaces. There are different approaches to hanging a show. The first touring exhibition that I organized at the Arts Council happened to be of Matta’s drawings, which was fortuitous. I called it Matta: The Logic of Hallucination (1984) because the drawings conjured inner worlds through the classic Surrealist technique of automatism. There were about 120 drawings, and the show went to Oxford, Plymouth, Rochdale and Newcastle. We had no plan because we didn’t need to build. You just laid it out and it was hung in two or three days. IR Thinking about the different galleries under the auspices of the Arts Council, like MoMA Oxford or the Ikon in Birmingham, they all had very different audiences. Did that play into your decisions? RM  Well, no. The exhibitions were conceived without reference, generally, to local audiences. It was assumed that people everywhere would be interested in seeing art of high quality, and in fact we tended to resist the pressure that local authority galleries were often under to put on shows with specifically local relevance, which we thought was patronizing. I need to explain the structure a bit. There were teams of exhibition organizers dedicated to the Hayward exhibitions and others working on the regional shows. The Arts Council operated through committees, which involved combinations of art-form practitioners. The Art Department had an exhibitions subcommittee that would meet quarterly to discuss proposals for exhibitions. This was when I first joined. On that committee sat David Sylvester, Bryan Robertson, several national and regional gallery directors and curators, art critics and one or two artists. Reams of paper would be produced for these meetings with proposals coming from all quarters, for exhibitions to be curated by a critic or art

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historian. So we, as exhibition organizers, worked with guest curators. (That has continued on the touring exhibition side more or less through to today.) So the Hayward’s exhibitions programme was trans-historical and very eclectic, ranging from Romanesque art to Henry Moore, to Richard Long, to Bridget Riley. Joanna had been working with the Tate and the Royal Academy in the 1950s and 1960s, when they really had no exhibition-making resources or expertise in-house and relied on the Arts Council. The Arts Council was the machine for generating exhibitions across the country, and she had organized some famous shows such as a great Picasso show that I remember seeing as a student. When I joined in 1983 the Arts Council still ran the Hayward, which they rented from the Greater London Council (GLC) for a peppercorn rent. Politically it was quite odd and entailed some contradictions. As I mentioned, my first job at the Arts Council was as one of a small group of Art Officers. For six months my job was to go around the country and visit galleries and discuss with them projects that they had proposed. And for which they were applying for funding. These were small grants, maybe £5,000–£15,000. Each region had its own association, and there was plenty of animosity between the regions and the centre. I remember going to a Northern Arts Association meeting and having to preface my first remarks by disclaiming any responsibility for past policy decisions. The North-East was particularly resistant to domination from the metropolis. That was all part of the politics. One example of the conflict that could arise was when I was at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, installing the British Art Show in 1984, just at the time when a new Arts Council policy entitled ‘The Glory of the Garden’ was announced. The Arts Council was proposing to withdraw, or cut, the funding dramatically from the Ikon Gallery and other regional contemporary art galleries and put money instead into municipal museums, which were resourced by the local authorities. It was very contentious. Antonia Payne was the Ikon’s director and she was very civilized and understanding and didn’t blame me personally, which I was incredibly grateful for. It was an example of the contradiction between the Arts Council’s dual role as both a funder and a provider. ‘Direct provision’ was the phrase. There was an apparent conflict of interest – of holding the purse strings and always having plenty of money for the Hayward, for example, and to a lesser extent for regional touring exhibitions, while withholding

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funding from regional venues. It was not quite as clear-cut as that, as the cost of funding all those museums and galleries properly would have been far greater than that of transporting a few exhibitions around the country. But it was a political issue that overshadowed the touring operation, until we moved with the Hayward to be administered by the Southank Centre. IR The GLC was disbanded in 1986, and the Arts Council took it over? RM  Well, the Arts Council took over the management of the music venues on the South Bank after the GLC was abolished when there was no one to run the Festival Hall. For a year they were run directly by the Arts Council and then the South Bank Centre was established as an independent trust. Joanna Drew was the single best thing about working at the Arts Council. She was thoughtful and witty and had such sympathy for art and artists. All the people working under her were very close to art. Virtually everyone had either studied art history or come through the art school system. The Arts Council Collection had money for purchasing. For a year or two at a time, it would appoint guest purchasers, three from outside the Arts Council and one or two internal. IR How did they see their remit for collecting? RM  The Collection had existed since the 1940s when Kenneth Clark bought the first Henry Moore. It was very much parallel to the British Council collection – there were often similar purchases. I can’t speak for the British Council, but when I joined the Arts Council, I was really lucky to be invited onto the purchasing committee in 1984. It was one of the privileges of working in the department. That year the external purchasers were Lynne Cooke, who at that time was writing a lot and teaching at UCL, and was very knowledgeable and alert to new art; Richard Cork, the art critic; and David Elliott who was Director of MoMA Oxford. That was the team that I was purchasing with, which was amazing. The idea was that you would convince one or two others to support your proposals for a purchase. There was an annual sum of money, about £80,000 or £100,000 I think, which was not a lot. That is why the Arts Council always bought emerging artists, and in fact, there are a great many prescient purchases of early works by artists who went on to be very famous and expensive. IR Was there any policy about diversity in collecting?

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RM  Yes, there was a lot of talk about it. The collection was a part of the Art Department and the Arts Council’s own policies were being formulated in relation to diversity and what was called in those days ‘ethnic minority arts’. So if you go back through the collection, I think you will find exhibitions reflecting the policy and those related to Black Arts in Britain. I think that the Arts Council stands up fairly well in terms of collecting. I bought the first work by Keith Piper to enter a public collection in 1984. The second time I was on the Committee, one of my fellow-purchasers was Sonia Boyce, and we bought some interesting works, including a series of photographs by the Trinidadian film-maker Horace Ové. The Arts Council, with its connections and exposure to a broader political discourse, was quite on the ball in this area. IR It is interesting. The 1980s was such an unsympathetic time for the visual arts in general. On the news or in the media, commentators would talk about literature quite happily, but contemporary art was something that was derided. RM  Yes. The media was generally hostile. IR The Arts Council must also have been in a difficult position. It gained money from government, and yet the government was probably not that sympathetic. RM  Well, there was some protection in the arm’s-length principle. The government was not directly responsible for decisions on arts policy. But the Arts Council was certainly exposed to attack. Quite often a controversy would blow up over something quite ridiculous. I remember there was a show at the Serpentine Gallery, in which Richard Wentworth showed a metal bathtub with a sealed surface with a half-opened sardine tin embedded in it. There was a reference to the sinking of the Belgrano on the interpretative label and this got headlines in the Evening Standard. Of course, there was Brian Sewell who was constantly on the attack. We would all duck under the table when one of these controversies blew up and lie low until it died down. IR I wanted to ask you about the 1984 British Art Show, which opened in Birmingham and met with mixed responses. It did not go to London, but it felt as if a slice of London had come to the Midlands.2 RM  That was the point of it. The British Art Show was originally conceived as an answer to the Hayward Annual on the basis that the public in the regions were entitled to see cutting-edge art. Of the selectors of that exhibition, Jon Thompson was perhaps the leading figure, and he was

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amazing because he knew so much and had such broad sympathies. The selection happened before I came along, and I took this show over from the organizer who left after the opening. The list of artists included the theoretically grounded conceptual artists, the young British sculptors, performance artists and more conventional painters. It is an incredible list of eighty-four artists of that moment – there are very few major artists missing. IR Well, if I am being critical, there were not many female artists. RM  Well, you are right, there were definitely omissions, but there were Mary Kelly, Alison Wilding, Helen Chadwick, Susan Hiller, Shirazeh Houshiary and Rose Finn-Kelcey. I suppose that what I meant to emphasize was the broad aesthetic range of work on show: Kitaj and Kossoff were shown alongside minimalists like Bob Law. IR It was a great show – I really enjoyed it. RM  Taking it around the country, hanging it in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Sheffield and then Southampton was a great experience. I remember that by the time that we got to Southampton, the curators had more or less lost interest, and I ended up doing it pretty much on my own. Southampton City Art Gallery is a great building, and being able to lay out that show with the local curators and having a free hand was like creating a whole museum. It was challenging but really exciting. IR Could you do the entire show in every place? RM  Yes. It was a slightly different version in each venue, but every artist was shown in every place. The Ikon looked really good. It was a great space. And Alistair MacLennan did an evolving series of performances – once at each venue – increasing the duration of the performance from twenty-four hours at the first one to seventy-two hours in the final showing. He occupied a room that he scattered with pigs’ heads, dead fish and various detritus, and he had a nylon stocking over his head and breeze blocks chained to his ankles. He was dressed entirely in black, pacing slowly around the room and stopping occasionally to make a drawing on the wall. It was an expression of pain at the conflict in Northern Ireland. It was alarming and scandalous at the time. I remember fighting off a photographer from the Birmingham Evening News who wanted to get a shot of this, as they would have liked to use it to show what the British Art Show was about and trash it. But we enjoyed the challenge. We were young people, and a lot of visitors came and appreciated it. It was not as if it was totally new territory. The Ikon was

Roger Malbert well established and the Director Antonia Payne had been adventurous in what she put on, and it’s a big city with an art school. Those so-called independent galleries, Ikon, Arnolfini, MoMA Oxford, were central to developing an audience for contemporary art. IR All of these seem to have had great outreach programmes, I am not sure whether this was part of the Arts Council remit? RM  I don’t know how it evolved, but I do remember that there was a big emphasis on education and there was an education officer in the department, the brilliant Helen Luckett. With touring exhibitions, we were at one remove. We could provide resources, teachers’ packs and so on, but the direct contact with the public, students and schoolchildren was on the ground at the venues. IR But the Whitechapel did seem to have a really good programme. RM  Yes, Jenni Lomax was excellent. The thrust of engaging in a very diverse way with schools, young people and other groups at the Whitechapel was handled very well. IR You have said that you felt that Hayward Gallery Touring had not been political enough. RM  Well, I think we haven’t tended to organize shows that address issues of pressing social concern. There have been many shows in galleries over the past few years on migration for example – that is easy. I felt though that we never really put out anything really political, and I think that we could have done something more radical. IR What sort of things? The 1980s was a difficult time. RM  It was. I did a show in 1990 with Elizabeth McGregor at the Ikon called Infusion: New European Art. It was not really in any way difficult politically, but it was showing artists who had come from elsewhere in the world to live in Europe. There were artists from Africa, Iran, China and the Caribbean. It was touching on the question of migration and ‘Fortress Europe’, but it didn’t feel particularly contentious. It opened at the Ikon and travelled around the country. It didn’t seem to ruffle any feathers. I can’t remember any shows that did have political fallout. One of the exciting things for me when working on the British Art Show was the performance art programme, which I was responsible for from the start. Station House Opera, Anthony Howell, Alastair Maclennan, Rose Finn-Kelcey and Gary Stevens – there was quite a nice group of performance artists that went with the show. That’s always an area that the hostile press would always seize on to ridicule. I just think

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that politically we are living through difficult times now, which makes me feel that I have avoided the difficult issues, questions of injustice, inequality, racism and war. IR Are there any touring exhibitions that you felt were important – not just politically, but a statement of the time perhaps? RM  Well, if I confine myself to the 1980s, there was a show on the Notting Hill Carnival called Masquerading from 1986. At that time the Arts Council was funding the carnival and supporting the mas bands, and this show was a gesture by the Arts Council towards that constituency. It was a big undertaking to bring all of those costumes, from around twenty-eight mas bands into the gallery. Each costume would have come out of a different workshop somewhere in London. It was about a community with an undercurrent of resistance. I also organized an exhibition of contemporary Jamaican art in 1995, with the Jamaican art historian and curator Petrine Archer Straw, which travelled to Nottingham, Birmingham, and the Royal Festival Hall in London. And in 1997 I did a show at the Hayward Gallery with David A. Bailey, Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance. That took a lot of organizing. We worked with a leading African American curator Rick Powell, co-published the catalogue with Iniva, produced a jukebox selection of jazz and blues curated by the musicologist Paul Oliver, and had major loans from New York, Washington, Chicago and New Orleans. The great Jacob Lawrence and Henry Louis Gates were there for the opening. We toured that show to Bristol and Warwick before taking it to the Corcoran in Washington and the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. It was incredible to be taking it to the United States, where at that time the Harlem Renaissance was under-appreciated – it was a question of a prophet in his own land. In trying to find venues in England, I was disappointed not to have been able to persuade the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to collaborate with us: the show would have been perfect for Birmingham, the city with the biggest black population in the country outside London. I thought that this was a significant exhibition that elaborated a moment in black cultural history that was really important. It could have had a major impact. That was a missed opportunity that won’t come again. Another disappointment was that there was not a single review in the national press – or I think in the art press. In that respect things have improved today.

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Notes 1 2

http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/collection/recollection/interviewee/roger-malbert/, last accessed 18 June 2020. The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions 1979–1984, (London: Arts Council of Great Britain and Orbis, 1984).

Figure 9  Ron Haselden, Working 12 Days at the ACME Gallery, 1978. Image courtesy of Acme Archive © Acme

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Interview 1 December 2017 IR How did Acme come about? JH Acme came about through the need for affordable accommodation and studios for artists. It happened almost by accident. I had been to Reading University and studied Fine Art, and then moved to London to do a postgraduate course at Chelsea. A number of Reading graduates had moved to London as well. It seemed like the inevitable place where one would end up. But how on earth one was to continue with one’s practice was quite another matter. But we were lucky. We had been tipped off by some Reading graduates who had come to London a couple of years before and discovered East London. There was a huge amount of redevelopment work going on there with a lot of boarded-up shops and houses awaiting demolition. This ‘short-life’ stock was being managed by the Greater London Council (GLC) and there was the opportunity to get access at a very low rent but only for a short period of time. David Panton and I, together with some other artists, approached the GLC, who told us that the only way we could occupy these properties was either to squat, and if we did they would evict us, or form a housing association, which required seven members and cost £70. IR Was it originally then just for the seven of you? JH Yes, it was just to house the seven of us, which when you break it down to couples, about four houses would have done it. There was no plan to provide a service for others. It was simply to find something for ourselves, however temporary, in which we could work and live at a rent we could afford. So we formed a housing association, went back to the GLC, and they gave us a couple of shops with accommodation above in Devons Road in Bow, one for David and his wife and one for me and my wife. They had a twenty-one-month life and were in very poor condition, but we took them on. And because they were going to be demolished,

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you could knock out interior walls and create a studio space plus somewhere to live. There was a lot of work to do because they were in poor condition, but one had a lot of energy in those days. It was all about self-help. IR Was David an artist – I understood him to be a scientist? JH As I remember he was doing a degree which straddled science and sociology. He was at Surrey University, but his wife, Claire Smith, was an artist in the same year as me at Reading, and I got to know him through Claire. We did a good job on those two properties. As a result, a rather benign gentleman at the GLC said that he would be happy to transfer some more. It got to the point where he would send transfer papers through the post for properties that were beyond our immediate needs. We knew so many artists who had the same needs as us, so David and I found ourselves running an organization that was helping other artists. Within a year and a half we were managing about eighty properties. IR Did you think, ‘This is a bit more than I had envisaged’ or was it just exciting? JH It was very exciting. We had found a solution to others people’s needs and, to begin with, we were getting properties transferred within a relatively small area in East London, so there was a real sense of operating within a creative community. We called it ‘The Four Roads’, as there were four roads in Bow where there were a lot of empty houses, and so why not? It was very exciting. We were probably quite naive, but we learnt quickly and there was a real sense of optimism. The seven founder members formed the association’s committee, with David and I taking the lead. To begin with we were not drawing a salary but were doing a lot of work. We were charging the artists the same as the GLC charged us, so there was nothing for administration. This was obviously not sustainable. The Gulbenkian Foundation provided us with seed funding for a couple of years, which meant that David and I were on part-time salaries. And then, later on, we got Arts Council support. So that is how Acme started. While Acme manages only a handful of houses now, this expanded and we are talking about many hundreds of properties from many sources, not just from the GLC, but local authorities, the Department of Transport etc. These were across London, but mostly in the east and south-east of the capital. Key to the success of the scheme was self-help, in terms of repairs, and critically, always returning the properties on time when required for demolition. But our relationship with the artists we helped, which still remains to this day, has always been that we provide the resource and trust the artist to make best use of it. We do not require anything back from the artist.

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We don’t represent them. We are investing in risk-taking and creative practice and letting artists get on with it. It is about the right to fail, the right to experiment. There is enough pressure on artists to make work, without having to perform things because they are in receipt of support or funding. So it has always been an arm’s-length form of support, providing the support of whatever kind and letting the artist get on with it. IR With creativity of whatever type you are constantly living with failure. JH Yes, absolutely. But the organization needs to be in the background to provide support if it is needed. That is something that the artist needs to request rather than us bothering them or checking on how they are doing. It is a fundamental policy that we intuitively adopted right at the beginning. So we did not make public the artists who were using the properties, because we did not represent them. They have a right to privacy. We have had some amazing artists in our studios and houses. It is probably OK to mention now, because they have moved on, but Grayson Perry had a studio and a house with us, Rachel Whiteread had a studio for years, Anthony Gormley, Richard Deacon, Martin Creed etc., etc., etc. Acme has helped at least 7,000 artists to date. IR I suppose that working in close proximity with other artists must have been self-generating in terms of energy and exchange of ideas. JH Indeed. Geographically that closeness was important. Certainly Beck Road was an example of that. I don’t remember how many houses were there – maybe as many as twenty. That, more than any other street, had that kind of identity. And the artists there had the opportunity to buy them at a discount when the development scheme, which would have required demolition, was cancelled. IR There is a photograph of Beck Road taken when they thought that they were going to be evicted, with Helen Chadwick almost hanging out of the window as part of an artist demonstration. JH That’s right. The problem for many of those artists is that having bought they found, with the escalation in property values, they were sitting on significant assets while being on very low incomes. They were, of course, fortunate in being able to buy at a discount but it made no sense to continue there; a number of them sold up and moved out of London. Artists are often considered as the pioneers of regeneration – unintentionally they make areas fashionable – but they are also the victims. A significant part of East London is now beyond the reach of most artists in terms of living and studio space. Unfortunately that will carry on – I can’t see that changing in London.

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Quite early on, in parallel with our combined housing and studio provision, Acme adopted the SPACE model of providing studios in redundant warehouses. IR When would that have been? JH We started in 1972. SPACE opened in 1968, in St Katharine Docks, led by Bridget Riley and Peter Sedgely. It had a very different dynamic in terms of where it came from, being the initiative of established artists. We always said that we couldn’t afford SPACE studios as recent graduates. But that is not taking anything away from them. That model of using redundant warehouses to create affordable workspace was one that we pursued from 1976 onwards, although we continued to manage significant amounts of housing stock for the next twenty years or so. We were very good at taking on short-term redundant factories, but the writing is always on the wall. At some point the leases would come to an end, and their potential value for residential use was something that developers would want to realize. It continues to be a problem for a lot of studios groups and organizations up and down the country. We needed to become a permanent organization. We would invest heavily in temporary buildings and then not get the long-term benefit. The thing that made the difference was the National Lottery, which started in 1994. We realized that here was this unprecedented fund – unprecedented in terms of the amount of capital funding available. We had received small-scale capital funding from the Arts Council, and revenue funding, but this would be an opportunity to actually buy property. IR So you moved onto doing something slightly different … JH It was seen very much as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It would give us the opportunity to have an asset base, against which we could borrow, to slowly secure an expanding portfolio of permanent affordable studios for artists across London. We were successful in securing £1.2 million. This coincided with a dip in the property market, which enabled us to buy Copperfield Road, a large factory in Mile End and also the Fire Station in Poplar. That created an asset base without a mortgage. And from that we were then able to continue to take on longer-term, leasehold properties. The next significant development that was critical in Acme’s development was probably around the early 2000s, when there was an opportunity of working with a developer: Barratt Homes. We were introduced to them by a planner in Newham, who was aware of what Acme was doing. We were losing the old Yardley perfume factory in Newham, our Carpenters Road studios. He suggested to Barratt that

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they talk to us about a project in Newham, where the local authority would be supportive of the idea of a development that could include employment use – which could be artists’ studios. So we had a conversation with Barratt, but they came back to us with a project in Peckham, where they had applied for planning consent for a site that was originally an old print works, and for which they had to provide 25 per cent as affordable residential space and re-provide the employment use. They had a real problem, as that would have meant them speculatively building commercial space, which they would not have necessarily been able to let. And boarded up, ground floor, commercial space in a residential development, where most of it is for sale, would make the flats less attractive to potential buyers. They came to us and I said that we could guarantee a hundred per cent occupation of the studios on day one, given the size of our waiting list, but only if the rents were affordable. And they would only be affordable if we paid them no more than a certain percentage of the building cost, and with the studios built to our specification. We made a deal with them. Their first application had failed, as they had hoped that the planning office would ignore the fact that there was no provision of employment space. So we secured the employment space and they got their planning permission. We got our studios built to our specification at a price that we could afford that would translate into affordable permanent studios for artists. The mechanism is known as ‘planning-gain’ with all parties gaining: the local authority gaining affordable housing and employment space which was also a cultural resource, Acme as the charity gaining a permanent resource, and the developer gaining the planning consent and therefore ultimately their profit. So looking at Acme’s history, you have access to short-life housing stock and then the use of leased redundant warehouses and factories. You then have the lottery helping to buy two buildings and then ‘planning gain’. Planning gain has carried on and that model has been rolled out in other locations so Acme is now permanent and self-sustaining. Before I left Acme a couple of years ago, we were aware that the whole criteria of Arts Council funding had shifted. The Arts Council, formed in 1946, I always understood had a relationship with government which was at ‘arm’s length’. I think that this arm’s-length principle has been severely eroded, in the sense that there is so much pressure on the Arts Council to provide data that is demonstrating the number of people, in terms of audience, that benefit from their funding – which is of course important. The Arts Council’s mantra is ‘Great Art for Everyone’. But you don’t have ‘Great Art’ unless you invest in the product, and the shift

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has been in trying to increase and evidence the number of people who benefit, while reducing the investment in the product. As an organization we had always had a very good relationship with the Arts Council. As a long-term client, I realized that the writing was on the wall a few years ago, in that we no longer met their criteria, because we were not a public organization in that we were not directly attracting an audience. We were quietly investing in the product. I made our annual application, acknowledging that we may not fully meet funding criteria, and said that if we were funded we would not apply again. Giving us funding for this final year would help us towards self-sufficiency. That was taken on board, and then we also got a bonus from them through a Debt Repayment Grant – towards reducing the borrowing we still had for a number of our building projects. In the end our borrowing was halved by this grant which allowed us to speed up the process of becoming self-sufficient. So Acme, with its ownership of studio buildings, is now a permanent resource. Very few studio organizations are in that position and none on the scale that we have achieved. IR Just going back a bit. You were getting more and more studios for artists. Where did they all come from? JH Regardless of how expensive London is, it still does attract artists. I can’t remember the exact figures, but there are a lot of international and European artists as well. If you manage to get a good quality, permanent studio with a guaranteed affordable rent in London, you tend to stay there if you can. Turnover is not huge, so the organization sees a responsibility to slowly take on more property if it can to increase the number of artists who can benefit and increase the turnover. So I think that covers the provision of housing and studio space. What we have also developed in addition, usually working with partners, is a very significant awards and residency programme for artists selected from open submission, which effectively adds value to the provision of space, by providing that space free with financial support, thus maximizing the time artists can devote to their practice. This began around 1997 and now supports around forty artists a year. IR What were and are your criteria of an ‘artist’? Would you have included a crafts practitioner or designer? JH No. Always ‘Fine Art’, which of course is a difficult term. We do provide a definition and a list of practices on our website. Acme was started by artists, and this formed what it was and remains. Demand for what we do is still much greater than what we can supply. Why would one extend the criteria to include others if there is still a problem meeting the needs of artists?

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IR Why the name ‘Acme’? JH The name came about because first of all it was a joke, not an acronym. It was one of the most-used trade names in American cartoons – ‘Acme’ this or ‘Acme’ that. When we formed the housing association we did not think that it would do anything more than provide the piece of paper for the seven founder members to access temporary short-life housing. IR So it was not about the Greek for ‘best’ or ‘most evolved’? JH Well, that is good too: ‘the acme of perfection’. We are very happy with the choice of title. IR I was also interested in the book you published in the 1980s: Help Yourself to Studio Space. JH That was part of the organization’s generosity about sharing hardwon knowledge with others and supporting them and offering advice. We have developed a significant advisory programme over the years. Advising others works as a two-way street. You are able to communicate your experience to others to help them deal with their problems, and, in doing so, you can also see what you are doing yourself more clearly and learn in the process. IR I was also intrigued by the International Visual Artists Exchange Programme (1977–81). JH The idea was that artists would exchange studios for different lengths of time. Not very much came of that, but what the organization has created is an international residency programme, which is now on a large scale, working with international foundations and governments, where effectively we work as an agent for them to provide accommodation and studio space in London. It was started with a Swiss foundation, which was keen on establishing some permanent studios and houses for artists from their programme to come to London. A significant part of what Acme does now is this international programme, currently working with six agencies and supporting over twenty artists a year. IR It was just burgeoning in the 1980s, when Maureen Paley at Interim Arts had artists come over from Cologne, and so many British artists had residencies abroad. JH What Acme also did was not only provide the accommodation and studio space for the foundations who would select their artists, we would provide access for possible exhibition opportunities, studio visits, etc., etc., which added value to those residencies. IR I wondered whether you would like to talk about the 1987 TSWA 3D project, which commissioned major temporary site-specific works throughout the UK. JH  Very briefly, I co-founded a television company called TSW -Television South West. A friend of mine led it, and I supported him. My

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involvement was much more on the arts side, and because I have strong West Country connections and he hadn’t, I legitimized his involvement in the project. It was a time when ITV companies were effectively ‘licences to print money’. As there was then no competition for advertising revenue, with no other commercial stations beyond the ITV companies, profits were assured. As part of the strategy to win the licence the company formed a number of advisory boards, to make sure that its programmes were informed by local people and organizations. I was closely involved, working with Gareth Keene from Dartington Hall, which was a corporate investor in the project. We put together an arts advisory board, and Gareth and I were also involved on the appeals and sponsorship board. The company won the franchise in 1982 and had a very generous approach to sponsorship. The first thing I did was to make contact with South West Arts, and a number of projects emerged through TSW’s sponsorship working with the regional arts association. TSWA, a collaboration between the company and SWA, was a charity formed to represent TSW in creating a project that started as a national, open submission, painting project – which predated the TSWA 3D project. Then we moved on, and in a sense this refers back to the work that I was doing when I was running the Acme Gallery (1976–81), because TSWA 3D and the Four Cities Project from 1990 were both focusing on providing artists with the opportunity to present site-specific, temporary work. There were one or two projects: Richard Deacon’s Moor project in Plymouth and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s River Clyde project in Glasgow that were permanent, but the idea was that one would commission temporary projects working with an agency in a particular area. So, for the Four Cities Project in 1990, we worked with the Orchard Gallery in Derry, the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow, Projects UK in Newcastle and Plymouth Arts Centre. Obviously Plymouth was the centre. And this provided access for artists to extraordinary sites that had never been used for presenting art. So artists applied and were commissioned to make works in response to the particular sites. IR Were there calls for applications, or did you seek out particular artists? JH TSWA 3D was about open submission. We made approaches to artists with the Four Cities Project, and it had an international dimension including Chris Burden, Ilya Kabakov and Magdalena Jetelová. The people who were involved were myself, Tony Foster, Head of Visual Arts at South West Arts, and James Lingwood, who was working at the Plymouth Arts Centre as junior curator, and went on to head up Artangel. Tony knew him and said we should approach him,

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to work together on both the TSWA 3D and Four Cities Project. Extraordinary major projects were realized through these two programmes. Thirty-eight in all. One example, One Piece at a Time by Richard Wilson (1987), in the tower of the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle was beautiful. Pieces of cars were suspended on wires, which were cut by a machine, and the sound of them falling was recorded. The noise for each day would be added to the sound from the previous day. There was a pile of car parts on the floor, and this amazing accumulated sound. These projects allowed me to pick up where I had left off at the Acme Gallery, which had been about providing the opportunity to show at a gallery for the first time. The artists would enter into a dialogue about what a gallery could be. It was not a place with a curatorial agenda. I saw my role as being, at best, a collaborator that allowed the artist to do what they wanted. Because the building was going to be demolished anyway, we had a very open attitude to what could be presented. For instance, Kerry Trengove walled himself in and then dug himself out (An Eight Day Passage, 1977). We had a totally open approach to what could be presented, at a time when there were so few galleries that enabled this type of work. The first exhibition was the Robert Janz’s Opening Drawing that was happening while we were renovating what was to become the gallery in an old banana warehouse in Covent Garden. That was pre-opening. The final show was by Stuart Brisley and called Touching Class, which was about the class system and the impossibility of rising through the class system, and involved the beginning of the gallery’s demolition. And the two exhibitions, which were like book ends, say what the gallery was about. We supported artists regardless of their practice. It was quite pleasurable when people would pass by and come in and enjoy an exhibition by the painter Bert Irvin, for instance, which was immaculately displayed, and then shake their heads and say, ‘Am I in the right space, because a couple of weeks ago there was an artist called Stephen Cripps’ (who was a pyrotechnic sculptor), ‘and it looked as though the place was going to be burnt down’. It was pleasurable having those distinctive and contrasting types of shows being put on. IR Were you ever un-nerved by any of these exhibitions? JH We were fairly careful. Health and safety did not have the same impact then as it does now, but nobody died in the process of making the Acme Gallery exhibition programme. We were careful and artists were responsible, but because we were one of the few galleries at the time that was prepared to go to those extremes, we attracted artists whose practice was in that area. The Acme Gallery’s reputation was partly made from that.

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IR It was similar to other galleries, like Matt’s Gallery. JH Indeed. But I don’t want to take anything away from what Robin Klassnik has done. I think that we are great admirers of each other’s work. What Robin has done is extraordinary. The Acme Gallery ran from 1976 to 1981 in Covent Garden, and I had a sense that when it closed, its course was run. We had made a statement. We were quite young then – I started the gallery when I was twenty-six. One was not aware of the context and had not researched the context and thought that we should be doing this because others have not. You were in a dialogue with other artists, and things just happened and you followed your intuition. There were significant older artists like Ron Haselden and Stuart Brisley, who were incredibly supportive and also showed there, so one felt a really good dialogue with them as well. It was just an amazing time, and to be in the centre of London – in Covent Garden – meant that we had incredibly good critical coverage for what we did. IR It is interesting to think that, at that time, East London and even Covent Garden were not places that people would normally go. JH Covent Garden was not far for the critics to go, and once they came, they came back. But I remember one of the critics, Sarah Kent, saying, when we opened the Showroom in our Bethnal Green Studios, how it was like travelling to Outer Mongolia. Clearly that has changed. Acme, I always felt, was artist centred, and there were so many other organizations that predated us, but with whom we had close relationships, like the London Film-makers’ Co-op, the Musicians’ Collective, London Video Arts, X6 Dance Collective in Butlers Wharf, 2B Butlers Wharf which was a performance space, Artists for Democracy, etc., etc., which were artist led. Why were artists leading them? Because no one else was doing it, and artists felt impelled to do it. It allowed them to share production resources, to share presentation resources, to create a forum for debate etc. The 1960s saw those organizations emerge as an alternative to the commercial and public sectors. Now, I feel that there is very little distinction between the commercial and public. The market is supreme, if that is the right word, or at least dominant. It certainly was not in the 1960s and 1970s … IR … and the early 1980s, until Thatcher’s Britain took hold. JH Absolutely. The need for alternatives still remains, and the extent to which artists need to be politically active is a big question. Things changed enormously in the 1980s. It takes nothing away from the major institutions like the Tate, but you realize that whether they like it or not, they have to work within the market.

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We felt that we needed to be an alternative, and in needing to do things to support ourselves, we created alternatives. We worked with those other artist-led organizations, and we produced an events sheet, which pulled together what we were all doing. London Video Arts used our gallery to present their work once a week. The gallery was a resource that was really well used. So I have talked about Acme and its relation with artists and in terms of studios and housing. I have talked about it in terms of its relationship with artists at the time of the Acme Gallery, which was very particular. I just feel so privileged to have been there and had the opportunity to help make things happen. And I am delighted that when I retired as Acme’s CEO two years ago, the organization had become a permanent and self-sustaining resource for artists at the most fundamental level and one with the capacity to extend its provision even further.

