Lubaina Himid

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the artist Lubaina Himeed. She made headlines when she won the Turner Prize in 2017, but her career began 40 years ago when she decided to eschew set design for a different kind of theatre. Many art catalogues talk about immersive installations, but hers really walk the walk. One piece boasts 100 life-size figures that the audience must weave amongst, another features huge flags hung on giant pulleys, which we are invited to move and rearrange. Black identity, creativity, politics, and the lives of the people of the African diaspora are recurrent themes in her work. She describes herself as a filler in of gaps, working to make visible narratives that might otherwise go unrecorded. She says, I need to be able to see myself. I need to make paintings that feel like what it means to be me. We need to feel we belong in those shared spaces. Telling stories of the black experience that are both everyday and extraordinary is what I'm here to do.

Presenter1:43

Lubaina Himed, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. The everyday and the extraordinary, that sounds like a very satisfying brief and pleasingly broad as well. Where do you look for the stories that you want to tell? Well, I guess I listen to people, I hear about their families, listen to them talk about their past, I read a lot of books, and I suppose I've tried to sort of be kind of invisible and work a bit like a writer, spying on people, I guess. It follows then that the audience is central to your work. I mean, what part do they play? Well, because I trained as a theatre designer, I really kind of believe that my work doesn't work unless someone's actually looking at it. You know, in a play, you have to feel the heat from the audience, and then you kind of act and perform to that heat. And I absolutely know that audiences in art galleries are coming to bring their own stories. They bring their stories, they bring their lives to the space. So it's a place where those two sets of stories, or hopefully hundreds, thousands of sets of stories, kind of collide in the room, using the work as a kind of conversation piece. You don't shy away from tough subjects, but it is impossible not to be struck by how exuberant and joyful your work is. Where does that come from, do you think? Well, everybody who knows me knows that quite often I'm trying to paint the perfect grey painting and failing.

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So I'm obsessed with colour and how much colour you can get into something that doesn't have a colour. But I have this strange thing that happens to me where I have an idea, I know exactly what it's going to be like, but then I'm in the studio and my hand kind of goes towards the purple and the orange and the yellow and the brightest blue and I'm just sunk in that. We're going to hear the first of your music choices. There are some very beautiful tracks, a lot of great female singers today. What part does music play in your life?

Presenter3:47

Well, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I'm listening to some music or other. It's very, very difficult for me to paint without music on, but I kind of use music strangely, not to sink into so much, but sometimes to kind of paint against. It's really important, but I'm not an expert, I'm just an eager listener.

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Let's see this first disc then. Why have you chosen this one? Well, Beyoncé is fabulous. There's something very important being said here about how...

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The world would be a better place if

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People.

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And let's say especially men, listened to women. Just listen to her, guys.

Speaker 34:30

If power

Lubaina Himid4:32

Uh

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Think I could

Lubaina Himid4:36

I understand.

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I refuse to love a girl I s

Lubaina Himid4:46

Where the You better make

Lubaina Himid4:52

I listen to her.

Lubaina Himid4:57

Uh

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Cause I know how it works.

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When you lose the one you won

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Beyonce and If I Were a Boy. Lubena Himid, you've said that you're painting the parts of black women's lives that nobody paints. What's been missing? Well, what's been missing is that we're just

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Ordinary, you know.

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We do what other women do. We feel what other women feel. We're not super sexy or super dangerous or heroic. We're just ourselves. And I think that's the challenge. You know, I've seen too many movies or TV things where the black woman is dead in the first 10 minutes. You know, we're not tragic either. We're just ourselves and that's what we want to be. You won the Turner Prize in 2017 and among the works that you won for was your installation Naming the Money. Each character in it was a standalone cut-out figure and the audience would wander among them. Tell me a little bit about the inspiration for the piece. I'd seen some astonishing paintings in La Rochelle many years before that were paintings of black slave servants who were presents from the King of Spain to the King of France. And so they were beautifully dressed and they had these sashes going across the front of their costumes that said, you know, my name is Jean-Pierre and I am a brilliant lute player. And so really I lifted this idea, combined those two sorts of ideas about paintings, about ownership, about servants, about naming and about money, and made this hundred-piece installation.

