Keeping the piece: Graff lockdown in Brighton for Insight

A piece from the Insight Art and Design issue:

While street art is increasingly presented as a vital part of our city's creative geography, the council are removing legal places for graffiti artists, young and old, to practice their craft. Charlie Jones writes some wrongs

"It's gonna be a rough summer, properly." David Samuel is smoking a cigarette outside his Trafalgar Street gallery, RareKind. The artist and gallery director, who has been painting since he was 13, is discussing the impact of the recent closures of tolerated graffiti zones. Most notable of these was Tarner Park, which was pulled by the council after nearly after nearly twenty years of legal writing at the end of January. The closure has met with no small controversy. Environment councilor Geoffrey Theobald said that "Managing graffiti in Tarner Park hasn't worked and some local people have told us that they avoid the area," as a result of which "[action was taken] to reclaim this park for local residents." However, the closures are appearing to have the opposite effect. "You can already see more tags on the streets around the centre, which is what [places like Tarner Park] kept down, and it's only be two or three weeks. And it's only going to get worse."
Brighton has always had a strange relationship with street art. With a large art student and hip-hop community, Brighton is a prime location for a flowering of urban art, and the existence of large, professional city-centre murals are examples of the council's active funding of the graffiti writing community, encouragement that has lead to worldwide acclaim and a surge in regional pride. At the same time as these developments were being sprayed, the legal parks where the crews learnt their craft were being closed. The legal – or at least tolerated – areas of Davingdor, Blackrock. The Level and Tarner Park have been shut down. "The public are in two minds about graffiti – they love the quirky, fun stuff, but can't stand certain images, or artists who aren't as strong or developed," argues Snub, a graphic designer and street artist. "Councilors wanted a Banksy-style mural, but you can't order something like that. There's this '100 broken windows' idea – as soon you allow a bit of mess into an area, it goes down the pan. But the opposite is true – they act as a pressure valve." DarkDaze, a prolific photograher, has something to say about the regenerative effect of graffit. “The Kensington Street walls have definitely opened up a street that people used to stay away from – it was grimey, stank of piss and had tags and throw ups all over it. Now it’s the most photographed street in Brighton and brings in more tourists, has been featured on calendars, talked about in magazines and has even made money for Brighton traders who sell prints and postcards of the walls.” Places like Tarner Park act a community base, he argues. “Every time I used to go up there kids would come up to the writers and ask questions and seemed to love what was going on. Writers used the park as much as anyone and were aware that it was also a kid’s playground. Many of the artists I know have kids of their own.”
David Samuel agrees. "The public have this idea about that any young person doing graffiti will take be taking drugs and robbing anyone who walks past. I'm not saying that every writer is a saint, and I don't like seeing tagging everywhere as much as the next person. Parks are training grounds, places where the older heads can show younger writers where not to paint – and how to paint well. The people who painted dubs outside of the parks were by and large from out of town and they didn't know the rules about where and how to paint. To take away all our parks because of a few tags outside is like giving the whole class detention when one kid acts up."
Five years trading graffiti goods to the writers (as graff artists call themselves) and art to the buyers of Brighton makes Samuel something of an authority on the state of graffiti art in our fair city. "With less paint being used, less people are buying it. I know two people who've had to close down because no one was buying their paint, and I can't afford for my takings to go down." I ask him what would have happened to him without such parks. "I learnt my craft there! When I was a kid I didn't give a fuck about myself," he says frankly. "But being able to go to these parks made me see what an incredible tool graff can be. 14 years later and I'm running this place and doing what I love. Something as simple as drawing in notebook and then creating something beautiful that's 14-foot-high – it makes you realise that anything in your life is possible."

rarekind.co.uk
snub23.com
darkdaze.com

BOX OUTS:

Graff glossary
Graffiti – for purists, graff means spraypainting outside areas, (often in contravention of the law) not stickers, stencils or gallery works.
Writers – Those who paint graffiti
Produtions – Large-scale murals. Also called "pieces", short for masterpieces
Tags – Small, basic stylised signatures, often in permanent marker
Dubs – Simplistic two-colour paintings
Halls of Fame – Places with many pieces, usually from several different writers or crews
Jams – A one or two-day event that brings many writers together to paint, often from around the country or world