Figure 10  Mikey Cuddihy with Rock, Scissors, Paper. Installation view: Riverside Studios, 1985. Photo: Edward Woodman, © Mikey Cuddihy

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Interview 30 April 2018 IR How did you become an artist? MC  Well, in a sense the decision was made for me. In a lot of ways, I felt that my options were limited. I had a very bad stammer as a child, so visual language was where I was most comfortable. When I was at school at Summerhill, there was an emphasis on making. I had a very lovely teacher, who was a refugee from Germany, who taught me to sew. So my first experience of making came from that. The notion that you would have an idea and realize it as an object continued into my artistic practice, where I often felt awkward about talking about working within painting and often said that I was making art. I felt that I was making a painting. IR That is really interesting. Thinking through making and thinking through a visual language are totally different to verbal thinking and communication. They are very precious. MC  Yes. I left Summerhill when I was sixteen and went to sixth form college in Edinburgh and did my Highers in art there. We had a really nice art teacher, who encouraged me to go to life drawing classes in the evening at the Edinburgh College of Art, which is where I started my undergraduate degree. I still thought that I would probably make clothes or tapestries, but I was very good at drawing. In Scotland it was a four-year course, with the first being a Foundation year. The second was also quite general, after which you were allowed to specialize. My boyfriend of the time, who was older than me, got into the Royal College of Art, so I applied to art school in London after two years’ study, got into Central School of Art, and started in the first year as a painter.1 IR Were you a painter all through? MC  Well, in Edinburgh I was still trying out lots of things. I felt a little uncomfortable with oil painting and canvas, but I always loved drawing,

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while knowing that I did not want to be an illustrator. But I was accepted as a painter. At Central, in 1971, there were all these glamorous, young, male tutors who were paying homage to American hard-edged painters, so they used masking tape and acrylic paints and made big paintings. Then there were the older tutors like Cecil Collins, who was a bit of a mystic, and in print we had Blair Hughes-Stanton and a young Norman Ackroyd. I really enjoyed print-making. As a young person, learning a process and skill took away the pressure of having to have an idea. When I arrived at Central, I did not think I had any ideas. It had been a quite old-fashioned course at Edinburgh, where one had life drawing on a Monday, draped life on a Tuesday, still life and anatomy, and I excelled in those areas. To suddenly arrive somewhere where people were making big canvases was daunting. But they still had the life room that was operational, with a life model who was there every day. That is where I did my most experimental work. I was often the only one there. I would bring in clothes and dress the models up, and I used to tear paper and use collage. It allowed me to be experimental with materials. I did not have the pressure about ‘What am I going to paint?’ That was really important. IR It sounds as though you were exploring different types of vocabularies through different types of mediums. MC  That is very well put. At the same time, I was never comfortable with oil paint or with using huge swathes of flat acrylic. I did not really find my feet at Central, in terms of painting, until the third year. Only then did I feel that I was using a genuine language that was me. I really felt that I needed to have another year to develop that, but my stammer was terrible, so I knew that I could not apply for teacher training like most people did. So I applied for postgraduate at Chelsea College of Art, was interviewed by Sean Scully and Ian Stephenson and got a place. I went there for a year – it was one of the first places where the MA was fifty weeks. After that, one of my friends from Chelsea, Simon Read, cycled around and found an empty warehouse space in Butler’s Wharf, so Simon, Kier Smith, Gillian Ingham and Roger Kite got a space there, but Kier got a residency in Cardiff, so I took his place. It was one large space that we occupied. The fog used to roll in from the Thames. It was totally derelict, very depressing to go to, and very cold, but we kept our connection from Chelsea, which was hugely important. We were all painters and quite conventional. We would turn up at nine and leave at five, and go home and cook dinner, but of course there were many others

Mikey Cuddihy there working in performance. Above me was Derek Jarman, who was making the film Jubilee (1978) at the time and would play really loud opera music. Sometimes I would bang on the ceiling with a broom and shout, ‘Shut up!’ There were lots of artists working there, and some were pretty much living there. IR Yes, I gather some did. MC  It was a really rough place. IR But it seems to have been really inspirational for you … MC  Well, yes. I was quite a dreamy sort of person, so it was good to be sharing a studio with people who were a bit more practical. We would exchange information about what was happening, shows coming up, and things to apply for. In fact, from there I got into the John Moores Painting Prize, but with a canvas that I did not think of as being a painting. It was sewn and pinned. IR  How did you organize that studio space? MC  It was huge, and four of us in there. It was open, but down one wall we had large, storage racks where we could put our canvases. IR What made you move? MC  I had three part-time jobs – and for none of them I needed to speak very much. I had one at the weekends in the Serpentine Gallery, another in a cafe, and another in Dingwalls, which was a music venue along the canal. Trying to get to Butler’s Wharf always felt dangerous. You would be pestered by men, and it was not great coming home in the dark. It was not as it is now. Sarah Greengrass, whom I had known at Chelsea, had an Acme house and suggested that I apply for one. I was living in this wonderful flat in the West End, which was really cheap, but it was furnished and had lots of regulations. The thought of having a whole house, where I could live and work, and not have the hassle of commuting to the studio was great. So I went for an interview in Covent Garden, which is where the Acme headquarters were, and was interviewed by Richard Deacon, who was working for Acme. I was offered a house in Beck Road. I went to have a look at it and thought ‘no way’. It was so awful. There were no trees – just some street lamps and flat-fronted houses. Most were boarded up as the residents had been moved to the Holly Street Estate, and many had been squatted in for quite some time. I just thought that I could not live there. IR  What happened? MC  Sarah was a really strong influence and said that I must do it. Helen Chadwick, who had moved in six months before me, came over with her boyfriend when we were looking and said it was fantastic! When

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she had moved into hers it was much worse than this. We felt rather like pioneers. We all moved in around the same time. I moved in about 1978, and other artists, like Genesis P-Orridge, had been there for about a year. I had a boyfriend who was very practical. We took down walls and did repairs. IR How long was your contract for? MC  Well, they were short life-houses. We signed a licence agreement, rather than a rental agreement as such, which meant that we agreed to leave at four weeks’ notice if required. So there was always a temporary aspect to how the houses were maintained. It was always good enough, but we were not going to invest heavily in it. It was cheap, which was fantastic. It was wonderful to have a safe, live-work space, which was so practical in terms of time. I had part-time work, but any time that I had at home I could spend making my own work. It was great! IR I gather that you co-founded the Beck Road Arts Trust. MC  Yes. What happened was that we all carried on living there. People started having children. It seemed to be going really well, but we always had the feeling that we were going to have to leave. Finally, in 1987, the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), who owned the houses, abandoned their plans to build an extension to Hackney College and they contacted Acme to say they had decided to sell the houses, not individually, but as a job lot. Acme approached us, and we set up the Beck Road Arts Trust to secure permanent live-work spaces for artists and decided that we would raise the money to buy all the houses. We had meetings with Jonathan Harvey and David Panton about how to coordinate this. We produced a brochure and made a documentary. There was a great series on the BBC called Open Space, where they collaborated with communities to make documentaries, and we did one for that. We did not raise a lot of cash, and the ILEA became impatient. Then, suddenly, they changed their minds and said that we could buy the houses individually. Suddenly there was a rush to the door, with a few of us saying, ‘Wait, wait, what about the Arts Trust, what about … We should not be so selfish.’ I can laugh about it now, but the whole thing fell apart. It was fine in the end. Some of us were able to raise some money and get mortgages. It was the late 1980s, and one could self-declare one’s income. The ILEA agreed to declare that we had been tenants rather than licensees, which meant that we had the right to have a discount on our own homes as we had lived there so long. We got them cheap. Those that could not or did not want to get a mortgage carried on renting from the family housing association that Acme had handed the houses over

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to. Many of us did get mortgages as I think that there was a lot of anxiety that if you were with the family housing association, they might move you on, as often there were only one or two people in a whole house. I bought my house in 1991 and stayed until 2011. IR Did things change on the road during the 1980s? There were twenty-six Acme houses in a small road alongside non-artist residents, and I just wondered how stable it felt. MC  One got sold – I am not sure why, so there were twenty-five. It is very hard for things to change in a street like that. The front doors open onto the pavements, and although people have moved into it, they did so because they liked the whole idea of it. The street is divided by a railway line. The bit that we lived in was beyond the railway arches from the Hackney Road and felt very cut off. When I go there now, it does not really feel as though it has changed much. There were other people living there – other than the artists – so there was quite a mixed group of people. IR  Did you get to know each other? Were the artists very separate? MC  We were in and out of each other’s houses. I knew each person’s knocks: Helen’s knock or Sandra’s knock from next door … We wouldn’t interfere with each other’s work unless invited. Mostly we would sit in each other’s kitchens. However, there was good critical and practical support when you needed it, and we would borrow things. There was a street ladder. My friends Pete and Jen, who still live there, sent me pictures last summer of a street party with everyone there, eating cake. IR You also had a job with Acme? MC  We had all these meetings with Acme about Beck Road. Jonathan and David asked me whether I would like a job as they could see from the minutes, letters and other copy I produced – as secretary for the Beck Road Arts Trust – that I could type. (Helen’s boyfriend Phil was Chairman, and Keith, who lived next door to me was treasurer of the Arts Trust.) Acme was expanding, and they needed someone else to come and work with them. I was finding it really hard to plan my own work and be ambitious while being self-employed. So it was really great to know that every month there would be an income. And, of course, it was lovely working with artists, and I did not feel that I had to take the work home with me. IR So thinking about your own practice from the 1980s, did you have a gallery that represented you? MC  No, I did lots of projects in artist-run spaces. There was one in South London called Unit 7, which was in Camberwell in an old luggage

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factory. I did two projects with them: in 1987 and 1989. I did not have a gallery representing me as I was working outside painting. I was working with installation – not sculpture. IR Yes, looking at your website for that period, there seemed to be a tension between two and three dimensions, between abstract and figurative work, and gesture and geometry. You were occupying an interesting space between the normal coding and demarcations within art. MC  Yes. That made it hard to define my work, and I did not fit into a feminist agenda. There was a lot of work being shown by feminist women that had a didactic, figurative aspect to it – kicking against the ‘patriarchy’ I guess; a lot of video and performance work and not much painting – Women’s Images of Men for example at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) (1980). Claire Smith – the artist who curated 8 Women: Artists: 1980 at the Acme Gallery – put forward a proposal that there were women artists working within painting and sculpture, who were making abstract and conceptual work and whose approaches were radical and ground-breaking in their own way, and that we were feminists too in spite of our non-figurative approach. So our show included Claire Smith, Sarah Greengrass, Alison Wilding, Margaret Organ, Emma Park, Jozefa Rogocki and myself. It was held in two parts, and there was a lovely catalogue essay by Fenella Crichton. IR Looking at exhibition catalogues, including those from the Ikon Gallery like Sculpture by Women (1983), this notion of a female sensibility was very much in the air. Later on, it would be excluded from the dialogues, but for that short time it was there. MC  Yes, and because the four of us who were painters were working in an expanded field of painting, we did not fit. Feminists who were painting were making figurative work that was almost propagandist. We did not feel that we fitted into that. We knew that we had a place, but … The following year (1981) I was in the Serpentine Summer Show. That was the first time that I did not display my work within set diameters. I installed tiny paper maquettes, which floated across the walls, alongside framed works. Adrian Henri, who was a selector for the show, came to my studio and asked what was in my plan chest. I opened the drawers, and there were all these paper maquettes for larger folded paperworks. I was working with folding, gathering, pinning and tearing paper, and using colour, abstraction and mark making within them. He encouraged me to display those works. IR How did you generate the maquettes? MC  I would write notions or recipes for the moves that I would make for

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the work. I would have a square, and then the marks that I would make would be in response to that square. Or I would mould the centre of the paper into a circle in response to the square, and tear holes into that in response to the circle, and then draw squares in response to that. IR So it was an iterative process. MC  Iterative – yes. Then what would happen was that the work would take on a character according to the gestural marks or colours. In some ways the work was quite sculptural. I always wanted to refer to my paintings as ‘objects’ – not ‘pictures’. The works for the Serpentine Gallery were all on paper, which was a move away from canvas. In some ways those shows were often quite a shock, as they would be the first time that you had taken the work out of a domestic scale into something that huge. My space in Beck Road was as un-domestic as I could make it. I had knocked down the central wall, making one, L-shaped room. But the walls were not that high. Alexis Hunter was also in the exhibition at the Serpentine. She knew a gallerist called Edward Totah, who had opened a little gallery in Floral Street called the Totah Gallery. He was showing Derek Jarman and the South African painter Gavin Jantjes. He talked to Alexis about wanting to show some women artists, and Alexis suggested Paula Rego and myself. So the three of us had a show there called Three Women Artists. That was my first show in a proper gallery. I think that Edward was quite disappointed that my work had become quite figurative. I was experimenting with folding and gathering paper, and referring to fans, skirts and aprons in their forms, and then drawing on them. I had a whole library of objects. There would be high-heel shoes, saucepans, scissors, tin openers and electric fires. IR How did you pick them? They suggest an absent figure in a domestic space. Was it autobiographical? MC  Oh yes. They were all things that I had around me. I also started lying down on the floor and drawing around myself. Then I would dress the figures in moulded bikini shapes or would depict guitars across them. It was very playful. I felt that I had links with the New British Sculptors who were exhibiting widely, and I started to be in shows with people like Lisa Milroy and some sculptors. One of my closest friends was Edward Allington, who was in the big sculpture shows – Objects and Sculpture (1981) at the ICA, and The Sculpture Show (1983) the Hayward Gallery, and who then got taken on by the Lisson Gallery. Lisa Milroy was showing work with similar content to mine, shoes and clothing. I

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remember walking into Nicola Jacob’s gallery to see Lisa’s first solo show (1984) and thinking, ‘Those are my things’ – and then thinking, ‘Oh that’s fine – it is oil paint and canvas.’ I felt that I had found my place in what was happening. I was showing, which was nice. But I had no commercial gallery and sold no work – nothing. Then I was offered a show at the Riverside Studios with Helen Chadwick and Annette Messager (1985). Helen and I had half the gallery each, and Annette showed her big spider web piece Les Chimères in the concourse. My show was called Raising the Roof and Helen’s was Ego Geometria Sum. I had a letter from Milena Kalinowska who was running the Riverside at the time, asking me to do a show with the others. She did not know that Helen and I were friends. At that time in the 1980s, the Riverside and the ICA were really important places where we all went to see shows and meet each other. IR Did you choreograph the show to work together? MC  No, but it was really funny that Helen and I were often working on the same things, but in totally different ways. At that point she was using her body. She had already had her Serpentine show with Ego Geometria Sum (1983), where she photographed herself and placed those images inside objects from her life. I was lying on the floor and drawing around myself, building houses and using my own body as a template for caryatides for these. IR Looking at your work for this exhibition, I was not sure whether the depicted roofs were made from found or made paper. MC  I bought it from a hardware shop in Hackney that would let one go up into the storeroom and pillage paper that no one wanted – bricks, stone and fish on blue backgrounds were my favourites. I had also moved towards filling the whole studio wall with wallpaper and then superimposing painted objects. None of my wallpaper was made. IR Using found objects was very much in the air. MC  Yes. But what I found dissatisfying about the Riverside show, and then at the ICA six months later,2 was that all this work was being made in the studio and then rehung and refigured in a totally different space. Then, in 1987, I was offered a show at Unit 7 Gallery in Camberwell, run by artists Nikki Oxley, Nico d’Oliviera and Michael Petry, and for the first time I made the work in the exhibiting space. The works did not have a physical presence. I projected slides onto the walls. It was the most transparent and honest work. There was no attempt at making something that I could sell. It felt like freedom that I could play around with images of my work.

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I had started to work from doodles that I made while on the phone. Like all people who stammer, I found the telephone the hardest thing to deal with. Somehow drawing, and writing things out, helped me through. So, for the exhibition, I took slides of these drawing and used them as found objects and texts. I chose some, made slides, hired a slide projector and enlarging lens, and projected them onto the wall. I drew over them in heavy charcoal on the white spaces. The drawings often took on a decorative, cornicing aspect. Some of them had writing, and I would use the writing the other way around so that it had a calligraphic presence. It was great doing that show. I did another show there a year later. IR I was just thinking how one of the dirty words in the 1980s was the ‘decorative’. MC  It is very hard for women. If you are a man using the decorative, it is seen as a strong choice. But, as a woman, it was seen as a fall-back position. It has caused problems. I have had a couple of reviews in the past by women, where they described the work as ‘slight’. In 2004 I was invited by Sharon Kivland to take part in a lecture series at Sheffield Hallam University, where artists were invited to present a discourse on their practice. The talk I gave was under ‘Ornament and Utility’. Following each series, they published Speaking & Listening, a beautifully produced series of publications – this book was the third in the series.3 My talk did not record, but I referred to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, but what Sharon wrote was that the talk was not recorded, but that I had talked about pattern, repetition and the transfer between the domestic space of the studio and the public arena of the gallery, and how the works were transformed through the change in setting. But I never felt that my studio was domestic. There was one horrible chair, bare floorboards and white walls, so it never had that feeling. IR So if we push this a bit, at what point does a doodle become art? MC  It is when you choose to make it art. When you are making it, the doodle is serving a different purpose. When I returned to painting, I used that notion of the unconscious. I started painting directly onto the canvas using calligraphic mark-making that tapped into a similar idea. IR What made you change from making objects to going back to painting? MC  I started to find that when I took a show down and there was nothing left, it was really frustrating. I had always enjoyed working with colour, so I stretched a piece of canvas on the floor and sized it. It was quite large

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British Art of the Long 1980s – eight feet by six feet. Then I poured some tea over it, and once that was dry I stretched it flat onto the wall and projected one of my doodles – a filigree shape – onto it and enlarged it massively. I drew over it in heavy charcoal. I realized that using something as throwaway and tiny as this shape that had probably taken a second to make, and enlarging it so that it becomes quite gestural, could be a painting. It felt that I was making things and building up a family of paintings. I used my job at Acme really well – I would draw obsessively. I would choose a doodle that I thought had potential and would make lots of watercolour, pen and brush things from it until I felt that I had got to know its forms. It became part of a painterly vocabulary. Then I would draw the forms out onto a canvas that I had stretched and gessoed on the floor, in graphite. I would choose a colour, using a lovely acrylic paint by Lascaux, which had lots of pigment in it. Then I would wash it out before it had completely dried. I would build up these transparent layers. The canvas was never fully painted. It was constantly being washed out with sponges. Then finally I would hang it up. When I made the paintings I was in this haptic, close-up space, and when I hung them up I had some distance. Somehow, I felt, when making those, that I had more control and that they would always have their own space. I entered one for the Whitechapel Open. When I went to the exhibition, the curator, I think it was Jenny Lomax, said to me that she really liked my wall hanging. I thought, ‘Wall hanging!’ I had sent it in all rolled up, and they had taken it off the roll and folded it up so it was all creased! So they gave me an iron and I ironed it in the gallery, on the floor. The creases never really came out. I sent them a letter of complaint and the following year the criteria said, ‘No rolled 2d work would be accepted.’ So, for my submission that year, I made a stretcher and stretched a canvas. That transformed things for me, as it made me wonder why I was so hung up about putting a painting onto a stretcher. The painting looked great with edges! There was no question now about whether something was a wall-hanging or a painting. The painting got in, and it held its own hanging there on the gallery wall. I got taken on by Flowers East in 1991. I had two one-person shows with them and my paintings were included in some group shows as well. I was using colour, and I felt so good making those paintings. I had my first show at Flowers when I was three months pregnant with my son. I felt so wonderful making those paintings.

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Notes 1 2 3

For further information and images of works discussed in this interview, see http:// mikeycuddihy.co.uk, last accessed 18 June 2020. A Bed of Roses, Concourse Gallery, ICA, 1985. Sharon Kivland, Lesley Sanderson and Emma Cocker eds., Transmission: v: 3: Speaking and Listening, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2004).

Figure 11  Kate Blacker, Matterhorn, 1982. Corrugated metal and paint. 100 × 100 × 25 cm. © Kate Blacker

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Kate Blacker

Interview 16 October 2017 KB  I went to Camberwell College of Arts in the mid-1970s. It was quite strict. I knew other schools were more relaxed, more experimental but I specifically chose a sculpture course with a more rigorous approach. Afterwards I went to the Royal College of Art. It seemed at the time that after Minimalism there was a kind of full stop and that there was not much more you could do in sculpture! That felt pretty frustrating, especially after decades of exciting sculptural development. It is also amazing thinking about how provincial and insular our information was! Anyway, the challenge was to think your way out of this dead end. This was made more complicated by the move away from object making; the ‘dematerialization’ in the more contemporary conceptual practices and my growing awareness, through the current debates, of the exclusion of women artists from art history and its dominant male perspective. I became conscious (and frustrated!) that I couldn’t combine the two things that interested me: contemporary sculpture and feminism. I am a sculptor. However, in the 1970s women artists were becoming aware of the consequences of making sculpture or painting and thereby continuing and endorsing a male-dominated art history. In order to avoid this, it was logical to operate in more contemporary forms like performance art, video art or photography (often combined with critical text), which were seen as new disciplines and so unaffected by the influence of male art history. They were also seen as more effective ways of making critical work. Feminist work seemed to find its form through critique – being about the problem and directly addressing the problem. IR So what if you wanted to make sculpture? KB  It did feel like there was a kind of impasse between sculpted cubes and flat coloured canvases, and the immateriality of conceptual art! This

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is seriously simplistic and it also sounds hypocritical because I was fascinated by what was going on and felt concerned and passionately interested in these and other developments in contemporary sculpture which were filtering through. I explored this conundrum in various ways – mostly through irony but the results were too illustrative. This is really where the Geisha was such a breakthrough for me.1 Before I was making cut-out pieces in metal, rolling the metal and making the form. Then I found this sheet of crumpled corrugated metal on my way to Amherst School in Hackney where I had a residency at the school. IR What sort of date are we talking about there? KB  The Amherst School residency was directly after leaving the Royal College in 1981 and was gained through the Whitechapel Gallery’s education programme that was run by Jenni Lomax. It was absolutely brilliant. I spent a term at the primary school, where I was given a classroom as a studio. We organised with the teachers that as I made sculptures they would go into the classroom and would become the central focus for all the classroom subjects. So, for example, the Geisha went into a classroom and the pupils measured her up and that was maths, and they found out who a geisha was and where she came from, exploring Japan in geography and history. Then they would write a story about her. I thought (and still do) that is just how primary education should be. So I found this piece of corrugated metal, which was crumpled, pre-sculpted or ‘ready-sculpted’ and took it back to the studio. The bottom part was bent at a right angle so I put a bag of clay onto this part which allowed the rest of the sheet to free-stand vertically in space. Making a sculpture stand up is not always that easy! The fact that this was so easy was already a good sign! IR Were you imagining these for inside or for outside? KB  At the time I did not imagine my work in any specific site. I was much more interested in working out how to make sculpture. Finding this piece of corrugated metal was a real flash of recognition! As soon as I saw it I realized this crumpled metal (which was actually a dirty, rusty, deformed old sheet of discarded waste), embodied just what I was looking for. The form was already there and just needed to be revealed. Even better, this deformation was the result of a destructive act, probably with a bulldozer. Unawares, a man had sculpted the form which I could now articulate. Perfect! I was not going to take away men’s age-old

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prerogative for transforming ‘his’ material to create a form. A man was still at the source of this transformation of the material! Now, through simply using paint to organize the surface of the metal, I could reveal the figure that was there. The paint makes neither the form nor the figure but brings to light what is already there. This corresponded with my understanding of the feminist position that you couldn’t overturn the embedded tradition of the male prerogative to impose form onto a material, so the relationship that men have to raw material is maintained. The feminist position was to renounce this imposition and reveal different readings or understandings of pre-existing forms, plastic or otherwise. Feminism resisted imposing form onto material because it was a way of dominating your material. Historically and philosophically women had always represented nature, the raw material which man transformed to create art. IR Where were you picking up this feminist position? KB  I went to quite a few lectures in the late 1970s. I was good at getting about by that stage, listening and reading. I think the problem for me was that my contemporaries did not see me as in any way coming from a feminist point of view, because I was making sculpture and there was nothing feminist about the subject matter; it was in the method. I was making landscapes and women figures: two of the most common subjects in the history of art and two subjects with the most complex artistic conventions! But, of course, that was the point. IR So the different shapes and forms we see in your work were largely found. KB  Yes, entirely, you cannot crumple corrugated metal yourself. What I would look for was a suggested posture in the crumpled metal sheets. I went to scrapyards and got the sheets from there. At the time you could wander into a scrapyard. (Health and safety were not a problem.) This was another incursion into a men-only world. There was always the inevitable conversation involving a bit of male/female banter like ‘This is no place for a woman,’ but I never had problems and, on the whole, they were happy to fish out that inaccessible piece of metal with their machine and give me a hand strapping it onto a car or the bike. There wasn’t an issue of what to make; the subject was already in the material. What was so fabulous was that the material – corrugated metal – lent itself so perfectly to looking like folded cloth and sculptures of women. There was no need to ‘create’ them. The form just came through, organized and revealed by the process of painting. That these deformed

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sheets of metal turned into representations of statuesque female figures seemed a ‘fair’ revenge for so many centuries of misrepresentations of women. I was also influenced by what Michelangelo had said that the sculptural form is already in the stone so all he had to do was take away what wasn’t necessary to reveal the figure within. So revealing rather than imposing was the opposition that I was interested in. I was also interested in the shift between the two -dimensional and the three dimensional. For example, the Geisha is not painted on the back; it is just left in its natural state as corrugated metal. IR Were you imagining the sculpture in a situation where the viewer wouldn’t be wandering around the back? KB  No. On the contrary I really wanted the viewer to wander around the back and see it. I wanted to show this cracker piece of material that allowed one side to represent a geisha – and probably considered the ultimate image of feminine beauty – while the other side shows the deformation that gave rise to the frontal facade. Those ironies are vital. Conceptually, the material was completely playing into my hands in terms of the sculptural criteria that I was after. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the 1980s, there was a renewal of the idea that if you made material objects you were not conceptual, but were making commodities that played into the capitalist side of art. I remember Alan Charlton saying, ‘If you make an exhibition and the work sells then it means it’s a bad exhibition.’ Aspects of this attitude still exist. IR Would the fact that it was Thatcher’s Britain come into it? KB  We weren’t quite there yet. Margaret Thatcher might have been in power, but it was only around 1982 that it started to have a real impact. I think we wanted to make things, representational things, intelligent objects, where the politics was in the work and no longer in the non commodification of the work. I have not talked a lot with others, because I left England in 1984. Tony Cragg left; he went to Germany. There was a sense that you had to get out of England, to be able to do anything back in England. Many 1970s artists had gone to live elsewhere for a bit and returned. Nicholas Logsdail saw a big opportunity. He had shown great exhibitions of ‘difficult to sell’ art when he was young and idealistic. I remember as a student seeing Michel Asher, Sol leWitt and Mel Bochner at the Lisson Gallery – artists that were not yet shown in British public galleries, which was great!

Kate Blacker But he was really fed up that he couldn’t sell anything and he would be really quite heavy on us when we started showing at the beginning of the 1980s. He sat me down one time and said, ‘Look, I have sold five Bill Woodrow’s, and I have sold six Tony Cragg’s, but I’ve only sold two of yours, Kate. It’s because you’re making these long horizontal landscapes. People need stuff that goes vertical. They don’t have enough wall space for these horizontal pieces. They need to go up, not along.’ He would get his book out and say, ‘You’re not selling enough.’ He was really happy that at last he had some art he could sell and that there were buyers. In France Mitterrand had come into power and set up the decentralization programme with Jack Lang as Minister of Culture. Curators were coming over from France to buy New British Sculpture pieces from him. In 1982, they bought a piece of mine for what is called a Fonds régional d’art contemporain. These were regional collections made by small decentralized arts councils all over France, and they had decent budgets. The Transavantguardia was happening in Italy and there was also New German Expressionism. So there was a feeling across Europe that there was art to buy and sell. IR You have to sell stuff if you’re a gallery owner. KB  You have to sell. It’s a very pragmatic approach, and Nicholas was very pragmatic. IR How did you originally join his gallery? KB  I met Jean-Luc Vilmouth at the Royal College of Art. Jean-Luc had a Sainsbury scholarship to do three years at the Royal College and he was in his last year when I arrived in my first year from Camberwell. Jean-Luc had already known Cragg before he came to England and he invited him to teach one day at the Royal College, so I met Cragg through that. When Jean-Luc and I got together we moved to live in South London, not far from Bill Woodrow and the Acre Lane studios, so we went there quite a lot. When I did my degree show Nicholas came. I had met him before because Jean-Luc had left the RCA two years before me and he was already showing at the Lisson with Cragg and possibly Woodrow. Then Nicholas and Mark Francis came to my degree show. Lots of people came to degree shows at the RCA. Nicholas then did the show London: New York 1981 at his new, enormous, loft-style gallery. No one had gallery space like this in London! I exhibited Blue Axeman and Pink Axeman pieces from my degree show. Then it took off. There were enough of us for Nicholas to be able to establish New British Sculpture. We very soon became a kind of package deal for different exhibitions.

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We were often met at the airport by a curator holding up a sign ‘New British Sculpture’ to greet us! We were a bit of a cheap deal as we would take the airplane and make the work on site. IR  So you, like Bill Woodrow, were picking up materials near to where you would be exhibiting? KB  I always used materials that were local, and you can find corrugated metal all over the world. That was important. I didn’t use objects. Objects had been reintroduced as the sculptural material – Vilmouth, Cragg and Woodrow were all using objects. Putting objects at the centre of our work was one way to categorize the group. However, I never used objects and was keen to make this distinction. What I really liked with corrugated metal is that it is recognizable internationally, and it is a material which is integrally political – so there is this tension already present. It is also a fundamentally abstract material. Its undulations imply infinity – they just keep repeating forever. So this pre-fab, ubiquitous material has political and unlikely metaphysical characteristics. It is simultaneously two dimensional and three dimensional, which is why I was attracted to it in the first place, and when crumpled like a sheet of crumpled paper it goes from sheet form to a fully three-dimensional form, turning inside out and back to front. This is when I started to use it recto-verso. As I said with the Geisha and one or two other pieces I left the back unpainted. Then when I started to find much more crumpled sheets, and the back and front started to get muddled up, I started to paint it all the way round. IR You were travelling with other New British Sculptors … KB  Ah yes. The host venue would put us up and we would produce the work for the show. It was actually really interesting and really terrifying. An exhibition 1983 in Gibellina, Sicily, was particularly exciting! We had not a clue what we were going to find and had to be ready for anything! IR  Did you find different types of areas had different types of refuse, or were you ever stumped? KB  I just learnt the way to say ‘corrugated metal’ in a lot of different languages – that and ‘I need a scrapyard’. I started the mountain landscape pieces pretty much at the same time as the women figures. They started to make me think about the stereotypical subjects in the history of art. Landscape is another major subject in the history of art! If you want to challenge something you have to face it head-on. IR  I was just thinking of Mont Ste. Victoire (1982) because that really is taking something absolutely face on.

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KB  Yes, I started the series with a sculpture of the Matterhorn. There are three sheets of metal which are cut to shape and which make a puzzle and get installed one at a time. The lines of corrugation suggest a graphic way of simulating the stylistic hatching in drawing. They are not invented landscapes, but I would use photographs of mountains or a landscape, and trace them, working out where the lie of the land changed in order to angle the lines in the metal. I cut each sheet out in the angle of the hatch and put that on the wall, and then cut the next one out and so on. Another challenge was how to make large sculpture! If ‘you can’t lift anything heavy’, how to make large sculpture as a woman? First, avoid the monolithic, macho, metal welding of the St Martin’s school! With my puzzle method I could bring together lots of small sections; I could make pieces as big as I liked and which could then be packed up. I carried a mountain in a suitcase on a plane for an exhibition in 1983, ready to assemble on the wall. There is one piece, Ama Dablam (1983), that has been repaired by the Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Rhone-Alpes. They have put magnets on the back, which is great! The technology was not as good in the 1980s, so then I nailed pieces to the wall. Ama Dablam has thirty puzzle pieces. You start with number one, which is flush with the floor, and then you go from there. The important thing here is also that the landscape made an unframed landscape. So, once it is on the wall, the whole wall becomes part of the installation, because the edge is defined by the edge of the puzzle, the outline of the horizon, rather than the edge of a square or rectangular picture frame. There’s always a part of the piece coming out into the space: a foreground, which gives the wall installation a certain perspective. On the small Matterhorn with Skier (1982) there is a lip. I just bent the metal along the undulation – corrugated metal only bends in one way. That is another restriction that I find very interesting. I placed a skier on the ledge, who is also in corrugated metal, and then the skies folded over the undulation. They are all devices of distance, so each time there is a log, branch or skier, it gives you that sense of foreground. IR A bit like scenery sets in a play. KB  Absolutely. That was also one of Cézanne’s favourite moves! He would often paint a branch or boulders in the foreground of his Mont Ste. Victoire paintings, making the mountain recede. His painting style is very hatched, and so I thought, ‘This is perfect.’ I put a large branch in front of my version of that work. What was also important was using

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actual branches and logs in these pieces – confronting and mixing the real with the illusion, which is also quite theatrical! IR  Memory and cultural projections are interesting because at the mention of Mont Ste. Victoire everyone thinks of Cézanne. He put so much onto it, but the mountain itself couldn’t care less. Everest also has a lot of emotional and cultural debris projected on to it. KB  Which is another reason why I’ve carried on with the work on Everest … IR  Does the title matter for your works? KB  Yes, every single piece has a title. There is only one whose title is, on purpose, Untitled. I think a title is an evocative lead into a piece. Some simply name the work, for example the place of the landscape, while others suggest parallel methods of perceiving the work. I don’t call them anything that isn’t linked to the piece and I certainly would not call Mont Ste. Victoire ‘Hommage to Cézanne’! Man Leaning against a Log (1982) is exactly what it is. It represents a life-sized walker/hiker leaning against a log. This is a very early piece. I made only two like this where I tried to find the ‘figure in the landscape’ in the crumpled metal structure, but it didn’t really work so well. Man Sitting on a Log (1982) was the other, which was quite fun. The figure is painted on a sheet of non-corrugated, flat, crumpled metal, with just enough of a dent to get him sitting on that log. In the background you just see the rusted metal as a vague landscape. IR That is the interesting thing about allusion and non-allusion. Ursula Schulacovscz in Artefactum (April 1990) has talked about that stepping stone, the zone between the two. Where do you think you are? KB  I think sculpture is in a very interesting place. Sculpture is material and related to place. Image can take you anywhere. An image can take you to the moon for a cup of tea, but you can’t do that in sculpture. Its physicality and materiality bring you down to earth. Sculpture can only take you somewhere from its material and spatial reality. I really like playing with that. You are looking at a mountain landscape, but you are not because you are looking at a load of corrugated metal. It’s a 50/50 balance. It has to be 50/50. It can’t be 49/51. If you get that balance right, then you can be both in illusion and reality at the same time. Good art is convincing art. You believe what you see if you are convinced into going along with the illusion. I think that this time in the early 1980s is really interesting, because the energy came from within and was unselfconscious and quite unconscious of contemporary art history. What was happening in America with artists like Jeff Koons was more strategic, and their work

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was immediately put into an art historical context that made it look serious. I think we were considered a bit jokey. Bill Woodrow was cutting guitars out of washing machines using a technique from the back of a cereal packet; Cragg was making decorative installations with old bits of coloured plastic. The YBAs in the 1990s seemed to be much more sussed and strategic. There was a lot of humour, a lot of lightness of touch and even naivety in our work. Like most interesting times in art, the transition periods are quite often where some of the most inventive stuff happens and then it gets synthesized afterwards. The inventiveness was really interesting at the beginning of the 1980s. Our materials were omnipresent – everyone had washing machines, plastic objects, and corrugated metal was everywhere hiding in building sites or in urban wastelands. It was different from the Pop art euphoria. Our work shows the beginnings of the anxiety about the effects of a consumer society and the deterioration of the environment. Piles of obsolescent goods were appearing. People were chucking out as fast as they were buying. This was beginning in the 1980s. Another aspect that was important in my work was that the landscape pieces were made from discarded urban building material. We’ve already discussed the theatricality of the landscape pieces and I was very keen on working on sets with performing arts. I started working with Gaby Agis in about 1982. Borders was at the Riverside Studios. The costumes were in cloth printed with a corrugated metal pattern, and when the dancers moved, their bodies would crumple the cloth, producing a parallel with the women figure sculptures made from crumpled metal. There were three spaces in the set, starting with a very urban one, transforming through the space into a landscape horizon at the far end. The idea was mainly that the movement of the dancers’ bodies would be, in form and appearance, similar to the crumpled metal of the installation. IR  The Riverside really was an important venue in the 1980s. KB It was great! Greg Hilty was there with Milena Kalinovska. Later she went to New York. I had a show in the foyer next to Julia Wood. They showed a lot of work in the foyer space and there was a good relationship between performance and small exhibitions. It was great working with Gaby because she really wanted to take things out of the theatre and into the more fluid spaces of a gallery. I was very interested in making installations that could exist in three phases: an installation related to a space, a performance that would articulate the installation, and then afterwards, the installation would be seen differently through the

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memory of the performance. If you had seen the performance your perception of the installation would inevitably be altered from your initial visit. This idea worked well in the Whitechapel Gallery, where we made a piece called Trail (1984). Because of these experiences with Gaby, I also started working with other people, including a couple of times with Pierre Audi from the Almeida Theatre. It was fantastic working on large, complex sets, and again working on the idea that the set is interesting enough to look at without anything happening, like a big installation or sculpture. Then something happens. The lighting, narrative, etc., transform it, and afterwards you can see the set again having experienced this narrative that took place in the piece. I really wanted to make sets which weren’t just a back drop of props where you just wait till the action happened. I wanted the set to be as vital a force in the piece as the narrative. The set for The Undivine Comedy (1988) changed about seventeen times during the performance: this yellow bit comes down and the floor shuts and opens, the staircases are on different levels and so on. It was the same for the set made at the Maria Guererro Theatre in Madrid in 1988. The actors come in from behind the corrugated metal. There was a mezzanine; certain things came down … IR Some of these remind me of Russian Constructivist theatre. Were you looking at them? KB  I hadn’t thought about that, but I was looking at Picasso figures which resembled buildings in Parade (1917) – and also the work of Oskar Schlemmer. IR I was also thinking about the audience moving around, because that is an integral part of looking at sculpture. You look at it in relation to who you are, where you are, the angle you are at, the height of your eyes, the physicality – and so having performers there, and presumably being in the transitional space of the foyer at the Riverside, people would be moving anyway. Were you imagining them as almost auxiliary performers or were you imagining the performance as separate from the audience? KB  The audience in the gallery space was essential to the performance. Their proximity to the pieces and to the dancers created an important part of the atmosphere. We had done one piece at the Riverside where it was stage based, but all the corrugated metal went under the seats. We asked that the second one go into the gallery. We were determined to perform in the gallery.

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In the Whitechapel Gallery I hung two mini-stages in new, four-metre-­ wide shiny sheets of corrugated metal at either end of the upstairs gallery. They each formed a seven-metre backdrop from ceiling to floor and extended out onto the floor far enough to make an area for the dancers to move on. There were two dancers. When they went on to these ministages they had a completely different relationship to the space and the public. Also, their scale seemed to change compared to when they were dancing on the floor of the gallery space. IR  Presumably there would be a sound as well? KB  Oh, it was great! In fact, it was terrifying! Gaby wasn’t scared. As soon as she found she could move the metal and make sounds with it she explored all possibilities. The problem with this performance was that we had to install, perform and get out in between a Donald Judd and a Carl Andre show. This was the typical situation in 1983. They were doing these blockbuster shows of minimalist artists. So us girls went in, slapped it up, did a couple of nights and took it back down again. It was really intense, but the only way at this time was to operate. The sheets of metal were only fixed to the wall at the top, and then each sheet was fixed to next all the way down, so when Gaby moved on it, the sheets on the floor slid from side to side and the movement rippled all the way up the back. The visual and sound results were fantastic, but I couldn’t look. I did not know if it was going to fall on Gaby’s head or not because it was only fixed with about five or six bolts – good bolts – but I never had time to check. I watched the performances with my heart in my mouth. IR Health and safety weren’t quite the same then. KB  No, not at all!

Note 1

For images and further details about this and other works discussed in this interview, see http://www.kateblacker.com, last accessed 18 June 2020.

Figure 12  Richard Wilson, Turning the Place Over, 2007–12. Liverpool, as part of the Liverpool European Capital of Culture, 2008. Sculpture © Richard Wilson and image © Richard Wilson

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Richard Wilson

Interview 19 January 2018 IR Although your work is incredibly varied, particular strands, including testing things to the limits, an engagement with architecture, and altering perceptions of things known do seem to run right through. Looking at Twelve Pieces from 1978, I am wondering what you thought their role was in your work?1 RW  This is one of several shows I did at Coracle Press in the mid- to late 1970s. Twelve Pieces were twelve little conundrums of stress and balance that all sat on the wall. They were playful, connected systems of forces working and came out of a body of works at that time which were looking at permanence and impermanence. For my DipAD thesis I had written about this and came to the conclusion that the only thing that was permanent was impermanence, and so questions arose like how long does sculpture last? How long should a sculpture last? Can a sculpture be an event? Can a sculpture perform? Does its material render it permanent, or is it permanent in terms of its location or its remembrance? Does it have a timelessness about it? It was all those kinds of questions and they were all part and parcel of a series of works, big and small. The Twelve Pieces would come out for an event such as an exhibition and then they would be put away afterwards, because if they were left out the elastic limit of the materials would be reached and be hopeless after that. So they were performing rather like a wound-up clock. Once it’s unwound the time stops. They were quite formal and were made of wood, wire and cotton, and they were hinting at much greater things. Twelve Pieces led on to a commission from an individual in America, which led to a book with an edition of two hundred, entitled

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Wind Instruments. I made two hundred, and I then made an extra fifty, which we sold through Coracle Press at a later date. Twelve Pieces were sold also. IR So if they fall on the ground, would the sound be part of it? RW  Not necessarily. I wasn’t thinking of sound at that time. My introduction to sound came later on when I met Anne Bean and Paul Burwell at Butler’s Wharf. IR You were at Butler’s Wharf from about 1976 onwards? RW  Yes, 1976 to 1981. It was absolutely extraordinary. I did a postgraduate in Sculpture at Reading University from 1974 to 1976. I came back to London and wanted to establish a studio. So I went to the SPACE offices and they said there was a waiting list of about a year and a half. I asked if anyone knew how to get to Butler’s Wharf, and they advised me not to go there as if it was considered a dangerous location. It was the other side of the river, at Tower Bridge. This excited me. I thought, ‘This is where I do want to go – radical thinkers doing their own thing.’ So I went off there. IR What was it before? RW  Well, it was a brewery on the corner, and the rest of it was rag trade I believe, and storage for herbs and spices. The streets smelt of them and in fact you could find your way home at night, in the fog and dark, just by using your nose. I remember in 1976 when I first arrived at Butler’s Wharf I used to go and eat at a cafe called the Cat & Cucumber and there were old boys in there in overalls and their faces were bright yellow where they had spent a lifetime picking up turmeric sacks. Rather like a tattooist’s ink that impregnates the skin, the turmeric had entered their skin. You would never see that now. Butler’s Wharf at its height had about two hundred artists, with no one in charge. Everyone just looked after themselves. The living room was the Anchor Tap pub, and everyone seemed to exist on an American lifestyle – get up at midday, work until about nine ‘o’clock in the evening, go down the Anchor Tap, eat a pie and drink until about five in the morning. Fall asleep in bed and wake up at midday etc., etc. IR Did you live at Butler’s Wharf? RW  I lived and worked at Butler’s Wharf. It was apparently illegal, but the person who ran it, Mr Woods, turned a blind eye. I believe his daughters had established the whole loft industry in New York. He understood the potential and liked artists. We were there until 1981–2 when we moved out. Then I founded, along with two other members, Chisenhale Works.