Presenter6:47

I suppose when you're in it, you need to feel like you're at a wedding or you're at a party, you know? And in Britain, it is sometimes, unless you are at a wedding or a party, it's quite difficult to be in the same room as another hundred black people. And so it was an opportunity for some of us to do that. You're the oldest person and the first black woman to receive the award. What were your thoughts about that when you won the Turner? It was much remarked upon, wasn't it? Much remarked upon. Yeah, the being the oldest was really a killer because although I can count, you know, and I knew how old I was, it was shocking to me to actually understand how old I was because I'd lived 63 years and then I didn't have 63 years left. But it helped because I thought, okay, I've got probably 15, 20 years worth of standing up and making that I could do, so I'd better really do the things I want to do. Yeah, the being the first black woman to win it was a bit bittersweet really because there were many black women who've been up for it in the whole recent history of the prize.

Presenter7:57

I was happy to win it, but it was bittersweet, really. And what's the legacy of the win for you? I mean, what people have said to me is that it gave them hope that things were changing. And I absolutely know it, because I've been around long enough to know that things are changing, but we have to kind of hang on to it and build on it.

Presenter8:17

It's time to go to the music. Tell us about your second disc. Why have you chosen it? Well, I'm very interested in, for all sorts of reasons, in madness. Artists are often described as mad. That's a mad idea. Or had this mad idea to do this or that. And I love this song because I listened to it a lot in 2017. And it reminds me of my assistants, Matt Birchall and Teo Lashley Burnley, who are the opposite of the Bedlam Boys, really. They are the sort of sensible bit of our team. But yeah, it reminds me of them.

Speaker 28:53

Fort Sing Matonga Badler

Speaker 28:57

Ten thousand miles I travel, Mad Morning goes on dirty toes For to save your shoes from gravel Went down to Satan's kitchen To break my fast one morning And there I've got so popping all on the spit of turning Still I sing money boys, money mad boys Bedlam boys are bonny But they all go fair and they live on the air And they want no drink, no money

Presenter9:27

Stick in the wheel and bedlam. Lubena Himi, tell me a little bit about your mum. You've described your mum Laura and her sister Betty as wild when they were young, were they? They were wild. Yes, they had parties. They would decorate the whole house, the garden, they'd put jam jars with coloured see-through paper inside and candles, and then they would hang those in the trees. They'd roll up the carpet, get the record player serviced. We always went in a taxi because we never went in taxis, but we went in a taxi to, I think it was to Whiteley's actually, and got the record player serviced. In West London, to the shops, especially. Yeah, and there was lots of drink. I mean, lots and lots of drink. And I slept right at the top of the house. So, of course, I was supposed not to be able to hear the party. But the party spread all the way up the stairs, and the house was full of fabulous dancing men.

Lubaina Himid10:04

In West London too.

Presenter10:25

And how had your mum met your dad? Take us back a little bit. Well, my mother was at the Royal College of Art as a textile designer and my father had come from Zanzibar to do a course at University College. And I guess it was some wild party. That's where they met. And he's a teacher, but he wanted to be a drummer.

Presenter10:50

And of course I would say now, and you should have been a drummer. He graduated and and then went back to Zanzibar. But your mum always used to say he sent for her. Yes, it's this incredible phrase. I think it must be a phrase of the nineteen fifties. So yes, he sent for her and she got on a boat.

Presenter11:09

And sailed not through the Suez Canal because it was closed, so round the Horn of Africa to.

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to Zanzibar. I think it took six weeks and she married him there.

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Your father died of malaria in 1954 when you were just four months old. It must have been absolutely devastating for your mother.