Places to see graffiti art in Brighton
RareKind – The country's only commercial gallery dedicated to graffiti. Check out the wall above the two story shop as well.
Kensington Street – Some stunning murals from Paul Barlow, Alex Young and the Heavy Artillery crew, amongst others.
New England Quarter – Over 500m long, this is the longest single piece of graffiti in country
AliCats – Snub, Mishfit and Bringa got on the case and revamped the inside of this Brighton institution
Prince Regents Swimming Pool – Some great hoardings from the RareKind boys

Tim Westwood for Insight (honestly)

Honestly, I actually think that Tim Westwood is an alright bloke. As Pharrell Williams said, “the people who don’t know him don’t know nothing. F*** them: everyone else get your shit together”. For Insight.

As well as coining phrases like “that rust game is intense!” on his Pimp My Ride UK show, Tim is one of this country’s finest, most passionate, experienced, committed and respected DJs in Britain. Radio 1’s longest-standing DJ, he has been Hip Hop’s most passionate propagandist since he was DJing at the Gossip club in the early 80s and helping to launch Kiss FM in its days as a pirate radio station, a time when Hip Hop was written off as fad. Tim has never just stood at the sidelines of the culture, though: he organized early Def Jam stars like Beastie Boys’ UK tours, sold over 2m albums and has teaches young offenders at Feltham prison how to control the ones and twos. That’s something you don’t see Steve Lamacq doing.

It is this, and his infectious, school-boy enthusiasm for rap music in all its forms that has earned him the praise of the rap community – Hip Hop Connection Magazine (who know a thing or two about this) have voted him Best Radio DJ every year since 1992, and everyone from 50 Cent to Pharrell Williams, who once said “The people who don’t know him don’t know nothing. Fuck them: everyone else get your shit together,” to Pete Rock, who called Tim “A Hip Hop brother,” count him as a mate. You ever laughed at him for “talking like a rapper”? He talks like that because he’s been hanging about with rappers for 25 years. He’s in town for the Brighton City Festival, and as Snoop Dogg recently pointed out “you can can’t come to the kingdom and not see the prince.” Yet again, we couldn’t agree more with the Doggfather, so Insight chatted to a surprisingly humble and mild mannered Tim Westwood the other week. Big Things!

So you’re coming to Brighton in October? Yeah man, I’ve been down Brighton a lot. Used to play at – what was that spot called? – the Zap Club. People are really good there, they wanna party, people love the magazine they know what time.

You were with Hip Hop since the early days, weren’t you? Yeah, man! I got into it when I heard Rapper’s Delight by Sugarhill in ’79. Back then, man, it was just fun music, party music you know. I was working a club called Gossip back then, the time of Spoony Rap, Cold Crush and all that. You could really identify with the records – you could just see the power of the music then. It was street music, party music. Dancing, breakdancing was real big then. A lot of people really knew about it – it was big.

How has Hip Hop changed since then? It’s the most dominant youth culture on the planet now. It has its own sneakers, fashion lines, culture, everything. When it becomes “the voice of youth” you know that it has its own responsibilities as well.

Is this where your work with the young offenders comes in? Yeah… I mean that’s no big thing at all; everyone does something like that. [pause] I mean, it’s such a phenomenal blessing to work in the game that – I’ve been blessed, you know? – you’ve got to pass some of what you’ve learned along. Hip hop has that duty built into it though – everyone is involved with community projects, rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. It’s community music, so the players are community aware.

Your father was Bishop of Peterborough, and you’ve previously talked about how proud you both (as self-made men) are of each other; and you seem to hold very strict morals. Isn’t it ironic that you work with what is seen as a very amoral or immoral music, yet you don’t drink or take drugs, and you don’t allow profanity on the air? I hope there is a moral obligation there – my father’s a very good man. But many players in the game don’t drink or blaze either. Funkmaster Flex was something of a mentor to me, and he doesn’t touch that: he is that focused. A lot of artists don’t party though. Time was when you’d be able to do all that, smoke weed, drink, you know, but now the work is so crazy hard that if you were out late you just couldn’t handle it.

