Pleasure to be moderator with these stars in my right, but before I say anything you're going to get a pop quiz What's this? Students, what is that? That's a central beat of hip-hop, and if you don't know you need this lecture We're going to do it alphabetically We'll start with John or her And John I have One question for you. Yes, what is the role of innocence in the art of Keith Harington? I like to think that the Innocence means something very important related to preserving one's nature and it means being careful about the things that you absorb and the things that you'll hold private to yourself and So, you know, we have the barking dog and the crawling baby and certainly they represent some kind of innocence and And I think that I Think Keith wanted to cut through some of the the complexity of intellectual dialogue about contemporary art and and deal directly with the people and so the use of iconic images that were far more innocent was very useful for that and So I think Keith Harington used the comics and those and also a very simple Figuration that was very clear to everyone But there's a whole nother aspect of innocence that we're talking about too Which is you know, we have talked about transgression and innocence versus your purity and purity Maybe I'll leave it at that we'll go further into this Conversely, you know transgression is a rhyme the other rhyme. Do you want to talk about that? Well, I Really go together Yes, they do go together and I think Keith Haring had a kind of a joyful youthful celebration of a kind of adolescent gay liberation and And I think he wanted to be very clear with people where he stood in terms of his sexual attraction and this is very clear and he was very Expressive about that.  I don't know But I mean there's a lot of sexual references in this work Well, you know another thing I know you love to talk about scale Yes Well, I Was I like to talk about Keith's athleticism scale with the way that he was able to Address a wall that was possibly 50 feet long and and freely Work work over a wall without any hesitation or consideration of the problems inherent in doing this and I Think that one comparison of scale is the graffiti artists that were doing top-to-bottom Whole subway cars at the time, which was an amazing sense of scale that was happening Just previous to the work that he was doing. So he was seeing the straight artists the graffiti artists Taking on a very free sense of scale as they worked outdoors on walls Would you say that his mastery of scale one of the reason why he's able to jump from street to gallery just like that? Abstract expressionists who are always showing off scale. So he's going to show it on too Well his his first show at Tony Shafrazi I Think it really premiered his Tart paintings primarily as artworks for sale and I have this sort of a notion in my own mind that the Secret of the Tart paintings is the drip Technique that he used and I think when he would he would do this amazing line going very fast But the drip would sort of like maintain the sense of momentum and speed is Expressive in the line or double So it always maintained this sort of action painting And it looked like it was very spontaneous And if you if you cross out all the drips it loses some kind of energy. So the drips are very important Yes about Innocence what one of the things that always strikes me the way here and uses it. I mean even even simple Line drives like this in the subway which he was famous for is there's always this sense of the fragility of innocence You know, it's not a naive kind of innocence. You know, it's a sense that We we maintain it and protect it at great cost because there's always other these all these other menaces You know around they can rob you of it, you know and destroy it Yeah, so so there's this there's this sense of needing to to maintain it and somehow hold it and Preserve it amidst all of the other shit that's going on in the world, you know, and that's a very hard thing to do I want to kind of expand on the idea of innocence to the idea of liberation I think one of the things that's really important to understand about Keith's journey and The essence of his work is having come from small-town America to New York to essentially reinvent himself You know, we talk about innocence. It's sort of as a as a Unencumbered blind slate. I think that was sort of the initial joy for Keith coming to New York and being able to sort of Re-evaluate who he wanted to be how he wanted to approach the art world but not Not in a really Sort of necessarily academic programmatic sense. I mean he brought an academic sensibility and a greater understanding of the art world proper to the street level world and Activity he was involved in but I think You know in a much different world in 79 80 It wasn't much more innocent time And I think that period and that sense of discovery informed his work that way You know and even in sort of physical terms what you describe about how Keith preceded through a wall preceded through a space From Nobody more embodies the that sense of liberation that sense of starting in the beginning and and discovering where you end up along the way as opposed to Really having a restricted way of working. I don't think you said that a lot of me that Keith accomplished to a stylistic universe between 1980 and 1980 to You want to amplify on that the whole show is about that but I'd love to get your take on it. Well, a Where do you begin? It's a lot happened in 1981 for him and apparently I think that His drawings his chalk drawings Must have been a really important moment for him to realize that he could he could take a piece of white chalk and draw on these These black pieces of paper in some way and and that also that he had a very simple Variety of images to work You know one of the most interesting pieces to me and in this show is the early pure abstract Linework with you know, you can see how he developed the iconography and what his intention was in terms of both you know politics sexuality and Innocence but at the same time that that one real gestural piece really encapsulates The energy the motion the movement the rhythm that he that he Applied as his iconography developed He tried everything out, but then through that process of experimentation and improvisation He got his vocabulary and it gave them You know like a set of jazz or hip-hop sequences, you know, you could vary it you could improvise you could take any space and Make that an improvisational moment and once he had that basic vocabulary down He just ran with it you could do it anywhere any scale right any place on canvas on a wall in the subway It was just something he intuitively got you know how he could improvise I was gonna say that when he was doing the sort of non-figurative overall pieces That gave him his speed his sense of delivery He was already doing it before he knew what he was going to draw and the style was almost there Completed and all he needed to do was a little Sharper focus as to what the subject matter was So in a way his style preceded the subject I think And I think you know there was a real fearlessness Keith from day one both in terms of the content he challenged as well as the physicality of sort of a Absolute self-confidence in line. That's what's always amazing is that self-confidence? You see him back to the video in the in the exhibition if you haven't seen you yet of the painting Painting myself into the corner. He just starts out in this space. He doesn't know where he's going This is a very early work was that Sunday to Sunday night at 79 you know and He maps out the space and he fills it in and and he knows that The line is gonna take him there. His line is going to find the way, you know He just does it intuitively no plans. No drawings. No sketches. He's got this space and he's gonna fill it in It's really good Wanted I wanted to point out that Like Keith Keith erring. I was once a young man and So I remember Being a young man. I remember how life Evolved and changed from one week to the next and that the sense of the world that you were living in Especially the idea of what it meant to make art was changing from Month to month and it was evolving and changing and it's kind of amazing as an older person to look back and think That that was the way it seemed at that time and I was going to mention how New York City from the mid 70s to the beginning of the 80s how New York City evolved and and how the idea of what it meant to make art Evolved during that time and if I think it it involved a lot and would I remember I Like to say that I was an innocent person and I mean that in a self-deprecating kind of way like a lack of sophistication or knowledge about things and so I remember that you know, I came to New York and there was the Dematerialization of space there was a kind of a Very rattle sense of the extremities of art in both in performance and and the Using the extremities of materials and and I think in my opinion What the artist did at that moment in time and towards the end of the 70s They pulled back from that precipice and they got much more conservative and they started thinking please bear with me when I say conservative what I'm saying is they decided that They had a responsibility to address people and not just do whatever the fuck they were thinking about Doing as an extreme act was not the point the point was more communication with people and So the the the art changed the artists Started thinking in a more I call it a more conservative way like for instance some of the filmmakers started thinking I'm going to try to make a narrative movie That's very conservative as opposed to and we were stepping back away from abstraction towards subject matter towards having something to say to other people and The the reception that we got especially among regular people started becoming very important to us You know and I say boss and I think he's hearing is Sharing that you know and some of this preceded him and then he led the way as a torch bearer from that time And you know One of the responsibilities of an artist is to make sure that his work will last beyond him And I couldn't with you Well, he became much more conscious of materials after the first couple of years if you look at even some of the pieces in this show they were Done with magic marker they were they were In some ways very unstable and I think it was very early on in 81 82 that Keith realized that you know He'd always been conscious of longevity and making his mark But I think he Addressed the materials on a whole different real longevity exists in our hearts and our minds not in the materials You have Kwong Chi Taking photographs of drawings that made he made in the subway that would not last more than two weeks at the most those pieces Will forever be some of the most important iconic images that be created and the context is everything The fact that they themselves did not last does not matter. There is longevity in the documentation that Did his work I think there's different categories of art making to that He was very very much aware of the subway drawings were just a great spontaneous serendipitous act You know and and those pieces are really they're really acts, you know, they're they're performative, you know They're ephemeral there for the moment He wasn't thinking long term about what they were going to What were going to happen to the material you're absolutely right But the the record of them as an act, you know the audacity of that act, you know And the performance is what lasts and then he started reconceiving the way, you know, he could do other kinds of work He was doing work on other from kinds of media That's all We had a But I think he was also conscious of operating on all these levels at the same time I mean, I think that's one of Keith's greatest gifts is not to sort of be Tunnel vision in terms of what was fine art what was Public art what was product and and the balance between both Doing Transient art and permanent art at the same time within the same style parallels his sense of responsibility to both give it away while also charging for it within different contexts within different platforms, I mean, you know, we'll get into