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IR I wanted to ask you about that because it became a gallery and an artist space. RW  Yes. That established itself about 1983, and then others from Butler’s Wharf heard about it and came over. It was a kind of a spin-off. I was the building manager there for ten months. I took a gap out of my career and managed the building work and then left a few years later as it was quite institutionalized. I mean I enjoyed college, but when I left college I had left college. I was back in a situation of meetings, and votes, and opinions, and that sort of thing. It wasn’t me. It was the beginning of all that right the way across the UK. Things were getting more official. ‘Can’t’ became a big word suddenly. IR London had this plethora of disused buildings at the time, which did lend itself to a certain type of art practice. I’m just thinking about your Big Dipper of 1982 and some of those other works that could not have happened without those large, vacant spaces. RW  Big Dipper was a big piece that I made on the ground floor of Chisenhale Works. I cast a great big metal ring around one of the columns of the building. The building performed in the work and was part of the work. They were inseparable unless you broke one or the other, and I couldn’t take the pillar down. At the end of the exhibition, the metal was broken up with a sledgehammer and used for other cast sculptures. The artist Hannah Collins and I did a duo show there. I knew Hannah’s partner at the time: Ron Haselden. We were good friends, and we taught together in the 1980s at Reading University. Hannah and I shared the exhibition. She did the first stint, for a couple of weeks, exhibiting photographs. Then I went in and cast this big ring with a couple of students from Reading University. Chisenhale Works was really derelict. The concept of a white gallery now is understandable, but then it was a black, soot-ridden, industrial, derelict ground floor, where there’d been a massive fire. So it was interesting to make something born out of fire – taking in the home-built foundry and melting metal. IR Was doing that part of a performance? RW  No. There is a very strong sense of event about the process to product, but it was never intended to be witnessed. The process was a private activity, however theatrical. But the product was the ring. IR Looking at catalogues of your work, it seems like this was one of your first forays into engaging with the outer world and making some sort of reference to that within your work.

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RW  You’re right. It was the first time I’d dealt with ‘installation’. Not strictly site-specific but there is a sense of it being specifically born out of the relationship to the building, the room and the column. It was not like I was in my studio and testing ideas independent of spaces. IR I did wonder how you went about making something like that. It’s not part of the normal art education. RW  No, it wasn’t, but when I was at Hornsey College of Art, which became Middlesex Polytechnic, my influences were all American. I was looking at ‘land art’. The only other person I was looking at in the UK was Barry Flanagan. I was interested in Hole in the Sea and the Sand Pieces, Broke Pieces, and Light Pieces, which were very playful, and the fact that his whole process was a field of inquiry. It was not like product making, with many similar things being made. It was a field of enquiry and it seems that art is no longer about that. The 2000s have generated an artist that is answerable to project as run by curator or, the product is a commercial asset. An art collector can buy a well-known artist’s painting and know that it’s going to accrue more interest than money in the bank or in a property. That’s why art is a commodity now. I am in all the other markets though: intelligent ideas and things like that. IR Well, those are the important ones. RW  It is the important one. You gain a lot of respect from artists and other people interested in the visual arts for your integrity. You stick by your guns and you think, ‘I am interested in making money out of art. I am interested in galleries, but I ain’t compromising the work.’ It’s difficult. IR I was also thinking of people like Gordon Matta-Clark, and his relationship with, for instance, 112 Greene Street. He did some amazing things there, partly again because the building was derelict. I was wondering whether you were influenced by that sort of work. RW  I have been paralleled to Gordon Matta-Clark for many years. But funnily enough, I didn’t come across his work until about 1985–6. But there was a body of work out there. On the surface there are very close similarities, but we are coming from very different fields. I was coming from a formalist idea of undoing – taking the given world and playing with it. As hinted at in Big Dipper, I was becoming more involved in the setting for the sculpture. So I ended up building settings as sculptures, like a staircase or that sort of thing. So Gordon Matta-Clark and I were sort of parallel. I think he was more of a political player with those ideas.

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He was really looking at why buildings were derelict. I was saying, ‘Great, a derelict building, I can do something with that.’ IR Are you political at all? RW  I’m not a political animal. I have got opinions and viewpoints. I could say A Slice of Reality (2000) was the breakthrough because what happened was I worked as a formalist up until about 2000. But then something entered the work which is called context, like historical/ social, not really political. The North Meadow Sculpture Project, organized by Andrea Schleiker, was located around the dome site, but Antony Gormley and myself both wanted to work off-site, on the river. My reason was that I wanted to work architecturally and what better way than to take maritime architecture and do something to it? To not just talk about these parcels of space if you slice it open and reveal it, but also ‘why are there no ships on the river? What happened?’ IR It was a very busy place. RW  This was going to be something that was going to rust itself back into the river, as a lament to a lost river industry. The only other project with a political take would be European Capital of Culture, Liverpool 2008. Taking central government money from London and spending it on a sculpture that animated a derelict building in Liverpool, which got people from all over the world to come and look at that derelict building. IR I was wondering about One Piece at a Time from 1987, which was up in the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle … RW  That was when I’d already established myself with Anne Bean and Paul Burwell in the Bow Gamelan Ensemble. We had gotten together on a one-off gig at the London Musicians Collective in 1983 and we were immediately and suddenly on the road, travelling to Europe and doing gigs. It got bigger and bigger until about 1991, when a decision had to be made whether we really were going to go for the whole juggernaut or whether we were going to hold on to our personal careers. Paul was a solo performance artist working with sound – mainly drums. Anne was a performance and installation artist, and I a sculptor. We would be on the road, then I’d rush back, and then we’d be back out on the road again. It was quite a schizophrenic existence. But there were moments when I could marry the two activities together, so One Piece at a Time was inspired by the acoustic possibilities of that enormous space within the footings of the Gateshead side of Tyne Bridge. IR It has been written about as being a social commentary, which is why I brought it up here.

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RW  There was a given on that. It was a Television South-West Arts organized project, where they selected nine artists for nine sites around the UK. I won the Tyne Bridge. The whole idea from TSWA was that this shouldn’t be permanent works. Everyone opened at different times, but we each only had five weeks, after which the work had to be removed, so I thought, ‘I’m going to build sculpture as an event.’ I thought about the idea of going from a visual to an acoustical experience and the whole idea of a kinetic experience. I ended up hanging all these car parts in the space. They were all fastened into the ceiling through a floor and then on an apparatus that cut the rope and about forty would drop every day. They would fall and the sound was recorded. Then on a second day another forty would drop and be recorded along with the previous day’s recording, so you accumulated the sounds. At the very end of the five weeks, there were only about forty or fifty pieces up in the ceiling, but there was the sound of around six hundred parts falling. You went in and witnessed the work from within a caged area, because there were doors falling down, bonnets, bits of engine, and springs bouncing everywhere. It wasn’t intended as threatening but it added to the drama. IR There was also the work that you did for the Venice Biennale in 1986, where you were throwing hot metal at a tilted table. Was there an element of danger here as well? RW  It’s like a magic trick. It is theatre. It can look dangerous but it is not. I like to be experiential. I like stuff. I like playing with stuff. In that work, it was an action to produce the work. It was not a performance. I had made a table that was slightly tilting, which was my version of Venice sinking on piles, and I covered it with thermal paper. I did an action painting on that by taking lead and throwing it. As it hit the paper it skitted across it, triggering the chemicals in the paper, causing bright, Renaissance blue-coloured markings. Then that piece of paper was pinned onto a wall. The remaining bits of lead would fly off the edge of the table and hit the wall, which made this tide line around the room. So this was sort of a positive/negative: the residue of an event that took place, how did it go from process to product – those kinds of questions. But it was the many moments of throwing metal, all recorded on this one sheet of paper. I suppose I was saying that Venice is almost a state where time has held still since the Renaissance period, and here I was, trying to hold on to time as non-moving. My actions were recorded as frozen moments.

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One or two people came in and photographed, but the audience weren’t in at that time. All the artists were still building their works. IR Looking through a lot of your works, we only know them through photographs. They don’t exist anymore. What are your feelings about their translation into a 4 × 6 inch photograph? RW  Well, it’s frustrating. The reason that one doesn’t have a back catalogue in physical existence is two-fold. One is that to store work is an expensive business. The other thing is that the practicalities of storing some of this stuff are quite difficult. Some pieces were fabricated, but others you just could not take apart. A casting or a big aluminium rig has got to be broken. I started to adopt the idea that although they were finished works that had prices on them, if they didn’t sell during the gallery programme or whatever space they were being exhibited in, they would be dismantled and all the plans on how they were built would be drawn up so they could be recreated in the future, anytime. It did not have to be the original work. A classic example of that is the oil in 20:50. I don’t store it. I first made 20:50 at Matt’s Gallery. Subsequent to that it went to the Royal Scottish Academy, straight after Saatchi had bought the Matt’s Gallery piece. Everybody who interviewed me asked me, ‘How do you ship the oil?’ I said, ‘You don’t. You make another one.’ At the time that concept was outrageous; no one could believe that’s what you did. People wonder why I don’t keep any of this stuff because it’s unique, and I say, ‘Well, it could be,’ or I could sell one and have an artist’s copy. People now usually make three. I’m no different to them. It’s just that I don’t have the original. There have been instances where I have reformed things. I am in conversations all the time about my back catalogue. If someone comes along and says, ‘I’d love to have Big Dipper,’ yes, I could do it. I would probably take a different spin on it, but it would have the nucleus of the previous idea. I don’t have any qualms about that sense of re-creation. Some of my works would probably not naturally exist now given when they were built. Let’s say One Piece at a Time. That was an event piece. Some of the recording equipment used in that work is now obsolete. So I would have to go digital, which would give me a different type of sound, so you get changes. They are minor. No one would really notice them. How long does a piece of sculpture last for? If it’s in bronze, you’ve got longevity. It’s not infinite, but you’ve got longevity. And the same with stone. If you’re fabricating in wood or any of the plastics, or something

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like that, things corrode, move and change and are subject to all sorts of factors. Some of them are a conservator’s nightmare. So I’m not worried. I don’t mind recreating works, adapting or changing. The Tate recently acquired She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. It doesn’t exist. It was made at Matt’s Gallery in 1989 as a one-off. There were many, many drawings and models and that sort of thing, and photographs and notes of thinking and sketching. The Late Show did a programme. The Tate own all of that. I’ve had a discussion with them about if they were to find a window, could I recreate it? I say ‘yes’. It would not be the same. It would not be a Crittal clear window like it was at Matt’s Gallery. It would be different in the same way as 20:50. The ingredients are the same. The focus is different. IR You had a number of exhibitions at Matt’s Gallery, so clearly you had a good relationship? RW  Yes, I had four, one-man shows of which we sold two works of the four. The first piece of work was Sheer Fluke (1985), which was a cast beam in the room. That harkened back to a childhood experience of visiting the natural history museum with my father and going into the great whale room and seeing that mass suspended in the space. I did not see the whale. I just thought, ‘How did they get this into the room?’ But of course it was built in the room. The fact that there was this mass sitting off the ground and this eye that just watched you. I tried to make a work based around all those remembered experiences. The second time was two years later, in 1987, which was 20:50. She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (1989) was a bit like 20:50, but it was about a physical inversion. If you put oil into that room, the reflection doubles the room’s size like the TARDIS in Dr Who. If you take the window out and bring it into the room, have you shrunk the architectural space physically and made the world outside much greater? It was those sorts of little details I was playing with. Then more recently when Matt’s Gallery moved to Copperfield Road I did the first show in the big space producing Water Table in 1994. IR Who represents you now? RW  I don’t have a gallery. When I left Robin, I had administrators, but I ran it myself until five years ago. Then I was approached by Michelle Souza and she wanted to be an agent for me. We signed a five-year contract to see what we could do. This is now about to expire so I’ll be back managing myself until …

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IR Can I just go back to the Bow Gamelan. How did it start? RW  It came initially out of a very close friendship between Paul Burwell, Anne Bean and myself. We shared common interests in sound making, action and performance. Our shared interest was based around sounds on the river. Welders welding, people banging pipes, resonances and echoes and barges bumping in the night. So why play a little bell when you can play two barges? We had grandiose thoughts and grandiose ideas. If there had been vast budgets we would have gone further, full time with a big tech team. We were at Butler’s Wharf together. We started doing little bits and pieces and then one day Paul Burwell (who was a member of the London Musicians Collective when it existed) invited Anne Bean and me to form a trio using homemade instruments, for one night only. We made things that had no musical history. I invented an instrument from the wire mesh off a very old bed. This was hung up and I ran an arch welder rod up and down it and it clicked with sparks. So you had a visual and you had an acoustical. It was all done using natural acoustics. If you wanted something loud, you played it louder (by hitting it or whatever) or you bolted a big megaphone on it. We used to discuss things like ‘If you had to put a sound in Wembley Stadium what would you do if you didn’t have an amplifier?’ So we started looking at early warning systems, massive sirens, steam whistles and the drone horns out at sea, as possibilities. There are ways around the problem, and if you wanted to put sound up really high, you could fire it up on rockets like explosions. I suppose we were coming from one of those Dadaist movies – that framework. We started thinking about what instruments we could make that would take thirty people to get the sound out of it. Like hauling a log across gravel, or sand, or whatever it happened to be. The Bow Gamelan was born out of sitting, drinking and talking about ideas. IR So did you have an audience for some of the outside gigs? RW  A lot of them were outside. The Bow Gamelan ensemble was flexible. We had a touring repertoire, which was basically a set of instruments we built, but we could always add to that, or we could recreate them, and they could be indoor or outdoor. We were versatile. The method of actual playing was really down to what was almost like a shopping list because the instruments were all nicknamed. You had ‘Black Betty’. You had the ‘Gobbler’. We would sit down before the gig and we’d say. ‘What shall we start with?’ We would then work off each

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other. We were incredibly sensitive to each other, but at the same time we were just like technicians, manning everything to make sure it all worked. It was highly visual as well. We used blowlamps and big industrial pipes. We had something you threw bags and bags of nails into, and this fan used to thrash them and send them out smashing against sheets of metal, so it’s like being in a hailstorm under a corrugated iron roof. There was the sense of danger. There were pyrotechnic effects. We made it very theatrical, and acoustically it was radical. It certainly was ground-breaking, and we were flavour of the month with the British Council. They sent us all over the world, playing festivals, which meant I spent up to ten years touring alongside doing my own work. IR There are overlaps though: the improvisations, spectacle and the aspect of time. RW  Absolutely. One fed the other. I had to remain a sculptor to put my element into the Bow Gamelan, and at the same time, the Bow Gamelan gave me back sufficient that I could make things like One Piece at a Time. Even Water Table at Matt’s Gallery had a paddle in there so that every now and again, you heard a ‘blub, blub, blub’ as the groundwater was agitated, rather like the balls kissing on a billiard table. The wonderful thing about the Bow Gamelan was it wasn’t individually signatured. It was just completely unique in itself but dreamt by the three of us. It survived because it was a collaboration formed out of friendship. Anne left before me. Anne and her partner had a baby in 1990. I carried on for one more year with Paul, and we brought in friends. Z’ev was very much a stand-in and the fourth member. We worked with other people, like Thames Steam Launch Company, where we could get steam for whistles and effects. I left in 1992. A lot of the stuff was being banned. You couldn’t just go in any venue and use fire. It was getting more and more difficult. It felt like the right time to go. Paul died unfortunately about ten years ago, but Anne and I still do stuff, but we do it under the name of WOB, which is Bow back to front. It’s quite fortuitous because being Wilson it’s W and Bean, Anne Bean is B. This O is the new state, this zero of Paul. He’s in there still. We did the London Contemporary Music Festival about two years ago and we’re doing a Bow Gamelan archive show at the end of this year – 2018 – at the Cooper Gallery in Dundee, Scotland. In fact I was working on that this morning with Anne just making lists up and stuff. We are hoping to

Richard Wilson tour that, but at the same time we do a live show for that as well. It is not so outlandish and ambitious as the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, but it has the essence of the Bow Gamelan in there, so yes, good fun.

Note 1

For images and further details about the works discussed in this interview, see http://www.richardwilsonsculptor.com, last accessed 19 June 2020.

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Figure 13  Antonia Payne at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. Antonia Payne by Miriam Reik, Cosmopolitan, January 1986, p. 113

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Antonia Payne

Interview 27 April 2018 IR In 1981 you became Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Where were you before that? AP Well, I did something that would be impossible now. I read English Literature at Cambridge but, already, I knew that I wanted to be involved with the contemporary visual arts. So, whenever I could, I skewed my studies that way. Straight after I finished my degree, I got a nine months’ job as an Education Research Assistant at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, funded through the national Job Creation Scheme programme. There were three of us (the other two both artists), all employed to produce Teachers’ Packs for schools. That would have been in 1977–8. From there I went to Rochdale Art Gallery as Assistant Arts and Exhibitions Officer. Very unusually for a local authority–run gallery at that time, its programming and collecting had started to place strong emphasis on contemporary art. After about a year, my boss (Mike Cross) left and I became the Arts and Exhibitions Officer in charge of programming and collections. IR What sort of programme did they have? AP  First and foremost, the gallery aimed to respond to its immediate context: it was the only art gallery in a relatively small northern town, with a very strong sense of its own identity and history and where, frankly, interest in modern, let alone contemporary, art had been largely confined to a small bunch of enthusiasts in the local art college. With very modest means, it set out to entice interest in much that would have been wholly new to local people. We aimed for generous, open conversation between new art and ideas and those that were more familiar. We wanted to prompt visitors to reconsider what they thought they already knew as much as to engage with what they were encountering for the first time. We wanted

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to create a place, for artists, where interesting activity took place and internationally current ideas were discussed. By this approach, the gallery also, of course, wanted to carve out a reputation and space for itself within the broad network of museums and galleries in Greater Manchester and the North West – many of which had stupendous collections, long histories of scholarship and far larger budgets than we could ever dream of. And by doing that, with the arrogance of youth, we hoped to start to build a reputation nationally. The programme, then, was self-consciously diverse in scope: we made good use of Arts Council touring exhibitions; we organized one big exhibition each year associated with a purchase made for the collection (established by my predecessor as having a focus on British painting). I remember an exhibition organized in the early days of the art magazine Artscribe to advocate for some of the artists it was championing at the time, and there were regular shows of work by young British artists, including many based in the region. My role, working with a great Assistant Exhibitions Officer Jill Morgan, who had come from Manchester’s then only independent contemporary art gallery, the Peterloo Gallery, was a mixture of programming and curating exhibitions, developing associated educational outreach activity and advising the Borough Council on collections development. Then the directorship of Ikon came up, and I thought I’d go for it. Incredibly, it seems to me now, I got the job. Even then, that was a pretty extraordinary turn of events. I think that the Council of Management was looking for something quite particular at that moment, especially with regard to audience development and fostering relationships with artists, of which I’d had a lot of experience at Rochdale. That professional trajectory just would not be possible now, but it was then. IR What got you interested in contemporary art? AP  I have just always been interested in art and how and why it gets made. When I was at Cambridge, one of my dissertations included consideration of the work of Art & Language, which got me very interested in what was happening in Coventry incidentally. My second was on contemporary American poetry and landscape, in which art of the period provided the main context. I’ve always wished I had gone to art school instead of university, but that’s not something either my grammar school teachers or my parents would have encouraged. I was the first in my family to go to university, and going to Cambridge was considered a big deal.

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IR How interesting! The climate was really not sympathetic towards contemporary art at the time. AP  Absolutely not. It was a completely minority preoccupation and, even within the contemporary arts more broadly, it was a niche interest. It is hard to remember that now. IR Even if you look at the first issues of Art History, it was all about historical art rather than contemporary art. If you studied art history, contemporary art was not discussed seriously, and it was hard to be taught anything about the contemporary. Although some international journals were long and well established – Artforum, Studio International, Flash Art above all – the new wave of UK-based journals like Artscribe and Art Monthly all only started in the late 1970s so, if you were an art historian, it was much more difficult to be aware of and understand contemporary art. AP  I agree. Had I transferred to study art history at Cambridge instead of English, there would have been no opportunity to study contemporary art – or even twentieth-century art. In Britain, especially, the discipline of art history, in any case, seemed largely to occupy a completely separate space from the practice of art, even though ‘art history’ was then taught in art colleges. But that relationship had started to change with the development of ‘the new art history’ and the rise of ‘art theory’, of course. Griselda Pollock, and others at Leeds especially, all in various ways very engaged with contemporary practice and artists, helped to bring that about. IR And they were prolific in dissemination. Could it be argued that an interest in contemporary art was a middle-class preoccupation then? AP  That was possibly true of all the arts before the 1980s, wasn’t it? (It’s possibly still true now!) I don’t think I would pick out the visual arts as any more middle-class than any other art form. But one of the most important changes during the 1980s was, certainly, the development of gallery education, and the absolute commitment to widening participation and access, and to developing audiences for contemporary art more generally. That went hand in hand, often, with a degree of leftist political engagement, which involved some kind of signing up to equity and equality. So, no, within context, I don’t think contemporary art was an especially middle-class preoccupation. The Arts Council seemed to be a terribly middle-class institution, and it was very much upon the Arts Council and the then regional arts associations, who certainly liked to think of themselves as less middle class in outlook, that the contemporary arts across all disciplines relied for their funding.

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Local government played a role, too, of course, but really very little in relation to contemporary art. In the visual arts, the long hangover of connoisseurship was still exerting its impact. If you look at Tate, for instance, at the beginning of the 1980s, it was arguably still very much of that world. But there was a massive change in the 1980s. The proliferation of art schools across the country, their infiltration of the universities and the sheer numbers of fine art graduates starting to emerge on the scene were all part of it. IR It gave students a way to enter higher education, rather than the London art colleges having a stranglehold on the market. AP  There were already important art schools in Coventry, Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham and so on and, although the great London institutions maintained their supremacy, there was a democratization, yes. IR The growth of art schools also allowed practising artists to have a portfolio career. Looking at Helen Chadwick’s notebooks, for instance, she went down to Portsmouth to teach. AP  Also, what was really important in the 1980s was that it was a time of publicly subsidized arts development – development admittedly before the really massive escalation of funding in the 1990s, but also before the parallel onset of a long, slow death inaugurated by well meaning, but ultimately disastrous political instrumentalization, and all but ended by financial crisis. I feel I am so lucky to have experienced that particular moment, albeit so much of the 1980s, as a decade, was anything but positive. In terms of artists, many, many artists were able financially to support themselves through part-time teaching. (Many more than those who were supported by their relationships with commercial galleries.) It was possible to be producing and exhibiting really ambitious art without having to worry about selling it or much of it. That whole UK art world economy was predicated on the availability of public subsidy and art school teaching. Importantly, teaching sufficiently to make a living was compatible with maintaining one’s practice at the very highest level. That, sadly, seems more or less unthinkable these days. IR Was Ikon Gallery still in the Pallasades shopping centre when you arrived, or had it moved to John Bright Street? AP  It had moved. Between doing my first nine-month stint after university and returning there three or so years later it had moved. The John Bright Street building was an early twentieth-century precast concrete building used, originally, as a garage showroom. With its semi-industrial feel, the

Antonia Payne Gallery’s decision to move there was wholly consistent with what was happening in art at that time, and responded to the requirements of the work that was starting to be made. The new gallery was over two floors and offered much more space. IR I remember it well – this industrial building that seemed to be able to reconfigure for each exhibition. AP  Yes, it was incredibly flexible. That is what was so exciting about it. Every time there was a new exhibition, we would remake the galleries according to the requirements of the work and the artists. Part of the development of many of the exhibitions would be working with an artist to determine what configuration would work best for what they wanted to achieve. IR I was not sure whether having this unapologetically industrial building on two floors, with the upper floor lit from above and no natural light below, would help or hinder. AP  You are right: the rear portion of the upper floor had a pitched glass roof and the basement was artificially lit. On the whole, I don’t think that this constrained anything. It meant that you had two completely different environments, both of which offered different possibilities. All the walls were built on Dexion framing using 8-foot chipboard panels and could be made and remade very easily. Although the construction and finish were crude by today’s standards, the gallons of white paint that generally went on the walls and grey paint on the floors achieved an aesthetic wholly representative of, and in keeping with, the moment. What the idiosyncrasies of the building did mean, though, was that artists presenting work (either existing work or commissioned new work) were all very much involved in a conversation with the building. That really was integral to the invitation to show there. IR Looking at your exhibition listings for the 1980s, you seem to have had one or two exhibitions a month, with a very fast turnaround.1 I seem to remember that they would start around the 25th of each month but last until a few days before the next one. AP  It was ludicrous! It wasn’t unusual to have three exhibitions going on at a time and, you are right, there was a very quick turnaround. The aim was to be open to the public, with at least one exhibition to see, as near all year round as we could make it. It was a treadmill. That was not utterly out of kilter with what others were doing at the time, but it was extreme. Over the decade, everyone started to move to longer exhibition runs. For us, it was about seeking to sustain a sense of public ownership and belonging, and a sense of new things always happening.

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IR Thinking about a short, undated interview that I heard at the British Library with you, you were saying that one of your main things was trying to reach out to the audience without compromising standards.2 You felt that it was about the methods of engaging with the audience, rather than ‘selling’ art, so programming was part of that. AP  Compared with these days, a lot of independent galleries did have relatively quick turnovers and short exhibitions. But I think we overdid it – we only managed it by working insanely hard and also, I now see, by spreading our budgets too thinly across too many projects. I don’t recognize that quote, incidentally. I wonder what I was responding to. In terms of ‘reaching out to the audience’, we had a very wide-ranging educational programme, with much of it involving input from artists. We ran an artist-in-schools programme, which enabled artists to be based part-time in local schools over an extended period. This was one of the first such programmes in the country. Already set up by the time I arrived, it grew rapidly. We also ran a regional, touring, exhibitions programme every year (some drawn from exhibitions first held at the gallery, some specially generated), which were booked by schools, community venues, hospitals and elsewhere in the West Midlands. In these and lots of other ways, we made a real push to embed the gallery in the local community, including the locally based community of artists. There were workshops for schools in the gallery, often run by locally based artists, talks by exhibiting artists, symposia, lectures and so on – all of which are a commonplace now, but much of which was still new and pioneering then. While Ikon’s core programming was funded by the then Arts Council of Great Britain, much of its community outreach programming was funded by West Midlands Arts, the regional public arts funding agency. IR You have both written and spoken about it being about and for artists. Was this structurally evident? Was there a board of artists? AP  Not a separate board of artists, but there were always artists on our Council of Management. The gallery had been created by artists in the 1960s and run by artists for a number of years after its inception, so it was incredibly important to me to retain that link. IR I think that the Arts Council was meant to be at ‘arm’s length’ from government. Did you find that you were under pressure to do anything in response to the funding, or did they trust you? AP  In my view, it genuinely was at arm’s length for most of the time, with no interference in our programming or in the way that we ran. The relationship was generally supportive and encouraging. There was a

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moment in 1983/4, in the run up to publication of the Arts Council’s Glory of the Garden strategy, when things did go disastrously wrong for a while: we were sent a four-page letter in which we were accused of being over-ambitious, with our programming unlikely to grow popular support from the general public. (Maybe that explains the British Library interview quote!) There was a big battle for the gallery, then, which, with fantastic local support and a really feisty chair and council of management, we ultimately won. Despite all that though, in retrospect I still have a sense of a lot of support from the Arts Council, even though money was really tight. IR Looking at some of your catalogues, there did seem to be input from other funds as well. So did you get a year’s allowance from the Arts Council and then look to alternative sources to top it up? AP  Ikon was one of a small national network of Arts Council of Great Britain annually funded temporary exhibition venues for contemporary art. As the decade went on, funding of some of the network was devolved to the regional arts associations and some venues closed, but outside London, Ikon remained, as did MoMA in Oxford and Arnolfini in Bristol. There was tremendous pressure, though, to raise increasing amounts of money from other sources – and that became more and more of a preoccupation. IR But the local authorities were so hard-pressed themselves. AP  It was an absolutely horrendous pressure on us. In my view, Birmingham City Council and West Midlands County Council could undoubtedly have supported Ikon and the visual arts more than they did at that time. And the Arts Council was not unreasonable in saying, ‘There must be some indication locally that you are needed, valued and supported by the local population.’ This was expected to be demonstrated not just by attendance figures, but by commitment, locally, of financial support. The Glory of the Garden was largely about trying to lever more local authority money into the arts and we and many other arts organizations most definitely played the role of ‘piggy in the middle’ in those political manoeuvrings. IR To go back to the interview I heard at the British Library, you said that you wanted to make sure that you did not compromise standards. Did you have a category about what those might be? AP  One thing that you need to remember about the 1980s was the sharp difference between what was going on in the Arts Council network of independent contemporary galleries, in the governmentally funded national institutions such as the Tate Gallery, and in local authority

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galleries and museums across the country. The perception was that the independent galleries were the places for cutting-edge, experimental art; they provided the interface between contemporary practice and the public. There really wasn’t much happening in most local-authority galleries (which is what had made Rochdale so interesting). The Tate was perceived to be mainstream, and galleries like Ikon, Arnolfini, MoMA, Whitechapel, the ICA and so on were the ‘alternative’, not least because of their close working relationships with artists. By the end of the 1980s, I would argue, they themselves were on the way to becoming another kind of mainstream and the alternative venues closest to what artists were doing and thinking were the artist-led galleries and artistgenerated, non-building-based initiatives that had sprung up during the decade, often with the sort of limited means and provisional ethos that had initially characterized the Arts Council–funded network. I think of Matt’s Gallery for example in London or Projects UK in Newcastle as early examples of this phenomenon. But in the first half of the 1980s, at least, galleries like Ikon were where you went to see contemporary art that was experimental. What I meant by ‘standards’, I imagine, was a commitment to continuing to ask the question ‘What is happening now?’ without compromise and to follow artists and their work and ideas wherever those might take the gallery, regardless of the challenges that might involve. That was the buzz of it really. IR Certainly you were exhibiting many women artists, and those from black and ethnic minorities, who were probably not being shown elsewhere. AP  Well, on the whole, they weren’t. As far as I was concerned it was a duty of a gallery like Ikon to do that, as sometimes it was to show interesting work that was not fashionable. Being out of fashion was another means by which artists found themselves marginalized. In retrospect, I think that I was very catholic in my programming; I made a self-conscious effort to enable a plurality of voices, voices of both artists and curators who, at that time, were consigned to marginal positions in mainstream discourse. It was a matter of saying to people with interesting, important, challenging things to say: ‘Here is this space and here are we, offering to work with you.’ That sums it up really. That was the project – enabling people to be heard. IR So how did you find them? Did you do a lot of studio visits? AP  I know now that people remember me as the woman who did lots of studio visits. I did take very seriously approaches from artists who sent me their slides and CVs. Everybody, then, got lots of unsolicited invitations to view work, but I think, from what I’ve been told, that I was

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probably more assiduous than most in that regard. Mona Hatoum once told me that when, as a young artist, she had sent out information about her work, I was the only person who had replied. I remember being astonished by that. Of course, most of those communications with artists couldn’t result in the offer of an exhibition, but it was just about respect, really, and giving people encouragement. IR Often that is all that it takes – just to be taken seriously. AP  It seemed to me to be part of the responsibility of the job. IR On studio visits, did you go along just to view the work, or with a checklist in mind for future exhibitions? AP  Perhaps the mechanics were different but, just as now, any curator has a responsibility to know the landscape, and the only way that you can do that is to see as much work as possible and to talk to lots of artists. By the law of averages, only a few of the artists that I visited were ultimately invited to work with us, but I hoped that most of them would have felt the exchange worthwhile, nonetheless. IR I suppose that a studio visit is also about getting feedback and a whole range of things, with an exhibition being the ultimate goal for the artist. AP  It was an exchange. It was not one way. IR Are there any exhibitions that you are really proud of? AP  I feel lucky to have commissioned some marvellous installations, really at the dawn of installation work. I especially remember Richard Wilson’s Heatwave (1986), and Cornelia Parker’s 30 Pieces of Silver (1988/9), now owned by Tate. There were wonderful exhibitions by Avis Newman and by Sue Arrowsmith, who no longer exhibits work. IR It is interesting that the works by Cornelia Parker and Richard Wilson were really important springboards for their reputation and careers. AP  Well, they were doing other things at the same time. Richard’s first installation had been realized at Matt’s Gallery and what was to prove his long-standing relationship with Robin Klassnik was pivotal to the development of his career. Cornelia Parker had already shown in an exhibition that I curated at Ikon, called Sculpture by Women, not long after she had left college. I felt very privileged to have that longer relationship with her, which went on subsequently with other projects after I left Ikon. I think that their exhibitions at Ikon were probably important early milestones in their careers. Another exciting exhibition that supported the career trajectories of young artists was The Pan-Afrikan Connection in 1982. Self-curated by the artists taking part (Eddie Chambers, Keith Piper, Wenda Leslie, Janet Vernon, Dominic Dawes) just after they had all left college, it took

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place just when the BLK Art Group was beginning to gather a head of steam and contributed to its developing discourse. Another exhibition organized by Eddie Chambers and curated by David A. Bailey, D-Max, in 1987, showcased some very interesting young Black photographers, including Ingrid Pollard. IR That, for you, must feel really good. AP  I don’t really think about it like that. I do feel incredibly lucky to have worked with some young artists at pivotal moments in their careers. Another highlight was a project with Susan Hiller in collaboration with A Space in Toronto to commission and present her work Monument (1980/1). And then there was an amazing show with Art & Language – their first, big show in the UK for ten years. There was a really rather wonderful series of Ikon-curated group exhibitions staged across the two floors: … the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to … (1988) (curated by me and my colleague, Angela Kingston); Open Futures, a show about drawing, curated by Angela Kingston; Hand Signals (1985/6) curated by my colleague Andrew Nairne, and so on. One of the highlights of the whole period was working with Rasheed Araeen on a big retrospective. I feel very privileged to have worked with him on that. So, yes, I think that there were lots of exhibitions that I feel really fortunate to have played a role in realizing. In my first two years at the gallery, we brought two amazing commissions to fruition (Chris Burden’s Diamonds Are Forever in 1981 and Dennis Oppenheim’s Vibrating Forest in 1982), which my predecessor Hugh Stoddart had initiated before he left. Working in the gallery with Dennis Oppenheim over an intense period to realize that work was extraordinary. There were lots of great painting shows, too, some generated by Ikon, some touring from other galleries (midcareer shows by Gillian Ayres, touring from MoMA Oxford and by Albert Irvin, from Sheffield Museums & Art Galleries, for example). Birmingham and its art school had been very much associated with post-war British painting and I saw that as one of the contexts with which the gallery should continue very much to be in dialogue. Lots of different shows. IR The Rasheed Araeen retrospective was a very important exhibition for him. AP  Well, Rasheed had had a confrontational relationship with the gallery before, so the exhibition also carried a particular weight and importance, I felt, in terms of a wider discourse going on at the time. That was a great

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exhibition and achieved with such intellectual and personal generosity on Rasheed’s part. IR You were really instrumental in showing sculpture and object-based work. Looking at the catalogues, you were passionate about sculptors working with materials from the world, and in Grey Matter (1988), you expressed concern about the environment and consumerism, in ways that seem very appropriate now. Was that a particular concern of yours, or was it because of what was being made? AP  Yes, they were particular concerns (and still are). They were also, of course, absolutely informed by my having the privilege of being able to think about the world through art and publicly to be able to share some of that process. As the Director of a gallery or a curator, I think you are always trying to think about and understand what artists are doing, and why they are doing it, in that moment, in a particular context. That is a responsive thing, but you can’t take yourself out of the equation either. I like to think that I tried to be responsive to what was out there. IR Looking at the catalogue Sculpture by Women (1983), one of the things that you wrote there, that was very much of its time, which people have largely forgotten, is the idea of a ‘female sensibility’, and how this should not be overlooked. That notion has now been swept under the carpet. AP  I felt, even then, that that exhibition was a really risky venture because of its central proposition. I remember having interesting conversations with Cornelia Parker about it, who was very ambivalent about taking part. It tried to tread a fine line between essentialism (which is not what it was about) and suggesting certain sensibilities at work in some practices associated with the feminine, and present in the work of a number of (predominantly) young female artists. It was my attempt, at the time, to suggest a way of thinking about some emerging art which was neither overtly engaged with feminist issues, nor overtly politically motivated, yet which nonetheless seemed to involve making processes, perspectives and sensibilities that were ‘different’. It was proposed to mark a moment in time, when the work of women was still clearly underrepresented in gallery programming and still relatively absent from what was thought of as mainstream discourse. So it was thinking about all those things. We were all to a greater or lesser extent informed by theory then. We were all reading the same things and were aware of the same writers. IR Such as? AP  Well, I was interested in all those French theorists: Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous. I was also thinking the other day that The Female Eunuch had

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only been published in 1971 – not that long before really (although a decade in contemporary art is a long time). FAN: Feminist Art News and MAKE were up and running. The New Art History was also there. IR At the time, though, all this was in the air. Just thinking about the exhibitions at the ICA at the beginning of the 1980s: Women’s Images of Men, About Time, and ISSUE: Social Strategies by Women Artists, and also Eight Artists: Women: 1980 at Acme. All of those were giving women a voice. It was normal that there were all-male shows, so it was a time when women artists thought, ‘Why would it not be normal to have all women shows?’ AP  There were some women making work who very much wanted to be part of all those debates and some who thought of it as a trap. There was already a young generation of emerging women artists, with their faces resolutely turned to the future, who refused to be pigeonholed by issues of identity. And, later in the 1980s, the Black Art movement underwent a similar trajectory. IR It was not necessarily that people were not interested in certain political or social positions, but artists wanted to feel that they had their own paths without being labelled. AP  Absolutely. There comes a moment when group identification starts to frustrate self-identification. I was highly politicized in the 1980s; how could I be otherwise living and working in Thatcher’s Britain! A gallery can be a place of resistance, not least through criticality and acting as a means of proposing, dreaming and plotting ‘alternatives’. There was something very clear to resist then, on all fronts. There was the position of women in society, the experience and effects of post-colonialism, the growth of post-industrialization, environmental degradation, Clause 28 – all of those things, among much else. I don’t know whether the fact that I was a woman encouraged my being particularly interested in what other women were doing. I do know that at one point Ikon had an all-female staff, including the technicians, and that was amazing (and unique in the UK). I think there was certainly a determination for the gallery to reflect how we saw society and to champion art’s role to ‘unsettle’. IR What do you think your most significant achievement at Ikon was? AP  Establishing a really strong working relationship with artists and making a visible link between the making of art and the showing of art, with art schools and galleries seen as part of a common project. That was really important to me. Also, I hope that we achieved some kind of continuity between audience and artist that presented an encounter with art as

Antonia Payne a collective opportunity to ‘make’ something so that the gallery itself and all who were involved with it became part of a shared project of ‘making meaning’. I was really interested in that. I wish that there wasn’t such a huge gulf between how most contemporary galleries and most art schools work. There should not be. I know, at the time, that I was seen as someone who transgressed their boundaries and tried to move productively between the two worlds. The 1980s was, of course, a decade when the idea of ‘curation’ was becoming embedded as the practice of working with artists and presenting contemporary art, certainly in this country. It also saw the rise of a new breed of ‘artist-curator’ and of artist-run galleries and projects. It was the decade when Britain’s relative insularity in art world terms started fully to break down: by the 1990s, international programming and networks were becoming much more widespread. IR What differences do you think these developments made? AP  Perhaps the 1980s represented the fag end of the long move away from connoisseurship. Because artists were, by then, making things in so many different ways; curators in galleries were necessarily becoming much more involved in the realization of their work. Because there was usually so little money it was absolutely a collaborative project between artists and gallery workers to make things happen, which was very exciting. Subsequently, I think, in the larger temporary exhibition institutions, internationalization and greater professionalization have changed things radically, in so many ways for the better. Far more artists and curators are working all over the world: artists can’t possibly see all the exhibitions in which their work is presented; they employ assistants to install work; there are often far greater levels of technical complexity. Curators have to be high-level entrepreneurs to muster the budgets they need. As the late art historian and Art & Language member, Charles Harrison, said, by way of LP Hartley, in a lecture I once asked him to give: ‘[T]he past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ IR Is there anything else you would like to add? AP  My experience of the subsidized arts sector in the 1980s, which was my milieu, was characterized by everyone working for peanuts but doing things for the crack nonetheless. Intellectual seriousness went hand in hand with playfulness, and playfulness with political engagement. Despite the lack of money, somehow, artists found the means to survive and to speak about the world in ways that continue to enrich my understanding of it and, I hope, the many hundreds of thousands

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British Art of the Long 1980s of visitors to Ikon over that decade. It was a huge ferment really. The ‘meaning making’ that was the gallery’s invitation to everyone meant engaging with art’s negotiation of instability and change, and that’s perhaps newly relevant. You need to understand things so that you can change them again (this time, perhaps for the better).