What’s on the horizon for Hip Hop? Hip Hop right now is very creative, but records just ain’t selling. Time was when, with all the Kanye / 50 thing going down, [Kanye West and 50 Cent recently went head-head, both releasing their albums on the same day. Kanye West “won”] their records would have done millions but now the struggle to sell a tenth of that. Still the creative energy is there. At the most we’re in a real party Hip Hop phase – it’s all very Dirrty South at the moment. It is always moving forward this culture.

Tim Westwood plays the Brighton City Festival on the 25th October. The Festival will be held at various venues around town. Tickets £15. brightoncityfestival.com

Christopher D Ashley interview for FACT

CDR for Fact, Spring 2008

Unlike many music teachers, Christopher D Ashley has spent the last year putting out crafted electro pop on Sunday Best rather than banging on about Moody Blues and awkwardly smoking a joint with the kids after band practice. Growing up in a 70s household, Chris, the youngest son of an English father and a Belizean mother, started learning music before most of us stopped eating crayons, picking up classical piano at the age of five.
“I was seriously, like, 11 when I realised that other kids weren’t musically trained! That was how old I was when I realised that it wasn’t normal to go home and practice for two hours a night,” he laughs. “I mean having a ‘diverse household’ was great because I got to hear different music, but what was far more important was the fact that the house was full of music. I’d be hearing my dad’s classical records in one room and my mum’s Caribbean music in another.” Like any teenager in the late eighties, he soon discovered that fourth horseman of thrash Megadeth and Street Sounds-style electro hip-hop. Still, he couldn’t just persuade his folks to pony up for a second hand guitar and discard it guiltily after a week because it didn’t transform him into Dave Mustaine over night like the rest of us: “My dad didn’t let me have an electric till I taught myself acoustic guitar. So I did… and formed some bands with terrible names!”
After a few years building his rep on the Reading electronica scene, along side folk like Nathan Fake and Dan Le Sac, Ashley’s lucky break came when le Sac himself passed a tape to Rob at Sunday Best. “We negotiated during the summer, and I was recording the album around people’s front rooms during at nights. I ended up recording much at the house of a friend that we met looking for a party. They’d get up for work and I’d be sleeping on their couch. Much tea was drunk!” He also took the show on the road, playing with heroes like Luke Vibert and Keith Tenniswood – who was so blown away by young Chris that he asked to come on, and now forms his live band. Something of the sofa-surfer has stuck on the album – though influences from Reich to Cage are kicking around in the dynamics of songs like “When We Shining”, there is also much in the way of fuzzy-headed funk and bleary-eyed elegant electro on “Sugar Coated Lies”. His Album Cruel Romantics is an omnivorous treat that ranges from acid house tremors to Prince-like white soul to soca to tweecore indie, “When I work with people like Keith, it’s great because they don’t see a boundary between styles. It’s all exciting. It’s a reason to get passionate, isn’t it?”

Low Motion Disco for RA

A review and scene shot for Resident Advisor

What a lovely surprise this two-part single is. It’s both a lovely release in itself, and an affirmation of two basic truths: the new disco scene, at least three years old now, has a load of interesting things left to throw up, and remixes can reach parts edits never can. Eskimo are unsurprisingly behind this, and for a label whose rep was based on outsourcing routinely superlative zero-gravity disco mixes, it’s endearing that part one is an entirely inhouse affair, with the remixing duties handled by SLB and Aeroplane. While much of Low Motion – two anonymous and competent producers based “nowhere and everywhere” – slips a little too-anonymously into the background, ‘Love Love Love’ is a steadily growing gem of not-quite danceable melancholia. Music for fast cars and slow trains rather than spaceships, its dignified, tugging piano loop and syrupy bassline carry a controlled climb. While it never really goes anywhere, the journey is the experience.