the Sort of relationship to graffiti and these kind of things in terms of public space in terms of You know John touched on it in terms of Engaging the public became a really primary act that the you know, Keith obviously Found a home on these black panels initially, but as as that era and the black panels disappeared Keith really You know was consistent in terms of just finding a bigger public platform for it Whether it was the low-reside murals or crack is a lack You know again, I think what was most consistent or maybe attracted to Keith about graffiti in essence was the lack of filter the lack of sort of Mechanism You know that yes, he came from art school. Yes, he understood the parameters of the gallery world But he also immediately engaged the context and a street level experience that eliminated that eliminated the filter eliminated the sort of Conservative mechanism of how you were supposed to display art Eric while you have a mic And that There is no substitute for speed and competence of total commitment to the moment That's something Eric Well, I think you know I'm going to try and avoid using graffiti as a catchphrase, but that's that's it the essence of Our understanding of graffiti from the beginning was that it was It was about the moment it was about the act it could get cleaned off it could get gone over and You know even in the earliest stage it wasn't Intended for a larger audience. It was Almost a sport that you've played that was about the moment it was about the act of creation And if you shared it with you know a small immediate audience that was great, but it wasn't It was understood in its impermanence and I think the that moment And I think even The speed with which one had to work in spray paint informed that that there was no going back and and I think I Wouldn't say that I Would say the Keith would have done what he did in the way he did Without that information, but I think it was sort of a perfect marriage at the time Then he fills that boundary, but then he makes a sub-subboundary So this nesting and embedding, you know the fill it and that's just a structure for nesting other Figures and information is like this density of information like the the beautiful lot matrix drawing in the show I hope you've seen it or if not see it at really long. What is it 50 feet up? It is It's just this incredible density of information that figures resolved into these you know different clusters of spaces and Every aspect is is filled in with this kind of energy and vibration. It's really incredible and He did that he executed that with no prior Plans Well, yeah, where do I start? You know, I think it's important to understand especially the time period in this show that You know, we understand Keith is a very successful very influential artist, but you also have to understand that You know prior to the internet and prior to the kind of communications were privy to now it was really Sort of much more inner city and that Keith, you know was working as a bus boy The club dance interior when he had his wife Tom show that You know Not only did he have the same commitment to what he was doing and the same sort of understanding of his tools and motivation You know, I think I Like to say that we lived in an era where there was no blueprint yet There was no aerial map of how you created it This kind of iconic identity. I mean, obviously There were the war halls and there were people that Keith took his cues from in terms of Understanding the nature of being a public figure, you know, I also want to say you know Physically as well as personally Keith was by far the most generous person I've ever known in spirit and in action You know, and I think Again in relation to say the graffiti community We were sort of tight-knit group that Was sort of defensive in our posture. I mean, we didn't want to be understood. We didn't want to be included in establishment and You know, it was a sort of rougher era where, you know, born out of street gangs where there was a Perhaps unhealthy sense of competition amongst us And Keith sort of jumped into the fray through some meetings we used to have with a group called soul artists on the Upper West Side and You know, I think Keith really impacted us in in his generosity of spirit in how he extended himself he invited us to be in Show called beyond words at the mud club where he was very involved and you know, we were sort of Bronx uptown Manhattan and Brooklyn people and Keith was really our first introduction in a window into the Lower East Side and this vibrant sort of alternative downtown Art scene but You know as much as Keith may have been attracted to what had been going on in our community He really extended himself to us to open our minds and You know See the big picture in a way. I don't think we did it at that time Well, Eric, what the other thing I'm dying to ask you is simple just one word signs Signs signs Signs and communication in terms of symbolism You know, I can only say that Keith was blessed to sort of find his find his symbols so early on You know the extent to which he built such a body of work around such sort of simple Universal elements in itself is remarkable but I think that that If you look at the work and in this show he sort of bounces back between, you know, very symbolic and very narrative to You know abstract and much more minimalist One of the things that strikes me about Everything he did was its accessibility And I think that the symbolism has a lot to that has a lot to do with that in terms of its absolute universality You know, some of my favorite work was always The stuff that really bordered on abstraction The iconography is there the symbolism is there but if you look at sort of some of the circular mandala pieces and you know the pieces that Could be Navajo in that context. They could be primitive in that context yet. They're so truly modern within their time that that's the amazing power of the very Simplistic approach to symbolism and simplistic is probably the wrong word because There was much more deeper thought and intention I believe to the simplistic elements than one might imagine And when you think of any of the ancient pyramids being irradiated by far out spaceships Primordial like cave paintings I just thought of cave paintings The lines in cave paintings. They're very late life like Petroglyphs Like you know all of his you know glyphic Pieces they kind of resonate with with forms that that go way back, but yet they're so contemporary You know, and I think that simplicity allowed his work to be translated in so many forms We're looking at 3d sculpture If you wander through the pop shop You know again there's a simplicity that is Sort of never lost in translation wherever he chooses to take it to I never felt you know took his credit that these figures repeat a lot He'll get you'll get an icon of an arrangement of maybe two or three figures and I'll see it Repeated like I just showed you in the book. That's the exact same two figures that I have Here it's funny that he would lift his own Template that he could reuse in so many different guys's right and that would help him Multiply the material. You know, I mean if he was pulling you like a bag of tricks, let's say He's a piece met it when he said that because he put it Yes, this I'm happy Yes But anyway, one last thing Eric You want to well, this is for all of him you guys discuss how Keith was able to melt the boundary between art and commerce You know, I think this is Perhaps one of the most underrated areas of Keith's contribution Besides the fact that early on Keith was interested in splitting the difference between high and low and May have taken some heat for it from the people on the high end who's Whose pockets were at stake when he gave it away on the other side of the fence, but again just sort of pulling the lens back my my memory and understanding of those times was that The fine art world gallery world and the world of graphic design and product was so much farther apart then they are these days that Design and Art of reproductions were almost sort of considered this bastard child of the art world and it was commercial It was sort of dirty work, but Keith understood the potential again in terms of accessibility and You know, we go back to the idea of permanence. I think Keith also understood that to recreate this imagery this iconography intangible product allowed not only greater access but but greater ownership on on a level that didn't demand deep pockets and that in terms of that exchange of ownership It extended the permanence of the work and that you know That I fit you know in the pop shop was a great risk for him on some levels and You know, he pushed through because it was really really important to him to make sure that this work was was accessible economically not just accessible intellectually and I think But it was a celebrity But this was part of the idea of a celebrity is to have his people Like a pop singer has their fans, right? So Keith Herring had his fans out there that needed to that he needed to address and to constantly Pay attention to I think that was a very important part of what we was as an artist was to is to maintain a Relationship with his thousands of Keith Herring fans out there that needed to get the Pins and the posters and all that kind of stuff. It's very important part of who he was But I think it's it becomes a little camouflaged if you if you put it in the guise of celebrity and and his Fame Well, you know when when you introduce being famous and you introduce celebrity You sort of think it it raises the bar in terms of the scope of what you're talking about when in fact it was The denizens of the Lower East Side those were the people he wanted to have pins and and toys and pillows that I think was international and kids too But what I'm saying is that the famous people the celebrity the the people who Enjoyed success could afford his art. That's not no I mean it the other way around. I mean if you're Judy Garland you have your fans, right? I don't mean that he's appealing to the Judy Garland He's doing the same as celebrities do which is they all have their fan base Which they have to maintain and take care of and that was important part of what he was doing Absolutely, and I think what were what were What one sec what we're pointing out is that that There were say two fan bases Simultaneously that work at complete obsidenza the spectrum, you know Tony Shifrazi in the art world had to satisfy the demands and value system of his fan base if you will Clientel in the art world while at the same time there was a whole different Demographic of his fan base audience and say Consumer base that is just radically different than the gallery world in the context But to be a legend gives collectors an interest in collecting a work of art agreed of a Personality when they want a name becomes precious to people If his major works were selling for a lot of money then There was the potential that Doing $5 product and $10 product had a negative impact on the value system on the high end and that was a Calculated personal risk Keith was willing to take in every step of the way He was criticized for that but he insisted it on doing the populist line to go directly to the people who weren't art collectors And he could satisfy the scarcity the art Art always works on the principle of scarcity and you know very limited supply So I disagree totally But I will say that in my opinion Scarcity is not the issue and I you know look at the castle, right or we're all I think that The problem with Keith Herring was not scarcity and I'm I'm making this up as I go along, okay So trust me. I mean don't trust me is what I mean In my humble opinion, I think that the point of collectors is they may be looking for some Artifact of Keith Herring's that has some intrinsic Realness to them as opposed to a blue as opposed to a Xerox or a copy of something, right? So Warhol was very careful to have some of his paintings were done in a kind of Original feel to them, right? That's the trick with Keith Herring. I mentioned earlier that some of the drips seem very crucial to the value of the work Right, so of course a collector is not going to want something