Notes 1 2

See ‘Ikon Exhibitions 1978–1989’ in Jonathan Watkins ed., As Exciting as We Can Make It: Ikon in the 1980s, (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2014), 148–50. Antonia Payne, interview – duration 8 minutes 37 seconds – with unidentified male speaker, Ikon Gallery, no date, British Library, A122740.

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Hilary Gresty

Interview 11 August 2018 IR You were the curator of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge between 1983 and 1989. How did you get into curating? HG  Well, I was just very lucky. I was a research assistant in the library at the Tate, and it was the time when artists began to make books, and one of the things that I was responsible for was helping purchase artists’ books. I was also in daily contact with the curators at the Tate such as the collector Dr David Brown who before going into museums had been a research vet, Catherine Kinley and Sandy Nairne. While I was at the Tate I decided to go to the Courtauld and do an MPhil in twentieth-century art history. My first degree was in philosophy and sociology, and I had then done a librarianship postgraduate diploma and a concurrent MA in historical bibliography, in which I researched Victorian book illustration. But, through working at the Tate, I got very interested in contemporary art. So I went to the Courtauld and worked part-time at the Tate while I was doing that. I was just really, really lucky that I went straight from my MPhil to Kettle’s Yard with no direct curatorial experience. I think that it was partly because I had done my MPhil on the shift from object-based to non-object-based sculpture at St Martins School of Art in the 1960s and 1970s. So I knew quite a lot about contemporary art through that, and before I was at the Tate I worked in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, so I had quite a lot of museum experience as well as contemporary art knowledge. I suppose in those days that was quite unusual, and Kettle’s Yard requires a combination of collections and contemporary art expertise. I suppose also – it would not happen now, quite rightly – but Alan Bowness was on the board of trustees at Kettle’s Yard, and he knew me from the Tate. Again, during my MPhil, I had done some research for the Whitechapel Art Gallery. There was the big sculpture show in

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1981, which I worked on. I helped do all the artist biographies and the catalogue. IR Do you want to talk at all about that show: British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, which was an extraordinary exhibition. HG  It was extraordinary, except that there were very few women in it. Nick and Sandy would use the Tate library at either end of the working day to do their research and I did basic research for them. The show was in two parts and included sculptors all the way through – Hubert Dalwood, Jacob Epstein, George Fullard, etc., right up to conceptual and performance practices. It was also, for me, a tremendous privilege to work with Nick and Sandy. You do not often get that sort of opportunity; Nick was subsequently my referee for Kettle’s Yard. Kettle’s Yard at that time was very un-professionalized. When I arrived, I did not even know what a mirror plate was, for instance. I had never done anything practical like that, let alone management at that level. Jeremy Lewison – my predecessor – was the first curator who had not been appointed by Jim Ede, and I was the first woman. When I got there I was horrified; I had no experience but was supposed to have two trainee assistant curators. I said to the board that it had to become more professional – ‘How do you expect me to train people when I have no experience myself.’ IR Andrew Nairne was assistant curator with you? HG  Yes, Andrew Nairne, who is now director of Kettle’s Yard. He was assistant curator for a year and a bit – it was very good training for someone working there. So that is how I got into curating. I was incredibly lucky as I did not have the pre-experience. But I think I had had excellent role models, and I had excellent support. There were lots of people I could draw on, and the Tate was incredibly supportive of Kettle’s Yard. For instance, when we did the joint exhibition on Ezra Pound, we borrowed the big Epstein sculpture of Ezra Pound from a private owner, and we could only have that on the grounds that we had full-time supervision. The Tate paid for that extra invigilator, as the exhibition went on to the Tate. Now it would be unusual for Kettle’s Yard to make an exhibition in collaboration with the Tate. But the art world was very small, and there were very few galleries outside London with the emphasis on contemporary art – just the Ikon, Arnolfini, the Contemporary Art Centre in Sunderland, Newlyn, and MoMA Oxford. Kettle’s Yard had the collection as well, so although it might not have the big space, it had that extra clout when seeking loans and collaborations.

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IR What was the relationship between the gallery and house? HG  It has always been one. But, apart from the core salaries, which came from the endowment and the university, the money for the exhibitions programme had to be raised. The Arts Council wanted to have art outside London in the Eastern Region. There was nowhere else. The Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia was just starting. We got Henry Moore Foundation money as well, and everything else had to be raised through other channels – for example, the French Embassy and Visiting Arts for a French exhibition – in which we incidentally showed Sophie Calle in the UK for the first time. The residencies, such as the one Veronica Ryan had in 1988, were funded by the Arts Council. There were similar residencies in Oxford. It was definitely targeted as a university residency. They went back to the late 1970s. Mary Kelly was the seventh in 1985/6, and she was before Sue Arrowsmith, but Mary was also the first woman. When I arrived, Paul Gopal-Chowdhury was doing a residency at Gonville and Caius. My first one was Dhruva Mistry – the sculptor – with Churchill College, and then it was Mary Kelly at what was then New Hall. Then Sue and Veronica. IR They all seemed to be affiliated to different colleges. HG  The way it worked was that there was a very nice studio in the grounds of Newnham College which Kettle’s Yard paid for, and then every year you had to find a college who would give them dining rights, accommodation and food and make them a fellow for a year. It was a question of going around to the colleges and persuading them that this was a brilliant idea. For example, Veronica went to Jesus College, which was really easy. Colin Renfrew, Master of Jesus College, was already collecting young artists and was really supportive. We had an exhibition of MA students work from Goldsmiths, and he bought some work from that, for instance. He was there for quite some time, built the collection and set up the regular sculpture shows. He is now Lord Renfrew. On the whole it was an immensely good scheme. The college gained a free fellow – the stipend was paid by the Arts Council – which helped to broaden out the academic community … For the artist, they gained a year out, without any obligations, which was really valuable. They would have open studios and would work towards an exhibition – but that was of benefit to them. They all gave substantive contributions to their colleges in one way or another.

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IR Were there regular exhibitions? HG  There would be a culminating one. I think that sometimes we would do a welcoming display at the beginning of the residency. Veronica also selected an exhibition for us in 1988 – Dislocations – which included Zarina Bhimji, Simone Alexander and Mona Hatoum, who did a performance based on her upbringing in Beirut, among others. Her final show was slightly after her residency. Her residency at Jesus College was the catalyst for their ongoing Sculpture in the Close exhibitions and sculpture collection. IR Thinking about Kettle’s Yard, aesthetically it is unique, and at that time it had the hovering presence of Jim Ede. Could you, for instance, have an exhibition in the gallery and allow the works to spill into the house or make interventions in the permanent collection, or were they quite separate? HG  It was difficult when he was alive. As soon as Jim died, curators could do interventions in the house. But when I was there it would not have been possible. The German artist A. R. Penck’s rock band gave a concert in the house, and we had performance works – for example, Gary Stevens in the house. But you could not change anything in the house – it would have been too distressing for Jim – he was elderly at the time. The precedent had been set by Jeremy Lewison for the gallery to operate an independent programme. I had the advantage that I had come from London with the expectation that I was there to provide a programme of contemporary practice. I was not there to shore up something. I felt quite confident about that. When I arrived, there was an expectation that Kettle’s Yard would put on a particular kind of programme. While I was there we started the Friends of Kettle’s Yard, which was brilliant, but there was an underlying expectation about what they felt Kettle’s Yard should be doing. I probably upset a few people by thinking, for instance, that having a selling craft show before Christmas was not necessarily a priority given the limited exhibition opportunities for contemporary artists. I thought that we were being funded by the Arts Council primarily to show contemporary art. Although you might do other things to broaden your audience, that, as the prime purpose, had to be done well. There was the recognition that we should do a mixed programme. We tried to do that and take touring shows that would encourage a broad audience, but it also seemed to me that it was important to create opportunities for young artists and contemporary practice, as there were

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so few venues or opportunities outside London at that time. While I was there the entrance way was opened up onto the street and became a space. We had rather an unfortunate start with that – initially Coracle Press ran the space, but unfortunately it did not work out financially. But it did mean that we had that smaller space as well as the main gallery to show work. We were able to do some light touch, but interesting shows there, like one done with Sharon Kivland, who curated a fantastic exhibition, Works for Shelves (1988) – using little, glass bathroom shelves. We invited about forty different artists to make shelf-sized work. Phyllida Barlow, for example, made one, which was great! She still talks about it. We were able to do things like that. I also felt that there was an interesting option to take work outside the gallery. For example, we did this fantastic performance with volunteer cyclists on Parker’s Piece with Charlie Hooker – Night in Bike City – in 1986. It was a wonderful sound piece. He choreographed the cyclists over three nights in mid-summer. It was before LEDs, so every bike had batteries and torches attached to it, and every basket carried a tape recorder with the soundtrack playing. It was wonderful. We did lots of things like that. Again, I thought that was a way to reach different and new audiences. IR You had an amazing outreach programme. HG  It was small at the beginning. But we also had this wonderful flow of volunteer interns, like Fiona Bradley, Ian Hunt, Ben Lewis and Edmund de Waal. We also got some County Council money for a dedicated education post. The education officer was Lucy Dawe Lane, who started as a volunteer and then went onto the Whitechapel Gallery as Community Education Officer. Felicity Lunn started with us, went on to work at the Whitechapel and then ran Kunstverein Freiburg. We had a fantastic inflow of people who would tip up, paint walls and help out. They were really engaged. We used the churchyard quite a lot. Cornelia Parker worked twice with us in St Peter’s church, which was right next door to Kettle’s Yard. For a few years there was the Cambridge Festival. One year we did a piece with Roxanne Permar in a little derelict house in Cambridge that she filled with stacks and stacks of textile rubbish. In another we worked with performance artist Richard Layzell across the city. Another time we hung a large portrait by Tony Bevan in the public library for a year. The other really good thing that happened when I arrived was that the Cambridge Darkroom was just opening. They were at the other end of Cambridge and had established links with community practice.

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Mark Lumley, the director was really good. I think that he came through community photography, and the refugee artist and designer Pavel Büchler also became associated with the Darkroom. There was a perfect storm of timing that meant we could work together. We did three joint open shows with them, with the idea that they were thematic (Next Tomorrow, Death and Post Morality) and open to any media. We were able to attract really good artists because it was such an open brief. IR Certainly Helen Chadwick, Cindy Sherman and many other major artists showed there. HG  Yes, the Darkroom was really important. The Arts Council policy at that time was to support photographic galleries. So they were given good money, and it was a really good link across Cambridge. There had been a really unfortunate bit of programming – not by me. The week that they opened, Kettle’s Yard had programmed a major, touring, photographic show from the Arts Council. How unsupportive can you be? So my immediate reaction was that we needed to make friends with these people, to try to make it positive rather than a negative thing. It was such a small contemporary art world, and Cambridge was quite isolated in some ways. It had a very particular idea about what contemporary art should be. I felt incredibly isolated coming from London. The first show I programmed was a John Cage drawing show in 1984. I did it in collaboration with Mark Francis at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. I thought that this was a fantastic opportunity to have a full weekend conference around performance, Black Mountain College etc. We did a John Cage concert, and we got experts talking about Black Mountain. It was a real eye-opener. I had been at Kettle’s Yard about six months; it was the first thing I had programmed and thought this would be really exciting. However, everyone came on the coach from London, and about three people came from Cambridge. We had a really good speaker list; Lynne Cooke and the performance artist Antony Howell, for example, spoke. It was not a naff line-up. IR What a shame that Cambridge University students would not have been interested! HG  I know. It is something to do with the fact that the art history department at that time did not teach anything beyond the early twentieth century. It was very traditional. I think that the people who did come would have been students in non-arts subjects. At that time there was a small Foundation, but no degree course in fine art in Cambridge.

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Anglia Ruskin had not started. So there was no body of art students. It was difficult to get studios in Cambridge; there was no art infrastructure. It is also very close to London, and with Acme houses right out into Leytonstone, why live in Cambridge? So that was another reason to work with the Darkroom and create our own critical context. IR  If you had performance artists, or artists working for shows, did they go back and forth to London, or did you put them up, or … HG  Some stayed in the bedroom in Kettle’s Yard. We would have to find the money to put them up in hotels if necessary. But the train connections are good. It was just very different. We felt that it was important for artists to be paid properly and to be looked after. I do remember having lengthy discussions with artists over frames, who should pay for them, etc., and I am sure that sometimes we were not quite as good as we could have been, but we did try. Touring shows and partnerships were quite common in those days – probably because it was a smaller art world. IR  I saw that you did some with Matt’s Gallery – like Nan Hoover’s Barely an Instant (1986/7). HG  I think that that came about because I wanted to do a show with Nan, whom I had seen perform at the Tate, and Robin said, ‘Why don’t we do it together?’ He and I went to Amsterdam to visit Nan. It was similar to when I was going to do a show with Victor Burgin, and Declan McGonagle at the ICA wanted to do one, so we collaborated. Likewise, for Mary Kelly’s Interim, we collaborated with the Fruitmarket and Riverside in London (1985–86). In order to do a show like that, you would talk with your colleagues and it was the only way to get a catalogue, the work, etc., produced. Before she got the residency, Veronica (Ryan) did some work with us on some outreach programmes. Because of that, Jenni Lomax, with whom she had worked at the Whitechapel, was very helpful and advised us on outreach. I always remember Veronica doing these artists in schools’ programmes. In those days, we got funding from the Regional Arts Boards for those. I remember her coming back and saying that she had been doing one somewhere out in the Fens, and because it was close to the American base, there were quite a lot of black children. She said that their faces when she walked in just lit up. They had not seen another black adult. Lucy Dawe Lane was really good. I remember a primary school from as far afield as March, for example, coming into the gallery for workshops.

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IR Looking at some of your booklets about the exhibitions and forthcoming events, your programming was ambitious.1 For instance, on one I saw that you had project sheets on various themes, quiz sheets and drawing sheets. You had a Children’s Art Club and a slide talk available free for teachers. You also had a teachers’ seminar, a lunchtime tour, Kettles Yard music, Saturday tour and a lecture on contemporary sculpture by Lynne Cooke from UCL. This did not seem to be unusual. HG  We certainly saw this as important. When I arrived there was an assistant curator, Sarah Papworth, who had started the club. This was lovely, because the children could just come after school. Obviously, it was not a big group – they would work in the gallery and house. Then we found a really good volunteer, an Australian artist called Charlie Sheard, who would come and help with the slightly older children. We took it for granted that these things needed to be there and were part of what an art gallery was about. IR How many exhibitions would you have in a year? HG  I think that exhibitions ran for about eight weeks. There were quite a lot of them each year. It was expected that you were trying to give opportunities to artists and keep the public engaged. You were very conscious that you wanted to get audiences in, engage different audiences and have a continuous through flow. When I went to Kettle’s Yard, I did make a point of meeting Antonia Payne at the Ikon, Jeremy Rees, who was at the Arnolfini at the time, and Stephen Foster at the John Hansard. Antonia became a good friend, and actually we did some things together after we had both left. I remember we did an event for Artists’ Newsletter with Martha Rosler. We had slightly different programmes during the 1980s, as the Ikon had been set up as an artists’ space and had connections with the art school in Birmingham as well. IR How did you pick your exhibitions? HG  Artists would send in slides. But I worked really hard at going to openings to see what was out there. Quite often I was influenced by artists that I would meet who would tell me about other artists. Then particular galleries, like Matt’s Gallery would contact us. There was also the expectation that there would be some historical exhibitions in the mix. The younger artists, we would try to cross-programme with the Cambridge Darkroom. There were the artists residencies. The Arts Council were very supportive. I remember Joanna Drew, then Arts Council Director of Art, coming up and sitting on a delivery of bubble wrap and chatting for a couple of hours about the programme. The Arts Council were, at that time, interested in the exhibitions and

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ideas rather than just accountability although that was obviously important. I know with the residencies we were very conscious that we needed to diversify – that was part of the underlying remit. If you think of the 1980s, there were Maggie Thatcher, AIDS and the miners’ strike, which were huge things. There was Section 28 on one hand, and the beginnings of the fall of the Berlin wall on the other. It was a period of change. Quite a lot of the programming was influenced by all of that. That was what people were thinking about. I don’t think that until Maggie Thatcher had gone we all quite realized how terrible it had been in so many ways. Cambridge was quite a conservative, with a small c, place. When I was first at Kettle’s Yard, there was an opening, and someone told me that I should go home and put on a skirt – I didn’t, but at the time that sort of thing was not unusual. I don’t think that anyone had ever told me what to wear since school days. IR That was part of the era. There were certain structures that were starting to crumble, but there were particular expectations that were still there. HG  I do think that the period was challenging, and the whole AIDS epidemic was terrible. We showed artists who died a year later. One of the joint open shows that we did – with Dawn Ades and Stuart Morgan as selectors – was on the theme of death (1988). It was so much part of the era. Stuart Morgan was very supportive about the programme and came to Kettle’s Yard quite a lot. I was lucky coming from London and also having a cross-disciplinary academic background. Lynne Cooke had been my external examiner for my MPhil, and she would come up. I knew Michael Newman, for example, just through being in London so I could invite people who were the key critics, writers and thinkers of the time. I also had a supportive network of like-minded people in Cambridge, such as the art historian Ivan Gaskell and writer, performer and theatre director Claire Macdonald who had been a Judith E. Wilson writing fellow. There was never any trouble getting interesting people to come to Cambridge. We did a big Constructivism in Poland exhibition that my predecessor had set up, which came from the Sztuki in Łódź. Ryszard Stanisławski, the director, came over. He was one of the curating superstars at the time, but he was so delighted to be doing something in England. That exhibition went to MoMA in Oxford and the Riverside Studios in London. It was a big thing in what was still the communist era. Ryszard was a big supporter of Kettle’s Yard, and all these people gave one confidence. I believed one could do anything.

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IR Are there any exhibitions or other aspects that you are particularly proud of? HG  Well, I suppose the exhibition that I did as a result of my MPhil, 1965–1972 When Attitudes Became Form (1984), was quite interesting historically. A slot came up and I phoned up Nick Serota and asked him whether he thought it would be a good idea given how recent the work was historically. He said I should go for it. So we did. Victor Burgin remade his floor piece. Barry Flanagan did his sand heap. Michael Craig Martin was in that show, and he remained a really good and supportive person to have in the background. That show lives on – people still talk of that. It toured to Le Nouveau Musée, Lyon, with a Richard Deacon show, which I always thought was a really intelligent piece of programming. I was very proud of the open shows which were unique in their concept at the time. There were a lot of individual artists that I worked with: Susan Hiller, Veronica Ryan and Mary Kelly. The residencies were great, and each artist brought something distinctive. I remember Mary Kelly organizing a really interesting panel discussion. The last show that I did there After 1789: Ideas and Images of Revolution was a mixed show stimulated by the anniversary of the French Revolution, which asked a great range of artists, writers, academics to nominate a work. So Dawn Ades, Guy Brett, Lubaina Himid, Dan Graham, Paul Gilroy, Marina Warner, Conrad Atkinson, Nigel Coates, for instance, all chose or showed a work. I worked on it with the designer Tony Arefin, who produced the first issues of Frieze Magazine with Matthew Slotover. He designed these posters and then plastered the gallery with these photocopied posters symbolizing revolution. The show had all sorts of really interesting work from Vladimir Mayakovsky books to Simon Patterson paintings. The show that we did with Pavel Büchler – Turning over the Pages, Some Books in Contemporary Art – was a personal highlight. We had the Kiefer books – Ian Hamilton Finlay, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, the Poiriers, Hanne Darboven etc. That was a really interesting exhibition. I found it really interesting to work with others to curate shows. Don’t know what I was proudest of really. The Cambridge Festival gave one the opportunity to do off-site shows, which were great. I remember Phyllida Barlow doing one of her big bin bag pieces in the churchyard. And, of course, the performance by Charlie Hooker. I am pretty sure that that was the first outdoor large, participative performance that a gallery had done. Charlie had done a

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performance in a car park in Gateshead, but I don’t think that a gallery had programmed anything like Night in Bike City before. IR That must have been fantastic! HG  It was. I am just sorry that there were not better archival records of that. You can get the sound of the bicycles in Parker’s Piece with their recorded music in the Tate archive, as part of the Audio Arts tapes but we weren’t very good at making sure things were photographed and documented. IR Where did you go after Kettle’s Yard? HG  I went freelance. I felt slightly burnt out really. It all sounds wonderful, but it was difficult. I don’t think that I was very good at it in some ways – not a very good staff manager – I had no skills when I started. The programme was good, but behind it, it felt a bit rickety. IR Everyone I have interviewed has said things like ‘We had no money, we had few staff … ’ HG  It was all very hand to mouth, and I think we were expected to work really hard. We thought nothing about staying up all night to get something done. But it is not the way to treat your staff. I think I was too focused on the end product. Politically and socially it was a moment. In the shift in the art world it was also a moment. I remember Damien Hirst phoning me up and asking for advice on how to publicize an exhibition – which of course was the Freeze exhibition (1988). It was a moment of lots of things just coming together and moving forward. It was a very interesting time to be part of.

Note 1

See, for instance, the small leaflets that accompanied exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard that are archived together at the British Library, General Reference Collection X.0425/253.

Figure 14  Veronica Ryan, Defined Place, 1988. Cement, canvas. 42 × 33 × 13 in. Photo: James Austin. Installation view, Veronica Ryan, Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge, England, 19 November 1987–8 January 1988. © Veronica Ryan. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

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Interview 26 March 2018 IR I just thought we might start with your experience of learning at Corsham Court. What were you taught, and were there any things that you carried forward into later work? VR  Even though Corsham was complicated and difficult, it was probably good for me to deal with those complications, which made it possible to go to the Slade. To go back a bit, I did my Foundation course at St Albans, which was very rigorous. The end-of-term crits were very critical and tough, and students would come out crying. You would have very critical scenarios, and tutors would draw all over the work. In the teaching I have done more recently, you just could not have crits with students like that; they would just not tolerate it. I remember when I was teaching later, I drew on a student’s work. She was really upset and said, ‘Do you mind, I don’t want you drawing on my work.’ At her age I just would never have said that to any tutors; it would not have occurred to me. Part of the conversation with students was not to become too attached to their student work, and certainly when you are learning to draw as a Foundation student, part of becoming aware of how you work is having this type of detachment, and not becoming upset about this or that. The Foundation was very rigorous in terms of critical discourse, as was Corsham in the first year, where it felt a bit like I was a naughty girl. It was very male focused. Katherine Gili was the only woman who came to give us tutorials, and she did not come often. She was welding a lot and followed the David Smith tradition. There was only one other black student, who was studying graphic design. I was working between ceramics, sculpture and printing. In ceramics, during the first year, I was making these egg-like forms. I was also looking at Brancusi. But rather than seeing this in the context of me looking at Brancusi, certainly

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one tutor said that this was typically female territory. Another women student was making work using tampons and had a very difficult time. I think this was partly to do with the staff being all male and could not engage with some of the subjectivities that young women students needed to engage with. So it was just poo-pooed as not being about art. IR I am just reminded of works using tampons, ceramic sculptures and egg shapes as being part of the influence of Judy Chicago and American feminist practices. Were you aware of these? VR  I was aware of From the Center,1 which was in the library and I had read. Judy Chicago was certainly one of the American artists I was aware of. It was only later at Corsham in complementary studies, when we were thinking about what our written paper was going to be about, that I became more engaged with this. Of course I was coming straight from ‘A’ levels, where we had been reading Henry James and Nabokov, and I continued to read some of these authors. At school we were also looking at Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and some other women writers. IR It is interesting because the language used by James, Nabokov and Hughes is so rich in the way that they evoke scenes … VR  Yes, but I have not read them for a while. It is interesting how at certain times you are able to concentrate on particular writing. As a result of the contextual studies part of the course, I found a wonderful bookshop called Beacon Books in Finsbury Park and found a lot of African American literature and artists, including Betty Saar and Faith Ringold. I was intrigued by Betty Saar, who was using a very different language to that which that I was familiar with at ‘A’ level, or in contextual studies at Corsham. There we were looking at people like David Smith, Bill Tucker and Brancusi. For a long time I could not look at David Smith. Now I can see his work much more in context, and I really love his work. At that early point when you have just left school, it needed different type of input. It was very difficult. Mike Penny was a tutor at Corsham who was important for me, and he had spent quite a lot of time in West Africa. I did quite a lot of woodcarving there and was looking at Miro towards the end of the first year, and then at some of the women working in textiles and weaving at the Bauhaus. I did not pursue that direction at the time, as it would have been critiqued as not being a sculptural language. I met Bill Tucker many years later in upstate New York and had a conversation with him about his generation of artists making it very difficult for me to feel that I could have become a professional artist.

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I also discussed this with Philip King when I later met him. They both acknowledged that it was a very difficult time and that they had contributed to the way that women artists felt alienated. Women artists are still not represented properly. Women artists are still not paid properly. If you look at the statistics put together by the Guerrilla Girls, women artists are still not equal in terms of representation. There is a lot of ignorance still. How does one address this now? There is also the question of diversity, and someone said to me recently that they know this problem exists but do not know how to fix it. The problems are so much part of a structural ethos that has evolved over a long period of time that it is hard to see, in terms of funding, etc., how to rectify it. It is an inclusion problem. Just include people, and pay them properly. At one level it is really basic. IR Yes. But I think that between the late 1970s and the late 1980s there was a bit of a shift. Although not great, you could never have had a lot of Brit Art, for instance. There has been a small shift, but perhaps that was a beginning. VR  Hmm. I should mention that at school the British women artists that I was aware of were Barbara Hepworth and Elizabeth Frink. We saw bits of Camille Claudel, whom one could see modelling and making work. Early writing did not say how much of the work was hers, giving the credit to Rodin instead. Now there is that wonderful museum in France – which I have not been to yet – that has a big collection of her own work (Musee Camille Claudel). But what an awful situation. She had a nervous breakdown and then her work was forgotten for such a long time. Then I started to be aware of Eva Hesse. IR Yes, I was wondering about her in relation to your work – her containers, her loose link with Minimalism … VR  Well, she was the most influential artist for my work at the time, along with Barbara Hepworth. In my second year at Corsham, there was a male artist who was making work like Hesse. And when I was at the Slade there was that wonderful exhibition that Nicholas Serota curated on Eva Hesse at the Whitechapel in 1979. That was the first time I saw her actual work. I still keep going back to her and can now see that there has been a whole generation of women artists who have been influenced by her work. There is something magical about it. Her work still resonates. At Corsham we became aware that resin is a hazardous material. We had a really good technician who warned us about that material and

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fibreglass. I did not like fibreglass – unless you wore gloves the fibres got into your skin. But, as a new material, I could see why Hesse had been so keen on it for some of her later works. It is so immediate, and there was something pearl-like or like raindrops, in the draping and looping. Her work was my introduction to Minimalism – I had not been aware of it at Corsham. Some of the structures where she poked plastic tubes into grid-like boxes, like Accession II (1969), and her drawings were really important for me. I have not looked at her recently, as there is that desire not to be over-influenced by the work that you love. You want to keep forging your own direction. But certainly she is one of my favourite artists, and when I go back and relook at her work, there is always something magical. I did not really know Sol LeWitt’s work initially. But when I was doing a project in Castlefield near Manchester, Maureen Paley did a Sol LeWitt installation of one of his drawing projects (Cornerhouse, 1987). I did not really get his work at that point. It was only later on, when I was rereading Eva Hesse’s notebooks, and I saw how Sol LeWitt was one of her fans, and really encouraged her, and how warm he was towards her and her work. Now I really like his work. In fact I have made some serial things in New York which are a bridge between thinking about their correspondence and thinking about whether there are some kinds of link in some of his earlier work. It is interesting how someone’s work that seem so hard edged, when revisited, can seem less so. IR He is not an easy or cosy artist, but there is a rightness about his work I find. Shall we come back to the Slade and think about the small scale of the work that you were making, and also your experimentation. Did some of your later concerns start here? VR  I loved the Slade. I used to go to the British Museum a lot. Lawrence Gowing was very fond of my work and took time to come in and see how I was doing. The other tutors were helpful, but he used to come in regularly to see how I was getting on. I was not over-conscious of that at the time, which is probably a good thing, because it meant that it was just something that happened. Part of what Lawrence Gowing was interested in was that I used a lot of different kinds of materials, and it was where I was becoming interested in things being contained in their particular environment. Some things were very small, but I was also looking at Sarcophagi, and I had been trying to make pyramidal structures in wood, which would just lean against the wall. In retrospect, what I feel that I am trying to come back to is some of the directness. When I left the Slade I started to

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blow up some of the small fragments of things that I had been making, and I didn’t like the way some of the work lost a certain intimacy when enlarged – there was something quite playful and intimate in the experimental Slade works. I was also looking at West African art, some of the little Ghana Ashanti bronze weights that were made using the lost wax method, and ceremonial objects rather than masks. I was looking at Ife heads, Benin Bronzes and the red seeds in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. I later started an MPhil at SOAS. My supervisor John Picton said that he was interested in my fetish-like objects that I was making. That is where I started moving from the solid things that I had made at Corsham to these more fragile, experimental things at the Slade. There was this whole period in the 1980s, where people were talking quite specifically about organic things: fruit and vegetables. I felt there was a romance attached to some of that work and felt that it was slightly removed from the fetish-like objects that I had been interested in at the Slade. It was difficult to explain to people that I wasn’t self-consciously making fruit and veg as something to do with loss or something; it was more to do with looking at West African art. I was also looking at Haitian fetish objects. I felt that some of my enquiries were being lost. There was that whole thing in the 1980s where some of the work has been appropriated into a more politicized context that removed me from some of the mythologies and cultural artefacts that I was really interested in investigating. IR When you say mythologies, do you mean narratives that gain credence within certain groups, or a way of understanding your place in the world, or … VR  When I started talking about mythologies to someone else, we were talking about Derrida, and Roland Barthes’s Mythologies (1957). There is a sense of talking about accretion of history and languages and cosmologies and also thinking about culturally identifiable artefacts. Thinking about signifiers and cultural objects in terms of particular systems, I started the MPhil at SOAS, as I wanted to understand more why Lawrence Gowing had been intrigued by what he saw as objects that had these relevant signifiers and what they signified. I started looking at Lega culture, and to be quite simplistic, Lega culture uses light bulbs, gourds and perfume bottles as a system, and in a metaphorical way they could all have the same semantic equivalent. So I think that is part of what my investigation has been about – thinking about history and what happens when histories are dislocated.

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British Art of the Long 1980s Specific to Montserrat is the connection with the volcano and the loss of cultural heritage and artefacts. In Montserrat, for instance, there is no voodoo; it is obeah. Talking to my aunt and mother, they do not like to talk about obeah and belief systems that grew out of West Africa and their systems. I am also interested that not all the indigenous populations of the Caribbean disappeared. We all thought that there were no indigenous populations in Montserrat and that they all died out by the time that Columbus got to the islands. I was reading recently that there is DNA evidence this is not the case. I always had this idea that maybe some of the original Caribs and Arawaks just disappeared off into the mountains and managed to remain in small locations. It is quite possible when you think of the ability to get lost in the mountainous region of Montserrat. Thinking about Catholicism and the missionaries in Africa and the Caribbean, one way that traditional societies managed to assimilate with Christianity was a syncretic integration of the objects and rituals of the church and worship. Thinking about disconnections, and what happens when people are dislocated from their cultural references, one of the dances of Montserrat is square dancing, which also references Irish square dancing. These traditional dance movements link with the traditional dances around Obeah, which would take place around ceremonial occasions, to get rid of Jumbies etc. At Christmas time you would set up a table with food for the Jumbies. One doesn’t talk about these things, but I am interested in objects that are made around these celebrations as cultural signifiers and their mythology and cultural accretions. In a way that is where my interests lie, and what happens when these cultural signifiers are taken away and eroded. Once people are removed from any kind of cultural inheritance, I feel that this can be a precursor to issues with mental health, as you no longer have those systems that are part of a cultural and historical framework. This is where my interest is, and I was getting anxious that this was being subverted by being appropriated into an overtly political arena. It is not that I am not concerned with politics, and the machinations and constructs around race that we inherit and have to redefine from one generation to the next; it is just that my framing is looking specifically at this part of the discourse. It has not always been very easy to assert that. I was looking at the French post-structuralist, feminist writer Julia Kristeva. I found that although the language was dense, some of her writing in terms of psychoanalysis made a lot of sense to me, and so

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I read her in preference to some of the male writers. I have a work in New York called the Archaeology of the Black Sun, and the subtitle is Musings after Kristeva, because I am quite interested in language, perception and nuance and how our identification links with our own experience as to meaning. IR It is really great to hear what your interests are and how they were manifested. On a more prosaic level, what was your studio like during the 1980s? You had a number of residencies – did you have new studios with them? VR  I don’t know how I heard about Acme, but I got an Acme house in Leyton. A boyfriend at the time, who was a year below me at the Slade, and I recently heard he has died, came to live with me there. Acme had these houses at various places in the East End. Some were being condemned, but the Acme house that I was in I could have bought in the end. I had it for a few years. We knocked walls down and I had my studio there. I submitted work for the annual Whitechapel Open in 1985 and became involved in the schools programme run by Jenni Lomax. My first residency was at a school for boys with learning difficulties. I went there every day, and some of the boys had quite difficult issues. I realized that the way to get their attention was to work with very small groups of them. If you let them play in the materials for a while, they then got around to wanting to see what would happen when we made things. IR Did you move your studio there, or were you just making work with the children there? VR  Yes. I didn’t move my studio there. There was a space to work there, as well as working with the children. IR I was also thinking of your residency in Cambridge in 1987–8, for which you would also have had to set up a studio. What happens when you set a new one up? How much does a studio matter? VR  I applied for the Jesus residency, and they had a studio in Newnham College. At that time I did not have a studio, and it seemed a good way to set up. I was in between things at that point, so to apply for something that was going to be for a whole year was going to be wonderful. The studio was wonderful and large, and I had rooms in the college and often worked in the rooms. It was a difficult year in certain ways. I had been doing a lot of teaching and was quite tired, so it was really good to have this period to work. I wanted to use the year to experiment with ideas that I had in mind, some of which were quite different from work that people had come to expect from me. I wanted to focus back onto some

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of my enquiries that I had been excited about at the Slade, as well as continuing other ideas. I did not show much of this experimental work. For the lead pieces that I did in the grounds of Jesus College I was looking at the windows, stain glass and lead guttering, and the architectural connections between the windows and the ground. Some of the works were slashed, and some I made into pools and birds had drinks out of them. I was also interested in the patina that was left by the rain. At the end of that six-week project I trampled the lead flat, and they became a series of drawings for Kettle’s Yard. They had this ongoing relationship with the ground and product. That whole process was an important part of the work and how it moved into this other realm was part of the conceptual thinking. That series of drawings is now in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. IR Having a whole year can be quite daunting, but also quite energizing. You can try things out and it does not matter. VR  Yes. That is how I saw it. There was a bit of a framework. The residency was an initiative between Kettle’s Yard and Jesus College. Hilary Gresty was the director of Kettle’s Yard during that time, and there were exhibitions there related to the residency. I opened the studio once a month and had dinner with the fellows. Some of the fellows that I had more of a dialogue with were working in microbiology, physics and mathematics. IR There always seems to me to be an organic aspect in your work, with things developing from each other that maybe scientists were picking up on? VR  That is interesting. I have just finished reading Carlo Rovelli’s Reality Is Not What It Seems,2 which has got me thinking more about cosmology. You mentioned that I work very hands-on. That is because it is the most direct way to do something. Some of the thinking and some of the processes of making are very intertwined. I remember when I was teaching at Goldsmiths, some of the students were interested in appropriation, having an idea and then having it fabricated. I think because of my early training at Corsham, and even though I found a lot of that problematic, I like the idea that I think through making the work as well as forming initial ideas. Barbara Hepworth talked about her thinking hand. It is, in part, accessing the unconscious, bringing ideas to the surface through research and the process of working. IR I was interested in your use of materials and how you seem to have loved lead.