But just as the best conversations begin with the most prosaic introductions, it’ s what the remixers do with ‘Love Love Love’ that provides the real thrills. LSB’s version recalls some of Walter Gibbons’ most interesting disco and hip hop edits, with the duo employing dub’s divine dimensions, cloaking high, picked guitars in reverb and wobbling the low end to a laidback and fulfilling climax. It’s the Aeroplane remix that really takes the breath away, though: Stephen and Vito’s unashamedly massive disco suits this track down to the ground. Beginning pregnant with Kommische horror strings, the track smoothly mutates with Acid half-steps into gleaming Balearic disco: disembodied, urgent and epic. If this set of triggers sound by the numbers, my apologies – this is the kind of epic disco that that no one does better. Listen at home and dance.

Part II is where the Eskimo BlackBerry gets a look in, with Soft Rocks (with Kathy Diamond) and DFA’s Still Going having a go. For the very small proportion of the world’s population for whom a Kathy Diamond guest spot on a Soft Rocks Low Motion remix is reason to explode, the track is likely to surprise. Her work on Aeroplane’s ‘Whispers’ saw her full-throated and dominant,: a positioning miles from the disembodied yearning of the Shapiro-Chromatics camp. Rather than play against type, then, Soft Rocks have played their sought-after guest down: the swelling, lush synths, nagging hand-drums and stripped kicks wrap her weightless Love… All we need is love. Stunning and stirring.

Still Going begin with the kind of pounding so strangely absent from much of disco’s revenge, give in to the primal urge and create a Choice-esque work of gleaming, retro-futuristic house. Now the loop sounds like a cold shower, and the undancable enters the sublime. Not even the wholly out-of-place AMO1/Studio guitar solo can remind tastemaking, contextualizing nodes to get in the way for longer than a minute – it’s a pounding gem, at once ancestral and ultramodern. It’s music for sweat and dark rooms and alien landscapes, and – with so much attention paid to edits on the disco scene – it’s a wonderful reminder of the power and the glory of a great rip-it-up-and-start-again remix. This is a very, very good release, showcasing four different takes on one rather unispiring original. Proof – were any needed – that this disco thing is still growing.

Italo Disco for Arena Online

A piece for Arena's July 2007 issue on Cosmic/Italo Disco.

Given the confusingly longstanding influence of the 1980s on everything from music to fashion to global power relations, it was only time before Italo Disco was going to get a relook-in. And about time too; for anyone who found last week's Mercury Prize nominations less than inspiring there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Just as noises like handclaps and piano loops looked like they were resigned to the dustbin of history, a new generation of producers is starting to channel the spirit of a set of European producers who made their own versions of US disco in the early 80s.
Pioneers like Giorgio Moroder began making electronic versions of American funk and disco records, rumour has it, because of a dearth of musicians who were able to play Moroder’s galloping basslines, but the music exploded because of an economic crisis – unable to import the increasingly rare dance records, many ventured into the studio to fabricate the tracks on a shoestring budget, resulting in minimal mixes of drum-machine percussion and melodic keyboard hooks. This post-disco, pre-Acid House electronic dance music is widely known as Italo Disco, but its reach went far beyond its Mediterranean heartland, influencing legendary early house DJs like Larry Leven and Frankie Knuckles, as well as a slew of Mitteleuropean disco producers.

This blissed out cosmic disco arguably fathered the Acid House boom: a certain small post-party club called Amnesia in Ibiza played Italo Disco and House as the sun rose to whoever was still awake. In 1987 Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling got mashed there – then decided to invent modern clubbing. Italo Disco was largely written out of the history books, though. Until now, that is.
Blame that 'Over And Over" tune: it all kicked off with Hot Chip totally understandable but astounding rise to ubiquity last year. Hot on their heels are a slew of ball-achingly cool acts, all taking their cue from the soft, slow, serotonin-rushed disco of the mid 80s. Take Noze, Parisians who are releasing the most sunkissed, airbrushed grooves this side of 1986, Still Going, the latest signing to LCD Soundsystem's label DFA, or the works of labels like Italians Do It Better. No that this cosmic disco revival is only the stuff of vinyl beards: hugely popular parties like And Did We Mention Our Disco and Adventures Close To Home have been sending ripples through clubland for months, and new nights Horsemeat Disco and Cocadisco are leading us four by four back to the millanarian gooves of the mid eighties.


