Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Turner Prize-winning artist known for unconventional cultural interventions, including a living memorial of WWI soldiers appearing unexpectedly across Britain.
On the island
Eight records
I bought a lot of records as a child and I was really entranced by Glamrock and it made me understand the link between how music sounded but also how it looked. And I remember going with my father and buying seven inch singles and I remember buying this one.
I think pop music is actually a great art form. It's probably the greatest art form of the late twentieth century. And this song by The Beach Boys is called In My Room, but it's also my manifesto as well, I would say, as a young person, but even now. So it just says everything that I believe in.
Out of the BlueFavourite
I've already mentioned the band, Roxy Music. They've been a band for as long as I can almost have memories, I remember this band as being part of my life. Life would not be worth living without this band in my life. They're like a friend.
It's a song by the KLF, who are this incredible band who really made a lot of mischief in this arena. And of course popular music, like in arts, is a great area to make mischief in and to provoke and to annoy people in, and they totally understood that.
Seeing as we're on a desert island. I've chosen a song from a tropical island. It's called Fisherman by the Congos. And I think I went to the Caribbean. I've been a few times but you go there and the way music it just permeates everything. Also our relationship in the UK with the Caribbean is clearly quite complex. But this song for me brings out the sort of spiritual element of the music from there.
I love steel bands, they're like almost my favourite form of music making. I love it when you see a band play a song by another band and they reinterpret it. It just tells you so much about society, about changes in society. A few years ago I was with my partner and we went to Oxford Street and I heard this track being played by a steel band, this song. It's Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and it was this up-tempo, upbeat version. It was just fantastic. So I've commissioned a steel band that I work with in South London called The Melodians to perform Hallelujah. And this is the first time probably it's ever been heard on radio.
I bought a CD when I was in America in 2001 and I was listening to it with my students. It was of sort of folk music and field recordings, and this song came on and the atmosphere changed in the room when we heard it. Everyone just looked at each other. I couldn't believe it. Like it was a proper goose bumps moment because of what's said before and then what you hear with the beauty of the song and the ugliness of the politics around it. It's just something that you'd want to hear if you're on a desert island, you'd want to hear this sort of give you some kind of impetus to survive.
I saw Willie Nelson on the telly about 15 years ago doing Glastonbury, and something really sort of like clicked in my mind about him. It was like I was falling in love with Willie Nelson, I didn't realise at the time. And then about three or four years later, I got the opportunity to see him in San Francisco at the Fillmore. It was quite a small venue, and I was near the front. And I've never experienced so much love for someone in a room as a performer. And when I get a bit down, I literally put on this record and I look at pictures of bats to cheer me up.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:07How much of what you produce comes out of anger, or making mischief?
I am quite an angry person, but I try to put it all within the work I make. I don't really lose my temper very often. I'm not for that. I don't really like confrontation. But I make quite confrontational work, weirdly.
Presenter asks
3:36What was the starting point for the living memorial with young men dressed as soldiers from a century ago [the 'We're here because we're here' Somme commemoration]?
Well the people organising all these events around the First World War called 1418 Now, they approached me and said, We're struggling a bit with the Somme. How do you commemorate a disaster? And I thought, Well, it can't be objects, it has to be human beings because of the dead. They should be represented by living people and it had to be a memorial that moved around Britain, had its own life effectively, almost like a virus. And also it was a memorial that you didn't know about until you saw it, so there was no pre-publicity about it. Over 1400 people did this, and they walked around railway stations, and we went to villages and towns all over Britain, including Northern Ireland. That was very important to go to Northern Ireland.
Presenter asks
4:26What interests you about art that is in the moment and then gone?
The keepsakes
The book
I would like an A to Z of London, because I would like to take journeys around my home town. ... So I could lose myself in that probably more than any other book.
The luxury
Well I'm stretching it, but there's a a road. It goes from Hay on Wye to Abergavenny over Hay Bluff and through a valley which has a a priory, a ruined priory and ancient churches and I don't even know what the road's called, but I would like to take that road and the landscape of Wales with me as my luxury.
There was some research done after and they thought maybe up towards two million people actually experienced it in person. I think it's important not just uh to make experiences for people they remember rather than objects. There's enough objects in the world, frankly.
Presenter asks
18:26In 2001 you restaged the Battle of Orgreave. Why did you want to make that brutal day into a work of art?
Well, I remembered it as a you know, I was at school when Minor Strike was going on. I didn't take part in it in any way. I just observed it on television basically, and I remember seeing it on the news that evening, and it was really a shocking event, the imagery of men being pursued by police on horseback and dogs just thought to me, this is a war, this looks like a war, doesn't it? Like an industrial dispute. What's happening here? And so I wanted to literally go back to the same place and restage it. And I always see it as like a public inquiry, but a physical public inquiry into something.
Presenter asks
19:18What was the day [of the Battle of Orgreave reenactment] like for you?
For me, it was quite unusual because I'd lost control of the project by then. There were so many other people involved. I was just like this funny little bloke running around trying to get things to happen. But it was too late. It was all happening. Like, probably like a real battle. There's nothing really you could do. This thing had been organised. And for the first half, which was in the field, I actually took my headpiece off and walked away and went and bought a chocolate bar, a news agent, because I just couldn't bear it. I was so stressed. And then the second half was this pursuit through the village, which is still there. And I actually took part in it, which helped relax me. You know, it sounds a bit like a joke, like an absurd happening. And it was never meant to be that. It was meant to be very serious. I didn't want to make an artwork that people felt they'd been healed by or something. I actually want to make people more angry than they were about what happened.
Presenter asks
29:02What would your life have been like if you hadn't become an artist?
My life would have been terrible. I sometimes have nightmares thinking about what would happen to me. I tried to work in a gallery once and it just didn't go very well at all.
“I am quite an angry person, but I try to put it all within the work I make. I don't really lose my temper very often. I'm not for that. I don't really like confrontation. But I make quite confrontational work, weirdly.”
“I like making work that is not in galleries. I do like making things happen. In a way, I'm sort of a director, but I like art to leave the museum and the gallery, much as I love museums and galleries, and just get into the world, as it were, and just see what happens.”
“I just thought, well, let's do something about Britain that shows that we have a sense of humour about our history and we're willing to satirise ourselves almost and have fun with our history and our identity.”
“I didn't want to make an artwork that people felt they'd been healed by or something. I actually want to make people more angry than they were about what happened.”
“I'm quite a grump really. But I think there was a lot of joy in the work as well as frustration with people. You know, a lot of the time I don't really like being around people, they irritate me. So maybe I make work to make myself happier with the human race and with humanity and with people.”