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VR  I don’t use it any more. My use of fabric now has in part come out of my previous use of lead foil. I was intrigued that there were gradations of lead foil. There was one that was very fine, and like satin. It seemed the thinner it was rolled out, the surface would gain different colours or hues. When I went to New York you could not get lead easily – it is not in the architecture. IR Where did you get lead in the 1980s? VR  There were builders’ suppliers where you could find it. IR I was also interested in how you combined materials in the 1980s – lead with plaster, and with some quite light materials like feathers. VR  Yes, I like feathers and the contrasts of the ephemerality with quite dense materials. I think that it was because part of my training was making materials have the quality of something else. So if you were using wood and you wanted a sense of softness, you would carve it in ways that would give that resonance of softness. And so I felt that I wanted to use materials that had those qualities without having to fabricate it in that way. I suppose also, thinking about traditional cultures, the way feathers have been used in masks, etc., and of course there is that Emily Dickinson poem, a beautiful quote about feathers that resonances with that metaphorical content in the work. ‘Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all.’3 That has become a more significant part in my work. I was also just interested in using what you have. So that was partly how I started using packing cushions for fruit and vegetables. When I first went to New York they had those packing cushions for avocados that were slightly puffy. I made a whole series of works, some stacked, some I put pins in. So there is some of that work that was part of the residency I did at St Ives. IR When you talk about making and thinking being entwined, do you think there is a metaphor there, or do you imagine a textual or a layering of meaning when you use different materials? Is it more intuitive than that? VR  Well, when I was using the lead foil, I was intrigued by the idea that lead has this lovely quality but it is also toxic. I felt OK using it because I was not welding it, but then I started to become anxious about how much I was absorbing into my skin. But I was interested in the deliciousness of the material but also its inherent toxicity. Also I was interested in how

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you could do things with lead that fabrics could do and manipulate it as if it were a fabric. IR Yes, I was interested in these crossovers. I think you said that your mother was a milliner? VR  No, but she did make hats. She made all our clothes when we were little, and does patchwork. I remember our first blanket she made was a patchwork made from small pieces of our clothes from when we were children. IR All those memories. We all have our favourite dresses that we associate with something and wear until we grow out of them. To make them into a quilt is rather a wonderful thing. VR  It is. I was always interested in fabrics. Some of those early pillow pieces were large but linked to my body circumference so I could make them on my own. The pillows had to be strong enough so they could be moved without cracking. In the early 1980s people were getting rid of their old, heavy woollen blankets for duvets. I collected these from second-hand shops. When I was making the armatures I cut them into big squares and overlapped them accordingly. I liked them at that point but did not have the confidence to just leave them as fabric without covering them with plaster. That was some of the first use of fabric. Plaster bandage would have needed many more layers to achieve the same strength. I did make armatures, and one of the grid armatures I bound with wire to make it rigid without welding. When you go through a process there is a part of it you like, but you do not pay enough attention to it. It is interesting when other people notice things, and although you notice, you do not pay enough attention. I spent a lot of time knitting and doing patchwork during the 1980s. There was a moment when they ceased to be separate activities from sculpture. When I got to New York in 1990, combining the activities became more relevant. It took a while to see how to do this, but of course Louise Bourgeois did this, and Mike Kelly, the American artist, made all these early crochet works, which I thought were wonderful. I started to combine the two, and that is what I have been doing, and still experiment with these juxtapositions. Because I work in the United States and Britain, working in textiles, etc., means they are easily transferable and can be in sections. One of my plans is to make a stack of packing cushions in fired clay. I recently went to see the people in the Leach potteries. When I was at Corsham I was really interested in ceramics, but at that point I realized that if I went into ceramics, I would have been pushed into being a ceramic artist, which is

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a different thing. It is different now. Since Grayson Perry made his pots, the whole landscape of attitudes towards ceramics has changed. Because I would have been taught about structure and glazes, it would have been difficult for me to have that enquiry that was part of sculpture and art history. Prior to this residency (2018, St Ives), Sophie Bowness said ‘Had I thought about clay?’, and it seems like a good moment to experiment with that now. But of course I want to carry on with things in paper and with collecting things and seeing their nuances. One day I would like to have a stack in aluminium and maybe bronze. What has been interesting about the Art House project4 is they documented work while I was working on it. Finally – for the first time – I have documentation of my working and the processes. That really is quite an important way of thinking about the work. It becomes a different kind of investigation.

Notes 1 2 3

4

Lucy Lippard, From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art, (New York: Plume, 1976). Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, (London: Penguin, 2017). Emily Dickinson, ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’, in Emily Dickenson, Poems, (no publisher cited, 1891 edition), Emily Dickenson Archive, available online at https://www.edickinson.org/editions/4/image_sets/80358, last accessed 14 April 2020. Veronica Ryan, Salvage, Art House Wakefield, 2017–18. https://hepworthwakefield. org/artist/veronica-ryan/, last accessed 19 June 2020.

Figure 15  Langlands & Bell, Traces of Living, 1986. Wood, glass, paint, lacquer, found objects. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Interim Art, 1986. © Langlands & Bell. Courtesy Langlands & Bell. Photo: Edward Woodman

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Interview 6 June 2017 IR What initiated your collaboration in 1978 while at Hornsey College of Art? Was it a project, were you told to collaborate or did you just like the idea of collaborating? BL It was a spontaneous decision to work together on one piece. We became friends and we had been making quite different types of work before. We just decided to make one piece together, which was called The Kitchen (1978).1 It was two kitchens that we built side by side, which shared a central wall with a fixed window in it, so you could look between one and the other. The thing was that you could walk into an old kitchen that we painstakingly reconstructed using old floorboards and old wallpaper, that was furnished with collapsing furniture and an old cooker, rusting cooking utensils, pots and pans, jars and bottles, all old, rusty, smelly and cracked. And when you looked through the window you saw a brand-new kitchen, identical in terms of the positioning of the cooker, the chair, the shelves and the objects on the shelves, but everything was shiny, gleaming and brand new. The shelves were made of glass, and the table and chair were chrome, glass and mirror. We lit it with concealed projectors shining light through prisms, so you got the colours of the spectrum flashing over the walls. NB  And shadows as well. BL Yes, it was quite dramatic. NB  But you could only see it through the membrane of the window. In a sense you were in the past looking into the future that was unobtainable. But intrinsically the objects were all the same. There were smells as well in the old kitchen. We used the old roast beef fat from the Market Café down the road. So you really were standing in something that was furnished with things from abandoned buildings and smelt like them too. We were living in an area where there were lots of buildings where

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you could just push open a door and enter. It was before gentrification. It was a very different place. BL  The buildings frequently still had the belongings of the previous occupants. There would be old furniture, clothes, and we found things like personal diaries, parcels, jars of preserves … NB … handmade rolling pins … BL … books, piles of newspapers, plates of candles; all of these things just left there. We were totally intrigued by this. It was so mysterious and exciting that we wanted to recreate it. NB  We had the two kitchens side by side, and we realized as well that we could bring the two of us together and create something architectural. We were surrounded by buildings, and it was a good subject for us. BL Initially our idea was that Nikki would make the old kitchen and I would make the new one, but as soon as we started, we discovered that it was easier to work together on everything and help each other. And so the two became one and we carried on working together from then on because it was exciting. IR Was this your first taste of furniture making and architectural building? BL In our art, yes. We had already been doing it to earn money before college. IR So this project led onto other things like building your studio and furniture? BL and NB Yes. BL We made The Kitchen in 1978 and then we re-erected it for our degree show in 1980. NB  We also made films at that point. The college we were at was an extraordinary environment where you could move between areas. There was no fixed way of working. You didn’t have to just paint; you didn’t have to be a sculptor or a print-maker – you could move from 2D to 3D to 4D. Some people just wrote music. It was a very radical environment. BL Which was why we had each chosen to go there. We liked the idea of moving between different disciplines … NB … and experimenting with different media, which we have continued to do. IR Yes, looking at your website, for instance, I can see films, and photographs, and what seem to be large three-dimensional works from quite early on, so obviously you were happy to use a lot of different types of media. NB  Yes. The freedom that the unstructured course gave us suited us. We were also the first people at the college to collaborate exclusively. We did a joint degree and we presented our work as one.

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IR How interesting! Of course, there were quite a number of collaborative partnerships in performance during the 1970s. Were you consciously thinking about that? BL and NB No. BL The only people we were aware of who collaborated exclusively were Gilbert and George. We became aware of Art and Language and other people like that pretty soon afterwards, but at the time we did not know of others. IR What did you find that each brought to the process and end product that would not have been there if you had worked alone? NB  I think having two different approaches, two different minds and two different people. We are quite different in personality. But we found that we had this common thread, this common interest. BL I suppose in a way it brought a kind of spontaneity, and we would get results to things that neither of us could have predicted at the outset. It was a kind of chemistry that created something that was unique and of itself, and we found that very exciting. We discussed lots of things. As anyone who knows us will tell you, we are very different personality types, but somehow we share a kind of vision or objective, not in terms of exactly what it looks like, but in terms of – I don’t really want to use the term ‘quality’ – but in terms of quality or its standards or … We just know that each of us is very different, and in the end we want things of equal value that complement each other. NB  So if we think of an idea, we both have to want to do it before we make it. We don’t create work that we are not happy with. It is very important that we believe in what we are doing – still. BL Occasionally we have to persuade each other, but normally we don’t need to. Normally we both instantly see what it is that we want to do, and then we just get on and do it. Very occasionally one of us says, ‘No, no. It would be good to do this’ or ‘How about that?’ and sometimes one of us does not quite see it at the outset in quite the same way. If one of us can’t be persuaded then we don’t do it, but normally if one of us really wants to do something we do end up doing it, if not immediately, then slightly later. IR I am thinking about vocabularies, and how you have said that you do not want to shape the world through your art, but ‘allow art to be part of life and vice versa’.2 The Kitchen and certain films were part of your life – such as Borough Market, the film commissioned by Bookworks in 1986. BL Yes, that is true. We showed a work called the Mobile Library (1979) at our degree show, made from chipboard and paint, and then we lit it. It could be rearranged in lots of different configurations.

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NB  At that time we were making books as sculpture and sometimes we used the Mobile Library to display them, and the units are like open books. Some books were hollowed out. There were many different configurations, depending on the idea we were trying to put together. BL Some of our books/objects were in the sculpture The Crisis of Western Education (1982). The title came from a book of the same name. Nikki took half the text out of the book, cut it in half and repositioned it upside down so that it reads like another language. There are half lines of text glued onto the lines of existing text all the way though the book. And in one hollowed-out book, the text is rolled into a papier-mâché ball and left sitting in the void where the text once was. The whole work is now in the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive collection in Miami. IR What was the impetus behind the bricks? BL That developed out of the Ruined Book (1982) project. NB  We were living in a tenement at the time, in a building with the same coloured bricks. Bricks really are the basis of the buildings in this area. BL In one sense we were drawing an analogy between accumulations of bricks to make buildings and cities, and accumulations of words to make language and meaning. The Ruined Book is two metres high – quite large. It is a paper and wood sculpture. We made it out of plywood and soft wood and covered it in fake brick wallpaper that you could buy in decorating stores. We took it down to a site in Wapping where they were demolishing old deck-access blocks of flats in order to build what were called at the time ‘yuppy homes’. We stood it in front of a huge pile of rubble. The area was being transformed in a quite unsentimental – or what we thought was rather a ruthless way – so this was a response to the time. NB  The outline shape of the sculpture is camouflaged by the brick wallpaper, so it almost disappears into the rubble. IR So why the title The Ruined Book? BL Well, the book is a kind of sacred vessel of knowledge, memory, stories, culture and history. NB  It can be passed around and handled … BL … and is a sign for culture – a codification of cultural value. Having taken the photo we took the sculpture away and showed it at Bookworks in 1984 in their gallery in Borough Market. NB  We made an installation called Traces of Living for an exhibition at Interim Art in 1986 that involved three tables and two chairs that we made. And it contained the model of the basement of the National Gallery in one of the chairs.

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BL The chairs and tables had glass tops and functioned like vitrines. We displayed objects that we had found in the streets and markets of the East End – objects to us that were evocative of the East End, of the domestic … NB  … and of the layering of history – the Jewish population and then the Bengalis. We were showing things we found in abandoned houses and displaying them as exhibits under glass for scrutiny, elevating them to the status of museum artefacts, BL While using the architectural model of the basement of the National Gallery to make a direct link with the idea of the museum. NB  We lit the chair with the model in the seat from above so that the plan of the building appeared on the floor under the chair as a shadow. We painted the gallery floor white so that it was part of the work too. IR If you think about it, so much of sculptural thinking is about shadows, not just cast shadows but the way that three dimensions are revealed. NB  Yes, that’s true. The shadows are very important in our work. IR I was just thinking about the three tables together with a loaf of bread displayed … BL … w  ith a dried rat inside it … NB  … and the cauliflower from the Old Spitalfields wholesale market nearby. They were wind dried, so nature had preserved them. They had become petrified – sort of mummified. BL We cast a bunch of used combs in a block of resin and found some tobacco leaves that at the time you could buy from Bengali grocer shops and covered a plate with it and collaged a heart-shaped box with images of diseased eyes, hearts and things like that cut out of medical magazines from the London hospital because we live very close to the London Hospital Medical School. IR I was also intrigued by the backs of the chairs. The ones that you did for your installation at the Stoke-on-Trent Museum and Art Gallery described the shapes of the bottle ovens.3 NB  Yes, sometimes they derive from the building plans, but the one with the combs in the seat is abstract and random, reflecting the way the combs are in the resin. We made all the tables and chairs in the workshop in our house. But later as we developed our practice we found people who could make them for us. BL The Crisis of Western Education (1982) was made in the early years of the Thatcher government, with its unemployment, the Falklands War and all that. It was a shift from one order to another. The old London docks were closed. The warehouses were empty. Then came financial deregulation

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and eventually development and gentrification followed. But in the early days there were whole streets of abandoned buildings. You could not get a mortgage to buy a house built before the First World War, and in this area there were lots of wonderful Georgian and Victorian houses. The whole ethos was different then. It was a hangover from the Second World War, when whole areas had been heavily bombed and left abandoned. The local authorities thought, ‘Knock them down and build new flats.’ The houses were not loved or appreciated. They were just waiting to be destroyed. IR Yes, and there were quite a lot of squats. NB  Yes. We lived in the largest squat in London – Myrdle Street, Fieldgate Mansions and Parfett Street. BL Myrdle Street and Parfett Street were the longest persistent squats in living memory. It went on for decades and decades. We lived in Fieldgate Mansions, which had 250 flats, all squatted – apart from one or two of the original residents just hanging on. NB  We had no hot running water. We had a copper in the kitchen and we lit a fire under it for hot water, and there was a man called Mr Clean who lived in our coal cellar. BL He used to sweep the street with a dustpan and brush. NB  And there was an amazing pub called the Queen’s Head, with a landlady called Countess Eileen, and every morning she would lower a wicker basket with a fiver in it down to the street on a rope and Mr Clean would pick up the basket, put in her provisions, and she would haul it up again. He would keep the change and go and get some breakfast. BL There were lots of these characters who were living on the streets, NB … and everyone in their own way helped them or gave them change. They would wipe tables and they would get a meal, or they would do an errand … and there was a way, somehow, of surviving in this quite difficult and poor neighbourhood. BL Like the old man who lived in front of this building (the studio) in a caravan with his cats and dogs. He would collect scrap and porter things for the market traders, and they would give him stuff from the market. NL  There was still a Jewish community and there were wonderful kosher luncheon clubs, and lots of interesting characters with shops and warehouses that had stock that went back to the 1920s and 1930s. It was an amazing place. It was a great source of inspiration to us as artists and led us coming here in the first place. It was also one of the only places that we could afford to live. We were able to find a building like this one, restore it and create something out of it.

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IR Part of the way that you were able to survive then was through making furniture, so there must have been a continuum in your furniture between those that were ‘art’ and those that were ‘functional’. BL Yes, and when we first made it as art we were very clear that the furniture was not furniture, but was sculpture, conceptual, and a socio-aesthetic concept or statement. It was a reflection on our relationship, people’s relationships and social relationships. NB  Furniture mediates between the body and the building. It is a pivotal point of interaction. IR There is quite often the absent human in your work – the idea of a viewing person with an interested eye, for instance, with the models of museums, and an embodied person sitting down, or imagining sitting down. Because we have all done this so often, we can project this notion onto a seat even if you are not actually seated. NB  We were encouraging people to look at furniture, not to use it in a physical sense, but to imagine. BL After Traces of Living we made the British Museum (1987). Here we were starting to work totally with architecture. You can just see the book form residually hanging on. There is the plan of the Round Reading Room at the British Museum, with a detail of the interior … NB … under pages of glass, with the readers’ tables radiating … BL … and this third book is a compressed perspective model of a panopticon prison at Breda in Holland. So in a sense we are talking about the Enlightenment and neoclassicism. These architectural forms originally derived from the Pantheon in Rome, regardless of whether they are the British Museum or a prison. So architecture used symbolically, for order, for spectacle, for containment … NB … for power … BL … a symbol of the universe. That was when we were starting to create these associations and narratives … NB  … which we are still continuing to do with Infinite Loop (2017) which depicts the architecture of the internet giants at the Alan Cristea Gallery, including the new Apple Campus Infinite Loop at Cupertino. It is still circular in form, although it is much, much larger in scale. BL The typology is essentially the same. The British Museum is now in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg. IR It is interesting to think about idealism in architecture – it is so right that it appears natural, but it is not. BL That’s interesting – what do you mean by that? IR Life is messy, and cultures are multilayered …

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BL … and architecture is about order – yes, that’s true. IR So much of architecture is about people management, as well as trying to project a particular ideological vision. BL But also, at its most essential, architecture is about protection from the elements and providing a safe space where we can conduct social activities, because we are social beings. So then immediately it becomes about producing order out of chaos, about planning for the future, so yes, it takes on this dimension that is critically determining. It is human intentions and human needs made solid. IR How does classical architecture speak to the twenty-first century? BL The Renaissance reconnected us with the principles of classical architecture and as people rationalized those principles, it moved into the Enlightenment. Even Modernism is part of the Enlightenment. If you look at someone like Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier, it is classicism in modern form. That is a trajectory that we see in Western architecture. I mean it does not resonate or apply to East Asia, Africa or Latin America in the same way. But we still have a relationship to classical architecture in those terms. We can think of classical architecture as inherently modern, or modern architecture as inherently classical. IR It is a kind of idealism? BL Yes – I think so. To plan socially and to plan for the future is very idealistic – if we detach ourselves from whether it is good or bad, and just say that planning socially is a kind of idealism in itself and having that vision is idealistic. NB  We moved from suggesting a narrative to stripping ourselves out. For instance, that piece we showed you at Interim Art, Traces of Living, was a transitional work. The next piece we went on to make with three tables in 1989 was Adjoining Rooms, where we were only using primary colours, red, blue and yellow, and the tables were white. It was about infinite possibilities that you could add to this configuration, but we were paring it down to the idea of possibility … BL … to light and space … NB … colour and structure. BL We have left the found objects behind and emptied the tables out. It is just colour and space. There is coloured glass in the sides and clear glass in the top. IR It is a lovely space they were shown in. BL and NB It is. The Artists House (2001) at Roche Court designed by Stephen Marshall. NB  Yes, and coincidentally he also designed the new Alan Cristea Gallery in

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Pall Mall. The Artists House was a way to experience the domestic in a gallery context. We did the first to show there when it opened and have been back to see many shows there since. It is a very beautiful space with lovely natural light. From there I suppose we were working with the idea of connections as well … BL … for an exhibition at Le Magasin in Grenoble. At that time everyone was talking about European integration. Collapsing Time (1989) included wall-mounted models of a satellite star at Frankfurt airport, an EU flag and the Council of Europe in strasbourg. We were interested in this moment when architecture was being used to talk about political ideals and political integration, with politics and technology integrating and collapsing European histories … or so we thought. IR It was all taking off at the time … NB  … and we were very conscious of that. It led us to make works about air routes. We made air routes of Europe, the World, of China and Japan. IR Of course air travel was just so much more expensive and so much more difficult. Even five or ten years prior to that, crossing the Atlantic was a huge deal. But by the late 1980s it was becoming normalized. NB  Well, it became more affordable. We were aware, intuitively, of what was going on politically and were displaying the buildings themselves, almost as a way of reflecting on these huge changes. IR How do you want people to engage with them? NB  You can read them as you like, but I think that you are gaining access and looking into a world that you normally don’t see … BL … or are excluded from. NB  It allows you that window into a subject that surrounds one – pieces like Surrounding Time (1990), Collapsing Time (1989) and Air Routes of North West Europe (1989). IR So the title would be important to you, to act as a sort of nudge. NB  Yes, it is part of the work. We also made the works mostly in white because we wanted them to be very neutral and beautiful architecturally. IR What type of white was it – was it reflective or matt? NB  Matt or satin, but with many, many layers of white to build up to that very beautiful patina. BL For the interiors we would use a white, water-based acrylic paint, and for the exterior surfaces we would use a catalysed lacquer with a satin finish. We showed Surrounding Time in 1990 for the first time, which included anamorphic, wall-mounted models of the Coliseum in Rome, of the Glaverbel Building in Brussels, and La Maison de Force – the

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eighteenth-century prison in Ghent. We were talking about the three powers of the state: cultural, economic and punitive. And also history embodied by architecture, the Coliseum, the corporate HQ and the prison. Then in the table we have the EU flag, or the EC flag as it was then, the parliament in Strasbourg, and the third table contains the University of Brussels in Leuven. NB  So it was a constellation of meanings that you could walk through physically, on the walls and on the floor, completely surrounded by what was going on. BL We made Striking Distance (1989) in response to the bombing of Pan Am 103. The attack brought home to us how interconnected the world was, how an event in the Middle East could impact on the tiny town of Lockerbie in the Scottish borders and also connect New York, London, Tripoli and Frankfurt in a geopolitical web. It was an early reflection – for us – about a rapidly globalizing world. NB  The sculpture shows the buildings in the town that were destroyed by the bombing, together with Frankfurt and Heathrow airports. IR The images are apparently so neutral, until one realizes what they represent, so in a sense the stillness causes a pause to reflect. Is this what you wanted? NB  Yes. We hope so. BL Yes, as with the architectural works, it is about revealing the structure, the extent of the structure and the way that the structure is arranged: its order. NB  There are links that one can read, and through their beauty you appreciate them anyway. They are beautiful in their own terms, and as art they have to be beautifully made. BL We made Stammheim in the 1980s and showed it in 1990. It’s a model of the maximum-security prison where the Baader Meinhof group were held in the 1970s and found dead in May 1976. NB  It shows three levels of the prison, presented under grey Perspex, which gives it a strange kind of distance. Of course, the plans of the prison were not available. It was very difficult to make a piece like this. When we approached the authorities, we were refused the plans, but then when we were doing an exhibition in Brussels, we found them … BL … in the archive of the Foundation for Architecture … NB … so we were able to use them anyway. BL They were in a United Nations handbook on prison design. IR I was also thinking about the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights. How did you manage to find the imagery for those?

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BL From archives. They are perspective views made from plans and photographs of interiors of the buildings. Occasionally one would see a news photograph, and we would go to look for more information. NB  We would also go to the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects). They have a fantastic archive. Now, of course, we’re looking at the plans of the buildings as they are being made, on the internet. We are not necessarily visiting the buildings themselves, but we are downloading the plans and making them that way. IR Do you miss the rummaging? NB  Well, it is a different kind of rummaging – it is a virtual rummage! BL We don’t miss spending hours at the photocopier at the RIBA. NB  Now we can do it ourselves, in our own space. But I do like the exploration, the discovery and books themselves. I love archives. I love libraries. I think that the two have to exist together. There is a physicality to books, the smell, handling them, delving into them, finding the right images for what you want. BL But it’s also exciting when you find it on the internet. IR Scale is so interesting because, you know, with the chairs you can imagine physically moving your body and engaging with them, but it is so different when the scale is small – you just can’t project in the same way along the corridors of a model – it’s more of an intellectual projection. NB  Exactly, yes, with the chairs you relate to them with your body, whereas with the models you inhabit them with your imagination. BL With a model you are zooming out, you are suddenly having a much more detached relationship with a building. Your relationship shifts to the model. Models are very attractive. And everyone understands a model from a child to an adult; you don’t need special information to understand them. So although you are becoming more detached, you are also gaining an overview, and you are making the building more accessible. NB  You are in a privileged position if you like … BL … and of course the sense of power that you get is pleasurable – so models are a very effective tool. IR I was just thinking of Maureen Paley’s gallery Interim Art, which was along Beck Road in the 1980s. Is that where you showed? NB  Yes, and of course it was in a house, so it made sense to make and show Traces of Living – you know, three tables and two chairs, and put it in that context.

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BL It made sense, but we were making chairs and tables anyway. We did not make them just for that gallery – even though we loved showing there. It was a great space and a great place at the time to show. IR It was quite a hub of artistic activity – Beck Road had a lot of artists living there. NB  Yes, there was a great kind of creative spirit. BL Helen Chadwick lived a few doors down. It was a great street. It was very much the spirit of the times. NB  It was quite radical to have a gallery in your house, and for anyone to come in, I mean I don’t think that it would necessarily be quite like that now. IR No, she had an amazing range of exhibitions there. BL At that time there was Maureen with Interim Art and Matt’s Gallery; they were the two galleries in the East End. They were hugely influential because they were both so adventurous in what they did. Both Robin Klassnik (Matt’s Gallery) and Maureen were prepared to be so radical and they had a very international perspective, which was so important. There were other good galleries at the time, like the Lisson Gallery or Anthony d’Offay a bit later on. But they were less accessible. Maureen and Robin really showed that you could do it yourself in quite small spaces and make a go of it. They showed exhibitions of great quality. NB  People would make a pilgrimage from the West End to see the art in these spaces. BL They introduced many artists to London who would never have been seen here without the shows that they did. IR Can you remember any in particular? BL Yes. There was the group of artists from Cologne, people like Rosemarie Trockel, Günther Förg, Thomas Locher and Thomas Grünfeld. Then from the States there were people like James Casebere, Vernon Fisher, Jenny Holzer, Robert Mapplethorpe, Charles Ray …. NB  We would go to Cologne and show in Tanja Grunert’s gallery. It was a wonderful European exchange. We were there with Michael Craig Martin, John Hilliard, Michael Landy, Bill Woodrow – a whole range of artists exhibiting in Cologne, while her artists were exhibiting in London. IR Was there a different reception to your work over there? BL In some ways, we felt that audiences in Germany, France and Italy were more in tune to ideas of architecture and furniture as art and that you could use furniture and architecture as a model or other reference, for their expressive or conceptual potential, you know, as art.

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NB  Conceptually they were far more open at that point. BL At that time the English art audience was pretty conservative. It was just a smaller picture. London was more inward looking. Even though there were many amazing artists based in London, like those associated with the Lisson, or Richard Long, Barry Flanagan and Gilbert and George. There were so many artists … but somehow it was a more clannish and parochial scene, not as connected with other countries as it has since become. IR Who did you align yourselves to artistically? NB  We didn’t really – we just found our way. BL We did not want to do a postgraduate. So we didn’t get into a network at that point. When we finished our BA, we went abroad, to South America. We were fed up with the education system by then. And, I suppose, maybe when there are two of you, you are kind of quite self-sufficient. We did not have a career-orientated notion of being an artist. We never really imagined that we would sell our work. I mean, we did not sell a work – apart from the odd tiny piece – until about 1984, when we did the Bookworks exhibition. We sold a few pieces then, but not much. IR It must have been a real thrill to sell your work. BL and NB Yes, it was. BL We weren’t able to make a living from our work until 1988 when we did the show with Tanja Grunert in Cologne. NB  That opened up all those possibilities and markets. Which is why Europe is so important …

Notes 1 2 3

For images and further details, see www.langlandsandbell.com, last accessed 19 June 2020, Instagram @langlandsandbell. Ana Finel Honigman, ‘Not Specifically Political: A Conversation with Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell’, Sculpture, (June 2006), 30–5, 34. These were exhibited in Palaces of Culture at the Stoke on Trent Museum and Art Gallery in 1997, in an installation called Degrees of Evidence.

Figure 16  Cathy de Monchaux, Defying Death I Ran Away to the Fucking Circus, Part 1, 1991. Velvet, Leather and Brass. 216 × 148 × 45 cm. Courtesy of Cathy de Monchaux

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Cathy de Monchaux

Interview 15 November 2017 IR You went to Camberwell College of Arts (1980 to 1983) and then to Goldsmiths College (1985 to 1987). How did they differ in their approaches? CdM There was a huge difference. At Camberwell, it was based on looking at the figure. On the Foundation we were still taught by people who looked back to Rodin, to put it simplistically. They were very good and passionate artists. We learnt about being passionate and about making art, as opposed to what most younger people now are taught: ‘business’ and ‘the art world’. There wasn’t really a sense of ‘the art world’. It was just artists getting on with their thing. So right from the Foundation at Camberwell, you were taught by dedicated artists who taught in order to survive. That’s what most people did at that point. It felt almost impossible that you would have a show, let alone sell something.1 IR  Were you always interested in sculpting? CdM I was drawn to sculpture quite quickly. I was initially quite resistant because my father is a sculptor. When I started the Foundation I wasn’t going to do sculpture, but the course was very much about making things and having the facility to make, to cast, to draw, to have a live model, all those kinds of things. It was not essential to go in there and think, ‘Oh I’ve got an idea.’ I am really glad I made that decision to stay at Camberwell and just let my ideas grow over that time. IR Thinking through making can be really interesting. CdM Yes. Exactly. I took a couple of years out after that. I set up a studio in Peckham, very near to the college. I knew that I needed to have a studio to work in. There were other artists there. We took over a building

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and subdivided it with plastic to start with. I worked on my own for a couple of years and then wanted to do an MA. I heard about the one at Goldsmiths, which was a part-time course where you had your studio and would meet for seminars. I applied for that and quite naively thought that wouldn’t be too taxing. But actually it was a very taxing course because the seminars were all about discussing heavy subjects that I had never encountered before. IR What sort of things? CdM Mary Kelly, for instance, would come and talk to us. She was great because she would say, ‘Were you listening?’ She was an artist, but every seminar was incredibly weighted in theory. I was starting to develop my practice, but I was challenging it against this new order that was about having a quantifiable dialogue. To this day I find it difficult to apply words to my own work. I would be sitting at the back of the class saying, ‘What about art? What about imagination?’ For me it was really good because it was like cross-fertilizing two entirely different learning methods. I think I got the best of both worlds because I still had my ability to make things, plus my weird imagination. Other stuff was coming in and it did force me to think about how my work would be perceived, which I hadn’t particularly thought about before. I also found I was looking at other, much more contemporary art. I was perfectly blessed by my education, to be honest. IR Did the other people in your studio have a similar type of theoretical stance, or were they mainly into making? CdM Most of the people in my studio ended up going to Goldsmiths. When I went, I was the only one from my studio, and then at a certain point most of the people in the building were either doing Goldsmiths, had done Goldsmiths or were sobbing in the corner because they were in the middle of Goldsmiths. It was really tough. The first year I was at Goldsmiths I just sat there sobbing in my studio because I couldn’t work out what was going on. But that is how I practise to this day. I spend a lot of time just sitting and trying to work things out. I am not one of those people that come into the studio and think, ‘I must make more things.’ I  work very, very slowly in my head. Then I work very quickly at making things. It’s probably the opposite of what you would think looking at my work. IR That’s interesting, because some of your works – especially from the 1980s – appear to develop organically.

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CdM They do in terms of the first idea for a piece. It’s very instinctive. Once I have my first rough idea, the making involves quite a lot of craft or handmaking. One thing that I learnt at Goldsmiths was that I definitely didn’t want my work to appear manufactured or made by an assistant. I wanted my work to appear handmade by me, the artist, and that handmaking was a clue to accessing my imagination. Also that the very handmade-ness of the work would allow people to enter the work imaginatively. I still believe that. I am very aware that there are elements of my subconscious/unconscious mind that I accessed when I was in my twenties that I didn’t really have a name for. But I had a certain confidence in the making that allowed for a mixture of something quite angst-ridden that was well made. Part of that process permitted something un-nameable to come. Now that I am older I look at the work and think about the things that happened to me in my early life that I have since remembered. But at the time of making my early work the happenings were well buried in the back of my mind. I do think that as women get older you access memory in a really interesting way. The retrieval now is more immediate, whereas I think my retrieval before was quite literally to do with making things. I’ll give you an example. I am currently working on a project for Newnham College in Cambridge and part of my imagery is books. I was working on the pieces to go to the foundry and wondering why this work was causing me so many problems. I suddenly remembered that I don’t go into libraries or bookshops because I was molested as a child in a public library. I have done a BA and an MA, and I have been teaching postgraduate students for a long time. But, unless someone makes me, I can only go to the front bit of a bookshop – very quickly. I can’t really go in to libraries at all as it makes me feel ill. It is quite limiting when you think about it. I had totally normalized this relation I had to books – a bibliophobia if you like – then suddenly, when I was working on this piece and trying to make a book and wrestling to understand why I was finding it so hard, it all clicked together. I was totally undone for a while as I had a post-traumatic stress response. I am using that as an example because everybody normalizes things, and most things have happened so long ago that you have almost forgotten their roots, or you have covered over the trauma. To me that is endlessly fascinating. It sounds a bit glib, but you can always learn from those things.

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When I start a piece I don’t necessarily know what it will be in the end. Because this piece I am working on is a commission, I was wondering whether I was going to be able to make it into art. I do genuinely think that art comes from making, a hand-eye activity, and trying to work things out. A lot of the work is about trying to make something look like a book, or a unicorn, or a tree. Somewhere in all that process something emotional happens. It resolves in a way. I tend to work very last minute on things, and maybe for about twenty-four hours it is very intense. At that point, all of those little bits are in place. I have already made a hundred trees or whatever. So I am just grabbing things, and it all goes wrong, but I know that there is this moment when the alchemy happens. For me, at that point I am able to release the subconscious if you like. The thing that makes it art has to occur; otherwise it’s not art. IR Oh yes – there is an extra dimension. CdM And sometimes it could be fear of a deadline really. Obviously, you can’t work like that all the time, but for twenty-four hours I can work nonstop. IR Some of your work from the 1980s and 1990s is so complex and detailed and made of different parts and materials that draw the viewer in. Do you need a plan? CdM There isn’t a plan. I think in my simplistic way, life happens and then I do a little sketch, and that is about as far as it gets. I get an idea of something and then think how to make it. The idea might come from something a bit emotional. It comes from various roots. Like poetry, it is driven by a broken heart or whatever. At a certain point, I disassociate from that source. You can’t always be sitting there with a broken heart. I suppose there is the whole process, whether it is metal work or whether it is all the little bits and pieces that go into making unicorns or a forest. If you were talking in literary terms, all the bits and pieces become the letters of the words that I am inventing. Because I’ve been making things for a long time now, the inventions get a little bit more complicated. They just take longer. The imperatives change. In the work from the 1980s there was much more clarity, where the materials were making quite a lot of the voice of the work. Now I want the work to have the voice, or the imagery to have the voice, rather than the sensibility of the material. Obviously, the materials are evident, but less so. IR Materials were really important in your work of the 1980s. Were there any links with fashion – the New Romantics were around.

