Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Artist who transforms everyday objects by exploding, flattening, or rearranging them; Turner Prize nominee.
On the island
Eight records
I heard this music first in Merton's in um in the mid eighties, it was accompanying a theatre piece I saw by Jan Faber at the ICA and I just loved it and I've been playing it in my studio ever since.
Python Lee Jackson featuring Rod Stewart
This is supposed to be one of the first singles I ever bought and I still love it. And it was on my original Desert Island Disc list that I made when I was 15.
Cry BabyFavourite
I mean I just love Janice. She had a tragically short life and I think this was released posthumously and I just think it's a fantastic release of energy.
I could have chosen hundreds of his tracks, but um I decided on Lay, Lay De Lay.
Jocelyn is somebody I've known for many years and I shared her house with her way back in the mid eighties so I know her music inside out. And I particularly love this trail, this I think it was used in Gangs of New York.
He made this journey from his house to my house, sort of doing an oral history really of the street and which houses were boarded up, which bits were about to be demolished. And then he got to my front door and I wasn't in. And I have a lump in my throat every time I hear it, and it's it's a very particular time that's been captured.
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
This is Gavin Breyers' Jesus' Blood Never Fail Me Yet, which is a longstanding favourite. It's based on a piece of found sound of a tramp singing the refrain. And then he builds up layer by layer, and then Tom Waits comes in to accompany him.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:10How much do you mind being hated, as you put it? Does it sting?
Hated is too strong a word. I don't mind really, I suppose the whole point of when I first went to art school was that I thought I was being a rebel and it felt a very comfortable fit somehow. And now it's obviously not that at all. But um no, I don't mind being hated.
Presenter asks
9:32What were you trying to escape from? Tell me about that childhood.
Well, I lived on a small holding. It wasn't really even a farm. We had a few handful of cows and a few pigs, and my father always had to have other jobs to make ends meet. So there was a lot of work to be done. There was three daughters, and I was a surrogate son, so I ended up doing a lot of manual labour outside.
Presenter asks
16:44Did you then say to yourself, this is what I want to do, I want to make a living doing art? Or was that part of a rebellion because it was not perceived as a proper job?
Well, um when I was about fifteen I went to London with my art teachers and I s you know, visited the Tate and all these different museums for the first time and I that was the first time I thought, wow, this is something I'd love to be able to do, you know, to be to m make a living as an artist.
The keepsakes
The book
Ten Thousand Things Every Child Should Know
I'm going to take Ten Thousand Things Every Child Should Know, which is this wonderful sort of nineteen thirties encyclopedia that I've been using for many, many years to mostly that's where I get all my ideas from.
The luxury
I think I might take a solar-powered vibrator because not that I've ever used one, but I'd love to have the chance and I imagine you might get bored with it after five minutes and I'll squander my luxury on that.
Presenter asks
18:40Was there a specific point when you realized you didn't want to be a painter, but you wanted to be a sculptor?
Um, it was probably halfway through my degree. I mean, I was still clinging on to the hope that I could paint, but really I was finding it very frustrating and very hard work. I was trying to paint something like light coming in through a window on a canvas with paint, which is all about creating an illusion. And then I'd escape from the uh the studio and go down to the derelict houses down below and there'd be real light coming through real windows. And I remember taking a window out of the derelict house and taking it back to the studio and putting, you know, replacing the panes of glass with three little paintings of light coming in through the window. And then the last pain I left with the the real light coming through. And I thought, well this is this is far better than what I'd painted. So this was the last painting I think I did. I just left it behind and started using materials for their own History
Presenter asks
23:31What changed [to make you want to leave a lasting monument rather than throwing your installations away]?
I had a quite severe car accident in nineteen ninety four when I shattered my pelvis and you know, had my near death moment and I was you know, spent several weeks in hospital and several months recuperating. And I think it was thinking, Well, if I did had died in that car accident there would have been nothing of mine left for posterity. I felt I should grow up a little bit and try and leave something behind.
“I think a lot of art people use their minds, you know, their intellects first and their their senses second and I'd rather them use their senses first and Let's see where that takes them and allow themselves to be free with it.”
“I think children are, you know, first class conceptual artists, really.”
“The reason I wanted to be an artist in the first place is I I wanted to be free and there's always people who want to pigeonhole you and you know put you in smaller and smaller pockets, but I I like the idea of just being an artist.”