Presenter11:28

Yeah, well, it it was it was devastating. She didn't stay very long after he died. He died at the beginning of November. We came back on Christmas Eve the same year. And I cried on every single plane.

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all the way back to London. I think I I didn't really realize till years later how devastating it was, but of course I would ask about

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him and I was only four or five years old and she still seemed very pained by that. But I th I can remember thinking, Well, it was such a long time ago, you know. But now I realize that four or five years is not very long ago.

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Yeah, I think that kind of melancholy was with her always, and I think I kind of soaked that up in a funny sort of way.

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Yeah, uh it's hard because I

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I can remember my childhood really being

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Fun in all sorts of ways, but somehow there's a kind of sadness.

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which never really quite went away.

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We're going to hear the next piece of music today. Tell me about your third disc. Well, this song totally reminds me of my mother. My mother's still alive. She's getting on for 91 now. But it reminds me of her and living in the city. She never wanted to live anywhere else but in the big city. And this song is just it, really.

Lubaina Himid12:55

When

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When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go

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Downtown, when you've got worries all the noise and the hurry seems to help unknown.

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Downtown, just listen to the music of the traffic in the city. Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty. How can you lose?

Speaker 313:18

Neon signs are pretty high.

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The light's so much brighter there You can forget all your troubles Forget all your cares So go downtown

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Petula Clark and downtown, taking you back, Lubena Himid, to growing up as part of a very tight-knit unit. But you, your mum Laura and your auntie Betty. So once she was back in the UK, we kind of made a home together. What role did you play? I'm interested in your description of yourself as a filler in of gaps and then this further description of being very aware of your dad's absence. Yes. Is there a connection there, do you think?

Lubaina Himid13:55

Is there a connection?

Presenter13:56

Well, yes, and I think, you know, the Beyoncé song, If I Were a Boy is kind of significant there. I think I've always tried to be my father for my mother. You know, I've tried to be what I thought he could be for her. I buy her flowers. You know, I like to, yeah, treat her well in that old fashioned way.

Presenter14:21

Your mother was a textile designer. How big an influence do you think she was on your aesthetic sensibilities? Well, I think for many decades I liked to think she had no influence whatsoever, thank you very much. I was having nothing to do with this fashion stuff. But I can remember hours spent looking at clothes in shops, looking at fabric weaving, whatever in museums, talking about other people's clothes. My mother was very judgmental about what people looked like. When people were on holiday, she was very much, oh I see she's wearing last season's dress there.

Presenter14:57

So a great influence in many ways, but it really wasn't until much, much later on in my making that I understood that pattern is kind of some secret language and that I now use it to say all kinds of things that you can't say in a figurative way, really. And she used to take you to art galleries. Yeah, every other weekend we'd be in art galleries or we'd be in department stores. And how comparable was the experience? Well, of course they were designed, invented at the same time, the department store and the museum. And they're really built on the same model in that you perambulate around, everything is beautifully lit and you admire how lovely everything is. The thing is that in museums everything belongs to us, but we can't touch it. And in department stores, nothing belongs to us until we buy it, but you can touch everything. I think it's totally affected the way I am about making, about showing work, and just about the taking in of culture, I suppose. It's time for your next piece of music. Tell me about your fourth. Why have you chosen it? Well, it's difficult with Joni Mitchell. I would have all the songs by Joni Mitchell in a way. But a case of you, I'm very fond of falling in love, I suppose. And I've been listening to this record for decades and decades. And it's that wonderful kind of warm, gentle feeling that washes over you when you hear this song. It's the same thing.

Speaker 316:40

I am a lonely painter.

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Uh

Speaker 316:46

My

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I live in a box of pain

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I'm frightened by the devil

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And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

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I remember that time you told me you said love is touching souls. Surely you touch my anchors. Joni Mitchell and A Case of You. Lubena Himeed, you are Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire, and that's an institution that you've taught at for almost 30 years, which perhaps belies the fact that your own experience of school wasn't fantastic. Why not? Well.