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CdM Yes. There was that kind of ‘lush thing’. I have to say that about as Romantic I got was putting more hairspray in my hair and using ten ribbons. That was a little bit earlier, but I suppose when I was at art school there were a lot of people that did dress up quite radically every day. I was very aware of it, and now I think, ‘I wish I’d dressed like that.’ But it was not how I chose to express myself. It is quite difficult to explain to a young artist now, but there wasn’t really much precedent for (a) female artists or (b) female artists making things quite carefully. I think my work did stand out at the time because it was very carefully made and it was kind of crafty, but it still had that witchy element. What I did learn from Goldsmiths was that I wanted the work to be in this mainstream discussion and conversation. It seemed important that one wasn’t marginalized, because at that point it was difficult. That is why Helen Chadwick was so great. She did that show – Of Mutability (1986) at the ICA – and everybody from my generation saw it. I was at Goldsmiths by then, and everybody in my group saw it. I am sure everyone on the BA – who were the Freeze artists – saw her work. It was really curious because her work was quite witchy. It was well made and beautifully put together. She made it all herself and she was using the technology of the time. IR … and it was quite decorative. CdM Very decorative. IR She was looking to Fragonard and the Rococo and translating that into a modern idiom. You exhibited with her, and I wondered whether you were also interested in this?2 CdM I was interested in the Rococo, but it’s funny that my imagination seems to be stuck in a Renaissance/Middle Ages groove. IR Thinking of the Middle Ages, there was such richness in their use of gold and clear colours. CdM Yes, there was a ‘Gothic-y’ sort of feel. IR Sometimes the figures on the margins of illuminations are slightly weird and monstrous – beautiful yet troubling. CdM Exactly. Just as much the monsters under the bed are the beautiful things, aren’t they? When I was a child, in my fanciful thoughts, and because of my family name ‘de Monchaux’, I believed I came from a different environment where there were princesses and unicorns, and we had a castle.

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Then again, I am really drawn to Robert Ryman. This is what we do as artists. We look at things and just grab what takes our fancy. I think it is totally instinctive, but our viewing activity is very pick ‘n’ mix I think. Everybody finds a different thing that attracts them that they are going to pull forward. With Helen it was the Rococo. IR Of Mutability is a compelling work. I went to the Victoria and Albert museum and had the curator draw out the drawers containing the different scenes. Like your work, there is a meticulous precision. You are seduced by the beauty, but it is simultaneously slightly disturbing. CdM Which is also to do with making. I do think that if something is well made, people think that you meant it. It is almost as if you have been drawn to the conclusion of something having a status as an object. This is the thing with objects, isn’t it, because it is not quite the same as pictures. IR An object keeps grounding you in the here and now. CdM In illuminated manuscripts you can almost believe in that world and think, ‘Oh there’s a gremlin in the corner,’ but somehow when you’re making a 3D thing it is slightly different. One’s physical and emotional relationship with it is different. Maybe sculpture is a bit more like alchemy in a way, because it’s strange, and it’s round. IR From the late 1980s, in works like Trolley (1987), there is an interesting dialogue between something that is found which is ‘dressed’ in a sense, and in creating quite small, compelling and detailed objects out of metal and velvet that perhaps needed to be laser cut. CdM Yes, some of them did use a bit of laser cutting, but not a huge amount. Most of the larger pieces I cut out with a jigsaw. You mention Trolley, which was in my degree show at Goldsmiths. At the time I was taking found objects and very meticulously making them into something else. I made a few pieces but then thought that I did not want to be dependent on the found object. IR And was that partly because of New British Sculpture? CdM Yes, there was a bit of that. I also felt that it was almost a limitation, because it was like you were wandering around looking for the next thing, whereas I instinctively wanted to be looking into my imagination for the thing. I suppose the point that I went from Trolley to those I made after was about inventing an object, like Erase (1989). Strangely enough that was made using found objects – my jeans and the bolt. In terms of making it, I spent half the time throwing it across the room because it was looking so ridiculous. That is the funny thing, isn’t it,

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because when you finish a work, you don’t necessarily know why it works, but you know that it does. IR I think partly for me it is because it is elusive. It’s got a range of qualities, which makes it destabilizing. CdM The narrative isn’t completely fixed, although it clearly does have a narrative. With the other work I was making at the time I was basically trying to invent a language. There were a few pieces before that which were quite sculptural, using these soft and hard materials. Before that I kind of shut the whole thing down and just made these dogmatic things with big lumps of marble: one black and one white. They were strangely minimalist but the sides were a bit soft. Then I went from this minimalist striping everything back to making these things that are very small, decorative and tactile, and very much like jewellery. IR Wendy Ramshaw was making those incredible ring sets at the time, and The New Jewellery was prominent. Were you consciously looking to those sorts of things? CdM At the time it didn’t feel like there was anyone else doing what I was doing. I was sort of stumbling around, but I just knew instinctively that it was growing out of the other stuff I was making and was more particular to me than being particular to sculpture, if that makes any sense. It is a development journey. I was looking at Rachel Whiteread’s recent show (Tate, 2017/18). She is a fabulous artist, and you can see she has developed this oeuvre from discovering a sensibility, facility and a means of saying what she wants to say relatively early on. I admire her for it. She has grown that tree, if you like, and it is very beautiful. Everybody is different. I am much more restless than that – always trying different things and wanting the language to shift. IR When we look at some of your work that incorporates rich leather, velvet, and metal, they trigger a haptic response in our minds. We have all felt those materials in the world. CdM It is feeling and being in the experience of the materials in terms of objects. But also because they’re just imaginary objects, it is also about the feeling those objects evoke. IR … a nd the temperature and all sorts of things. CdM Yes, is it material? Is it the sensibility? Or is it the two? I like that you can’t really unravel them. I think it’s a sum of propositions if you like. IR It is also about scale. I was looking at your exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery (1993), and there were small elements juxtaposed with large ones, and sometimes a lot of wall space between. How do you want your audience to relate to your works in exhibition?

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CdM In terms of that work, it was unframed and unglazed. I was trying to make things that felt that they were, if not growing out of the wall, at home on the wall. The thing about things being on the wall is that you can have something small that’s almost more compelling than something large, because it’s about the gaze and getting very close to it. But it is a different kind of gaze depending on where you stand in relation to the work. So I suppose with that work I was trying to create a sort of atmosphere for the viewer to feel like the work was supposed to be there as objects. My imaginary physical relationship with the person looking at the work is slightly different from the emotional relationship, but it is as much to do with the way I’m making things as anything. Maybe I am now less interested in that agenda than at that time. There was a debate then about the viewer in the space, but I don’t really know if it completely works, unless you’ve got a very big gallery and are able to control how people move around it. It is really strange because as soon as you do a show there is so much resistance to every little bright idea you have. I had one in my studio here when we first moved in, sixteen years ago, and it was lit by candlelight, and there was a soundtrack. I did some work with some musicians and there were some works on the wall. It was like my own little chapel, and people came. It was nice because I could do everything that I wanted, and I had loads of herbs in the corridors. IR Different sensory experiences … again it’s quite medieval, isn’t it? CdM Yes. IR I was looking at the exhibition Made Strange (1993), which was in Oslo and Budapest, where there were three components to Self I (1991). How were they hung? CdM They would be on a wall, but sometimes they would be on the same wall, and sometimes they would be on three different walls. IR What determined that? CdM Well, usually I would decide just as I was hanging it. For example, I remember for a show in Vienna I had made a small piece that I put on its own in a room. It was a quite domestic sort of space, with white walls, and the sculpture was made of leather and brass, and it did look really audacious because it was very tiny. But in this space it became very big.

Cathy de Monchaux If I am planning a show I am quite dogmatic about what it is. Going back to that idea about how the audience relates to the work, I am concerned about what it is you are walking around; you are driving the emotional car. Whereas with a single piece you are holding that gaze for the time that someone negotiates that experience. A show is a slightly different thing, because the viewer is moving from one thing to the next. At its best it is orchestration, when people don’t really realize they are being orchestrated, because each piece should stand for itself as well. If you’re doing a show you want people to walk in and be able to engage with everything. IR I was wondering whether you saw any of the exhibitions of Rebecca Horn’s work in London during the 1980s. So much of her work is about enclosure and using feathers, which we all have a sensibility about, and leather and extending the body in ways that are fanciful. CdM I am not sure. I don’t think I was aware of those costume works. If it wasn’t in front of us, it was in a magazine, so one would have been aware of particular works from those rather than the shows. But maybe when you are young you want to think that you have created the world. To be fair, it was the 1980s, and one did feel a little bit like an adventurer. It did not really matter because there wasn’t really this special species called ‘a woman artist’ to trip one up. There were not enough of us. It was pleasant if you found other people on the journey, but everybody was doing their own thing. IR You showed a lot abroad – São Paulo, Barcelona, etc., and I was just thinking that you, like many artists, almost seemed to have had more exhibitions abroad than in Britain. CdM Oh, yes, I did at the time. That was partly because I did not really have a gallery. That probably did make my relationship to showing in the UK difficult, and I was not part of the YBA and Sensation group. It doesn’t really matter, but it’s interesting how these things work. IR And also how recognition is created through aligning people into marketable groups. CdM By the time of Sensation (1997), it was already a variable group, and half of the people in that show were not part of that group anyway. For the moment I am really happy for not having a gallery to represent me. I am

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quite slow at making things and I can’t mass-produce for art fairs, nor can I make a massive output even with an assistant, which I have now. There is a limit to (a) how much I want to make and (b) how much can be made. I suppose I am trying to balance it now. I am just doing the work I want to make, and not worrying too much. IR It does allow you a certain freedom. CdM One of the reasons for working in my home was to return to how it was when I was young and I just made art because I did. For me, that has been quite liberating. When I do work with a gallery there is a conflict because they obviously want a lot of work. I have no interest in making a number of anything. Each piece is unique. At the moment I am working on forest things, female things, but only as long as I am interested in that. So the red velvet was only there for as long as I wanted to do that, and then I moved on to something else. IR Although it takes a lot of time for you to make your work, there is also a denial of visible time. In a funny sort of way it’s like Renaissance paintings, where all the background hard work is covered over by a unified skin of paint. CdM That is why with anything I have ever made, there is this twenty-four hours emergency where it seems totally improbable, even to me, that it will be finished. There’s so much work involved you can just go on forever and ever. So the assemblage is often alarmingly quick but there are the layers behind that, like a Rembrandt. It is so clear that there is that depth, but you cannot see it beyond a certain extent, and you really cannot see the joins. That ungraspability has a kind of magic. Somewhere there is a letting go. With Rembrandt there is definitely that emotional element to the work. It is not just the handling facility of the brush. IR There’s something in the brain that feeds into the making, the emotions that feed into the making, and somehow it all comes out in the result. CdM Exactly, but it’s very hard to work out what the ingredients are. I suppose I try to make each thing specific to the utterance I wanted to have at that time.

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Notes 1 2

For images of works discussed in this interview, see http://www.cathydemonchaux. com, last accessed 19 June 2020. Louisa Buck, Something the Matter: Helen Chadwick, Cathy de Monchaux and Cornelia Parker, (London: British Council, 1994).

Figure 17  Laura Ford, Buttercup, 1991. Painted aluminium, wood, foam, painted canvas. Installation view, Riverside Studios, London. © Laura Ford

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Laura Ford

Interview 4 September 2018 IR You studied at the Bath Academy of Art between 1978 and 1982. How did you find that? What were you taught? LF I went there partly because I left school early – halfway through my ‘A’ levels. Although Bath was not my first choice, it worked out well for me as they had a great sculpture department, even though I had no idea that sculpture would be what I would end up doing. I did my Foundation there, then went into sculpture, and then found instantly that I was in trouble, partly because of my bolshie personality and partly because I had trouble taking on their expectations of what sculpture should be. IR What sort of expectations were those? LF Well, they were very much into Caro and that kind of heavy metal, formal sculpture. I had no interest in that whatsoever. They were quite strict. I had to do a lot of life drawing, which has served me well. But there were also many quite restrictive things that we had to do. I just wanted to get on and do my own work. I was in conflict most of the time I was there. There were no female tutors. Assessments were done in a room with four blokes giving you a hard time. My reaction was ‘Fuck off ’, which did not go down very well. Also, I had arrived from South Wales, long blond hair, fully made up, in a sports car. I came from a fairground family. Bath was very middle class. There were many clashes. The hiring of artists like Richard Deacon, Anthony Gormley, Peter Randall Page, Anish Kapoor and Nick Pope by Michael Penny came later and in a sense they kind of stood in for women, as they were young and fresh thinking. Nick Pope saved me from being thrown out. All the major players in sculpture who were male came, and Shelagh

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Cluett came to teach for a day. Nick was one of my favourite tutors, partly because he was blisteringly honest, and you could have a laugh with him. IR His work early on was very formalist, with a lot of consideration about surface. LF Well, I was also interested in those components, but there were other aspects that I also wanted to explore. IR I was interested that you were doing figurative work – which was a no-no at the time. LF It still sort of is. IR But you also have a huge interest in materials, surface and the inherent knowledge that we all have about these in your work as an emotional touchstone. Do you want to talk a little about that? Did it come from Bath? LF I think it came from then. It was slightly knocked out of me at college, and I tried to do what was expected, but it reappeared. I did not come to art because I thought it would be a good career. I needed to make art. I made it with everything I had around me. In a funny way it followed on from early play as a child: Barbie dolls, turning rugs into rivers, turning a fruit bowl into a boat, making the furniture into great rocks … So when I saw Boyd Webb’s photos in The Sculpture Show (1983); the way he played was incredibly exciting to me. He had made photographs of him acting things out within a landscape of carpets and furniture. IR I gather that you went to the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, as part of your studies in Bath. LF Yes, that was just incredible. I was on the Bowery. I had my first female tutor, who was really tough and very good. There were no studio spaces, so I worked in the corridors. But I saw so much art. So many people went to look at art – it was very different from Britain. You could also see so much rubbish art, which was also quite liberating. At Bath and Chelsea if you were a student who was in early and left late, you could spend more time talking about art than doing it, and if you were as slow as I was then at making, then you could never get ahead of yourself enough to know what you were up to. Unfortunately, things have now gone the other way and students are left with very little teaching. About a year after the MA at the Chelsea School of Art, Andrew, my partner, and I moved into a derelict house with Mark Wallinger. Housing

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associations at the time would let you work in them for very little cost until they had the money to do them up and rent them out as homes. We then got offered an Acme studio, which we worked in for a year or so, and then we decided that we wanted to go travelling. But before going we were keen to show the work we had been doing since leaving college. Andrew’s great friend Richard Pomeroy was very interested in opening a gallery and was keen to help us, so we had an idea to find an old shop and set something up. We were both living in squats and were used to finding buildings, doing them up and making them look good. All the money that we had saved to go to India we gambled on doing this show. We managed to find a space in Islington, painted it white and installed our work, and got a great review in The Times. Suddenly all these people turned up in taxis and bought work. We doubled our money and went to India for a year. I remember Nick Pope saying, ‘Don’t do that. You have the momentum now and if you go to India everyone will have forgotten you.’ That is what happened and while it seemed a shame at the time, it was good for my development as an artist. IR What did you get from India? LF I realized that my fantasy of India was very wrong. The reality was tough. We had little money and were living in terrible conditions. But it was the completely different way of thinking about the world, which made me question every assumption I had ever had about life, that made it so important as an experience. Sculpturally, the thing that was exciting for me was the way that in the temples they dressed up the Gods, put clothes, flowers pigments and ghee on them, which brought them alive. That was huge for me and related back to my upbringing. I was not brought up religiously, but went to a Catholic convent school, and there is bringing Gods to life in Catholicism as well. IR The Sculpture Show (1983) came really early in your career. I think you were the youngest artist in the show. What was the process for selection? LF I was still on my MA. Fenella Cryton had seen my work in New Contemporaries (ICA, 1982), and she came to the college and looked at what I was doing and asked me to be in it. At the end of my BA and during my MA I was involved in the Greenham Common protests and women’s groups, so weirdly, I was quite ambivalent about taking part. At the opening, a group of friends came along and completely slagged it

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off. I was ‘going over to the other side’ and ‘selling out’, as one should not have anything to do with the patriarchal structure and definitely should not be showing in that type of gallery. My part was in the West Gallery at the Serpentine overlooking the park. I had five works there: Pig, Home, Sea Slugs, another abstract untitled bronze and the spotted dog called Still Life.1 IR There is an interesting dialogue in those works, between Pig and Still Life, which are semi-figurative, and Home, which is quite abstracted – an almost protective, cocoon shape. LF There was a regular tutor at Bath who was always saying, ‘You are such a good sculptor, such a good artist, if only you were not figurative.’ I kept on thinking, ‘How can I be a great artist … ’ But this haunted me for a long time. I kept trying not to be figurative, but in the end I just thought ‘sod it’. I can’t not be figurative. IR I was also interested in your range of materials that you used then, from wood, to bronze, to ciment fondu. Were you making all of these? LF The bronze I took to the foundry, but the others, yes. IR Taking something fully formed to someone else to make is a very different process. LF It has taken me a long time to work out how to work with foundries. But the turning point began when I did a residency up in the Scottish Sculpture Workshop around 2003. There I learned the bronze casting process with a technician called Eden and I learned how to play with the techniques. I started to get to know the process and discover what is possible and what is not. Another turning point came in 2005 when I represented Wales in the Venice Biennale, and Chris Butler who runs Castle Fine Arts Foundry was doing the transport. He suggested that we should do some bronzes together, which we later did, and I love working at his foundry. They are like artist studios. He has a lot of women working there, which was not the case when I worked in foundries before, and it makes a difference to the atmosphere. He is very happy for me to stop the process at any time, add something or take it away rather than me just handing something over and getting it back in bronze. IR It does make for a much more iterative process. Do you want to talk a bit about your process? I gather that you use tracing paper a lot to stop yourself from being precious. LF Well, it was important to me to have a lot of something so that I wasn’t precious … I was overthinking and being overcautious with my work at

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the end of the 1980s. There was a group of artists that I was interested in, who were connected to the feminist movement, and there was an idea around that one could take control of meaning – or at least that is how I interpreted it then. That really almost stopped me from working, as I kept thinking that I had to make sure that everything that I made was completely thought through and watertight in terms of concept. It felt like making art was a very dangerous game. Actually, I work very playfully. I will pick up materials and they might suggest something, and I will go along with that – it is back in the playroom where the rug is a river. IR I was also thinking about your involvement with the feminist movement – they were quite strong in the 1980s. You exhibited with Helen Chadwick in 1992, who showed The Labours in that show, and she got absolutely slaughtered for her use of her body. I was wondering how much you were put off depicting the body in your own work. LF Yes. I was terrified of using the body. You could not be figurative from a sculptural point of view at this time, and you could not use the female form from a feminist point of view. I had slight problems with Helen’s use of her body at the time but it was more to do with my feelings that she could have been more challenging. IR Thinking about my discussion with Kate Blacker, who said that you could not carve, model or use female imagery because of feminist stances, what could you do as a sculptor? LF Absolutely. I did not have problems with materials from a feminist perspective, because you could subvert those things – do some woodcarving of a bodily form and paint it a pinky flesh colour. Also, I really like making large sculptures and subverting the idea of what female art was supposed to look like. But the use of female imagery, which is what I wanted to explore, was tricky. One of my important influences was working collaboratively. I have done a lot of collaborations throughout my career, which has been really useful. My first was with Annie Griffin, which was incredible. I met her when I was in Bath and she was with the 1982 Company. She worked with Neil Bartlett and some of the people who went on to do Théâtre de Complicité. When Annie and I left college we started to work together. She was doing this fantastic work called Almost Persuaded, which was later put on by Artangel, which was all about country and Western music, and women’s sexuality and women’s lives. It was very

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funny. It was very Pina Bausch meets an American sensibility. We loved talking together about things and were on the same wavelength. We did Deadly Grove and Ariadne together. The shows came out of improvised rehearsals and came out of play really. A lot of ideas that came up in the work kept me going for a long time. IR What sort of things? LF Well, we would start a game like ‘It’s your funeral, what are people doing?,’ and you would act out your funeral. Or ‘You have just been dumped by your boyfriend and left on a rock. What does that feel like?’ You would have to get up, do this drum roll clap and then start improvising. As soon as you started to get boring, the others would give you the slow hand-clap. You would really have to think on your feet. This was how the rehearsal went. Something would come out of those, which we would develop. I did the sets, but with Deadly Grove I was very involved with the making of the show and I was in it as well. I was appalling! Because there was money for education, we developed the show with teenage schoolkids and so a lot of it was about sulking and bad behaviour. It was great! We filled the whole floor with tons and tons of peat. Out of this floor came these huge bears that were like trees, and it became this magical forest that was sort of alive. We performed among these things. IR Did you find that these things fed into your art practice? LF Yes, and the drawings especially. I did a lot of drawings. IR There was a whole series of Needy Greedy (started 1987) which went on for a few years. Was it a book? LF No, it was not a book, just a series. I wanted to do a series about a character who was needy and greedy, and sort of constrained and angry too. She was a slightly slutty, angry baby with a dummy in her mouth. IR There was quite a lot about the domestic in your work then – did you have children by that stage? LF No, but I was thinking a lot about it. That is where my politics came out of. You had to really rethink how you were brought up. IR There is quite a lot of anger in much of your work of the 1980s – For King and Country (1984) for instance, with this lion with an angry humanoid face, which re-emerges a number of times. Political anger, social anger?

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LF Massively – well, it was the 1980s. You had to listen to such a lot of shit. It was terrible. I find it fascinating now, when there is a fantastic resurgence in feminism, but they are still asking the same stupid questions like ‘Can women have children and be an artist?’ and everyone focuses on the few artists they know whose children are not very pleased with them! I immediately started teaching when I came out of art school, and there was still so much resentment around women – a fury that we were putting ourselves forward. It was Thatcher’s era. IR There were so many things – AIDS, the Falklands War, miners’ strike, inequality – there were so many things that people found difficult and that formed a backdrop to work and exhibitions. LF Really my work is about whatever was happening in the world and my experience of it at the time. It is all mixed up in there. IR How do you want the audience to engage with your works? LF Emotionally I think. I want them to engage on a personal level first and foremost – and the humour. I want the works to be eye-catching to capture your attention and then I want to work on you psychologically. Make you feel uncomfortable and ask questions about yourself so that you have to use your experience to understand the work, rather than me telling you what to think. IR Being open-ended and allowing the audience to engage in a multileveled way was part of the postmodern debate in the 1980s. LF Yes, absolutely. IR Some of your themes were quite worrying, like Buttercup from 1991, with this child brandishing two guns, and yet the materials were varied – with hard aluminium and soft fabric being incorporated. Did you hide the soft, or were they incorporated? Were there visual contrasts within it? LF She is hard aluminium – tough, hard and cold – and is painted with a hard, reflective enamel paint, and then underneath her skirt, the paint is rubbed away to reveal the reflective aluminium with the light shining on it – this mirror-like surface reflects the warm, yellow colour of the buttercup, inlaid into the top of the plinth. The plinth itself is soft and flower-shaped. That sculpture was part of a show that I did at the Riverside Studios with Hermione Wiltshire (1991). What we were exploring was how to make images exploring female sexuality, using images of women’s

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bodies that were not exploitative and compromised. For me, some of the dialogue of 1980s feminism took away choice and pleasure or made pleasure problematic. So the author Angela Carter was quite influential for me then. I didn’t like everything that she wrote, but it was so great to have her voice in the mix during that era. IR How did you choreograph the exhibition with Hermione? LF Working with Hermione was a way of continuing a dialogue once we had left art school. We would challenge and encourage each other. We would do studio visits to each other’s spaces and give crits to each other. It was a way of not being so isolated, and keeping a proper dialogue going on. Then we got asked to do the show at the Riverside, and we developed it together. I have done that subsequently, and it makes the whole process of art-making really interesting, rather than just being ‘another show’. IR Tell me a bit about the Riverside – it was such an important venue. LF It was, as were the ICA and Battersea Arts Centre. It had a theatre, and at the time the visual arts, theatre and music were so much closer. You could hop from one to another and they were often so political. It felt so exciting. The idea of an arts centre now seems a bit old-fashioned, but then it was really important. There were genuine crossovers, and the bar and cafe were the places where everyone would meet. We would meet a lot at the ICA – and they had these amazing talks that we all went to in the 1980s. IR Lisa Appignanesi was there then … LF She organized the most amazing talks, for science, feminism, psychoanalysis, gender … IR There are some lovely catalogues of those – one from 1985 is called Desire … LF Yes. I went to that, and it was amazing! I go to some now and think, ‘You should have heard them back in the day.’ They were saying so much more radical things then. They were brilliant! IR You also got quite a number of public commissions. I was just wondering that if you have a work out there permanently, like in West Bromwich (1985), where people see it regardless – how do you see your responsibility? LF I think if I thought about responsibility I would be the end of it. I want to make work that is approachable and well made so that people could

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enjoy the craft of it regardless whether they had a clue what it was about. I felt it was very important that someone from my family, for instance, who would not have known anything about art, would be able to engage, be curious and not be intimidated. I also wanted a piece of work people could grow familiar with, and that might reveal itself over time. I always have a hope that the image stays in the viewer’s mind and that image continues to provoke thoughts over time. IR Was Canterbury Tower (1986) permanent? LF No. It was for this incredible show, which I think they are trying to archive now. But it was for Women Sculptors Today (1986) in Canterbury. There were a lot of women who would not necessarily have wanted to be in an all-women show who were there, which was good. I made a large wooden tower and worked on it on-site so that people could see it grow. Phyllida [Barlow] worked on-site also. People’s attitudes to art have thankfully changed, but then it was all ‘What are you doing? You are using taxpayers’ money.’ Unbeknownst to them, much of it was my money that was paying for it. I had been saving up through teaching. I suppose I wanted to be this carver on-site, doing something that challenged ideas of what a female artist did and was probably something that even some blokes would not have taken on, in terms of scale. But unfortunately it got smashed down half way through, and then the workshops in Canterbury Art School helped me put it together again. It opened, and then it lasted a day, or a day and a half, and got smashed again. IR That is pretty gutting! LF Yes, I think I was quite naive. I thought that people would like it. Some people did. Probably it was a bunch of squaddies – it usually involves alcohol. IR Yes, the dialogues were different then. You had a right to dislike art and destroy it. LF Yes, it stood for something. People said things like ‘We would rather have a new nursery,’ which is not really an either/or. You still get those sort of comments, but not quite in the same way. IR What do you think made the change? LF An incredible lot of work. It is what something like Turner Contemporary did when they went down to Margate. They did a lot of education, opening their doors and listening, rather than ‘We will educate you.’ I think that made a huge difference.

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IR I think that Arts Council funded galleries, like Ikon, Kettles Yard and Whitechapel, thought of this as being part of their remit as well. They had huge outreach to schools. LF I think it made a huge difference, but not just people being told how to look at art, but it effected how art galleries were run. Tate Liverpool, for instance, had a fantastic education department, which had a big impact. It was more of a two-way thing. IR Thinking about galleries, you also had a show at Nicola Jacobs Gallery. It seems to have been a really important gallery at that time. Do you want to say anything about that? LF When I came out of art school I wanted to be shown by one of the best galleries in Cork street, and she was the one. It was great. She was the first one to get into Vogue and help popularize art. She was one of the forerunners of making art glamorous. When she found out what my work was about, she was horrified. The relationship did not last long. IR Did you have a gallery after that? LF No. I had Nicola, then I went to Benjamin Rhodes. But what was great about my show with Nicola was I got to know Paula Rego, who was having an exhibition down the road at Edward Totah’s gallery. We met, and that was a nice connection. IR It is interesting that in both of your works there does seem to be a tension between the dark and witty, and about human frailty, but expressed in rather different ways. LF I suppose that we also use folk traditions and dreams. IR Thinking about folk traditions, and the spaces that you showed in, I have seen photographs where your work – sculptures suggesting Staffordshire dogs – sits in glamorous surroundings. How much were you looking at popular culture? LF I was looking at popular culture all the time. My family, and the fairground people that I knew, would have their trailers full of Capo di Monte figurines, which is a type of Italian equivalent to Staffordshire figurines. You probably would not think about the stories, but they all tell stories and comment on class. I was always fascinated by the things that people have around, take for granted, and that have social commentary. Coming from Wales and moving to London, I was bowled

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over by how many images of power with the lion that there were. That was shocking to me. All this stuff that you get used to and which form the backdrop to lives, I am interested in.

Note 1

For images and further details of works discussed in this interview, see http://www. lauraford.net, last accessed 21 June 2020.

Figure 18  Richard Wilson, One Piece at a Time, 1987. South Tower, Tyne Bridge, Gateshead, TSWA 3D Project. Sculpture © Richard Wilson and image © Richard Wilson

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Interview 9 March 2018 IR In 2000 you said that a curator or producer is a creative person and that it is a bit like being an editor.1 Do you still feel this? JL I would probably nuance that statement now. Of course, being an interlocutor, catalyst, critical friend, being involved in a dialogue about ideas and possibilities is creative, but I wouldn’t want to confuse it with what might be called first-degree creativity – as in an artist’s work. The kind of work a curator or producer does is different. We can be an important part of the process. Whether it is exhibition making, commissioning or producing new work, there is an important role for people in my part of the art world. Being an editor is often important, even if less unseen. But that is about as far as I would go. IR Yes, there are two parallel strands, and the two come together, with one enabling the other through discussion or … JL I think one of the most important attributes that a producer needs to have is empathy: a feeling and an understanding for the way an artist works, how they are trying to bring their work into the world, and then gauging your relationship with that individual and working in a very flexible way. One of the most important things for a producer is to know when to stand back, even stay away. So it is not always about being hyperactive and thinking that ‘this needs to happen’; you have to respect the silences, empathize with the difficulties and step forward when the time seems right. IR How did you get into curating? JL My professional story is that I studied art history – well, first modern history and then art history – concentrating on nineteenth-century French art and criticism. There was nothing in particular pointing me towards contemporary art. It would have been difficult in the early 1980s to study that. So when I left university, if you were to have a conversation

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with the twenty-two-year-old me, I would have said that I wanted to work in a museum with more historic art, which is what I knew something about. The movement from that vague aspiration to what I began to do in the mid-1980s was more a history of accidents and things happening than a consciously mapped-out career path. IR Were you at Plymouth Arts Centre? JL Yes. My first full-time job was at Plymouth Arts Centre as Visual Arts Coordinator, starting in 1983. I think the reason I got the job was that I had become interested in photography, which formed part of the critical discussions about nineteenth-century painting. The language of photography is primarily a naturalist language, and there was quite an easy segue for me into twentieth century, and then more recent and contemporary photography. I had the good fortune of having a sympathetic director there called Bernard Samuels. The place was tiny, but it allowed me to follow my nose in working with artists locally and bringing in exhibitions. IR Did you get touring exhibitions? JL A bit of a mixture. Some touring exhibitions. Probably some Arts Council touring exhibitions. IR Was the Plymouth Arts Centre funded by the Arts Council? JL It probably was, and it was marginally funded by Plymouth City Council. It had a small cinema and a tiny gallery. Bernard’s great passions were painting and music. He organized a series of chamber music concerts each year and was very connected to Dartington College of Arts. We held an exhibition in 1983 of Cecil Collins’s work who had been connected to Dartington between the 1930s and 1950s. Plymouth was where I started and where I began to learn. I had good friends who were working in London, particularly Michael Morris, with whom I went on to become Co-Directors of Artangel in 1991. Michael was already a close friend, with exceptional antennae for what was going on in contemporary theatre, music and performance. He had a much clearer sense of direction than me. He got a job working in the performing arts department at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in around 1982 or 1983. Through Michael I was introduced to some of his colleagues there. Whilst living in Plymouth, I would come to London to see exhibitions every three weeks or so. I would go to the ICA, to the Whitechapel Gallery, which was really important at the time, to the Hayward Gallery which was showing great twentieth-century artists, and would also visit some contemporary shows in a handful of commercial galleries like the Lisson

James Lingwood Gallery, the Waddington Gallery and the Nigel Greenwood Gallery. My interests expanded from more historical painting to the modern and contemporary. IR I gather that you were one of the coordinators of the TSWA 3D (Television South West Arts) project (1987). JL That was really important for me. Through my time in Plymouth, I had got to know Jonathan Harvey, who had set up the Acme Gallery in London in the 1970s and was instrumental in establishing Acme Studios. Jonathan was also part of a consortium which gained the franchise for Television South West, the smallest of the TV companies in Britain. There was a change in government thinking about the need to restructure regional television and so the franchises were put out to tender. Jonathan was involved in putting one together, and they got the franchise. He did not really want to run a television company, excellent business brain that he has, but thought they could commission some left-field television programmes and support and sponsor some work by contemporary artists. I had got to know Jonathan through Tony Foster, who was an arts officer in the South West at the time. They knew of my work in Plymouth and asked me if I wanted to be involved. I can’t remember how developed their own ideas were at our initial conversations and how much developed later, but we launched TSWA in 1985, starting seriously in 1986. By this time I had moved back to London. We decided that rather than doing a big sculpture project in one place, we would present individual commissions simultaneously in several places around the UK. We raised some money and approached a really interesting cross-section of British artists, partly through Jonathan’s and Tony’s connections and partly through being aware of an emerging awareness of site-specific projects. I don’t think that anything quite like that had been done before on that scale in the UK, and certainly not a project that placed so much emphasis on the importance of site. We just found ourselves developing something which seemed right for the time and place. Site-specific sculpture was certainly in the air. Sculpture had evolved from Conceptual Art and Arte Povera to absorb different kinds of materials from the world and to consider the site itself as being a kind of material, in distinction to the tradition of modernist sculpture as an autonomous object in a gallery or museum setting. The way that the Forestry Commission was working with contemporary artists at Grizedale was prominent at the time. I

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remember going to an important conference at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where different artists were talking about their work in relation to place or site. There were very distinctive positions. Anthony Caro was adamant that good sculpture did not need a special relationship to place; in fact work placed outside a gallery setting involved too many compromises. Henry Moore, of course, had argued differently, and artists like David Nash or Andy Goldsworthy were making work that had a very direct relationship to place. IR Were they part of your scheme? JL No. I liked David Nash’s work and remember visiting him in North Wales. I was intrigued with the work that he was making with living trees, for example, but he wasn’t commissioned to make a project for TSWA in 1987. Out of our connections and discussions, and through talking to different producers and different organizations around the UK, we decided that the project should be across the UK. We found partners in Derry, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle upon Tyne, Liverpool, Bristol and London, as well as Plymouth in the South West, and approached, with our partners, different British artists, some of whom Jonathan would have known, like Richard Wilson and Richard Deacon, who had a strong connection with the South West. Richard Deacon realized an extraordinary sculpture called Moor on top of a railway viaduct beside a railway line in Plymouth. It is still there. That work was symptomatic of the shifting discussions of the time. Richard had emerged as one of the leading sculptors in the early 1980s. There was a close attention to what a sculptural object was in a gallery setting, combined with an acute engagement with what it could be in a very different setting. In his work for TSWA, Richard entangled the plinth of the viaducts, the proximity of the railway track and so on with the welded, riveted form of his sculpture. I thought that the title Moor was brilliant – relating his sculpture to Henry Moore, to Dartmoor, but also to the idea of the outsider, as in Shakespeare’s moor, Othello, and to the question of whether the sculpture belonged in its place. It also connected to the double helix form in the great steel bridge by Brunel across the river Tamar, further down the track. IR Yes, it is nicely multilayered. JL There were other memorable projects. Richard Wilson’s One Piece at a Time, for example. Richard had, together with his friends in the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, connections with the Acme Gallery, as well as with

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Matt’s Gallery, whose programme of installations in his place by London Fields was very important. Richard made an extraordinary work with car parts suspended inside in the tower of the Tyne Bridge at Newcastle. Antony Gormley made a powerful work placing three Janus-like sculptures with outstretched arms on the city walls in Derry. Edward Allington placed a kind of errant neoclassical architectural motif within the portico of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields next to Trafalgar Square in London. The whole project was an extraordinary, steep learning curve for us all. As we were working to realize all these different projects, we became increasingly aware that we were part of a current of approaching artists working in sculpture in different kinds of environments, that had also been developed more knowingly by some influential individuals and projects in continental Europe in the same year as TSWA 3D. There was the Münster Sculpture Project, which happened every ten years. Visiting the project in 1987 was an eye-opening experience for me. There was Chambre d’Amis, presented across a wide range of different site in Ghent in 1986, which I did not go to but read about. There was a lot of critical discussion about it in Artscribe and Art Monthly. The French Ministry of Culture had an ambitious commissioning programme of both temporary and permanent projects. All this was in the mix, and we realized that we were working on a parallel track. But you work on something, and you think, ‘That’s interesting’, and you learn very quickly. IR So you had this really successful project in 1987, and then you were involved in another in 1990 – the Four Cities Project. JL The project in 1987 did generate a lot of attention, and people were taken by its ambition. Some of the work was very contentious. It was catalytic. Jonathan felt that he was able to go back to his colleagues in Television South West. No one had ever heard about Television South West, except those in the South West, except through this exhibition, so it did precisely what it was meant to do. He was able to persuade the purse holders that we could do a second iteration of it that would be more ambitious. By 1987 I had a job as Curator of Exhibitions at the ICA in London. Before then, I was part-time until the TSWA 3D project materialized in the summer of 1987. I can’t remember exactly what my terms of employment were, but I had an agreement with Television South West, was curating a number of freelance exhibitions and then became Curator of Exhibitions at the ICA. It was an incredibly formative few years for me.