Unlike most dance music, it can sound just as good at home as in a barely industrial building. Like most dance music, however, it was almost exclusively distributed on vinyl, meaning that most original records are now either warping in the Balearic sun, covered in 25-year-old beer or changing hands for hundreds of pounds on eBay. You're far better off tracking down recent reissues or releases on CD:

Greg Wilson – Credit To The Edit
(Tirk)
This is a collection of Mancunian 80's soul boy legend Wilson's best re-edits. Taking his favourite US disco tracks into his grimy mitts, he'd chop and twist reel-to-reel tapes into shape with a razorblade and ruler. In other words, dude would literally cut the tape up until it sounded like he wanted it to. Christ. Though not strictly Italo Disco, its glittering yet organic texture (and Chaka Khan’s yelping) make it a great introduction to the genre.
www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kjfixqqsld6e

Morgan Geist – Unclassics
(Environ)
Great collection of Italo Disco underground classics from 1978 to1985, full of requisite sleeker-than-sleek synths and churning beats. Compiled Morgan Geist of Metro Area. Fantastic it is too.
www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:39fwxqqsldhe
myspace.com/morgangeist

Confuzed Disco – Italian Records Retrospective
(Irma)
This is it – the best collection of the best tracks from the record label that gave the genre its name. If this doesn't make you want to don cut-off shorts and snort anonymous white powder as the sun rises over the White Isle in 1985, I doubt much will.
www.myspace.com/confuzeddisco

Lindstrom – It's A Feedelity Affair
(Feedelity)
Let's start the resurrection: it's onto the new guard. This Norwegian fella occasionally takes time out from chopping wood, hunting whales and stuff (p'raps) to release some of the most blessed, blissed out, slowed down disco on Planet Earth. Dignifies himself as one of the few musicians you can see at Fabric and listen to over the Sunday Papers.
www.myspace.com/feedelity

Studio – West Coast
(Information)
Glorious, elegant, daft, cowbell, slurred dance music, reinvented by a pair of Swedes. First pressing sold out. Second pressing sold out. Now it's on the third, finally, and it DESTROYS.
www.myspace.com/sstudio

Henry Rollins interview for Insight

Hipster HC, whatever: interviewing your hero and him turning out to be an incredibly cool guy is one of the real joys of the game. Seriously people, if you haven't read Get In The Van, you totally should. Here's Hank making my week in July '08:

Henry Rollins is culture’s Kurtz, our Hemingway and your favourite uncle. A DIY punk with guts of steel, he’s also written one of the most moving memoirs about music (or anything) that I’ve ever read, Get In The Van, the exhilarating and gutwrenching story of his own private 1980s. He cut his teeth as lead singer of early eighties Californian punk crew Black Flag, the band that inked a thousand tattoos, sold a million six-packs and sent trillions of kids down the road to Do It Themselves. Aside from fronting the greatest hardcore punk band of all time, he’s also a renowned author, publisher, comedian, broadcaster and human rights advocate. The guy’s led what you could call an interesting life, and for one so famed for his no-guts-no-glory mindset, he came across articulate, sensitive and really, really fun. Basically, if there’s one person to spend an hour and a half listening to, it’s Hank. We called him up in Bangkok, and you really should go and see him this month.

Hi Henry!
Hi Charlie, how’s it going? I’m sorry this is late – I had an interview earlier and it overran, but thank you for ringing back and holding on. I admire your tenacity.

OK, no problem. Do you want me to call back later, or…
Let’s do this now: where I’m going this afternoon is ultra remote – no phones, no email, no electricity. So it has to be now. Let’s go for it now, and step on the other guy’s toes. Is that good with you?