Presenter17:31

I suppose perhaps I wasn't so stupid, but I went through school just thinking I was stupid. I was in a class full of wild girls the well behaved, clever girls were in another class, and I wasn't really that.

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naughty, but of course I learned things that were much more useful than

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You know, iron industry in the Rhone Valley or whatever. Like what?

Lubaina Himid17:55

Like what?

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Well, I had to get by.

Presenter17:59

How to party, how to roll my skirt up above my knees, how to have my tropical. From the waistband. That's right. How to cause havoc on the top floor of a bus, you know, useful stuff.

Lubaina Himid18:04

From the waistband.

Presenter18:10

I mean, your potential was obviously in there. Why was it missed?

Presenter18:13

I don't know. I don't think my art potential was missed. I spent a lot of time in the art room with an amazing art teacher who did really understand the importance of art. I think she knew we were, you know, thought of as not very clever and tried to teach us things through teaching us art. And my English teacher encouraged me to write, put poems of mine into competition. It was missed in general, but I was connecting with some people.

Presenter18:45

You're a mixed race kid growing up in London in the sixties. You know, were you aware of your ethnicity at at school and at that point? Yeah, very aware. Yeah. Not because horrible things particularly happened to me, but it was the sixties. And so, you know, there were uprisings, there were killings, there were political things happening in the States. I guess there was a kind of moment where I heard on the news about the church in Birmingham, Alabama being blown up and children being killed. And it struck home. You know, I really understood the kind of

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Not so much in Br Britain at the time, but I but the danger of being black.

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But at school I used Charm to get by.

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You mentioned that being aware of that kind of sense of danger, or albeit at somewhere over there. What what effect did that have on you, that sense?

Lubaina Himid19:44

Not

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I think I just had an early sense that all was not right with the world and that somehow I had to get my act together and try to

Presenter20:00

Do something about it, and that's kind of never left me. I guess being in Britain.

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Ugh.

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It wasn't easy, but in a personal way I didn't live a difficult life. I didn't get called names very much. I didn't get beaten up. I managed, well I think with the help of my friends really, to avoid real danger myself.

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We're going to hear some more music now. It's your fifth disc. Why have you chosen it?

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Well, Kaya Keita is just a brilliant, brilliant young musician. And there's something about her voice, about the way she sings, and especially this song, that has that kind of sense of danger. I can kind of feel the chill of what it's like to be the wrong person, really, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lubaina Himid20:54

These clothes you gave me don't fit right

Lubaina Himid21:00

The belt is

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Loose and a noose is tight

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I'm drunk out looking for a fight

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I'm soft and heavy

Speaker 321:12

It's dull night.

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I'm soft and heavy as the night

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I've drowned the legs of three men

Speaker 321:26

Yeah.

Lubaina Himid21:26

I've borne the wrath of you

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Uh

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Uh

Speaker 321:29

We should

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Yeah.

Lubaina Himid21:30

Uh

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Kayaketa and Nine Pin. Lubena Himeed, you graduated with a BA in Theatre Design in nineteen seventy six. How did you see your future back then?

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Well, actually as a disaster really. I didn't get a very good degree and I think my tutor thought I was pretty hopeless. So I didn't really know what I was going to do. I worked for a while in fringe theatre.

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you know, putting scenery together, chucking it in the back of a van.

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destroying the set, making it into another set. And I did that for a while at the same time as uh waitressing. And then I began to kind of design restaurant interiors. And I think I thought that it was sort of mm vague and a chasm was kind of opening up.

Presenter22:19

I clearly didn't fit into the theatre, not the theatre in Britain. I hadn't really done my homework in terms of making connections in the right places, really. And was art already part of your life? Oh, completely. I mean, it was never stopped being part of my life, you know, all the way through school, all the way through art school. I knew that I would be some kind of artist or designer, but I couldn't work out how to make that work.