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IR It was a fantastic time at the ICA as well. There was Iwona Blazwick and Lisa Appignanesi there at the same time. JL Yes, these were some of the people from whom I learnt a great deal very quickly. We all worked very closely together. The ICA was such a bold and open place. When the offer came to do a second big project for TSWA, I was interested in carrying that through. In 1990 I decided to leave the ICA, again just to be able to do other things. The TSWA Four Cities Project was one of those. Through all the experience and connections I had gained through working with Iwona, and also Andrea Schlieker and colleagues like Lisa and Michael Morris, and Simon Field who ran an important cinema programme, I began to develop a broader picture and framework for what was going on at the time. That informed the decision not to repeat the pattern or structure of the 1987 project in 1990, but instead to focus on four different cities in different parts of the UK where we had had a particularly interesting experience. Obviously, one had to be in the South West, so there was a cluster of projects in and around Plymouth – with Donald Rodney, Ron Haselden, the Czech artist Magdalena Jetelova, Judith Goddard and Vong Phaophanit. We invited some very interesting artists to work in Glasgow, including Rosemarie Trockel, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Richard Wilson and Cildo Meireles. Judith Barry and Stuart Brisley realized extraordinary projects. Several were artists I had either worked with at the ICA or seen as my horizons were broadened by visiting international exhibitions. The experience of seeing Magiciens de la Terre in Paris was an important catalyst, and the invitation to artists like Cildo Meireles and Ilya Kabakov came from seeing their work there. Another cluster was in Derry. I was close to Declan McGonagle, who had been pulled back to work in the city having been at the ICA. Ilya Kabakov made a project in a warehouse, Nancy Spero in a women’s centre, and Dennis Adams and Melanie Counsell also showed. So TSWA evolved from single projects in ten different cities to clusters of projects in four different cities. In some ways we struggled to pull all of those together. IR Well, there weren’t many of you organizing it all. JL No, we were a very small group and there was not much money. So much depends on the negotiations with local authorities, site owners and all of that. You need to be very on it, or your partner needs to be very focused. Probably some of the projects that we tried to do were just too ambitious.

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There were some real highlights. What was achieved in Derry and Glasgow for example was very interesting, but there were also some disappointments. Cildo had two potentially wonderful projects in Glasgow that we couldn’t pull off. That goes with the territory of commissioning new work. IR Something that you wrote for that project was that a sculpture can illuminate a space or increase an understanding of space, where people’s perceptions could be changed, even if temporarily.2 Artists were not necessarily changing the vocabularies of their art to consider the context. JL Well, that would be the wrong type of expectation. Artists have their own vocabularies and a way of working that they can adapt to a certain extent, but cannot subsume or jettison their vocabulary, just to take on the vocabulary of a new space or city. IR It is also interesting that these projects were at the same time as the growth in the Percent for Art scheme, such as in Birmingham, which was using site-specific art as part of its urban regeneration. This was different from your projects, as they were permanent works designed to remain in particular places. JL We were quite militantly against permanence, I think in reaction to what we felt were the disappointing orthodoxies of more permanent commissioning. Paradoxically, the work we realized with Ian Hamilton Finlay in Glasgow is still there. ‘All Greatness Stands Firm in the Storm’ is still visible on the stone pillars of one of the bridges across the River Clyde. IR I was wondering whether we could go back to the ICA. Looking at the exhibitions you had, there was a really broad range across art, craft, architecture and design. JL And there was photography, which was unusual at the time. We were determined to be international. We managed to scrape together the money to make occasional research trips to see, for instance, Documenta in Kassel and the Münster Sculpture Project in 1987, which I went to with Iwona, Andrea Schlieker and some other colleagues. We were voracious in looking at and absorbing what was going on. And we moved very quickly. Rosemarie Trockel looked interesting, so we made contact. The same with Ilya Kabakov and Eric Bulatov. It was the time of perestroika, and there was suddenly exposure to great artists from Russia. IR So did you just send out invitations or … JL Well, we needed to track them down, but we used various methods. Telephone, letters or through galleries, someone would connect you. The Whitechapel had an amazing programme of exhibitions through

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the 1980s, often with slightly more established artists. We situated ourselves in a different place, with younger, more emerging artists. It was a great time to be able to do that – it was a very vital period. Spain was exploding after the end of the Franco era. Germany was very important at that time for us. I remember going to Cologne and Düsseldorf a few times, where we met artists like Rosemarie Trockel, Astrid Klein, Reinhard Mucha and Thomas Schütte, Albert Oehlen, Martin Kippenburger and Werner Büttner in Hamburg. Gerhard Richter was a more senior figure whom we were interested in working with. He had already had a show at the Whitechapel and had begun to show at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery. We were able to bring his Baader-Meinhof Series to the ICA (1988). With the intervention of Anthony d’Offay, we were able to get in touch with Richter, and a couple of phone calls and letters later, he said we could arrange to bring the exhibition from Germany to London. He sent a pop-up cardboard model through the post, which showed his idea of the layout, and that is what we did. IR Are there any exhibitions that stand out in your mind as being memorable? JL Well, there were many. Certainly the Richter’s 18th October series (1988). Kabakov did an exhibition The Untalented Artist and Other Characters (1988) that was an adaptation of one he had made the previous year in New York called Ten Characters. Fischli and Weiss … I remember an architecture show that showed Zaha Hadid’s first scheme about what architecture could be in London through constructivist paintings: Metropolis (1988). We did some photography shows there. The exhibition Possible Worlds: Sculpture from Europe (1990) that Iwona and Andrea and myself organized at the ICA and the Serpentine Gallery with an emerging generation of young sculptors from Europe, including Thomas Schütte, Juan Muñoz, Miroslaw Balka, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Franz West, Asta Gröting and Stephan Balkenhol. Katharina Fritsch had an exhibition that Iwona was instrumental in bringing from the Museum of Modern Art in Basel. It was an amazing sculpture of repetitions of figures sitting at a dining room table (Company at Table 1988). IR There seems to have been quite an emphasis on sculpture with some photography. JL I think that we probably were not so sympathetic to the dominant mode of painting at the time – from early to mid-1980s – figures like Schnabel, Clemente and Baselitz. The Whitechapel was presenting major exhibitions by these artists, and we had a sense that generally speaking

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painting was not really where the action was. But it was an exceptional time for sculpture and installation. We showed the American painter Peter Halley at the same time as the Richter paintings. Doris and Charles Saatchi’s programme in Boundary Road was a huge presence in London. The scale and bravura of the shows was a total eye-opener. Warhol, Guston, Twombly. They had a big Anselm Kiefer and Richard Serra show and, from the mid- to late 1980s, embraced emerging work from the States – both painting and sculpture – particularly from New York: Jeff Koons, Robert Gober, Haim Steinbach and so on. London was still perceived by many to be at the edge of things. Notwithstanding the excellent shows that were done at the Whitechapel and the ICA, it just felt like it was more at the edge rather than being a centre. IR Yes, it was not as it later became. Thinking about Artangel, which was started in 1985 by Roger Took, did you come along with particular ideas to start with or … JL We were very aware that alongside my TSWA and ICA experiences, from 1985 to 1986 onwards Artangel was offering another alternative way of working with artists in the city. Roger Took and the curator John Carson realized several really powerful projects: Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projections on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square (a collaboration with the ICA), Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer and many others. By late 1990, the TSWA Four Cities Project was over, the Possible Worlds exhibition had happened, and I was thinking about what next to do. At that point John and Roger and their board had decided that Artangel as it had been set up, with a rather opaque funding structure, was very difficult to sustain and Roger was looking to hand the idea on. The first conversation was with Michael Morris, who had set up his own independent production company called Cultural Industry after he left the ICA. He had been producing major, site-specific performance projects with significant international theatre companies. Michael and I discussed Artangel and thought it was an interesting possibility, but it was not really clear from the board what the proposition was, as there was no budget to work with. It was set up as a registered charity. We were not sure whether it was a viable concern or not, but we said that we would work on it for three months to see whether we could come up with a plan. We knew we wanted to work with artists on site-specific projects and outside conventional institutional frameworks. We knew we needed to explore whether we could gain some funding from somewhere. Through my contacts working with TSWA and with the

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Arts Council, and through Michael’s Cultural Industry we were able to have a conversation with the Arts Council. They invested £10,000 as a one-off grant, and this gave us the confidence to approach artists. Then we built some momentum, and artists started sharing interesting ideas with us. We had an initial programme for 1992. The first artists that I recall talking to were Stephan Balkenhol and Juan Muñoz. There was a substantial exhibition at the Hayward Gallery called Doubletake: Collective Memory and Current Art (1992) and the Hayward asked us whether we would be interested in doing some public projects to run alongside the gallery exhibition. They were quite keen that we work with Jeff Koons on his Cicciolina project, but we decided not to go that way. However, we approached Balkenhol and Munoz, whom they knew and we knew through the ICA. Michael approached Michael Clark, who was the great contemporary choreographic figure of the time. Michael Clark wanted to rework The Rite of Spring, but not in a conventional way in a proscenium theatre but in a more raw and provisional feeling space, and we moved ahead with the project that became Michael Clark’s Mmm … , with Michael and his mother both performing, and Leigh Bowery. I had wanted to make a project for the TSWA Four Cities Project in Newcastle with Bethan Huws, which did not happen. But Bethan made a piece by bringing a group of eight Bulgarian women to sing to the North Sea. I had seen Rachel Whiteread’s cast of a room, Ghost at the Chisenhale Gallery in 1990, approached her, and she very quickly shared the idea of wanting to cast a house in situ in London. So the conversations that we had with artists led us to believe that there were many interesting ideas out there that needed an organization like Artangel to facilitate them. Gradually we built some momentum and a profile, which enabled us to think about the next generation of projects. IR I was looking at your website, and the documentation is fantastic, but the works no longer exist. Do you think that they are just of their era, or could they be made again? JL They do belong to a time and place. If you think of there being a kind of chemistry to each project, it was specific to the conditions, the politics and issues of the time, and the contingencies of working in the marginal or liminal spaces that were available to artists at that time. You could recreate the physical act of realizing a project, but it would not mean the same now as it did in the 1990s.

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Notes 1 2

Susan Hiller and Sarah Martin eds., The Producers: Contemporary Curators in Conversation, (Gateshead: BALTIC, 2000), 33. Discussion chaired by Mel Gooding, with Lesley Greene, James Lingwood, Declan McGonagle, Malcolm Miles, in James Lingwood ed., TSWA Four Cities Project, (Bristol: Taylor Brothers, 1990), 151–5.

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Karsten Schubert

Interview 12 October 2018 IR How did you become a curator – or a gallerist? Incidentally, what do you like to call yourself? KS Actually I don’t use the word ‘curator’ as I think that is a different arena, although I sometimes act as a curator, and I don’t call myself a gallerist because I don’t have a gallery any more. Art dealer and art book publisher basically cover everything in its current incarnation. IR And in the 1980s what would you have called yourself? KS I never had a problem with the word ‘art dealer’. The term ‘gallerist’, which had a very clear meaning in the 1960s and 1970s, by the 1980s had become something else. Describing myself as an art dealer is not a problem. IR You started the Karsten Schubert gallery in 1987. Where were you before then? KS I was at the Lisson Gallery for three years. I worked with Nicholas Logsdail when the gallery was tiny. When I arrived in 1984 there was Nicholas, a secretary and me. It was a very exciting time. It was the place where the local, contemporary scene had its focal point. IR Did that change when the Saatchi Gallery opened in 1985? KS No, because at that point the Saatchi was very much like an institution. It was not about selling art. There was a very small group of galleries in London then, working in the same area and competing with the Lisson. There was Waddington, Anthony d’Offay, Nigel Greenwood, Annely Juda – those were the main big players. What was different then to now was that everyone went to everyone else’s events. It was small enough for you to cover everything and it was still relaxed enough for that to be possible. Over the next ten years, people suddenly did not go to other people’s openings anymore. It got very competitive. It became big business and the galleries were not into sharing things with each other. Now, people definitely don’t go to other people’s openings.

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IR Is there a particular date when this started to happen? KS No. It happened gradually. It became so big that it became a physical impossibility. There was suddenly a big scene attached to it, and there were some people whose entire life seems to have been contingent on going out every evening to see a private view. I remember once, in the late 1990s, because private views had become so crowded, we decided that we would open the show on one day and have the private view a few days later. However, we would only disclose this to the people that we wanted there. So the show opened. In the morning of the first day, I had a phone call from someone who was very irate and demanded why there was no private view. I said, ‘Well, there was no private view as far as you are concerned.’ That was not acceptable. Another thing that happened during the 1990s was that collectors started staying away from private views. They became purely social things for the artists’ family and friends, the inner circle, but the collectors did not show up any longer. It shows that things had become too big to be cohesive. In the 1980s and 1990s you would make sure that as the person responsible in the gallery, you were visible. You would sit in the back office, but the door would be open. If you go into a gallery now, it is all designed to completely discourage that contact. IR Hopefully we can talk a bit about this later on, but if we could just go back to the Lisson Gallery – what was your role? KS The great thing about the Lisson at that point was that it was so small that you would participate at every level. There were not enough people that you could divide responsibilities up. There were certain artists that you would have an affinity for, so you would look after them, but you would be involved with everything. It was a really great training. I had worked in a German gallery for two years before that, so I knew the basic framework already. The trouble with the huge galleries now is that you have a very limited experience. You never get the overview. IR You decided to leave and found a gallery space in Charlotte Street? KS Yes, which was mainly because it was cheap. It was about three thousand square feet, and I think it was altogether about £35,000, which was not a killer. And it was within walking distance of other galleries like the Annely Juda. It had previously been a shop, so we spent money on it and turned it into a gallery. It was very exciting! You could do it, because the relationship between what it cost you to have the space and what you needed to have an edge was not completely disproportionate. From the 1990s onwards, when one needed to do the art fairs, you had to turn over an awful lot in order to break even. The art fairs today are as much of an expenditure as the gallery space.

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But to go back to the 1980s, you could be a visible gallery without financially killing yourself. You could take risks because the whole thing was not contingent on selling as much as possible. It was contingent on you having really good ideas that would translate into sales. As the escalation came, you could not take those risks as the expenses grew and grew. You had huge staff and big gallery spaces. We have reached a point where the big galleries generate their own universes, with their own media people. They write their own copy and do a fake art history. The impression from the outside is that all this comes with great critical weight, but the reality is that this is internally generated and usually does not reach beyond each gallery’s reaches. This also contributes to the isolation of the galleries. You don’t want your clients, who you expensively maintain, to go elsewhere. It has become insular and cut off. IR I was thinking about Lynne Cooke who appears in a number of your catalogues in the 1980s. She was an important and sympathetic voice. KS She was a great critical voice. She was one of the leading critics of the time, who had written extensively about British sculptors of the 1980s – the whole Lisson Gallery generation. She taught at the University of London, and she was a key voice in all this. So if she got interested in you that would be helpful. She wrote and lectured extensively. IR She was very perceptive. KS She was brilliant! She left London in 1989, went to the Dia Art Foundation in New York and is now at the National Gallery in Washington. IR I also noticed a number of other names in your catalogues, like Richard Salmon. KS Richard Salmon was my backer. He was a private dealer who decided he wanted to back a contemporary gallery, which he did, very bravely. But then 1990 came and everything exploded. That whole thing that had started off quite well became a nightmare, because suddenly the market dried up. It was really difficult, especially in relation to the YBAs. They had 1988 and 1989, and were booming, which got certain attitudes going. Suddenly there was 1990. This was not like the recession of 2008, when things slowed down. It was a complete full stop. It did not really rectify itself for over a year. Even if your overheads are not killing you every month, that is still an awful lot of money to find. I remember when this started Leslie Waddington had bought a share in my gallery that autumn of 1990. Leslie said that nothing would be as bad as 1973, which was six months long. I thought that it was interesting that for him that was a nightmare that he had survived and thought of as his benchmark. The year 1990 became my benchmark. There are a lot of things that

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change after you have been through a thing like that. You are more cautious. I don’t think he had any inkling what was about to happen over those twelve, thirteen or fourteen months. It was a great moment of consternation for the YBA when that happened. It was not part of the plan. IR No. But it is interesting how many were in the British Art Show of 1990, which had obviously been planned for a while. From the outside, it could almost appear to be almost seamless. KS Except that with the YBA the problem was that institutional support was limited. I think there was a perception very early on that these artists were too commercial or too successful for their own good. IR It did happen really quickly for them. KS Yes, but if you look back it always happens really quickly for people. You come up with something interesting and engaging and you are done. How that translates into sales or exposure, that is a different matter. But the speed of things always seems to be very fast. If you look at all the great post-war people, like those connected with Pop art, that all happened when people were in their twenties – Hockney, Riley – that was all quite quick. But there was a puritanical disapproval, thinking that the YBAs were having more fun than they deserved. So they were loved and hated at the same time. There was a very double-edged thing going on. But when Jay Joplin and Saatchi got involved, the puritans could not deal with that. IR I have to admire their energy. There were about three or four quite complex exhibitions in the late 1980s and early 1990s that they just propelled though. KS Well, it was partly people coming together. It was luck that they were all very good at what they were doing. But aside from the group exhibition at Building One, Modern Medicine (1990), which was hugely ambitious, the others were not so big. The Freeze exhibition (1988) was big, and no one saw it. IR I thought that it was well attended, and people who mattered were taken there. KS Some of the people who mattered were taken there. There was a key under the doormat if you wanted to get in. It reminds me a bit of the 1920s, and if you go through all the biographies and add up all the people who said that they were at the first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring … I think that there were lots of people who claim to have been there. Once something becomes mythologized, it is easy to claim that. It is not as if they gave you a tattoo to say you were there. It was

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very ambitious in that it went against the rules in London, which were that if you left college, you would hunker down to wait for an invitation from Nicholas Logsdail to be invited to be part of a summer group show at the Lisson Gallery. Nick, who for ten years went around telling everyone that the YBAs were a waste of space and time, felt a bit miffed that his gatekeeper position was being challenged. And them taking Anthony d’Offay and Norman Rosenthall out there to see the show again went against the conventions. But they had nothing to lose. IR I think that you picked out a number of artists straight from their degree shows – Michael Landy and Gary Hulme? KS Well, there was something very odd at that degree show. The first artist who was taken up was Fiona Rae, who went to Waddington. That in itself was a big breach with the past, as he had never done that. Leslie treated her very much like a daughter. She was very protected there. The second artist that Waddington took was Ian Davenport. I went to the degree show. I was very friendly with Michael Craig-Martin at that point and he would say, ‘Come and have a look.’ My first choices were Michael Landy, Gary Hulme and Ian Davenport. Ian was then picked up by Waddington. We did a group show of all three in the autumn of 1988. That was really a big change from the way it used to be done. Then Maureen Paley took on a few artists. IR What exactly was new? KS I think the speed of it all. Although my gallery was only two years old, it had registered with its programme. Waddington, again he had never done that before. Maureen Paley genuinely did it because that is what she did at that point. For the artists, it went from being at art school to being in this professional world very quickly, which irritated a lot of people, some of whom had waited years for their invitation from the Lisson. It felt very fast and very engineered, but it was much less engineered than it seemed. It was genuinely trying something new, and it was an acknowledgement that it was really interesting-looking work and, of course, it carried on the following year with Damien and Sarah Lucas and that second-generation graduating. IR What did you see your role as being with the artists that you supported and represented? KS You genuinely try to look after them, to pack them up as much as you can, sell work, get them into publications, into exhibitions and into other galleries. There is quite a lot to do. What changed was that they all suddenly had quite big and specific needs for money for making things. That was a big change. Usually you worked 50/50. Suddenly you had huge outlays that had to be recouped first, and, some of the work you could not sell, so you would have tied up a lot of capital.

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IR Yes, some of the works by the YBAs were really substantial in terms of scale and materials. Although you did not have much to do with Rachel Whiteread then, Ghost (1990) would have been expensive, as would some of the works by Michael Landy. KS We were very involved with Michael Landy’s Market (1990), which was a lot of money. Rachel’s was also a lot of money as it was expensive to make and cast. I don’t know who commissioned Ghost. That was new and difficult. We tried to make things as simple as possible, so we gave most of the people monthly stipends and they had accounts with us, and when they got very overdrawn we would buy in work. That was fine until 1990. Then I had to make rapid decisions, one of which was that ‘You don’t pay out what you don’t have to pay out.’ That caused a lot of anger. There was a feeling that there was a sort of right, and that I was going against that right, when actually the reality was that I did not have the money any more to pay them – which is not the same thing. I learnt a lesson from that. I would never again let people run up tabs. There are other ways of doing it. It became difficult when I had to stop it. IR I also saw that you had great connections in Europe and America. There was an early exhibition called Denkpause (1988), which included five German artists: Günther Förg, Thomas Grünfeld, Thomas Locher, Rosemarie Trockel, Peter Zimmermann. How did you choose them? Did they come to you? How did it work? KS That was the second show that we did at the gallery. You had to go out. As far as I was concerned there were very interesting things happening in America and Europe, especially Germany at that point, so I tried to get involved with that and bring it over here, intermixing those with exhibitions of the YBAs so that each benefitted each. But this is in hindsight. IR You had about nine exhibitions a year, so if you juxtapose one artist against another, it does suggest some sort of parity or equivalence … KS It was saying that this is what I think is interesting and worth looking at. You make a proposal to people. People would follow me. A lot of people did not, but that is life. It felt very coherent, and some things were directly related; some at least came out of the same spirit and reinforced each other indirectly and directly. We did the publications on the side. They all followed a format, and by using the same format for different things you suggest that these are things that should be considered in the same way. IR Who were you hoping would pick up the catalogues?

Karsten Schubert KS We did catalogues for about half the shows. There would be a mail-out of two to four hundred catalogues to clients, to libraries, to critics. I like books, and I like making them. I found that this was a much more interesting way of spending PR money than putting ads into magazines. IR Clearly as an art dealer you have to sell things. I wondered how much was also about broadening the audience towards a general public. You did some talks with artists, and you had a Riverside Appeal in 1987 … KS The Riverside Appeal was for the Riverside Studios that was about to be shut down. So we organized an appeal at the gallery, had a reception, sold tickets for it and raised the money that they needed. IR How much longer did they stay open in its format? KS  Three or four years, and then it went. IR Did you think about broadening your audience? KS It was still the time when people came to the gallery, so you did not have to make that distinction. I always felt there was a public service that you provided for those who came in, and then there was the selling side that made all of that possible. IR Were there any exhibitions that you put on that you felt particularly represented the era? KS I think that this is too big. There were runs of exhibitions where you felt, ‘That was quite beautifully balanced’ and that you are ‘hitting a pitch’. But you never manage to sustain that because somebody pulled out at the last minute, somebody changed their mind, and sometimes you have an exhibition scheduled with somebody, and it happens when they are going through a big change in the studio. Working with living artists who are making things is quite a risk, as you are making quite big assumptions about what they will be doing at any given moment. Often you are very lucky. Artists will pull out all the stops to make something fantastic. But there are moments when they are in the middle of a break-up, or it is really hard in the studio, and you have this slot in the programme that you need to fill. It is really hard to maintain a line of really great shows. It is a collaboration between you and the artist, and you presume that something can happen at a given time. Often it can; sometimes it can’t. IR Is there anything that you would like to add? KS What we have not discussed is the trajectory of the YBAs. It is very hard to get your head around this, as there is the factual record of what happened, then the fictitious record and then the mythology. This is hard to pull apart and look at objectively. It became mythologized very quickly.

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British Art of the Long 1980s It also very quickly became something that had more to do with a career than a calling. I think what happened here was an odd mix of Goldsmiths having very good teachers for a very long time who were practising artists, and they had a shared attitude towards the whole thing. It was very much a team effort. Increasingly artists were drawn into that. I think that 1980 to 1990 was the great moment when all that came together and worked really well. Subsequent generations tried to replicate what happened here, and of course you cannot do that. People would go to Goldsmiths because that is where careers started. Even with the teachers, the perception is that Michael Craig-Martin did it all, which is not true and drives the other teachers crazy. I feel that Michael could have been more challenging when this was put towards him. Jon Thompson, Richard Wentworth and others were a really good team, but the perception is one-sided. On the other side, Damien was not the motor of the whole thing. Again, it was a team effort. The decision about who would, or would not, be included in a show was quite harsh. Even if you say that Damien pulled all the shots, there were others who did the legwork and made it all happen. Charles Saatchi’s role has been distorted. He was there and spent a fair bit of money. He tried to stay very distant from the whole thing. There was no fraternization. He wanted a bargain. The first shows at Boundary Road were amazingly helpful, and people went to them. The group shows with Damien, Rachel and others, starting in 1992, were big game-changers. But it felt like you were dealing with a stranger. There was no loyalty bond. Institutionally it was difficult because institutional support was lacking. Iwona Blazwick’s Damien Hirst show – Internal Affairs (1991–2) – at the ICA was helpful. The Tate was in an odd place in relation to this. Nick Serota had his own generation where his loyalties lay. The narrative now about the reason why the Tate does not have any of the major works of the YBAs is that Charles Saatchi bought everything. But if the Tate had shown any genuine interest, they would have gone out of their way for them. We offered the Tate every great piece by those artists, and we always had the same slightly snotty letter back from them. Jeremy Lewison would write, ‘It was felt internally that we should wait a little longer’ and ‘It was not quite the right thing’. I felt that if there was genuine interest they would not have written that. It was not Jeremy, but Nick who was quite indifferent to it. They missed out on Rachel’s Ghost and Room, but … They should have a really good representation of the YBAs. They could have done it. They did not need a huge amount of money. We sold Ghost to Charles Saatchi for £10,000. It needed some

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money spent to crate and stabilize it. The year Rachel did House, she was nominated for the Turner Prize, and she showed Room. That was £45,000. You think, well, this is her second Turner Prize nomination, and you have all this activity going on in the East End. All that stuff went elsewhere, which is a real shame. They have not got a proper representation. They missed the boat. IR They missed a lot from the 1980s. KS This happened right under their nose. It was quite affordable. What is wrong with being a bit patriotic? That did not happen. The big exception to this was the British Council, which was very good. I think that Andrea Rose, who was in charge, genuinely understood and she could gauge interest from the outside. They just came in and bought and did it properly. The Arts Council Collection also. IR Yes, it is interesting how they seem to have been parallel in their buying. KS It was a good start because there was a lot of attention, but it was a wobbly start because some of the key players were not doing their stuff, which made it difficult. Likewise, if you look at European museums, they do not have much of this work. With Europe, it was that British art became almost disproportionately expensive, as American interest in British art made it expensive fast. At that point the Europeans could not compete. In America there was great support initially by people like Clarissa Dalrymple and Robert Gladstone. There was a show in Minneapolis, which I felt was consuming it more than documenting it. It was turned into a British thing. Then you had genuine interest in certain people. MoMA New York bought Room, and the National Gallery then bought Ghost. For the rest it is quite spotty. IR Some of the vocabularies that Rachel [Whiteread] was using in her work would appeal to an American audience. KS Yes. Minimalist, clean and clear. I think that is about it. The story is a lot more complicated than it looks in the clean-shaven narrative. IR It is interesting who has gained attention in the narrative and who has not. There are artists whose work I really admire, who don’t get the same coverage as others. KS It is a long time ago now, and we are not on the revival cycle yet. Some things that looked fantastic then now don’t always look quite so fantastic. Very few people have managed to maintain their art continuously. Certain people who were very prominent have faded away. So it is complicated. IR There is not one narrative. KS No. There is not a straightforward reason, and each individual story looks slightly different.

Figure 19  Abigail Lane, Red Vertigo, 1995, at Skin of the Teeth, ICA London, 1995. Red wax and steel wire. approx. 150 × 30 × 25 cm. © Abigail Lane. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020. Photo: Edward Woodman

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Abigail Lane

Interview 26 June 2018 IR I just wanted to start by asking why you decided to go to Goldsmiths? AL I had been to Bower Ashton (1985 to 1986) in Bristol for my Foundation course and when it was time to make decisions about where to go next, my tutor suggested I consider the textile course at Goldsmiths, which had a good reputation. I went to the degree show and saw that it was unconventional and that it might be really good for me. However, when I looked around my instinct was that the Fine Art tutors might have more to offer and that this course would allow me greater depth and freedom.1 The Millard Building in Camberwell (which is where we were situated at that time) housed only the Textiles and Fine Art departments from the university. As a result, there was a degree of overlap between the students – although looking back I think there was a little bit of snobbery between the two. The layout and fabric of the building itself were interesting and quite instrumental in bringing about a certain intensity between the students and their relationship to their work. Being there was, I think, integral to the group (some of whom were later labelled the Young British Artists (YBAs)), moving forward in the way that they did. The Fine Art teaching staff were mostly active and exhibiting artists. At that time, Richard Wentworth, Michael Craig-Martin and John Thompson seemed to be running things – a really brilliant set of people. Richard Wentworth was my first tutor there, who was really practical about things. I remember him telling us, ‘Your studio is where you make things, but actually the important things happen in the canteen and the bar.’ The canteen was also where the staff ate, and that allowed for a sense of equality and casual mentoring. Richard also said, ‘You have moved to London – use it. Go to everything. Find out what is happening.’ And more practically: ‘Libraries are warm.’ He made a huge dent in the process of leaving home and being in London.

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The way the studios and students were organized was also good. You were not grouped because of which year you were in, but because of practice and interests. Sarah Lucas became a friend quite quickly. You were allocated a year tutor and signed up to see others, many of whom went on to become people who I still consider colleagues and friends. The lack of hierarchy appealed to me very much. You were treated like an artist from day one. I had a different start from most, in that I went to a free school in the 1970s. You attended classes only if you wanted to, teachers used first names only, pupils were an entirely mixed bunch and it was housed in a quite spectacular Victorian villa. So I had an early understanding of life without hierarchy and I found myself in the almost exact same scenario at Goldsmiths. Another thing that influenced things was that my mother worked for some years in the Arnolfini gallery and bookshop when I was young. There was a big change in contemporary jewellery in the 1970s, which was borderline sculpture, and she was in charge of this at Arnolfini. She was friends with Patrick Heron’s daughter, Susanna, who was at that time married to David Ward (who later taught at Goldsmiths). Susanna was always sending me materials for making things from quite an early age. They were friends with Richard Deacon and Jacqui Poncelet – and also Richard Wentworth. So when I left home in 1986 I went to live with Richard D. and Jacqui who had two small kids. It was the year when Richard won the Turner Prize so he was rushing about here and there. Jacqui had also been really successful. They were both so generous, and I was immediately introduced to some of that slightly older group of successful artists. While I was living with them, my generation started Freeze etc. Looking back, I was in the crossfire of things. Michael Landy was my boyfriend at that time, and eventually I left so that we could move into a flat together. IR Were you aware that there was a break between what you were doing and slightly earlier on? AL Yes. Not with work, but with opportunities. The system beforehand comprised the powerful galleries like Lisson, Anthony d’Offay and so on. Sarah Lucas, when I first knew her, went out with Grenville Davey. He was one of the new, young, up-and-coming generation along with Julian Opie, Lisa Milroy and so on. That turned out to be a slightly in-between generation. They should have had more time and space – a longer period of dominance. But they were the last generation that seemed to be at beck and call of the gallery-prescribed

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pace of progression. Galleries would watch artists a bit, might come to the studio and promise to come back two years later. A few group shows definitely preceded any promise of anything more significant. But in that tiny space of time, with Damien at the helm, we decided that we were not going to do that. IR Was it Goldsmiths saying, ‘Why do you need to wait?’ or was it something about your particular group? AL  The college didn’t talk about that. Contrary to belief we didn’t talk about future career prospects either. I certainly didn’t have any foresight in that respect. No one really had an idea where it was going – it was just making the most of the moment. Make work – then show it – why not? And while you were at it, do everything as well as you could. Just before Freeze, Angus Fairhurst organized an exhibition (University of London in Bedford Way), and ahead of that, I was part of an event that Richard Wentworth organized in Heaven – a gay nightclub in Charing Cross. It only lasted for one night. I remember including a sculpture involving some light bulbs tangled up with blue cord. IR Doing all these things is impressive … AL I don’t know what it was – good chemistry, energy and luck between a slightly random group I suppose. There was a real clash of social background at college, but it meant we learnt a lot from one another. Me living with Michael (Landy) for instance – we could not have come from more different backgrounds. The whole of Goldsmiths was like this – a daring attitude from some combined with varying capabilities of others. Maybe that’s why impressive things could be done collectively. Damien had a natural impatience. He could not see any reason not to walk through a wall. It is only a wall and there is something on the other side. IR Who found the warehouse for Freeze? AL I think it was probably Damien, but I don’t really know. He always had a bunch of people with him, going out and about. The northern people stuck together – not just in college. IR At Freeze you showed Essentials. Did that change? The exhibition was in three parts, and some people seemed to have different work in each part. AL There were too many artists to show in one exhibition, so we split it up. My work, Essentials, was in the first part. The second was also planned at the outset, but the third seemed to evolve as things progressed because various people continued to work in the space throughout that period of time.

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I had been working on things like Essentials at college. You work on something and when you know the space you modify things to accommodate its specifics. Then, and now, the experience of works together in the space is the most important thing to me. I had been working with fabric for quite some time at college, and Michael Craig-Martin who was now a more regular tutor had been very supportive of that. The college art and textile departments each had a really brilliant shop so you could buy art materials and cloth very cheaply. I had made a lot of plinths, one had a bristle top, one had a bowl set into it and a third had a pile of papers with ADVANCE written on them, which were from the cleaning company to whom I sent my Essentials for starching and pressing. I liked the idea that you sent the work to the cleaners and it would come back ready to exhibit again. IR Which artists were you looking at? AL I was relatively knowledgeable about contemporary art as I had been hanging about at Arnolfini as a child. I saw work by Michael CraigMartin there, including An Oak Tree (1973) and a sculpture of a table held up by the ropes attached to some buckets sitting on its surface. It was a formal conundrum that I remember enjoying even then. I liked the idea of Eva Hesse – not just her works. I knew that she had had a big loft space to work in. I knew that Sol LeWitt had given her cabinets to put things in. The way she worked and her story were quite charismatic to me somehow. I also liked looking at Land Art: Richard Long, Robert Smithson and so on. Goldsmiths really encouraged one to go out and see everything. Your social life included private views, which are of course far from private. IR Were there any particular shows or venues that you remember being important for you? AL I remember seeing the Bruce Nauman show at the Whitechapel (1987), which made a huge impression on me. He was and is still exciting because he did such a massive variety of things and continues to do so. I have always been attracted to that. Obviously later we all went to the Saatchi Gallery and were blown away by its ambition and modernity but there were many other things before that. I remember going to Falls the Shadow exhibition (1986) at the Hayward. I remember Maureen Paley who had her gallery at her home in Beck Road and who came to give a talk at the school. She was impressive with her cropped black hair and her way of showing work in a domestic space. I saw lots – was influenced by everything happening

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in real time, and as well as all that I was exploring in the library – I loved Arte Povera, Kounellis, Pistoletto and also Magritte, Yves Klein and then later fell in love with Rosemarie Trockel’s work which I saw at the ICA in 1988. IR There were many different types of spaces at that time. AL The ICA, Whitechapel and Serpentine galleries were interesting spaces. They have changed a bit but they are spaces with some architectural detail. It was only later that so many galleries signed up so thoroughly to the minimal – no skirting boards, no windows, no breaks in line … I think all this effects how works are made and perceived. There is always a relationship to place and I have a feeling the tide is turning again on the ‘white cube’. At Goldsmiths the studios were real rooms, and despite the customary scrappy art school dividing walls, the rooms were handsome; there were floorboards, doors and windows. Consequently things worked to that scale and in relation to these details. There were some rooms that were set aside for students to book for week-long exhibitions. I did this a couple of times. Once I installed a room with wallpaper that I had made repeating some dance notation – with the idea that it was a language that could come to life if a dancer were to enter but otherwise it was a dormant motif resembling regular wallpaper. Another time I set five cables into the wall – in lines like a music stave, each dangling to the floor at the end of the line. Two significant things happened in my second year; the Freeze exhibitions took place and the Millard Building closed – the Art and Textiles departments moved to join the rest of the university campus at New Cross. It was really disruptive. We were given some financial compensation as we lost some term time and a lot of facilities that had been at the Millard were no longer available. After Freeze, many people continued to work in that warehouse. We didn’t want to move back to college really. All the intensity had been lost. The canteen was like an airport. Although there was a bit of crosspollination with some students from other departments it was not the same and we had got a taste for something else. I was not one of the people who stayed in the PLA building, but together with Michael we squatted a building in Deptford along with Mat Collishaw, Dom Dennis and a few others. It was just down the road from college and just around the corner from where we lived. Michael had left college by then. I finished college, but we were doing exhibitions and feeling, however tentatively, like we were part of the larger art scene.

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IR It all happened really quickly. You had Home Truths in Italy in 1989, for instance. AL Yes. It was amazing to be knocking about making work in an Italian castle just a few weeks after finishing college! Things were happening for Michael immediately after he graduated. For instance, he was given a studio to work in at the Riverside Studios, and I went over there quite a lot with him. We did some kids’ workshops together there, which was part of the deal. That was an exciting time for us both … I was also starting to get opportunities and to believe in myself as an artist. IR Thinking about some of the exhibitions that you did abroad, how did they come about? AL It was in part to do with living with Michael and the fact that there was interest in a group of boys from our larger group. It was a bit of a boy thing in a somewhat misogynist art world. I did everything with Michael, and when he got to go to Italy I was invited to participate as well. Michael was showing at Karsten Schubert’s by then. I always had a practical bent and tried to address the fact that we needed some basic income since we had decided not to teach or take on anything that would take time from being full-time artists. We were living in short-life housing association accommodation for which we paid very little. They needed a cleaner at the gallery so we ended up doing that alongside Michael showing there. It helped us along. We were very caught up with that group of people. Karsten had Helen Windsor (now Taylor) working for him. I became friends with Helen and she introduced me to fancy things like Smythson and Coutts bank. I sorted out the library at Karsten’s and did some filing. Then, to my total embarrassment, people who had taught me at college came in with their slides and I was the person who was asked to look at them! I met some interesting people there, like Martin Kippenberger and Susan Sontag. Likewise, Richard Salmon had a dinner party for Derek Jarman, and lo and behold, Brian Ferry turned up. I had loved Roxy Music all my life, and suddenly I had access to all this. Michael was getting increasing opportunities and we went to many openings. We were part of everything at every level, and I was helping friends put together their shows at the gallery, which was quite interesting. But eventually I felt my own artistic practice was being marginalized. IR How did you get the show with Karsten Schubert in 1992? It is a tricky thing not to be pigeonholed if you are normally there cleaning and doing administrative tasks.