Oh cool, yeah. So what are you doing out there anyway?
I’m going on a mission this afternoon that’s classified. I’ve been sworn to secrecy by the people with me, and I can’t tell a soul about where I’m going until afterwards. But believe me, you’ll hear in time!

Right! So tell me about the spoken word tour.
I’ve been on tour since September last year, and it’s a record of where I’ve been and what I’m doing and what I saw. Because of how it develops, the first 20 shows are never like the last 20 shows, because so much shit has happened in between. It’s been nearly a year, and I’ve done some pretty interesting stuff in that time, like going to Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan. Like when I was in Islamabad last year when Bhutto was assassinated, I saw a huge smoke cloud from my hotel, burning tires, and I was That’s where I’ve gotta be! That’s where it’s happening! Not in some vampiric, voyeuristic way, just in the sense that I want to learn the lessons. It’s one of the few ways that a man of 50 who is long of teeth and grey of hair can stick it to The Man! By going to Tehran, talking with prostitutes and waiters and bus drivers and then telling people You know what? Those “evildoers”, they’re really cool, and really normal as a matter of fact. How do you like them apples? And a lot of people don’t like those apples, believe it or not. You’d be amazed at how much shit telling people that other people are normal and cool gets you into, because The Man – whether he’s a some oil-hungry Neocon pussy or an Islamofascist asshole – doesn’t want you to know that.

What’s it like doing a show in Syria or Islamabad or Lebanon compared with a show in, say, Brighton?
Oh, I wasn’t doing a show; I was just visiting.

OK…
I always just drop in places I’m curious about, and see what up there. If I wanna know about somewhere I just go.

Do you think you’re a brave man?
Absolutely not, no way! I’m not a tough guy in any way whatsoever, man: if someone pulls a gun, I’m running away as fast as I can. I just want more from life than sitting around watching The Sopranos on DVD.

I heard you slept in Uday Hussein’s bed. What was that like?
It was a bed. Just like any other, but it was in the son of Saddam Hussein’s torture camp, with the hooks in the wall where he hung women up. When I was doing the USO stuff [Henry regularly visits troops in warzones and military hospitals], we were in the compound in Baghdad, and Uday’s palace was where some soldiers go for R+R – a place you can get air conditioning, a cold beer and a chance to watch Lethal Weapon or whatever on DVD and feel like you’re not in the middle of a war. So the guy was like on our first day in the Green Zone [adopts drill sergeant voice] One of you will now have the dubious honour of sleeping in the bed of Uday Hussein! And I was like Wow! What’s that going to be like? That’s MINE!

I though it was really cool how you once said that your way of protesting the war was visiting the troops.
I hate this war that Bush and his evil, evil gang of corrupt pondwellers have embarked on, but I have maximum respect for the troops who are fighting and living it every single day. So when USO [the organization that provides entertainment and support to US troops] said some of the guys out there like my stuff and they asked me if I wanted to meet some troops, I – of course – said yes. And it’s tough, man. These are guys who have seen and done more than anyone can imagine. I’ve talked to guys in hospital with pins stuck through their arm, amputees, people with their face blown off – things that no-one can ever imagine. The saddest thing is that these guys, their whole life has instantly changed. Whatever their plans were, however they thought their lives would pan out, those plans have to change, and so do the plans of his wife and his whole family. And there are no words for the rage that that gives you. Seeing that shit, it reminds you how much work is to be done.

What’s the toughest thing you’ve ever had to do?
What, you mean personally, in my life?

Yeah.
Grow up, I think. Having to realise that life is a lot tougher than you ever thought, and how hard you have to work at it. Realise that you have to use more than aggression in life, and that there are other people besides your whiny pissy little self. Yeah, that’s a tough lesson to learn, and it took a long time to penetrate my thick cranium, longer than most people. I had to have it kicked into me.