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In nineteen eighty two you attended the first National Black Artists' Convention, and that was the beginning of you organising exhibitions of black artists' work, including some of your own. I mean, a quote from you that just flawed me. Tell me if this is right. In the eighties I had to argue that there was such a thing as a black artist.

Presenter23:05

Yeah, absolutely. But we're we're talking about a time when you didn't see

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many black people anywhere. We we were here, we were on the street, in your office, in your hospital, everywhere, but we were not on the television, we were not in the newspapers.

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except if something, you know, drastic and dangerous happened. Um and so I guess the notion of black people being artists was completely

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Alien to people in the British art world. People actually said to me, Black people don't make art. And I said, Well, I'm making art and I know other people making art. Now, that sounds ridiculous, but it's absolutely true. So, given that, I mean, how did it feel when you got your first show? Well.

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Frightening, of course, unfortunately, um because I think I have a kind of a case of a big ego and low self-esteem.

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Seeing my work on the walls, I just it was full of doubt about whether it it was doing what I was wanting it to do. And I think that still happens to me now. Classic artist.

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Tell us about your next piece of music. Oh, well, yes. This is the kind of even more old romantic me. This song is so much about kind of the happiness and sadness of falling in love late in life. That kind of challenge that you have knowing that you haven't got that many years left to be with this person and that though years have gone by and maybe everything took

Presenter24:54

too long. This whole opera, Rose and Cavalier, absolutely sums up the kind of sweet sadness of understanding love late in life.

Speaker 325:04

His light and I've come with love.

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I lost in your soul.

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Yeah.

Speaker 325:23

It all is all.

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Rejoice on sleep and tower.

Lubaina Himid25:38

Uh

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Swear and cause me.

Lubaina Himid25:45

Ah!

Speaker 325:49

Uh

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Uh

Speaker 325:49

Uh

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Uh

Speaker 325:49

Oh my dear

Speaker 325:56

We turn it all.

Presenter26:08

From Richard Strauss, Der Rosen Cavalier, that was Istein Traum, sung by Rene Fleming, and Diana Damrau, performed by the Munich Philharmonic, conducted by Christian Tehlermann.

Presenter26:21

Lubaina Hamid, in 1997 you went back to Zanzibar for the first time and you were inspired to go by your late partner Maud Sulta. How did she persuade you? Because you hadn't gone but you'd thought about it and decided not to for quite a long time I think. She persuaded me to do it like she persuaded me to do most things actually. She just said we're going. You've got to, you know, face the fear and do it anyway. So I did as I was told. Yeah, I'd been afraid to go because, you know, by the time I was 10, there was a kind of pretty bloody revolution there. A lot of my relatives had left Zanzibar. And then I never learned Swahili and found that I was kind of ashamed and embarrassed about that. And then I never had very much money. So on and on and on went the kind of excuses, really. But really, I was just afraid of the place. You know, I'd left, obviously, in a sort of state of trauma, even though it wasn't me that was traumatised. And I just couldn't really face it. I'd spent years and years making paintings that were trying to understand the place. I read about the place. I'd seen photographs of the place. I'd been to other places that were very kind of dangerous and mysterious in a way that I imagined Zanzibar was. And then when I arrived, I got off the plane. It was just like being in Manchester. Do you know what I mean? It's so familiar. And I so understand who I am being here. It just felt right. Everything about it felt right. And what impact did that have on you? Well, I think I relaxed. I think I relaxed completely. And ever since, people from Zanzibar come up to me. A woman came up to me not long after I won the Turner Prize in the Tube in London. And this young woman came up to me and she said, are you Lubaina Himeed? So I said, yes. And she said something in Swahili and I said, oh, I'm sorry, I don't speak Swahili. And she said, oh, no, no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I just want to say on behalf of all the Zanzibari people all over the world, we watched you on CNN winning the Turner Prize and we're all very proud. And I just, you know, that was one of the most amazing things anyone had ever said to me because I didn't really feel I belonged.