that is the same as everybody else has But I think what they were looking for maybe is You know this pressure on the artist to continually invent themselves and to produce something that is that they'd never seen before, right? So what but I don't think the reproduction is what was the problem in my opinion. I don't think there was a problem One of the things that you haven't mentioned and what you've forgotten is that In the beginning he was all about reaching out to the people and when he was doing those Subway drawings he instead of telling people to come up to him and ask them or ask him like You know, Cory, what are you doing this for blah blah blah? He had made buttons with this work on them and handed them to the people so that they could be part of it and have something They can take it with them and appreciate it and I think that by saying that he opened this pop shop for Celebrity and trying did I say celebrity? No, I said celebrity. I did not say that So misunderstood Do me a favor, please just clarify what it is you're disagreeing with because I think we've kind of come No, I think that no with the whole idea that he opened it as sort of You know, because like you're talking about like You may miss under you may be thinking that I'm saying to you that he lacked all generosity or feelings of Kindness towards the people that he was giving things away to and I never meant that so please I Think that part of the motivation Opening the pop shop was Percaps a continuation of that generosity Canceling out funds to say who he was or t-shirts and also I think somebody wanted either Eric for Sorry But I want to say I am completely with you and on your side Just to clarify Keith was doing product was giving it away Was selling it long before the pop shop the pop shop is just a natural evolution of him really Raising his hand and saying I'm doing this and I'm gonna do it on a bigger level Regardless of any Consequences Jane Jane He was about joy The product of rights March I mean, I remember working with him And he's like I'm just having so much fun. I can't stop drawing, you know Because he drew all day that's why he developed his style so fast and He never met an offer that he didn't find exciting so when I said hey Keith I can do this Artist series on the billboard in one time square. You want to do it? He was like great and I think I feel like it wasn't so much Strategic like how can I you know feed my fans? It was that and I was essentially on your friend who helped him develop the pop shop And she was like he just would say this is so much fun. I'm so excited You know and people were attracted to the energy and I feel like that's what people love about his energy around the world You know my kids that didn't know him and he gave you know, but they were born to get a little You know they they they put his work up in college because it's generous And he was really really generous and whoever approached him. He'd be like great. Let's pick, you know Let's do giant sculptures. Let's do a chapel. Let's do neon lights. Sure. Let's do t-shirts he was an expansive And they have more than all this strategy And I think in terms of what you're saying Keith was unfiltered as an individual and that's that's true of his work and that's true of the generosity and that's true of You know what you were saying with engaging your people Keith was just very in a very open soul the work Blessing came out of him very open and in an unfiltered fashion But that was who he was it wasn't just a question of his artistic mission Yeah, but I've got a simple question that Positioned Keith culture a resident academic Well, I'm not going to play the buzzkill academic here You know, there's a great thing about about Keith and like a lot of pop artists, too Is that there's the ability to do to make some really serious statements about art, but Without losing the fun, you know without losing the joy without losing the motivation for it And there's definitely a serious side to Keith. I mean especially those those early years I'm just gonna bring up a couple of images, you know to look at For the father to give us some you know some reference points Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about you know preparing for this talk and for a book that I'm working on is thinking about this You know what I call a whole dialogic context going on in New York in 78 when he arrives, you know I think John Fertu and Eric both it's it was like that the art world was kind of up for grabs You know, you had a lot of these competing forces, you know, you're going to art school You're getting a lot of input information One of the great things that happened in the 70s, you know the legacy of pop and conceptual and performance was What I call finally Killing the teleological steamroller of our history That is that The job of the artist is to somehow fulfill the direction of our history whatever that is, you know And that really wasn't what Keith was about what his generation was about I think a lot of what the 70s artists were about is the sense that well Okay, this whole grand narrative of art history is is It's it's open to at its end And now there's a sense of all right. What's next? What are we going to do? And the whole thing was was opened up to a different sense of what the role of the artist could be Especially post war hole in the sense of how you manage high and low and all these different resources and Keith got so much stuff intuitively from just you know, a number of really interesting hints I just want to take you through like tripped on memory lane, you know all right, he's really interested in pictographs and symbols and how he could develop You know, we've been talking about how very quickly he got how he could do this Recognizable array of symbols that that people got right away. Well, you come to New York in the 70s There's still the legacy of abbex. There's still the legacy of all these sage and serious artists including Godly I don't think he ever references or refers to Gottlieb specifically But when you think about all the stuff that's going on, it's kind of presupposed and assumed as part of the mix There's no way that him making the work or the way it's received especially in the art world, right? Cannot kind of set up these coordinates and say, okay, where is he positioned? What is he thinking about right?   That's that was the dilemma back then and now superficially you can say oh, well here's some glyphs and you know images and pictograms that look superficially like what Keith might have come up with or Baskiat might have come up with but it's superficial because we know that what's going on here is part of a completely different art argument, right? Completely different art story, but if you're in New York in the 70s, it's part of the story It's part of what you've got to deal with I gotta tell you a really cool side story about Francis Ryan McGinnis, you know, there are other artists inspired by this whole thing went to a studio one day and spray painted on his wall was Art history is the competition And what I found so cool about that it wasn't a kind of like nice printed poster But in spray paint art history is the competition, right? Well, it's only one of the competitions I had to throw this in because in 95 the Brooklyn Museum did a godly exhibition So we're kind of in that history. So we got whole pictograph idea going way back Now Keith said when you know, he was in Pittsburgh He was totally inspired by hero shinsky What I found interesting too about Keith is that he drew from these outliers these kind of oddball characters who weren't part of the main Story of the oven guard. They weren't part of the main story of abbex They weren't really part of any story I mean the copper group of artists Lachinsky's with it, you know different kind of tradition story But he got what Alekshinsky was doing Alekshinsky was working in Sumi right doing these big huge expensive things And you could see he would lock out these frames and put all these images again non-narrative images stick symbolic and ways of building up this kind of Expressionist imagery it's something that the Keith got right away and ran with it Here's some other images. Well, look at snakes like all this stuff all this kind of imagery and you can see Keith think like Yeah, I can I can work with that. You know the snake is one of those iconic things But again, he would synthesize and rechannel it and rethink about how he was going to do it Well, I just throw this in what goes around comes around. There's a there's a big huge Alekshinsky mural in Paris right now and when I looked at I was thinking well, you know Probably without the disciple doing something without Keith herring actually showing what street art could do I seriously doubt if this installation would have happened So we've got Alekshinsky now scaled up huge, you know in Paris the kind of thing that of course, you know Would have done to just some other things. He says he really admired Mark Toby like another one of those outliers in the kind of abax thing Working with symbols and all over compositions and all this stuff You can tell that he was seriously looking at this You know when you see you know when you see some of Keith's early kind of gestural Calligraphic things, you know, he was looking at this work and he was thinking about how do I draw from this and make it live? How do I make it mine, right? Well, how can you be in New York in the 70s and 80s and not know about Sideswan Green, right? The graphic gestural stuff and what I find fascinating about this and thinking about it as part of this Dialogic world that the artists are working through is that again This is back in this old art historical problem of the picture plane and what only is doing he's quoting Writing and graffiti and gestures, right? He's not using it as an instrument, right? He's you he's quoting it to do something with the picture plane. He's not using writing or graffiti To make stuff and that's very different What's up? What else is interesting in this kind of dialogic universe is it just the moment when when Basquiat is working on the street and herring is trying to figure out what he's doing in the high art world, you know totally Continuing on this kind of later-day interpretation of abbex totally stone classical, right? Series of paintings on Homer's Iliad, you know that are drawing and gestural, right? So there's it to me that this is kind of a desperate act, you know to bring Seriousness and history and gravity into this tradition what on the other hand you've got you've got guys in the street You've got graffiti artists We're going right at it directly, you know not not this kind of folk naive, you know writing and gestural stuff 78 a series of paintings on Homer's Iliad. I mean what all this other stuff bursting around on the street You know, it's really really striking So you're growing up in New York and you're seeing all this stuff around of course you got you know I'm sure Basquiat working maybe you guys know this image and so things you know cover art for the Ronald Z single that was used in Style Wars and so we got you know, he'd be friends Basquiat. He's aware of what's going on in the street, you know And he's aware of all the amazing subway graffiti, which I'm going to get to in a minute So again mixing high and low another artist that he that he was really inspired by which is very different They are pink German expressionist again another one of these kind of odd ball outliers who was never really championed as one of the you know High artists of the of the modern world in Germany, but he's there and he's a player. He's interesting Keith was in the same art fair. I think it was the clone art fair I think it was year that was where there was some pink paintings and drawings one of the dealer's Spaces the same time somebody was showing his work and Hearing said I'd love going there and seeing his work, but I blew away, you know Didn't think show a shufrazy Well, I think there was a pink show a shufrazy. That would have made sense. It would have made sense But you can see what's going on here You've got these kind of primitive figures and imagery, you know that you could see that Keith was