Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An artist who won the most promising new artist prize at the Venice Biennale and is known for her Crying Men series of famous male actors.
On the island
Eight records
Tiny DancerFavourite
this song just immediately brings me up and makes me happy and makes me want to dance.
it's just one of those records I put on when I want to be sort of carried somewhere else.
for me it's like a call to action, this song. It's j just like a sort of I don't know. You can't sit down, I think, when you hear this song.
for me one of the most beautiful pieces of music and when I first started working at the Royal Opera House Jochen Kowowski was singing it there. I walked in on him when he was just warming up for it and I didn't believe that that was his real voice so I laughed which was very much the wrong thing to do but here he sings it and it is incredible.
This song is just such a beautiful song, and my daughter really loves this song, and when I first played it I left the room and came back and found her hugging the speaker, and so this has a very special place with me.
this I think is one of the most beautiful sort of love poems written. ... It's very romantic. I know, and I often dream that I've got black hair and it's about me, and I lie in bed and listen to it.
I discovered Johnny Cash sort of relatively recently and once I discovered him I became very obsessed by him and listened to everything. And I have been working on this idea of a film about William Blake with the actor Ray Winstone. And I was having difficulty trying to sort of figure out who Blake was or how best I could show who he was. And I was listening to all the Johnny Cash music as I was travelling around America. And I came home and I had one of those sort of Eureka middle of the night moments where I thought Johnny Cash and William Blake are almost the same person.
I think he's got the most unusual voice and the most beautiful voice, and he writes the most fantastic lyrics. ... And I think on a desert island, you might sort of long for a vibrating telephone.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:05How do you persuade these [famous] guys to cry for you [for Crying Men]?
Well, none of them knew that they had to cry until I arrived on the day, because I thought if I wrote in the letter that I sent to them that they had to cry, they may not turn up. So it was, you know, a lot of persuasion at the beginning and then a kind of gentle negotiation and then a sort of reluctance, and then finally we'd get to the point. But each one of them reacted so differently.
Presenter asks
4:40How did [the video portrait of David Beckham sleeping] come about?
It came about the National Portrait Gallery approached me and asked me if I'd be interested in making a portrait of him. And immediately my reaction was actually that I didn't want to because I felt he was the most photographed person in the world. And how was I going to make it my own? ... And so I went away and asked for some time to think about it and then had the idea of him asleep and thought that having that sort of hanging like a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, but as you see the movement and slowly realize that it's a film, that it would be something more interesting
Presenter asks
9:05Was it always there, this desire to do something with art?
No, it wasn't always there. I think I was always quite driven inside, and I think that might have been, you know, to do with how I was brought up and under what circumstances, and more a drive just to get the hell out.
The keepsakes
The book
Ted Hughes
I think one of the poems in the Epiphany is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read and I read it again and again and again. And also that one, because it talks about London, will sort of transport me back here because I'm sure I'll be very homesick.
The luxury
Because I do like to sing along to all these songs, and I think out there I won't be able to take any of all the other songs that I want to take, so I'll be able to sing them to myself, by myself, and I'll do it only after sunset, so I don't drive myself insane.
Presenter asks
9:32What happened [when your mother left]?
My mum and my dad split up, I think, when I was around nine. ... And then one day she came home and handed me a note and said, uh, give this to your stepdad, because I'm leaving you all. ... And then we just didn't see her for a while. And it was a very strange, very uncomfortable time. And, you know, we were young. I was probably fifteen, I think, and my sister was eleven and my brother was just four. So we were all sort of left and my stepfather, you know, didn't handle it too well and we were just, you know, in a right old mess, I think.
Presenter asks
19:01What was the catalyst then? What suddenly made you start thinking I can be an artist?
I was working [at the nightclub] and I was working from sort of five in the evening till sort of five in the morning and it was killing me ... A friend of mine stood me in front of the mirror and just said, Please just look at yourself. And I did, and I sent the keys of the nightclub back. And then I thought about it, that the three men, Basil, Ray, and Steve, who were the bouncers on the door of the nightclub, were the only people I could trust and were my friends. I took them to the Tate Gallery and took photographs of them standing in front of paintings ... and I think that was partly how I was feeling.
Presenter asks
28:28Are [your parents] proud, impressed? Do they feel they contributed?
I think my dad is very proud now. ... We've become a lot closer now. It took a long time to repair our relationship and I think the repair came was when I had Angelica and I realized how easy it was to make mistakes even though hers were a bit bigger than most. I think I just had to sort of let go of the anger and I felt also I was too tired and I was too busy with my own sort of sufferings to have anger mixed in with it.
“I find it very difficult to say no to a lot of opportunities that come my way'cause I always feel so grateful for them. And I find it so difficult to say no'cause I just panic all the time that what could be round the corner and I think having faced mortality that's always going to be with me.”
“I think, you know, sometimes I I say that my work is often three steps ahead of me. You have these ideas and you don't necessarily know why you're making them or where they've come from. And I think with these it was about that sort of final release from me feeling like I was an ill person, because I was living my life as an ill person.”
“I think as a woman, you know, losing a breast is one of the hardest things to go through because you do feel like a sort of big loss of part of your sexuality. And to recover from that is a whole other thing to recover from on top of the cancer and the chemotherapy.”