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And yet.

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Many, many of those people feel that I did belong, but going there really helped.

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We're going to hear some more music now. Why have you chosen this one? Well, again, I could have had every song being Nina Simone. I love Nina Simone's political songs, but when she sings Leonard Cohen, Suzanne,

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Ah somehow it's full of rich, deep colours. And again we're talking about mm someone on the edge of madness, someone on the edge of being here and not being here.

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Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river.

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You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night forever

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You know that she's half crazy And that's why you wanna be there

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And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China.

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Lina Simone and Suzanne. Lubina Himeed, you've been Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire for nearly thirty years. How have things changed for aspiring black artists since you started there?

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Well, I don't think I've done all that much to change things really because we're still

Presenter30:09

Out of London, there are still not that many young black artists in art schools. I think it's still difficult for parents perhaps to understand that you can be educated through art and it's useful in all kinds of different ways. But I think what's happened in Britain as a whole, I think there are some really exciting and interesting young artists who are doing the essential thing of talking to each other rather than thinking of themselves as an isolated genius. And I do think things are changing.

Presenter30:47

There are now younger curators in charge of art galleries, art newspapers, museums. But the important thing is that we need to keep building on these changes and not think, oh, well, it's okay now. In every kind of walk of life, we just have to keep vigilant and just make sure that everything is as fair as it can be. That's all I'm really interested in. Let it just be fair.

Presenter31:15

We've got one more disc to hear today. This is your eighth. Tell me about it. Why have you chosen this one?

Presenter31:21

Well

Presenter31:22

A long time ago I used to go to a restaurant on Sunday evenings with a man I used to know. It was a Portuguese restaurant and when we were in there eating extraordinary food, this is way back in the probably even the late 1970s, these amazing Portuguese singers would be performing in the restaurant. And then I came across Mariza and her amazing song Chuva, which is about the rain. And of course I live in Preston. Preston is the rainiest city in Britain.

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But there are artists there that are the artists that sustain me.

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And

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This song just reminds me of them, reminds me that the important things are kind of in the everyday, you know, in that rain really.

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I scored as for God.

Speaker 332:15

Yeah.

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Number song so the

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Yeah.

Speaker 232:23

So a slim balance is good

Lubaina Himid32:27

Yeah.

Speaker 232:27

Move.

Lubaina Himid32:28

Foisa in sorrow.

Lubaina Himid32:34

I sent a coffee kinda stone

Lubaina Himid32:38

The story is red.

Lubaina Himid32:44

You tested

Presenter32:46

Marisa and Chuva. Lubena Himed, I'm about to cast you away then to our desert island. How might life there inspire your art? Well, I'd be pretty desperate. I think I'd have to make drawings in the sand, burn some wood, get some charcoal, make drawings somehow with that. I can build things a bit, so I might be able to kind of make myself a shelter. But I've never been camping in my whole life, so this is the worst place. You're gonna have to learn on the fly.

Presenter33:19

Now, as you know, I'll give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read while you're there. You can also take another book of your choosing. What will it be? Well, it's really one of the, I think, one of the most amazing books ever. It's a book by Marge Piercy called Woman on the Edge of Time. And it's a book again about madness and about how the world could be. I think it would give me a lot to think about. What about a luxury item to make your time on the island more pleasurable? I'm going to ask for an endless supply of self-ironing Japanese shirts by Jaco Maricard.

Lubaina Himid33:56

Um

Presenter33:58

Okay. Because when I'm rescued, which I hope will be after about 10 minutes, I need to look my best. They're yours. Thank you. Finally, which one of these eight fabulous tracks would you rush to save? I think I would have to choose Suzanne by Nina Simone. Lubena Himid, thank you so much for sharing your desert island discs with us. Thank you very much.