saying you got the snake, right? Say, oh, okay. I get it. Yeah, that's that's gone somewhere. I can work with that And then you get stuff that's a lot more, you know primitive and gestural And then pink starts getting more abstract Color ground it's still using this kind of solid black line Of course by that time Keith was already he was already gone, you know, he was already out of his own Again the other context, you know, you've got sites only doing this like, you know high-level classical thing going on At the same time, you've got, you know, all the all the great graffiti stuff going on in New York So by 83 you've got the you know the famous Sydney Janet show in 84 Was the crash show, right? And these are the look at just these dates, you know the famous, you know Chalifant book, you know in 81 Charlie Aarons, Mervyn 83 Tony Silver's movie, Star Wars in 83 and the famous Subway art book which again kind of locks into cultural memory all the stuff that was going on from the mid-70s to this time Worth noting of all of those the New York New Wave show at PS1 in 1981 was it was a seminal New York show on a lot of levels, but For my generation for the graffiti artist. It was the first time we cross-pollinated and were exposed to The likes of Hanging our work together with Warhol with Keith with John with Maple Thorpe. I think You know, it's a whole conversation in itself, but there's there were a few Real formative moments where where everybody ended up under the same banner for the first time We were talking you know, we're really about The subway work, you know Keith, you know the journalist says he came to New York and one of the most exciting things He saw was was the life and the energy of the graffiti on the subway cars. He had immediately gravitated to this the energy the beauty It was really transformative and Lee, you know the honest friend they show together Crash of course, I just kind of threw these together as quickly as I could just to say okay This is a visual context.  Well, he said he watched videos of here Alashinsky working large on the floor on the floor Creating these big, you know canvases and here he is. He's filling out the frame drawing it in Thinking around his own abstract vocabulary. This is one of the early drawings where he is working on these signs and symbols He's abstracting all kinds of stuff out and then by the time he's working on the Subway panels what I love about this is that you know, he was doing so many of them He was treating them really as his laboratory a studio, you know, he would go and just do it 40 40 at a time in one day And it was a way to improvise it was a way to really work this out performatively and He worked out so much of his vocabulary that way Really brilliant move I can go on and on about the significance of working on blank advertising panels But he got it intuitively he knew this was a this was a messaging system that he could have that he could work with and he Could redirect in terms of making really Interesting acts of art right in a way that hadn't been done before and in the Times Square Storyboard you get, you know the kind of sequence of a lot of his classic imagery You know that he works with you know the barking dog the baby the TV set I always love these kind of menacing crosses, you know That are in the background all the time You know the dog with the cross and the snake and you know barking Nuclear, you know an atom. I mean the whole thing is just amazing, you know It's like this spontaneous combustion of imagery and You can see that well, he was synthesizing all those a lot of the stuff and more obviously from some of the imagery I showed you earlier, but he was a great Great improviser, you know again the panels, you know filled in all this imagery And what's so cool about it is he got this kind of storyboarding paneling idea But it wasn't narrative like comics, you know, it wasn't that you know The each panel was part of some sort of story or added up to a narrative But it formed its own kind of iconic space and he really saw the power of working that way And of course now, you know the great drawing here and others where he could just scale up and use all this space for this real complexity and density of information and You know, he like Warhol was frequently criticized for just being too pop too simplistic to whatever I want to end with two famous paintings that to me have always been some of this most powerful It's a little beyond the context But it shows that well. Yeah, you want complexity.  Well, here you are motherfuckers, basically You know, I mean these these two paintings Luckily that with the top one is that the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC, which you know Every time I see that whenever they have it out I'm just totally blown away and of course the Michael Stewart Kind of commemorative piece at the bottom is it's just it's it's so powerful You've got the symbolism. You've got surrealism. You've got the grotesque You've got the the kind of line drawing gestures that he's famous for but then he just pushes it I mean he just pushes it in a whole new in a whole new direction So, you know, he can do the stuff but there were moments when he was so moved to do that dense complex piece that was like from the inner core of his being that he just had to get this out He can do this too. You know, I mean the range of what he can do is just spectacular So I know that's really quick and brief, but I'm always I've always astonished and impressed by how he synthesized from There's so many different sources his own language and did it in what two years two or three years The question here Those This world It wasn't until the commercialization of graffiti and hip-hop Did it and specifically the music industry that they segregated to say this is black And I found that as a person from New York It wasn't just black it was urban was born out of comedy boredom and like you said being cultured being ignored and it created a whole new culture Well, my question is that I always wanted to know no one's ever asked When did not the commercial world but the political world come to keep Did they come like for instance? He did a lot of the drawing for the age walk-a-talks and it became a huge symbol What a soup or if you saw keep having you like, oh, he's about eight Or or the crack Crackies whack stuff like that. So I always wanted did Was he political and politics came to him or the politics comes to him because they saw Like the woman said everybody I remember when I got keep having buttons. I didn't know keep having a man But I was like, yo, I'm gonna keep having I Think it is a bit of the chicken and the egg. I think Keith was always a political animal on some level and I think as his star began to rise and Both he and the world around him understood sort of the power that he wielded Keith assumed the role of Promoting change and promoting Whatever he felt Comfortable with politically. I mean, you know as a As a punctuation to that in the later stages when Keith was diagnosed HIV positive He actually sat down myself and probably a number of his good friends and basically said I want to tell you this, you know people had been passing around him his boyfriend as well and You know, he had prepared himself for that moment politically and personally and It wasn't only that he wanted to tell us himself before it was public, but part of his message was I'm gonna be open and was proactive about this and I understand that I'm in a unique position to Use whatever time I have in the most positive fashion politically in terms of AIDS awareness and in terms of not Not hiding behind anything about it to be very open and very proactive and very young Consciously political about getting ahead of the movement or getting ahead of the medicine getting ahead of people's perception about the Medical realities, but I think that is the ultimate example of Keith embracing What was obviously? You know a Negative in a crisis for him personally and finding a way to turn it into something as positive Symbolically politically and personally as he could and and I think those things always went hand-in-hand with Eve as his as his Reach grew so did his sense of social and political responsibility You know the insides of the schedule stand and you can see him during walk-a-thons and having this social conscience from a very young age So while yeah, I did proceed from Anything but I do think a lot of it came from him really naturally like Something he just wanted to do he did it and then the city parks Kind of took it under their shelter once they realized this is a great service message I mean he's almost always doing public service messages very naturally I Think it was just an automatic reaction to The Devastation he saw around him in the neighborhood with people he worked with with people he loved and respected as well as strangers that I can't remember what year exactly crack is lack But you know again it was it was an epidemic that Keith had You know whatever grand or whatever limited opportunity to make a statement and and you know he always Welcome those platforms as well First of all a Look at his paintings Watch for this I just younger than I that means I am so happy for watch for this say what Would you stand like that in front of your grandmother? Culturally correct answer thank you this Young by old Congo gesture it means I'm tired. Let's stop And there's a lot of it in his work. He saw it by a capoeira where the capoeira means I'm tired out time means this time out so look for this this but also this Keith was Keith's best friends were B boys DJs. They were Latino They would put that again. He was very tight with the culture and you can see the confidence. They play Keith's Robot, which is like a sheba of some sort of tantric cancina With several arms, but look at the arms and they're forward. They're playing the same Across three records so that when one is finished boom started again to connect the other this was one of the discoveries of African and father and others we had the DJ robot runs the corner of Avenue D and house them Keith once drew to decode dad's gestures in his Conceive a headstand spider move with DJ robot and the Electric looking next slide It picked up as soon as it happened as soon as headspins came in would be boring. He was there And you can see except they're learning it from television But when Keith said once I put it in the subway because I knew the subway was where the B boys work And they would recognize themselves So these are love letters all of them to the black and Puerto Rican New York next slide And it became more athletic and more dangerous The 1900 where you do this spin on your palm and you can see the best B boy Well, and I love doing it on the left and one of the masters of capoeira, New York Who is doing it only they call it but a fool zone which means to screw your mom into the earth Music was powerful combination of commerce art where Keith has a young green boy during the 1990 on top of a Never-never With this wonderful stuff called the spider One of the great photographers of hip-hop Claudette and Queens up there in 1982 83 and you can see The Brazilian couple in a star is using this move over the Frustrated body of Connobon The body is called the bridge for obvious reason and it leads to one of his masterpieces where the dancer Dancers over the bridge of the body of his partner. This is from his Los Angeles parents Which is qualitatively one of the most exciting moments in American art as far as I'm concerned next slide And you can see that what he does is he turns street sign into museum sign Is to hit it with some elegance hit it with full color And blow it up And now the ultimate has happened the fusion of the two people is this total one unit There they have come together forever next slide But one of the things that's most beautiful about hip-hop choreography is the electric boogie In black church modified Modified imitation What if I couldn't believe that the shoulders of where the spirit hits first And the word for shoulders in my vehicle and that tons on my input, which means ecstasy This is when you're getting really happy And that ecstatic church behavior was seen in none other