Are you an artist?
I’m not an artist, no. A bullshit artist, maybe… Musicians are allowed to have a long 18th year, if you know what I mean, a life with no responsibilities to speak of. But then you meet people who are like 21 with two kids, and that’s real, you know – having a human being that depends on you making money to stay alive. And you have to hustle hard then. A lot harder than strapping on a guitar and being like This is my office. You can't be surrounded by booze and drugs and girls and be like This is my nine-to-five and still connect on meaningful level to the guy driving the bus who is buying your record. Luckily, I make rent though, but I've gotta hustle. That’s why I do what I do, you know, the films and so on, the 300-day tours – I still have that minimum wage, how-am-I-gonna-make-rent mindset.

Why do people love Black Flag?
I don’t know. I really don’t know. I mean, I had nothing to do with the band – all the stuff that is remembered as classic Black Flag was written before I joined, mainly by Greg Ginn. I was like the fourth singer, so when someone says they love the band, I say, Yeah, me too, I’m a big fan.

Really? Because for me, you kind of are Black Flag: I can’t imagine the band without you. Even if you didn’t write the songs, you kind of do symbolize the band.
I was in the version that recorded the album Damaged and I was in the version that toured it internationally. So yeah, people around the world do think of them and me, which is cool, because they’re a really good band. But in terms of their appeal… Stuff like 'Six Pack', which is such a cool song, it’s absolutely awesome, was before my time. I had really nothing to do with that.

It’s about twenty past 10 here. What should I do with the rest of my day?
How much time do you have? If you get time, read some stuff on the internet. Get informed and inform others. And when the sun goes down, I’d think about getting laid and making dinner.

What should I do in August?
Oh man… Apart from see my show? You could go to North Africa. You’re like nine hours away from Marrakech, go and see what it’s like over there. Or book a flight to Phnom Penh in Cambodia and see the Killing Fields – it’s the rainy season over there, so all the bones and teeth will be exposed.

Cool! Cheers for this Henry.
No problem man. See you on the road sometime.

Nathan Coley interview for Insight

Nathan Coley makes beautiful, Turner prize-listed art from Western sets, Scottish islands, Belgrade housing blocks and cardboard churches, and I got a chance to speak to him in June 2008. House is a feeling:

You should pop down to the De La Warr Pavilion in July to see Nathan Coley’s show. Photographer, sculptor and installation artist Nathan has exhibited at some of Europe’s strongest houses, including the hyper-next Haunch of Venison, the CCB in Lisbon and the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh, where he made knee-high cardboard models of every place of worship in the area. Of course, the thing that got him the most column inches was his Turner-Prize shortlisting, which he picked up last year for, among other pieces, beautiful scale miniature show homes and terraced houses. We love him because he wrestles with the hugest of issues – faith, country, art, nature, you name it – with heartfelt wit and rare humility.

Hello Nathan! What’s the work you’re showing at De La Warr Pavilion?
Hello… It’s a new commission from the DLWP and Haunch, and it takes as its starting point a Western stage set. Westerns are about decline, at least in part, and from it hangs five words; BELIEF, LAND, WEALTH, MIND and FAITH, which are the five rights granted under Islam, but also are appropriate for the frontier mind. Also, the idea of a stage set is very interesting to me as a sculptor. You can’t go for a whiskey in the salon, but that’s what people around the world think of when they think of “a salon”.

It’s really cool.
Cheers.

I really like how your work is totally political – in the sense of being about, y’know, “stuff” – but it doesn’t order you about.
Yeah! That’s what draws me to buildings – it’s the way that people build their environment and community around these things. You know, I don't think of art in that modernist sense of something which you stand before and "experience" – I think of it as something that builds up in your mind. It’s as simple as “This is what I think, what do you think?” Art should provoke discourse and make you see the world around you… Well not differently, but at least make you look around you and give you something nice to talk about when you’re having your tea.

Is the place something you give real consideration?
I think where a work is changes its meaning and effect, definitely. With There Will Be No Miracles Here [a huge carnival light display carrying the words of the title on bare scaffolding], it was originally erected on the Scottish island Bute, where it said something about what we want out of nature. When it was placed in front of a Belgrade communist-era housing block, where it might say something about the dream of socialism. Of course, where it is now [in the Tate] might mean something else entirely.