Presenter34:39

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lubena. She'll very probably be the best-dressed castaway when or if she's rescued. Many other wonderful artists have been banished to their own desert islands over the years. Damien Hurst, Tracy Emin, Yinka Shonibare, Cornelia Parker and Paula Rago. In 2014, fellow Turner Prize winner, the filmmaker Steve McQueen was interviewed by Kirsty Young.

Presenter35:03

I said in the introduction that that you were there was a time at school before you know the drawing was really recognized as being something that you could go on and pursue when you were pretty much r written off. You were put in this class where you know you can do manual labour. Is that is that true?

Speaker 335:17

Yeah.

Speaker 235:17

Yeah, I mean, you know, in the third year I was I was in a 3C two and there was a three C one which was for people who were sort of you know fairly bright and then there was a three X above that these were people going to Oxford and Cambridge. Below all of that there was a three Y which is kind of self-explanatory where people dump people who they didn't think are very bright at all. And I was in three C two so it was sort of manual labor kind of situation. And that was it. That was my future tied up when I was uh thirteen years old. End of.

Speaker 235:49

Where you are you dyslexic?

Speaker 235:51

Yeah.

Speaker 235:52

Yeah.

Speaker 235:53

You're very dyslexic, the way you say that, Meet. Very dyslexic. I don't know what very dyslexic is. I could read. Well, you can be mildly dyslexic. No, no, I could read. I'm slower.

Speaker 335:59

I guess I can

Speaker 236:03

Um uh I have a hard time spelling sometimes. Right. So I have addictaphone. I mean I would say it's it's severe, but it's one of those things where um I'm I'm aware of and I've sort of compensated in the way of how to sort of do things to sort of you know deal with it. And sometimes it it's it's a burden and often the often times it's it's it's a real it's a real help.

Presenter36:22

What was going through your head? Can you remember when you were in that class and you were pretty much being told, Well, you know, manual labor's the thing, that's a decent way to to live your life and earn a living?

Speaker 236:31

I I don't they I don't think they they they didn't actually didn't come out with that. They would never do that, of course. But I just had to believe in in myself and what I wanted to do. It's one of those things where you just have to there's a feeling. And art was one of those things. Art was my salvation. My foundation course in Church School of Art was the first time I I could breathe.

Speaker 236:51

Ideas, stupid ideas, daydreaming, falling asleep, not going in sometimes, you know, finding a book, you know, hey, what do you got? What's that? Wow, possibilities, sharing. I had this wonderful friend of mine, he was from Sri Lanka called Indica, who used to go through life drawings class every night. I mean, he was just this robot. And I would just sort of, okay, I'm going with Indica to sort of, you know, draw people who influence you, encourage you. And it was just wonderful. It was discovery, freedom.

Presenter37:21

Have you kept any of those pieces from like the life drawing classes and so on? Do you look

Speaker 237:25

Somewhere in my loft in my mother's love somewhere, I suppose. Yeah.

Presenter37:28

You want to sign those and frame them, I'm thinking.

Presenter37:32

I I do think

Presenter37:33

The marvellous Steve McQueen, his programme and many others are available to listen to on BBC Sounds and on the Desert Island Disc's website. Next time, my guest will be the social scientist Professor Monica McWilliams. Do join us.

Speaker 338:10

I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me the Score, the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions, covering topics like resilience, tribalism and fear with people like this.

Lubaina Himid38:21

We keep talking about fear and to me I always want to bring it back to are you actually in danger?

Speaker 338:24

That's Alex Hunold, star of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo, in which he climbed a 3,000-foot sheer cliff without rope.

Lubaina Himid38:31

So, I mean, a lot of those, you know, social anxieties things and certainly I've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life where I'm like, oh no, like I could never do that. And it certainly feels like you're going to die. But realistically, you're not going to die. And that's all practice too.

Speaker 338:42

Yeah.

Speaker 338:45

Have a listen to Don't Tell Me the Score full of useful everyday tips from incredible people on BBC Sounds.