than Fresno, California by the Solomon brothers who picked it up And added more electricity to it So thank you I love this glass If you want to see what it comes from Here's a shame of the upper right hand corner who is drawing what it feels like the power comes down from God It's like lightning your legs turn to lightning everything turns to lightning But ultimately if the power is strong enough you're blown away Here's his leg two legs two arms and God knows what else Keith always did these things with a sense of humor And he was saying some of these people as they're so was actually boogie that they could light a light bulb With the current in their body next slide Then of course Egypt Malcolm Garvey black nationalism is very deep Malcolm Garvey who said that Egypt is where we come from upper Egypt the ancient black civilization King David was into it those of you who know your Davidic or your Torah Psalm 69 and Princess should come from Africa from Egypt And Ethiopia she'll pull it from us to the war That's Davidic this King David's poetry and it goes straight into not only hip hop, but it goes into reggae and a lot of apropos Jamaican, but you can see the The vestiges of African gestures from ancient Egypt They first of all the torso for they had to decide And these were known as tough teams When the hieroglyphs were played out In slightly different ways Bopam Bentham Agile Egypt These are not just anyone. These are some of the biggest stars of the New York City breakers on the left But then when you look at Hayes in high art context, you can see that he's loyal to it He keeps going here was the tough team over the barking dog By the way, when I asked Hayes, what was the name of your dog mean the one we had a touchdown? Yeah Mambo Think about that There's a tough two tough teams battling it out We learned from Everybody else in the panel if there's anything as the engine of hip hop It's a competition that they're battling it out next slide, please And then of course the the wonderful transference of the spiritual electricity Transferred by a Dominican beneath us And his black body Energy goes through one arm through his shoulder blade down his arm and into the other guy And you see the two guys of the New York City breakers are Keeping that dance alive in the 21st century And then Keith again with his sense of humor the electricity goes boom It hits the person and the person goes oh All right next slide, please The fighting we ended with voguing I mean Keith was into that too voguing is done from that from the waist up voguing is done with a lot of Facial framing and he caught that here's a voguer friend of his Demonstrating one of the gestures that goes into voguing on the left So to sum up dance is transcendent What we are dealing with here is a man who knew that dance is more than dance Dance is freedom dances transcendence. Look at how he says it if you dance with your partner tight enough lovingly enough Intimately enough you will become a pair of scissors and you can cut the bonds of other people so they share your freedom Excellent Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for coming. I'd like to thank both of you Very good


I am Tim Shaw and welcome to my exhibition. And it was really the one Iraq where I started to create work about conflict. Such isolation. The casting of a dark democracy that I think stains our own democracy. Ship the society and ship the country in which we live. Tim, how are you sir? Yes, very well. Thank you very much Chris. Good, good. So we met at the wonderful Martin Webster's film premiere for his film Penitent down there in sunny Cornwall. And as I was saying to you before Tim, I'm delighted to be able to chat to someone in an area I don't know an awful lot about. Although as an author, I guess we're both artists. What would you term yourself a sculptor? Yes, I would. I've heard the term visual artist banded around. Is that something? Well, I am that as well. But essentially I'm a sculptor and sort of traditionally, you know, that would be an artist that perhaps specializes in the shaping of three dimensional form in materials such as clear wax or stone or. But these days it's, it's sort of, it can, it can be used as quite a wide in a wide in a wide way to go into installation as well and we're light and sound is used and smell perhaps. Tim, how is it because I know the sheer amount of time it goes into creating well creating any anything of value. And I've just made I've been making a sheaf knife with my son and it's taken weeks. In fact, the whole process has gone into years now. And I would imagine it there must be a point is there where it starts to I mean you've got to get noticed to earn the money in order to be able to do the profession it would I be right. Yeah, of course, you know, we all need to to to eat since we need to live somewhere and and so yeah, it doesn't it doesn't that doesn't come out of out of thin air unless you're extremely rich or whatever. So, for me, I do need to sell work and receive commissions in order to support what I what I do do. And I'm lucky enough to be able to have that I work. I do receive commissions and I do show and sell my work. And in fact, we're on the second last day of an exhibition, which is on at the moment in St Ives and I'm a Monday. Sometimes I'm a Monday gallery that is. And it's a show that's called Fox Mabalic, which means clear the way. Yes, and and I'm guessing you need to earn a bit you need to have a bit of money available because the materials with the size of your sculptings are quite significant. Yes. I mean, I suppose, yes, bronze is not having things produced in in in bronze is it's definitely not. It's definitely not cheap. Quite the opposite. But, you know, I think as a sculptor, you can also, you know, you can use words which is readily available. Branches, you know, lots of different materials as well. But whenever I'm making something, I try not to count the cost and, you know, the idea of what what it is I want to create becomes the, you know, the bigger thing and then, you know, finding the funding. In order to do that. It kind of come comes along. Yes, got you. And so Tim, you're born in Belfast. Right at the. You were born just before the trouble so your younger years would have been right in the in the thicker things. Yes. In the early 70s, I think we're, you know, looking back quite crazy times actually. And I don't really, I don't really have much memory, you know, from from before the troubles. I suppose I would have been six then. 1970 I was born in 1964. And, you know, early life memories really growing up in Belfast. Well, the army seemed to always be there. And in fact, when the army first arrived on the streets of Belfast. You know, we lived in a Protestant area and soldiers were welcome. And in the early days, in fact, our mothers would bring tea to the soldiers.  Believe it or not, and, and being given army badges from their hats and all of that. So, and then obviously, you know, when they, when it began to get very dangerous, I think they, you know, they, it all became very separated. You know, it probably wasn't a great thing to be close to a soldier because that was a target. But, you know, I think at the time we, I think, I think at the time we sort of had this inbuilt instinct that everything was okay. We were all safe. There weren't, there wasn't danger, but looking back at it retrospectively, it was a dangerous place to be. It goes without saying because there were bomb explosions, there were shootings and a lot in the early days and in the early 70s. And I remember as a kid being in the centre of Belfast on a day called Bloody Friday, which very few people will have any knowledge of outside Northern Ireland. Many will know about Bloody Sunday, but on Bloody Friday, the IRA planted 25 bombs or close to 19 of which went off. Within the city centre, certainly within a, I think a four mile radius. 17 of those went off within the first 30 minutes, I believe.  So you can imagine what chaos and pandemonium that brought to the streets and to the people of Belfast that were shopping that day in the centre. And it was a case of, you know, running one way and not knowing whether you were running away from or into the next bomb. And I think the IRA blamed the, said they had given warning to the security forces. But, you know, whatever warning you would have given, it would have, no security forces or emergency services probably could have dealt with such a ferocity of bombing that day within such a short period of time. And very few people will know about that from outside Northern Ireland. And certainly, you know, younger people won't have any knowledge of that either. Tim, do you have a stance on conflict, on war, either personally or professionally? Do I have a stance?  I guess I'm a realist in that conflict has been there from the beginning of time. And I think what my work hopefully does is it shows what we do, shows what we are, and with one particular piece called Man on Fire, it's about the absolute horror of war. And I would like to think with that piece that we look at it and reflect. And we remember that when we go down the road of conflict, this is what is achieved. Nothing good comes from it. And if there's a way to stop something happening, then that is the path that should be taken. I mean, for instance in Ukraine, you know, what good is coming from that? And it's the people at the top, Putin, for example. You know, this is all about him and his idea of what, of expansionism, and it's based on, you know, probably old fashioned ideas. We live in a world now, it's, the world is now too small for us to have these conflicts. You know, we need humanity now needs to get on with saving the planet.  Yes. And the thing that was coming to mind when you're talking about your Man on Fire piece is that it's not just an incident that you see on the news. I mean, this is what your piece relates to the chap on the tank that was set on fire. But it's affected you. It's to a degree affected me, everybody that's witnessed that incident through the media. But of course, the soldiers concerned. It's not, it's not like a one off thing. Is it? This is all these is trauma embedded in people's minds for the rest of the rest of their lives. It's, it's, yes, incredible. I guess your works helping to help in helping to highlight that. Yes, I think, you know, the terrible thing is with with conflict and, you know, it's the fallout that comes from that. And the people that have seen seen dreadful things before the in front of the very eyes, you can't unsee that. You know, you can't press rewind and take another path. Once you've seen something, you've seen it and you and you can't obliterate. It's the kind of pleasure you have to you have to deal with that. And I mean, my God, a lot of people at the moment have seen dreadful things. And in Ukraine, you know, well, I was going to say children and mothers, but anybody. Yes, exactly. Yes, sorry. No, no, no, continue. I'm a really a for listener. And I was listening a couple of weeks ago to your own correspondence or from our own correspondence. And Katie and there's somebody out in Maripul. And, you know, this, this, they were just documenting.   