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AL I had been part of an exhibition at Prue O’Day’s gallery in Portobello Road, curated by Andrew Renton called Show Hide Show that included Jake Chapman, Sam Taylor-Wood, as she was known then, Alex Hartley and myself. I sold a few things, including to Charles Saatchi, and Maureen Paley took notice of me. She had a group of artists that she represented, but I was not one of them. She had recently moved from her small gallery in Beck Road to a grander space in Derring Street, right next to d’Offay’s. She approached me and asked if I would like a solo show. I said, ‘Yes of course’ and started working towards it. Then, just before my exhibition was to open, her gallery went into receivership. I was devastated. Karsten and she were close friends and so we went ahead with the show at his gallery instead. It was really good of him to do that but I don’t think that he regretted it. It was a good show, well attended, and I sold some work. It was called Making History and included Bottom Wallpaper, four large black Ink Pad works, Blue Print, some shoes with my rubber stamp soles and a conceptual ‘game’ called Conspiracy. At the end of that it was all a bit of a muddle. My relationship to Karsten was so multifaceted by then – would he represent me now? Would Maureen sort things out and still be interested – in which case how would I feel about that in any case? I had an identity as Michael’s partner and he was pretty successful by then. God knows whether we were still doing the cleaning, and yet I felt I was an artist in my own right having just done the show. Unexpectedly, I got a letter from Glenn Scott Wright, who had been Maureen’s assistant and he said that he was setting up on his own as an agent. I don’t remember everything he said, but he wrote in a very nice and straightforward way asking me to work with him. It appeared to be a clear path of my own, independent of Michael’s career. At that point Glenn was only working with Langlands and Bell, I think. We worked together for quite a few years. He was living with Julia Peyton-Jones as her lodger, and I got to know her quite well too, which was nice. She was at the Serpentine Gallery. Glenn was very good, which I did not fully appreciate at the time. He was getting my work into good collections and doing the legwork that enabled me to work and show consistently. I did not know that the opportunities I was being given were unusual, and I was still skint all the time and couldn’t understand that. I was working hard but perhaps didn’t make the necessary compromises I should have made in terms of editions and so on. After some years Glenn said that he was going to join the Victoria Miro Gallery. I joined

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them with Glenn but always felt a bit like the stepchild who had never really been properly invited into the family. IR What did you make for Home Truths? AL The exhibition and making period was in a beautiful castle – well, two castles in fact – called Castello di Rivara, close to Turin. I chose – or was given – two rooms. One was a derelict, beautiful room washed in pale pink with windows and shutters that opened out over a great vista. I made two plinths that you could walk between towards the window. Each had something like a page attached with a photograph of my corresponding hand – as if allowing the pages to fall open for the vista. I made another structure, rubber-stamped with an emblem I had copied from the walls of the castle. IR How did you make the work? AL Well, we just muddled through. There were a few of us there – Michael, Angela Bulloch and others. I remember going on shopping trips to get materials and enjoying that someone was taking us seriously enough to translate everything. The man who owned the castle was Franz Paludetto. He also had a gallery in Turin and he ran both with his partner Marina, who later moved to London, but who basically organized things for us while we were at the castle. There were a few people to help us. It was great! It was hot, atmospheric, with a kind of faded glory and the sound of the crickets surrounded us. Both castles were filled with incredible Arte Povera works casually placed among the distressed rooms – a grandeur so specific to Italy. For me it was amazing. I was interested in what I was making, but also engrossed in the overall experience. I had never been to Italy, stayed in a castle, or anything like that, and all this was experienced with my friends. IR It was really heady stuff. AL Yes, it was, but being with Michael it felt safe, and we were really serious about doing our work. Studio-wise, around the same time our squat in London became a nightmare. The protection racket people came after us and Michael had to get our work and possessions out really quickly. Next, we found an old school building near Lambeth Bridge. We approached the owners and said that we could not pay rent, but offered to occupy it, rather than them paying for twenty-four-hour security. Somehow that got agreed and it was brilliant for some years. There was always a feeling of self-sufficiency but nevertheless being on the edge. We had an auction to pay for the electricity bill. Damien

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was not part of the set-up, but he had borrowed the space to make his small formaldehyde fishes so he contributed something to the group of works by everyone in the studios. I think that we asked people to bid for the whole lot in return for the exact electricity bill, which was about £1600. If only Damien had been more involved we would have probably raised a surplus, but we weren’t that savvy! After that arrangement ran its course and they took the building back we went on to have successive studios with Lambeth council on a similar basis. We had a horrible place in Brixton and then something wonderful in Clapham. We moved around as a group. IR Big spaces to make work in? AL Very varied. The school was great. It was not very big, but felt big because the ceilings were so high. My studio was about four hundred square feet, with a parquet floor and big windows. Then there was a large communal room that we could use for exhibitions or whatever. The studio in Brixton was awful, small and full of cockroaches. I planned my ICA show in there and remember Emma Dexter and Kate Bush coming to discuss the work and plans and thinking, ‘This is a hell hole – how can they take me seriously.’ I think we might have moved to the much more impressive Clapham space before my ICA show opened. Richard Shone’s essay for my catalogue was based on a fictional visit to that space, not the cockroach-infested one. Bloody Wallpaper (1995) was a natural progression from earlier works that I had been making with rubber stamps and inkpads. The Ink Pads (1992) were like never-ending infinite paintings, as they never dried. In my earlier show at Karsten’s there was a piece called Conspiracy for which I had wanted to get my police fingerprints recorded. I needed to use my contacts for that, so Helen Windsor and I went to Scotland Yard together – they were very happy to do it since I was with her. Works and interests developed naturally. This led to my acquiring various crime scene images – actually from an American police source. Bloody Wallpaper evolved from the traces and marks of blood depicted in these shocking documents of domestic violence. Then I made more large Ink Pads to hang on top of these papered walls – this time in red. IR There is often the absent person in your work. AL Yes. We are in so many ways perceived by what we leave behind or around us. IR And always an absent back story. What comes first? Do you have a back story that you have in your mind, or some materials you want to use, or …

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AL It varies. Sometimes there is a back story but ultimately that might not be more than the impetus for the work. People like a back story and it gives them something to hang the work on, but sometimes it’s actually quite irrelevant to what is in front of you. An artwork is so much more like a dream in which someone can be three people all at the same time – you don’t notice that until you wake up and try to unpick it. I think it is best if a work can maintain that feeling. Mostly I like the interaction of differing elements that configure an environment and set a mood in a given space … of ‘cooking’ actually. These elements can be regrouped again and again to make new wholes. It’s a process of building and threading strands of earlier thought and actions. In this way the whole work is never finite, but fluid. It is something different each time – and individual to everyone looking at it of course. I remember Craig Wood giving me the idea to make multiple Ink Pads, which was a pragmatic decision. It sometimes makes sense from a commercial point of view, but on the whole, I tend not to make a series of things as maybe there isn’t so much to be gained from the creative point of view. However, he was right in that instance. It worked well and the repetition became something in its own right. I made different colours just because ink comes in different colours, although the red was quite pertinent with the Bloody Wallpaper. I also made Blue Print around the same time – that is a chair fitted with an inkpad seat facing the framed print of a bottom on the wall. Now, many years later, a chair facing something on the wall reoccurs in my work. Blue Print led me to think about making the Bottom Wallpaper so that the repetition would develop these prints into something new and could become a more enveloping installation. The wallpaper had a repeat pattern, but each print was unique having been made direct from the skin. I was (and am) interested in touch, hands, fingerprints and how they are used and interpreted, and that led me to thinking about other types of traces and marks that human behaviour leaves behind; bloodshed and how that might relate to Abstract Expressionism. The marks on the surface of the Ink Pads are potentially quite gestural, but they are also cool sculptural objects. Much as I like Abstract Expressionism and works by Pollock in particular, I found there was a macho-ness in the artmaking process that was foreign to me. I felt that a lot of Expressionist art came out of very hot-headed gestures but related to nothing of day-to-day life, and it occurred to me that while artists were thrashing paint around on a canvas, there is a real ‘expressionism’ that takes place in the home – love, violence and psychological warfare.

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I took the bloody marks – traces of a brutal scene of domestic violence (both victim and perpetrator anonymous to me) in order to reveal and make public this awful expression of circumstances that had apparently got so out of hand. It was a very quiet act of lifting these from their expressive origins (by way of their evidence as a photographic record) and to simply repeat them without end. It was a calculated and restrained action but it came from a very hot situation. Then I made the red Ink Pad on top of this Bloody Wallpaper, which added a new dimension to the papered rooms of the ICA show, Skin of the Teeth (1995). There was also a dog that had been cast from a stuffed, real dog that had been in an accident. When the dog was cast some of the hair came out into the mould a happy accident that made the work much more powerful. I cast two concrete and one acrylic version, and each by chance had different areas of hair as it was pulled from the mould. It was a kind of limited edition, which served the purpose of being able to show it in two places at one time, but again each was unique. In this show was an audio work – some scratching behind a closed door. There was also a man’s head and arms hanging, which were cast in wax from Michael’s body (Vertigo, 1995). The installation was not meant to be shocking for the sake of it. I was just trying to create a psychological mood – a feeling. It was not meant to be a literal scene as such. IR I was just thinking about the bottom prints, and possibly five years earlier you would not have made those, partly because of feminist agendas. AL I was looking back a bit further. I love the blue body prints of Yves Klein. Part of me was captivated by the aspect of the performance involved in their production, with strings playing, an audience, the artist dressed in a suit being the showman and making a special occasion of the process. But what was he thinking of? Dragging women about, slathering them with paint, pressing them onto walls like tools. It is accepted because it is now historical – and the resulting prints are beautiful, of course. My bottom prints were not made from my body either. The model was a friend and we had a laugh. I employed a man once, but it was just a mess and, in many ways, more awkward. If I were a male artist I might have been expected to use a model, but as a woman I think the presumption would be that one would use oneself … perhaps this was a tendency set by the likes of Helen Chadwick who, quite rightly, assumed the right to explore her own body and sexuality rather than have others

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do that for her. But I didn’t want to run with that possible assumption, in fact quite the opposite. IR So much of your work at this point seemed to be about who makes the rules and how you perceive things, for instance, Houses and Occupants (1991), which were from photographs taken at the V&A. AL Well, they were about ideas around who is writing history and how trusted that might be. It is impossible to write a really clear, true history as perceptions vary. I have always loved museums. It struck me that as I photographed an historical object in the museum – the object in its glass case was only as clear as its reflection and therefore equal in the photograph. People passing or security guards would look like they were in the cases too – so they were then also equal in this new perception. Housing the photographs behind very thick glass turned them back into objects and resonated with the idea of ancient insects captured and preserved in amber or something. The thick glass also has a distorting effect on the images. These works have recently been on show as part of the Arts Council’s touring programme. I think they were works that Charles Saatchi had bought and that he later donated to them. In terms of ideas they still make sense to me and I don’t feel so far from them, but as objects I do. IR Is there anything that you want to add? AL I think the only thing missing from our discussion about this period is about the multiple self-organized shows by my generation of artists. Freeze was just the first of many – and it wasn’t even that if we count Angus’s earlier show. There were Modern Medicine (1990), Gambler (1990) and Michael’s Market show in the same Building One space (1990). There was East Country Yard (1990) in its ridiculously massive warehouse space and then there were numerous other smaller shows – such as Sarah’s in Kingly Street, which she self-invigilated (and diligently fried her eggs for her sculpture Bitch each morning). Gary (Hume), Sam and others had a joint show in some basement in Soho I remember … and later I showed a film installation on my rooftop, held events and an auction in my live/workspace. This was a real break with the previous gallery system. If you wanted to show people what you were making then our group had formed a belief that you could give yourself that opportunity. The galleries had to rethink things around that. Possibly now the gallery/artist situation has reverted to type and it was just a moment – I don’t know. If so it could be just that the social

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climate has changed – certainly contemporary art has a completely new standing in society and these days the art fairs are so dominant – which is tough for middle-rank galleries and artists alike. From my perspective, now as an older person, it is harder to think about organizing things for myself since despite my remaining very close to those same friends. We no longer move as a group in quite the same way. We all have different lives and responsibilities now. However, somewhere deep down, I cling to the belief that one can make things happen independently at any time if you really need to.

Note 1

For more details, and images of works discussed in this interview, see http://www. abigaillane.co.uk, last accessed 21 June 2020.

Afterword This has been a wonderful project. Meeting the artists, curators and facilitators in their studios, homes and workspaces to discuss their work has been a privilege. All have been generous and warm in their time and support during what has been a long period from the first interview in the summer of 2016 to final publication. One of the aspects that constantly surprised me was the sheer determination to make work, develop opportunities and hold exhibitions, regardless of whether they would have made any money or gained positive reviews. In some ways the fact that initially there was little money and public recognition was minimal meant that artists just did what they wanted and worked together to find spaces, materials and possible openings. Frequently the interviewees mentioned that health and safety were not an issue of concern. This led to a degree of freedom to make and exhibit work that would not be considered today. Artists, curators and facilitators worked hard to develop art that was new, interesting and ambitious; to exhibit it, and to improve the perception of contemporary art within society. Their dedication to art, to educational work and outreach programmes, in developing studios and art spaces from abandoned buildings and through creating opportunities in truly imaginative ways has never before been discussed in such depth. Their legacy enabled subsequent generations of artists and curators to work in an international art market where contemporary art is better understood, discussed and celebrated. I hope that the interviews will inspire readers and scholars to further explore the work of this key, vital and largely overlooked decade.

Select Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading Alloway, Lawrence. ‘The Support System and Art Galleries’, Art Monthly (February 1982), 3–5. Appignanesi, Lisa, ed. Desire, London: ICA Documents of Art, 1984. Araeen, Rasheed. Making Myself Visible, London: Kala Press, 1984. Araeen, Rasheed. The Other Story Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain, London: Southbank Centre, 1989. Araeen, Rasheed, Sean Cubitt and Ziauddin Sardar, eds. The Third Text Reader of Art, Culture and Theory, London: Continuum, 2002. Baker, Nick. ‘Managing the Reputations of the New British Sculptors’, Sculpture Journal (vol. 21, issue 2, 2012), 75–84. Baker, Nick. ‘Expanding the Field: How the “New Sculpture” Put British Art on the Map in the 1980s’, British Art Studies (issue 3, Summer 2016), n.p. Beal, Graham. A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture since 1965, London: Thames and Hudson, 1987. Betterton, Rosemary, ed. Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media, London and New York: Pandora, 1987. Biggs, Lewis, Iwona Blaszczyk and Sandy Nairne. ‘Introduction’, in Institute of Contemporary Art and Arnolfini Gallery, ed., Objects and Sculpture, London and Bristol: ICA and Arnolfini Gallery, 1981, 5–6. Chambers, Eddie. ‘Blackness as a Cultural Icon’, in Critical Decade: Black British Photography in the 80s, Ten.8 Magazine (Spring 1992), 122–7. Chambers, Eddie. Black Artists in British Art: A History since the 1950s, London: I.B. Tauris, 2014. Cherry, Deborah and Juliet Steyn. ‘Putting the Hayward Annual Two Together’, Art Monthly (No 19, 1978), 10–14. Cooke, Lynne. ‘Reconsidering the New Sculpture’, Artscribe (August 1983), 25–9. Cooke, Lynne. Alison Wilding, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985. Cork, Richard. ‘British Sculpture in the Late Twentieth Century’, in Catherine Marshall, ed., Breaking the Mould: British Art of the 1980s and 1990s, London: Lund Humphries and Dublin: The Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1997. Cork, Richard. New Spirit, New Sculpture, New Money: Art in the 1980s, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Curtis, Penelope. Modern British Sculpture from the Collection, London: Tate Gallery, 1988.

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Curtis, Penelope and Keith Wilson, eds. Modern British Sculpture, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2011. Curtis, Penelope and Martina Droth, eds. British Sculpture Abroad, Special Issue of British Art Studies, July 2016. Drew, Joanna. The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984. Drew, Sandra and Georgie Scott, eds. From the Kitchen Table: Drew Gallery Projects 1984–90, London: Café Gallery Projects, 2018. Ede, Jim. A Way of Life: Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Fortnum, Rebecca. Contemporary British Women Artists: In Their Own Words, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Francis, Richard and Lewis Biggs, eds. Starlit Waters, British Sculpture: An International Art 1968–1988, Liverpool: Tate Gallery, 1988. Gilmour, Pat. ‘Page Two: Talking the Tate Around’, Art Monthly (October 1979), 2–3. Glossop, Claire. ‘Infrastructures: Formation and Networks 1975–2000’, in Penelope Curtis, ed., Sculpture in 20th Century Britain, Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2003, 231–41. Gould, Charlotte. Artangel and Financing British Art: Adapting to Social and Economic Change, London: Routledge, 2018. Harper, Glenn and Twylene Moyer. Conversations on Sculpture, Hamilton New Jersey: ISC Press, 2007. Hiller, Susan. The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art, Abingdon: Routledge, 1991. Hiller, Susan and Sarah Martin, eds. The Producers: Contemporary Curators in Conversation, Gateshead: BALTIC, 2000. Hoffmann, Jens, ed. The Studio, London: Whitechapel Gallery and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Ikon Gallery. Sculpture by Women Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 1983. Jameson, Frederic. ‘Pleasure: A Political Issue’, in Tony Bennett, ed., Formations of Pleasure, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, 1–14. Jones, Amelia. Body Art/Performing the Subject, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Kent, Sarah. ‘British Sculpture: A Thumbnail Sketch’, in Serpentine Gallery, ed., Here and Now, London: Serpentine Gallery, 1995, n.p. Kerman, Monique. Contemporary British Artists of African Descent and the Unburdening of a Generation, Cham Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Kirby, Rachel and Nicholas Serota, eds. From Two Worlds, London: Whitechapel Gallery, 1986. Lingwood, James, ed. TSWA Four Cities Project: New Works for Different Places, Bristol: Taylor Brothers, 1990. Macmillan, Duncan. ‘Exhibitions: “British Art Now” in New York’, Art Monthly (March 1980), 13–14.

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Melville, Stephen, ed. The Lure of the Object, Williamstown, MA: The Clark Art Institute, 2004. Mercer, Kobena. ‘Black Art and the Burden of Representation’, Third Text (Spring 1990), 61–2. Monchaux, Paul de, Fenella Crichton and Kate Blacker, eds. The Sculpture Show: Fifty Sculptors at the Serpentine and South Bank, London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1983. Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Newman, Michael. ‘New Sculpture in Britain’, Art in America (September 1982), 104–14 and 177–9. Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art and Power and Other Essays, London: Thames and Hudson, 1989. Noord, Gerrie van, ed. Off Limits: 40 Artangel Projects, London: Merrell, 2002. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010 [1984]. Parker, Rozsika and Griselda Pollock, eds. Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–1985, London and New York: Pandora, 1987. Perry, Gill, ed. Difference and Excess in Contemporary Art: The Visibility of Women’s Practice, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Powell, Jennifer. ‘A Coherent, National “School” of Sculpture? Constructing Post-War New British Sculpture through Exhibiting Practices’, Sculpture Journal (vol. 21, issue 2, 2012), 37–50. Renton, Andrew and Liam Gillick. Technique Anglais: Current Trends in British Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. Robinson, Hilary. Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 1968–2000, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Rowe, Marsha. Spare Rib Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. Suleiman, Susan Rubin, ed. The Female Body in Western Art: Contemporary Perspectives, Cambridge Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 1986. Taylor, Brandon. ‘Defining Postmodernism: Problems and Paradoxes’, Art Monthly (March 1985), n.p. Tucker, William. (Introduction) The Condition of Sculpture: A Selection of Recent Sculpture by Younger British and Foreign Artists, exhibition catalogue, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975. Wallis, Clarrie, Penelope Curtis and Teresa Gleadowe. Richard Deacon, London: Tate Publishing, 2014. Watkins, Jonathan, Antonia Payne and Hugh Stoddart, eds. As Exciting as We Can Make It: Ikon in the 1980s, Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2014. Wood, Jon and Natalie Rudd, eds. Making It: Sculpture in Britain, 1977–1986, London: Hayward Publishing, 2015.

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Select Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading

See also these archives Archive of Sculptor’s Papers, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Arts Council archive: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/research-and-data/research-andpublications-archive#section-1 British Library Sounds: https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history, which has many interviews with artists. The British Library also has holdings of rare art books and exhibition pamphlets. Chelsea Collections and Archives: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/n/nationalart-library-special-collections-catalogues/ Diaspora Artists: http://new.diaspora-artists.net/index.php National Art Library Special Collections: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/n/ national-art-library-special-collections-catalogues/ Tate Britain: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive, which also holds the archive of the Institute of Contemporary Arts between 1947 and 1987, and large holdings of the British Council Visual Arts archives. Whitechapel Gallery: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/whitechapel-galleryarchive/ Women’s Art Library: https://www.gold.ac.uk/make/ There are also many smaller archives connected with museums and galleries that are worth investigating.

Index A Acme 70, 141–3. See also Jonathan Harvey; Gallery Beck Road 8, 135, 147–9, 229–30 Anthony Reynolds Gallery 73 Araeen, Rasheed 13, 25–35 and Andy Warhol 28 and Anthony Caro 26 Black Phoenix (1978–79) 12, 30–1 materials – obtaining 8, 27 The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain 13, 33–4 Paki Bastard (Portrait of the Artist as a Black Person) (1977) 29 racism 29, 31, 33 and Richard Long 27–8 Third Text 31–3 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol 1, 6, 129, 187–8 art – and craft 75–76, 79–80, 110–11, 112, 217 non-categorical 2, 11, 40–1, 80–1, 150, 153 art school education art history and complementary studies 11–14, 33, 34, 53, 208 Bath Academy of Art – Corsham Court 97–8, 109, 207–10, 211, 214, 216, 245–6 Central School of Art 145, 146 Camberwell College of Arts 233 Chelsea College of Art 146, 246 Goldsmiths (UoL) 17, 233–5, 237, 238, 276, 279–83 Hornsey College of Art 172, 219–21 Royal College of Art 67–8, 161 Slade (UCL) 210–11 St Martins 98–99, 101 Art History (journal) 14, 183 art history bias 13–14, 33–4, 79, 157, 210–12, 271 education 14, 183, 200, 257

art market – development 3, 7, 16–18, 87–90, 142, 231, 269–70, 271–2 Art Monthly 12, 14, 88, 183, 261 Artangel 9, 140, 249, 265. See also James Lingwood artists’ lives – economics, 8, 17, 52–53, 76, 101–2, 184, 207. See also Arts Council and individual galleries commercial gallery system/support 27, 72–3, 160–1, 175–6, 241–2, 254, 266, 273–5, 280, 284–5 money 3, 6–8, 76, 87, 111, 116, 148–9, 161, 175, 184, 231, 233 residencies 7, 63–5, 115–16, 138–9, 158, 197–8, 213–14 travel 7, 16–17, 62–5, 77, 109–111, 162, 173, 227–8, 230, 247. See also British Council Arts Council, the. See also Roger Malbert aims/remit 14–15, 137–8, 183–4, 197, 198, 200, 254, 258 collection 13, 77, 81, 126–7, 277 exhibitions 120–2, 124–5, 129–30 organisation 7, 14–15, 122–3, 125–6, 137–8, 186–7 support for artists’ projects 31–3, 134, 266 Artscribe 87, 88, 182, 183, 261 B Baker, Nick 3, 6 Black British art 10–11, 15–16, 29–32, 126–7, 130, 188–91, 207, 211–12 Blacker, Kate 156–67 and feminism 157–8, 159–60 and Gaby Agis 165–7 Geisha 158, 160 making sculpture 158–9, 163, 164 materials 159, 162, 165 Mont Ste. Victoire 162–4

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and Nicholas Logsdail 160–1 residency at Amherst School 158 British Art Show; Old Allegiances and New Directions (1984–5) 5, 7, 18, 123, 127–8 British Council 5, 41, 44, 72, 77, 81, 89, 110, 112, 126, 178, 277 Butler’s Wharf 7, 146–7, 170–1, 177 C Caro, Anthony 14, 26, 98, 260 Post Caro lineage 2, 59, 245, see also Katherine Gili Chadwick, Helen 2, 11, 15, 85, 147–8, 152, 237, 249, 289–90 Chambers, Eddie 14, 189, 190 Cooke, Lynne 4, 12, 17, 18, 45, 88, 200, 202, 203, 271 Coracle Press 169, 170, 199 Cork, Richard 12, 13, 87, 126 Cragg, Anthony 5, 6, 62, 87, 88, 89, 160–2, 165 contemporary art – perceptions of 3, 8, 13–14, 15–16, 46–7, 127–9, 181–2, 183–4, 188, 198, 200, 290–1, 292 Cuddihy, Mikey 144–55 art education 145–6 Beck Road, Acme live-work spaces 147–8, 149 Beck Road Arts Trust 148–9 Butler’s Wharf 146–7 and ‘the decorative’ 153 and Helen Chadwick 147–8, 152 making art 150–4 non-categorical art 150 curation – exhibiting sculpture 55, 92–4, 106, 171–2, 174 exhibiting group shows 124, 128 audience encounter 41–3, 81–2, 166–7, 241–2, 252–4 curator – role of 185–6, 188–9, 192–3, 198, 202, 257 Curtis, Penelope 4, 6, 12, 115 D Deacon, Richard 6, 77, 84–95, 245, 260, 280 Acme 85–6, 88 Acre Lane Studios 85–6

It’s Orpheus When There’s Singing (1978) 86 Lisson Gallery 87–8 making sculpture 91–2 outsourcing 91 materials 91, 92 relationship of drawing to sculpture 86–7, 94 scale 92–3 sculptural space 93 site 93–4 Turner Prize – importance of 90–1 Drew, Joanna 2, 7, 122, 123, 126, 202 E Eight Artists: Women: 1980 10, 70, 192 F Feminism and feminist art 11, 12, 41, 44, 150, 157–9, 191–2, 208, 212–13, 249, 251–2 Ford, Laura 244–55 and Annie Griffin 249–50 art education 245–7 audience encounter 251, 252–4 Buttercup (1991) 251 and feminism 247–8, 249, 251, 252 figurative sculpture – status of 246, 248 and folk traditions 254–5 and Hermione Wiltshire 251–2 making sculpture 248–9, 250 and politics 250–1 Freeze (1988) 17, 18, 205, 272–3, 281–2, 283. See also Abigail Lane and Karsten Schubert G Garage – Anthony Stokes 7, 87, 111 Gili, Katherine 96–107, 207 art education 97–8, 99 exhibiting sculpture 100, 101, 103, 105, 106 Leonide (1982) 104, 105 Life models 103 Have You Seen Sculpture from the Body? (Tate, 1984) 103–4 making sculpture 97, 100, 102 materials 97 manipulation 100, 104–5 obtaining and transporting 99–100

Index sculptural expression 98, 100–2, 103, 104, 106 sculptural space 98, 105–6 sculptural surface 100–1, 104 studios Greenwich 99–100 Stockwell Depot 98, 99, 101 and Tim Scott 101 titles – importance of 105 Greater London Arts Association, the (GLAA) 7, 12, 32 Greater London Council, the (GLC) 12, 30–1, 85, 125–6, 133–4 Gresty, Hilary 195–205 art scene in Cambridge 198, 200–1, 203 Kettle’s Yard 1965–1972 When Attitudes Became Form (1984) 204 and Cambridge Darkroom 199–200 collaboration with other galleries and museums 196, 201, 202, 203 exhibitions in gallery and house 199, 204 events exterior to Kettle’s Yard 199, 204–5 Charlie Hooker, Night in Bike City, (1986) 199, 204 house and gallery relationship 197, 198 outreach programme 199, 201–2 programming 202 residencies – with Cambridge University 197–8 and the Arts Council 197, 198, 202–3 and the Tate 195, 196 H Harvey, Jonathan 15, 259, 132–43, 148, 259–61 Acme Gallery 141–2 Acme studios and houses Artist support 134–5 beginnings 133–4 and David Panton 133–4 Help Yourself to Studio Space 139 housing stock in East London – repurposing for artists’ live work spaces 133–5

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International Visual Artists Exchange Programme (1977–1981) 139 redundant factories – repurposing for artists’ studios 136, 137 and the Arts Council 136, 137–8 Lingwood, James 140 TSWA 3D Project (1987) 139–41 TSWA Four Cities Project (1990) 140–1 Hayward Gallery, London 10–11, 33, 123, 124–6, 258, 266. See also Roger Malbert health and safety 100, 141, 159, 167, 292 Heron, Susanna 75, 78, 280 Hesse, Eva 73, 209, 210, 282 Hiller, Susan 12, 16, 36–47 An Entertainment (1990) 45–6 Belshazzar’s Feast (1983–4) 43–4 conceptual ideas 37–8, 42, 45 language and representation 38, 39, 46 making art 39, 46 Monument (1980–1981) 41–3 Myth of Primitivism, The (1991) 45 and television 41, 43–4 Wallpaper (magazine) 44 and women artists 39, 41, 47 Work in Progress: Seven Days of Undoing and Doing (1980) 39–40 Himid, Lubaina 16, 30, 204 Hirst, Damien 17, 56, 205, 273, 276, 281, 286–7 I Ikon Gallery 15, 42, 128–9, 184–94, 202. See also Antonia Payne Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) 85, 148 Institute for Contemporary Arts, (ICA), London 10, 14–15, 30, 50–2, 188, 192, 252, 261–5 Interim Arts – Maureen Paley 17, 139, 210, 222, 226, 229–30 K Karsten Schubert Gallery 17, 73, 269–71, 274–5, 284 Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge 6, 15, 119–22, 195–200, 201–2, 204–5. See also Hilary Gresty

300 Klassnik, Robin 39–40, 48–57, 175, 176, 201, 189, 230 and Jarosław Kozłowski 51–2, 53 making art 50–1 SPACE studios 49–50, 51 Matt’s Gallery concept 51–2, 56 collaboration with other galleries 55–6 making exhibitions 52–5, 56–7 and Rose Finn-Kelcey 55 and Richard Wilson 53–4, 55, 57 and the ICA 50 L Landy, Michael 18, 273–4, 280, 281, 283–4, 286, 290 Lane, Abigail 17, 278–91 Freeze (1988) 281, 283 and Glenn Scott Wright 285–6 and Goldsmiths (UoL) 279–80, 281, 283 Home Truths (1989) 284, 286 influences 282–3, 289 and Karsten Schubert 284, 285 making art 286, 287–9 and Michael Landy 280, 284 and Maureen Paley – Interim Art 285 Skin of the Teeth, (1995) 289 studios 286–7 trace and narrative 287–90 Lang, Jack 89, 161 Langlands & Bell 218–231 and architecture 223, 225–6, 227–8 audience encounter 225, 226–7, 228, 229, 230–1 collaboration – importance of 219, 221 furniture – as art 220, 222–3, 225 Interim Art (Maureen Paley) 229–30 International links 227, 230–1 Kitchen, the (1978) 219–20, 221 London – East End 219–20, 222, 223, 224 making art 219–20, 222–3, 226, 227, 228–9 and politics 227–8 squats 224 titles – importance of 227

Index Traces of Living (1986) 222–3, 226, 229–30 Lingwood, James 15, 140, 256–67 and Artangel 265–6 curator – role of 257 and Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) 261–2, 263–5 and Jonathan Harvey 259, 261 and Michael Morris 258, 265–6 and Plymouth Arts Centre 258 sculpture and site 259–60, 261, 263 TSWA 3D (1987) 259–61 TSWA Four Cities Project (1990) 261, 262–3 Lisson Gallery – Nicholas Logsdail 6, 64, 72, 87–8, 160–2, 230, 269, 270, 273, 280 London – art scene 18, 87–9, 142, 269–71, 273, 276, 280–1 derelict buildings 8, 133–4, 222–4 East End 219–20, 222, 223–4 squats 8, 54, 86, 133, 147, 224, 247, 283, 286–7 M Malbert, Roger 118–31 curation 119–20, 122, 123–5 and Kettle’s Yard 119–22 exhibitions organized or involved with Chile Venceremos: Dedicated to the Victims of the Junta (1978) 121–2 Food Art (1977) 120–1 Reflected Images, 119–20 and Matta, Roberto 121–2 and press perception 127, 128 and the Arts Council 122–30 The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions 1979–1984 (1984) 127–30 12 Collection – Buying policy 126–7 Drew, Joanna 125, 126 and the regions 123, 125–6, 127–8 Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance (1997) 130 structure and organisation 123–5, 127

Index making art – materials 65, 70–1, 80, 91–2, 97, 100–1, 209–10, 215–17 processes 39–40, 42, 50–1, 78, 102–5, 113–15, 150–1, 174, 214, 227 sculptural boundaries/internal space 71, 92–4, 98, 163 surface 100–1, 215, 227 site 93–4, 171, 172–3, 222 skill 60–1, 146 sound 167, 169–70, 178 studios 69–70, 81, 99, 146–7, 213 titles 71, 94–5, 105, 164 use of found objects/materials 8, 27–8, 53–4, 63–4, 152, 158–60, 165, 220–1, 223 Matt’s Gallery 7, 40, 53, 142, 175, 176, 178, 188, 189, 201, 230, 261. See also Robin Klassnik Monchaux, Cathy de 232–43 art education 233–4 audience encounter 239, 240–1 Chadwick, Helen 237–8 development of ideas/works 234–5, 236 gallery representation/system 241–2 importance of making 235, 237–9 importance of materials 239 influences 237, 238 making art 234–5, 236, 238–9, 242 visual language 237–8 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 6, 55, 81, 124, 126, 129, 187, 190, 196, 203 Myth of Primitivism – Susan Hiller (1991) 16, 45 N Nairne, Sandy State of the Art (documentary) 15–16 New British Sculpture as a group – perceptions 1, 2, 62, 161–2 constructing the narrative 3–6, 87 Nicola Jacob’s Gallery 152, 254 O Objects and Sculpture (1981) 1, 3–5 P Payne, Antonia 125, 129, 180–94

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and artists 184, 188–9 and audience engagement 181, 186, 192–3 and contemporary art 182–4, 188 curator, role of 188–91, 192–4 female sensibility/feminist art 191–2 Ikon Gallery 184–94 and the Arts Council 186–7 funding issues 187, 193 John Bright Street building 184–5 programming 185, 188, 189–90 Rochdale Art Gallery – and contemporary art 181–2 performance 29, 120, 128–9, 165–7, 177–9, 198–9, 249–50 Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth 140, 258 Pollock, Griselda 11, 14 Poncelet, Jacqueline 75–83 art/craft divide 75, 79 audience encounter 76, 81–2 British Council Bicentennial Arts Fellowship (1978–9) 77–8 ceramics 75, 78, 79–80 colour – use of 77 development of ideas 76, 78, 79–80 and photography 77–8 and Richard Deacon 77, 83 visual languages 75–6, 78, 80–1, 82 Pope, Nicholas 87, 108–17, 245–6, 247 Art and Project (Amsterdam) 112, 115 British Council scholarships 109–11, 112, 113–14 collaboration 114 drawing – role of 113, 114, 115 exhibiting spaces 114, 115 form and content 112–14, 116 making 110, 114–15 Odd Lumps (1981) 113 residency 115–16 Venice Biennale 111–12 R Riverside Studios 152, 165, 251, 275, 284 Rochdale Art Gallery 181–2 Ryan, Veronica 197–8, 201, 206–17 art education 207–8, 210–11 bias 207–8, 209 cultural identities 212–13

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T Tate Gallery 4, 14, 55, 125, 142, 176, 184, 187–8, 196, 276 television and the arts 9, 15–16, 41, 43–4, 90, 139–41, 259–63 Thatcher’s Britain 9–10, 192, 203, 223, 251 Policy for the arts 3, 10, 31 Totah Gallery, London 151, 254 Turner Prize 15, 90–1

W Waddington Gallery 17, 52, 259, 269, 271, 273 Whitechapel Gallery 87, 129, 167, 195–6 Educational programme 158, 199, 213, 264–5 Whiteread, Rachel 135, 239, 266, 276–7 Wilding, Alison 15, 67–74, 79 art education 67–8 boundaries of sculpture 71 exhibitions 70, 72–3 Karsten Schubert 73 making art 68, 70, 71–2 materials 69–71 SPACE studios 68–9 Wilson, Richard 53, 141, 168–79, 189, 260–1 Bow Gamelan Ensemble 177–9 Butler’s Wharf 170–1 Chisenhale Works 170–1 installation site – importance of 172–3 making art 169–70, 171–2 Matt’s Gallery and Robin Klassnik 176 One Piece at a Time (1987) 173–4 sculpture – impermanence 169–70, 171, 174, 175–6 recreation/original 175–6 sound 170, 173–4, 178 Twelve Pieces (1978) 169 Woodrow, Bill, 5, 58–66 audience encounter 61–2 development of ideas 59–60, 65 making art 60–1, 63 materials 61, 63–4, 65 New British Sculpture 62 residencies 64 travel 62–5 vocabularies 59–60

V Venice Biennale 80, 111, 112, 174 Vilmouth, Jean-Luc 62, 86, 161

Y Young British Artists – (YBAs) 17–18, 271–3, 275–6, 279

and Eva Hesse 209, 210 inequality 208–9 influences 208, 211, 212–13, 215 making art 210–11, 214–16 materials 209–10, 214–17 residencies 213–14 S Saatchi Gallery 17, 89, 175, 265, 269, 276 Schubert, Karsten 269–77, 284–5 dealer – role of 270–1, 273, 274–5 Karsten Schubert Gallery 269–71, 274–5 exhibition programme 274, 275 finance 270–2, 274 Lisson Gallery/Nicholas Logsdail 269, 270, 273 Tate 276–7 and the London art scene 269–70 and the Young British Artists (YBAs) 272–3, 274, 275–6, 277 Sculpture Show, The (1983) 8, 10, 73, 246, 247 Serota, Nicholas 16, 87, 196, 276–7 Sewell, Brian 13, 46, 127 SPACE studios 7, 26, 49–50, 51, 68, 69, 136 Spare Rib 37 Stockwell Depot 98, 99, 101

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