And it wasn't till afterwards that he thought he'd gone over some bit of rubbler or something. And it's just really dreadful that. Did you study? Did you go to art school, university? Yes, I did my foundation in Manchester at Manchester Polytechnic. And then I then I did my degree from the School of Art. And then I left. I was hoping to go and do an MA in London at some stage, but I decided to after I left college. I worked across Southern England, based in myself and Bristol, working on various restoration and conservation, building old building conservation projects. I worked in Basin, Stoke and Kent's and Chester and several projects in and around. Bristol as well. But it wasn't too long before I realized that I really just needed to get on and make sculpture. And I give that job up and I was lucky enough to find a gallery in London that would take all my work short and started to sell work. Did you learn a lot about the profession when you were restoring items? Well, it was more I decided here when I left that I'd be working on medieval cathedrals and and it wasn't. It really wasn't that it was more sort of restoring old buildings. There was a tutor tar folly tar and a crucifixion that I also worked on. So I wasn't learning about the craft of sculpture really and it was more sort of just restoring buildings. And when you started your studies, Tim, did you know you wanted to be a sculptor or did you try your hand at different areas first? No, I've always been very single-minded there in that way. When I was at school, I wasn't until I was about 14 or 15. Yeah, I was probably one of those extremely annoying kids that was disruptive. And, you know, always getting into trouble for not, you know, just very petty offenses, let's say. But there was a quite a lot of them. And one day my art teacher said, Tim, I would like you to work with some clay. And I thought, oh great, this is another medium that I can throw around the classroom with people. And he said, you know, just work away there. And I said, well, what do you want me to do with this? And he said, I don't know, you know, make some, make a head, make some hands. So I did literally that, sat down and started to create these forms, human forms. And pretty much straight away.  And that's what I do. And there was never any question from that point onwards that this is what I would do. As you can imagine, you know, growing up at that time in, well, I guess would be anywhere, but growing up at that time, particularly in Northern Ireland where the artistic culture wasn't that great.  And so there was always that big challenge and question to get over, you know, how would I survive as an artist? And that made me all the more determined, really. And so, you know, when I went to Art College in Manchester Polytechnic and then on to Art College here in Falmouth, I worked extremely hard and just always knew my vision was very clear as to what I would do. And it's pretty much remained so ever since that time I'm now 57. And for many years now, I've just made, every day I've made my sculpture. Is it going back to Belfast, Tim? Is it common knowledge in the community who paints these murals? Is it common knowledge who the artist is? Yeah. That's a really good question. And I can't answer that. But, you know, I imagine in the communities such as the Falls Road, you know, nationalist areas or Protestant areas such as the Shankle Road, where you see many of these murals, I'm sure in those communities it will be well known. There'll be some very gifted individual along one of those roads. And they're given the job of being the muralist. You know, perhaps it wouldn't, on a world stage, it wouldn't be so sort of grand. But, you know, certainly within those areas, there would have been a lot of time, you know, I guess, given over to thinking, you know, how they would be made and what they want to portray. And they're the very powerful pieces of work. Pretty unique, aren't they really? You don't really see such a political statement anywhere else in the world. I might be wrong, but not in that sort of form anyway. Well, they're very direct. I think that, you know, one of the things with growing up in Northern Ireland and at that time that, you know, as you know, communities were very divided. You had your nationalist areas.  And in the early days, those were very divided. And as a Protestant, you may not have felt very comfortable going into a nationalist area. And the demarcations were very clearly presented. Where I lived, not on my actual road, but not far away, you would have pavements, the actual pavements, which would, the curbs, which would have the colours red, white and blue on them. You would have flags with the red hand of Ulster on it. And then obviously in the nationalist areas, green, white and gold. And the tricolor, tricolor. Yes, for friends at home, kidnapping was a big, was a big problem. And very often the innocents were caught up in that, weren't they? People coming back from the pub that got mistaken for a gunman or something.  Yes, I don't know a great deal about that. And I think that you may, but people did disappear. I know that, again, you know, we have this, I know for example, if I go home and the troubles aren't really talked about, and you never really talked about them. And so it's taken a long time for me to sort of unravel what precisely it was. But in there there's murky memories of, you know, I remember looking up the road one day and seeing the whole wall of a house had disappeared. And just a disarray of a bed and you could see into the bedroom and the living room. And that whole wall had collapsed. I can't actually remember an explosion. And although probably where I lived, which was, you know, fairly nice area, but probably within a quarter of a mile there might have been maybe up to about 10 bombs that went off over time. But we never really discussed it. You know, I remember around the corner when the library blew up because it felt as if it nearly blew me out of bed. And then also the chap that lived opposite, not directly opposite, but one opposite and one house to the left was killed in his house. And the neighbors next door who were a Catholic, young married Catholic couple had moved in. And the sooner had they moved in that there was a trace of a bullet hole through the window and they moved out pretty quickly thereafter. So all those, those are murky memories. But they have a residue and some tried to forget those things. And I guess as an artist, you recall them and you try to sort of give them what just, yeah, they're with me. Those things are with me. And there is a residue there. And I remember, for example, recently, when I was visiting home with my sister and nephews and nieces, we decided that we would go and have a walk on Divus Mountain, Black Mountain, which if I remember, Chris, you were posted to Belfast, weren't you? You'd spent time there. Yeah, I was actually part of my post and I was on Divus Mountain. There used to be a little base up there. I can't even, to be honest, was it a sangle or something was there? I just remember there's a small enclosure, just big enough to run around in the evening, but not much bigger than that. Okay, so Divus Mountain was MOD land. So it was all cordoned off. You weren't allowed to, nobody, the public were not allowed to walk on that mountain. So it was all cordoned off and this where the British forces were. And it's only been recent times that it's been opened up to the public. When I say recent, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years, and although I could stand corrected to that, somebody else would be able to tell me exactly when. And I thought, well, let's go for a walk on that mountain because where I lived in North Belfast, it was quite close to that mountain. You'd see it off in the distance and you'd see the big communication towers there as well. So I was very interested to do that and we took a road, I think it's called the Hightown Road, or somewhere close to there to get to that, to get to the Divus Mountain. I remember travelling along it and just talking about residue, just feeling, this road feels, it's got a bad feeling about it and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. And we turned the corner and there was a little memorial to three soldiers who'd been taken from a pub probably and kidnapped and taken up there and executed. And all along that road is where actually these two, where the disappeared, were buried. Which of us to learn afterwards. So it's funny how travelling along a road has that residue that you can sense as to do with the past. Yes, like a sort of dark energy. Yes, a dark energy, that's what that road had and you could still feel it today. I'm interested to know how after coming out of your studies, your career began. Do you have to get yourself a workshop or do you live, do you get a flat that's got room to work in? Okay, so how did I start? Well, I was kind of fortunate in that, as I said before, that just after leaving art college, I went to work as a restorer, a conservator of old buildings and sculpture. And I wasn't particularly happy doing that or certainly seeing that as a career that I would be following for the rest of my professional life. And at that time, probably like every youngster, you would just think, how do I get on the right road here? And I remember my mother at the time saying, why don't you get in touch with this? He was called Effie McWilliam and he was probably one of Northern Ireland's best known sculptors who lived in London for most of his professional life. And my mother and I had visited the Ulster Museum back in 1982 or thereabouts to see a major solo show of his work. And I was fascinated by it. There's a series called Women in Bomb Blast that he created and that was very evocative and powerful, expressive. And those images stayed with me and my mother had said, get in contact with that man and I said, well, he's hardly going to respond to me. Anyway, in those days, you go to the library by and look at a book and find an artist's address, postal address. So I did write to him thinking I'd never get a reply, but the following week it did and at that time he was 82. I think he'd written, well, you know, I'm an old man now. I don't know whether I'll be of much help to you or not, but come and visit me. So I did do the set and I went to visit Effie as he was called at his house in Holland Park, London. And I was met at the door by him and came in and we spent the next couple of hours just chatting away and, you know, he'd met people like Picasso. He'd spent time in Paris and so he's very, very interesting. He made me laugh when he said myself and William Scott, one of the other Northern Irish, well, actually of Scottish descent, but educated Northern Ireland did, gone to the Slade, then headed to Paris as he put it, to be French. And I think a lot of people, a lot of young artists probably went to Paris to be French at that time. Anyway, he gave me a contact and he said, I want you to contact this man and tell him that I sent you. And I said, Cheerio to Effie McWilliam and got in contact with this chap who's called Mark Blaisburg, who ran the Albemarle Gallery in London, right in the centre of London. I went to visit and he liked the work, he liked what I did. And then he sent me away with a check to say, get on with it now. And that's what I did. And I had my first solo show at the Albemarle Gallery and get this, I wrote to Effie McWilliam a couple of years later just to thank him and to send him this invite. And to say that, well, this happened as a result of meeting you. I'd like you to come to my exhibition and he wrote back and said, I will come to your exhibition on one condition that you've come to my exhibition the following day when it will open in the gallery just round the corner. There was a nice little coincidence to that. So he came to the show, I then went to his show and sadly a couple of months later he died of cancer. He hadn't been very well. And then a gallery was opened in his honour in Banbridge, Northern Ireland called the Effie McWilliam Gallery. And that is where I had my first major public show in 2015. Yes, we must give a thank you for all those artists out there that have helped a youngster come along because I had a similar thing when I wrote my first memoir and I realised how difficult it was to get one of these elusive publishing contracts. I thought, I thought, right, I'll take a different approach. I'll try and take the backdoor approach. And I wrote to about three authors and just introduced myself. Fortunately, we had an email then so it was a lot easier. And I just said, hi, my name's Chris, I've written my first memoir. Would you be kind enough to read the first couple of pages? And I phrased it like that as though, you know, it can't be that hard to read two pages for somebody. And there was a chap, I believe his name was Tim. He wrote a book called White Mischief. It was all about the history of cocaine. And he very kindly wrote back to me and he gave me one bit of advice in that email that then allowed me to go and completely reshape or reshape my writing. And if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be where I am today or certainly wouldn't have enjoyed the successes that I've enjoyed. And the other chap or one of the other chats that I wrote to said, Chris, this is amazing work. I've spoken to my publisher and he wants to publish you immediately. I was like, yes, the backdoor approach worked. Where were you creating your works of art, Tim, at this stage? Well, listen, I would also like to say, Chris, that, you know, those early years, which for me were the early 90s really. So I graduated in 1989. And then it's really in the early 90s that, you know, you're trying to sort of form your way. And that's why I came back to Cornwall, because I was able to come back to a farm where I had rented a room during my student days the last year. I was able to come back and use one of the barns as a studio and it was able to live work in a relatively inexpensive way as opposed to trying to do that in London. And I'm still here today on this farm. I've got a few studios now. I haven't just stayed here. I did have time in London and Germany and various residencies across Europe. But I always come back to here. And I think that was a key to being able to do what I do, to keep expenses as low living and studio expenses as low as you could be. There is a drawback to that. That's that you're 300 miles from London where, you know, the machinery, the networking of career building does go on. So you have to go to the city to meet the people that you need to meet. And that's where you exhibit and people see your work. Not saying that that doesn't happen in other places too, but I've always felt that I've needed to show in London and meet the people that I need to. And so, as I said, during those former years spent here just working away in the studio, did a little bit of teaching fun with School of Art, which became fun with university. And just really, you know, had my head to the ground still on that and just carved away, really. As I was saying earlier, I had my first solo show in 1992. God, that is a long time ago. And then I had another one in 1995 and 97 in London. And I began to say that I was able to sell work and, you know, had followers. And then I guess the momentum built. Then I was, I did a show at Falmouth Gallery and from that came a pretty major commission from the Eden Project, which I worked on from 2000 to 2004. And then that sort of amplified the work and put it on a stage whereby a million people or so would say it every year. And then I began to show with a gallery down here called Goldfish that then became Millennium and then became Animal Monday. We've worked with its director called Joseph Clark. He's been a great supporter. And then I had a residency, a fellowship at the Kenneth Armitage Foundation. We had a wonderful supporter called Michael Sandel. Who was instrumental in that. And that began to put the work on a London stage. And things grew from that, really. Tim, what was the incident that happened? Was it silenced here? Am I pronouncing it right? Salinas. Salinas, sorry. Yes. So Salinas was the... Okay, that came from the Rites of Dionysus, which is the commission that the Eden Project commissioned me. I was asked by the Eden Project, would I create a piece that would tell the story about wine production or something to do with wine? And I thought, well, it is a good opportunity to go back to the beginnings and let's work on the subject of Dionysus, the god of the vines or the vine or grapes or nature god, really. And Salinas was the tutor of Dionysus, commonly depicted as this... sort of large squat figure. And I decided to crit this figure with antlers because the Dionysian writes for all about fertility, really, as well. So I produced this piece, this Salinas piece that was kind of very shaped by these depictions, depictions of Salinas from classical Greece. This figure with an erect penis. And so this figure that I created was about eight foot high. And that actually came after a residency that I won at the British School of Athens. And where I went off to do research in many of the ancient Greek sites. So that piece came after, came out of that. And so I created this figure in foam with wooden antlers, which I first showed at Goldfish and then Goldfish took this show to London, to the east end of London in a place called Viner Street. This was around 2007. No, to that, yes, 2007. I think 2007 they did a show there. Viner Street at that time was quite a trendy street in which many young galleries were opening up. So there's quite a lot of excitement, private views when they were all in the whole place. The whole street was crowded full of art followers and gallery people and all sorts. Anyway, I showed this piece there in the yard and behind doors actually. One of the days this chap came in, hooded chap with a baseball bat and smashed it up into bits. And then I believe left saying that I was worshiping the wrong god. I wasn't there at the time. It was just a poor gallery person behind the desk that witnessed this. It must have been quite traumatic for her, I'd imagine. Then it arrived the following day or the next day or two. It arrived in the double-page spread and the paper about it connected to an article about art and vandalism. I'm guessing had he assumed it was the devil or something? I really, really don't know. Was it somebody that was psychotic? Was it somebody with very extreme religious beliefs? Could it have been another artist carrying out of art performance? I think several people had said, oh, is this something that I had done? Was this a publicity stunt that I myself and the gallery had pulled off? Certainly not because the piece had been collected by a very major art collector. They were very happy about what had happened. Yes, I bet. Can you tell us about your military pieces, Tim, or the military-related ones? Yes, so the military... I think let's call them the conflict or the pieces that are about conflict and war. I think that all evolved out of... When I was working on the Eden project and working on the... about the Dionysian myths and I created this piece. I think it was of Orpheus and it was a sacrificial piece where in classical literature Orpheus' head is ripped up from his body by the Minades who were the followers of Dionysus. And I decided that I would produce... put his head on a pike and surround it by seven herds' heads, also on pikes. In other words, I wanted to produce this sacrificial thing and the Minades was alleged that they would go into the mountains and drink wine and become intoxicated and had this superhuman strength where they would rip animals apart and indeed some would sacrifice humans as well. So that's why I created this scene. But when I was making this and when I put the first head on a pike it was actually around the time of the first beheading in Iraq. I actually had... the heads was telling a completely different story but the timing was... well, it was just at this time and the heads had to be... there was a lot of complaints were made about this so the heads had to be taken out because visitors weren't very happy about that. But it started to make me very aware of when law and order breaks down and we become intoxicated by conflict and war that humanity starts to break down and obviously early 2000s from there onwards you have the beginning of the war in Iraq and this is what you were saying where a country was invaded and society was breaking down or being ripped apart this is probably a better way of saying it and so I started to become conscious of war really from that point and also I think at that time I hadn't really... I'd never made work about Northern Ireland I'd always shied away from it and people used to say why haven't you made work about where you grew up and conflict and I didn't want to and it was really the war in Iraq where I started to create work about conflict and it wasn't until... well the first piece that I created was called Casting a Dark Democracy and it was based on the very infamous photograph of the hooded Abu Ghraib figure which we'll all know and it's when the Marines, the US Marines put a prisoner who was cloaked in a blanket I think he would have been naked and then he was cloaked in a blanket put on a probably... I'd say a box of... some box with a hood over his head and he was given these electrical wires to hold and I think he may have been told that if he fell off the box he would fall into water and be electrocuted anyway the image... well I first saw that image it had such a powerful resonance and you looked at it and thought where does this come from? what time does this come from? it looked like something that had been dug out of the ground from long ago medieval in appearance and yet these were the images that had just come to light in 2004 of these torture scenes and that was just one of many photographs that were taken but it was that image that for me really told the story of a war that just seemed at best controversial and at worst illegal and to this day it seems controversial and I just felt that we should not have invaded Iraq and so what I did do is I created the piece that you see there based on that image I created at a height of 5.5 meters about 18 foot in height on a wooden plinth the figure itself is made from steel barbed wire and black agricultural plastic is stretched over it in the shape of that figure and then it overlooks a pool of oil the first version of it is an elongated shadow if you like of the figure itself and that represents it's the casting of a dark democracy that I think stains our own democracy and of course we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction embedded as yes and even if there were smashing a modern civilised country back into the Stone Age isn't the way that we need to do things is it yes I think that was a dictator and a terrible man but did that constitute us going in and blowing the place apart I know what I think yes Tim two more things for you did you want to talk about was it man on fire I'm just looking at some pictures as we're it's up to you how much because of what you said to me earlier I know there's stuff that you can't divulge but did you want to talk about it at all yes some man on fire you'll remember that in 2005 there were these very visceral horrible images of they were posted across the press of a riot scene in Basra and it had these soldiers that were clambering out of an APC warrior and in the riots petrol bombs had been thrown at the warrior car and I think one had gone right into the into the actual vehicle and got what an awful thing that must have been setting the whole inside of the warrior vehicle on fire and out of the hatch came these soldiers on fire jumping from the warrior and I remember just looking at these images and thinking this is the true reality and the true cost of the horror of war this is what war is about and just seeing this soldier diving from the tank on fire so I produced this piece called tank on fire and just really just showing that image I guess and then I created from there from some other photographs that were related to that particular event soldiers running on fire and I just wanted to create this piece that also could say that roughly at that time well a couple of years on 2007 I think was the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport and we saw the two terrorists who just crashed into the tried to crash into the airport with well trying to blow up the airport and one of them had got was pictured sort of running from the car on fire and this is that famous scene of somebody with a fire extinguisher trying to put him out put the fire out and I don't know these images that image as well as the ones taken from Basra 2005 it just had a real resonance for me it just didn't leave my mind and I just needed to make it make these pieces tank on fire and man on fire why I don't know it's you know I suppose as a kid often saw vehicles burnt out and scenes after riots and you know looking at a building after it had been burnt out or an explosion I don't know the mind and the imagination fills in what the eyes haven't seen and with those images I guess it really disturbed me and it made me think about you know that I guess this person alive that has been consumed by flames grasping on to life and on a precipice lunging forward with arms outstretched trying to grasp on to life with death consuming him or her and that's that's very disturbing and I don't know I needed to make it I needed to make that piece and so I created a small version of it first of all well first of all I made tank on fire and then I made this version of man on fire and put it on a white pedestal and wrote on the pedestal what God of love inspires such hatred in the hearts of men and poured oil over it and I think it was a comment on at that time about how religion fuels people to go to war but in fact the real war is about is about loss and gain of land and power and that being oil as well control of oil and that becomes the real God yes none more so than at this moment in time yeah and so I decided to create a thought after it made that piece I really need to make this a big larger version of this so I created man on fire in spring 2009 it was the next piece I made after casting the dark democracy and I don't know why I just decided to create it at a monumental scale and then I finished my fellowship in London and I got shown a few times 2014 2018 in public shows across the UK and an opportunity came up where this piece could be cast into bronze and for the purposes of it being gifted to the state and it is in the process of now being cast into bronze and it will be installed next year in front of a museum I shan't say where and it's about five metres tall and four and a half metres long so it's a quite a monumental piece and I reworked it during lockdown for a whole year because it's when I originally created the piece it was designed for it to be shown running across the gallery floor and now it will be going to be out in the public domain and it needs to be on a pedestal so you'll be able to walk up to it and see underneath it and what is it about it's about the horror of war and the true cost of war I really can't say more than that Well congratulations on the commission and Tim just the last thing just of interest to me really is the whole green man thing I wasn't aware of the green man until that was it true detective with Matthew McConaughey and it started this notion of a green man started to sort of come into my life at least I realise there's an awful lot of history behind it Listen Chris I'll come to that in a sec but there's something probably quite important that I've left out here that I'm just thinking about it now there's a piece called Mother There is Blue There is Dangerous and you might see it there on my website sort of a blue room and I'm bringing it up because I suppose it ties together quite a lot of what I do and it's quite an interesting story as well about memory I've said that I was in Belfast during Bloody Friday but there's this other events and I've never been able to make a total sense of it but there's a memory of being in a restaurant well there was a canteen you didn't really have restaurants the early 70s in Belfast the idea of a restaurant may not have really existed but it was probably a sort of a cafe area in the store department store I remember so I have this memory of my mother saying get ready we're going to go to town and I remember playing with this little car a little dinky you know we had these little dinky cars if you can remember them or matchbox cars and as soon as she said that awful churning feeling began in my stomach I just remember thinking something horrible is going to happen today and I didn't want to go to town and my mother said just get yourself together and we're going off to town and we went to meet her friend and her son her son being a lifelong friend of mine and we met them in the cafe a bomb went off fairly nearby and I remember freezing to the chair remember what I was eating before I was putting in my mouth at that moment it was a tomato another one goes off closer and the fear that I had in me was dreadful because I just thought I wasn't sure if we were going to live out this moment and then a really massive explosion happens almost that the air expanded and then just blew forward and it was like an electric or a petrol blue colour the air was just like a petrol blue colour and smoke started coming up the stairs and things went flying through the air I remember the clatter of trays and panic panic set in and people ran one way and then another and we finally got out and I think my mother and I walked home that day through the streets there was a lot of panic and it was never really spoken about and I mentioned it many years later and my mother said oh yes I remember this thing but many things happened it was a time when every day there were bombings and shootings and it wasn't until I created man on fire and casting a dark democracy in other words the work that came from Iraq and somebody said to me what will I make next and I thought I need to keep give shape and form to this memory and an opportunity came up in Greece to go and do a residency it was at the Capatos Gallery in Athens and before I left for Athens I went back to Belfast as I would do every summer to see my folks and friends and I said to my friends whose name I won't mention the lifelong friend that was there that day we were out in a pub half a dozen of mates and I turned to him and I said I'm going to make this piece of work about this memory that I have and I said do you remember being in this restaurant when a bomb goes off nearby and he just froze and looked at me looked blank and said no and at that moment I thought well let's move the moment on let's carry on who's the next round whatever I left for Greece soon after and I thought this is problematic where does this memory sit now sit and my mother's dead so she wouldn't be able to back this up nevertheless it's something that I've carried all my life just it's just there earlier to you that once you've seen something you can't on see it you can't rewind memory and but the person that was there that is alive today didn't appear to remember so I carried on with this piece that became an installation based on that memory and in the installation there's chairs and tables and clothes or the chairs tables there's sort of detritus that you might find of left in a panic situation of coats, handbags you know when something like that happened you have no time to get your handbag and pick it up and take it or imagine so and there is just this sound strange sounds of you could say sort of based on a saran almost and on the walls are projected these figures running running to the door continually running just shadows because what I remember is not people but almost people as grey shadows shadows running in panic and running like panicked animals one way and then another so I put just this piece and I actually to show it in Northern Ireland at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery came up and they wanted to show the piece and 2015 there still would be a time when showing that would still be quite controversial because it would you know it would rise many memories in people's minds and indeed my cousin's husbands had to leave the gallery anyway my friends came as well as some of my other friends and I felt very uncomfortable about it because I had to sort of cut them out of the history of the making of the work because he didn't appear to remember it and I didn't say much I wasn't able to talk to him that night but the next day I phoned and said thanks for coming to the show and he said Tim I walked into that room and I saw hell and it brought back this early childhood memory of being in a restaurant with my mother and we run out and looked up at the window and there's all these flames coming out pretty much close to where we sat and because I've got things so mixed up in my mind about him not remembering sort of these distorted thoughts of is he just trying to is he playing a trick on me or whatever so I said I need to see you straight away and we met in a pub the following hour and I didn't I just couldn't trust what he was saying until he drew it out and I said you must draw this out you must draw a diagram of this and point out where you were sitting and tell me more about this what you saw and felt and he sort of wondered why I was making him do this but he did it and then I said we were both there together and he couldn't remember me or my mother but all he could remember was the lunch and his mother and running with his mother and I think what an extraordinary thing to not remember such an event that I could remember until the moment he walked into that room and then this memory came to light in his mind it really fascinated me because when I told him about what I was going to make the look in his eye was it had gone dead it was a stair but it was a hollow stair and that's why I moved I didn't want to breach the subject I wanted to move on from that moment straight away I cut him out and then meeting him the next day or talking to him on the phone when he said I walked into that room and it was like walking into hell and then he said it reminds me I remember this thing that happened when I was a kid and I guess all you can say from that is that I guess the person that you're closest to your mother becomes the main thing that you remember that's your safety and everything else is excluded there we go Yes I wrote a piece once I never went raving or party in a dance party and I could have sworn the guy in the car next to me was this chap called Steve and when we hooked up years later having not seen each other for a while I said Steve you got to read this and I sent it to him and I was waiting for his response to be and he said now want me and then I remembered oh my god no it wasn't him was it it was another chap and people are funny my dad once said to me as an adult or obviously I was an adult he said yeah one time I was taking a cricket nets in he's talking about being at school right he said and yeah this pilot ejected from his plane his chute didn't open so he said I just heard it and he said I looked over and he just died on the ground next to me and I was like dad you didn't think to like mention that my whole life and what it was the school was next to a military and this pilot had taken off guess he had engine failure and didn't have enough altitude to turn around so he had to eject I think they call it a roman candle where you shoot twists up there's now so strange as folk that my whole life my dad never thought to mention probably a severely traumatic injury and then that led to me thinking bloody hell what must be going on in my dad's head in his own life for that to be insignificant I can sort of tell you there's probably quite a lot of other stuff going on that meant that that wasn't sort of a thing for him Well I guess time moves on and you bury things Chris I'm going to have to say I've got a meeting in three minutes I've got somebody turning up but I'm very happy to carry this on at another point Yes you must tell us after your installation you must come and tell us how it went and what the reception's like This is the, we're talking about the burning Yeah the man on fire Yeah I think that's a good point to also talk about the green man and that takes it on to another section so really happy to do that I'm sorry that I have to meet the filmmaker actually that's going to be recording it and he's due to arrive here in two minutes So I'm sorry to No don't be sorry at all thank you so much Tim for sharing your life and your career with us I'm just sat here finding it absolutely fascinating so thank you I'm sorry to bring that up at the end but the the early childhood experience I think it probably also feeds in to the man on fire thing I said earlier about what you don't see your mind and your imagination fills in what might or what could happen or might have happened or did happen and it's an interesting area I think that to deal with some modern Webster deals with things like that Tim you must get off, don't stay on the line I'm just going to thank everybody at home for tuning into this one much love to you all friends please look after yourself, if you could like and subscribe that would be wonderful and we will see you next time Thank you very much, same to you Chris Cheers Tim, take care, bye bye