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Artists involvement with the New Art Gallery

Peter Jenkinson, Project Director.

AP This building has had quite a high input from artists. Artists who aren't trained in architecture, but have worked with the architects. Why?
PJ The project is about creativity as well, and artists have got a very clear role to play in the project in many ways. As a focus for creativity in the town its absolutely appropriate that the opportunity of creating the Gallery should also make opportunities for artists to make work. It should be a platform for that to happen. Some of the artists are working on documenting the gallery as it rises up into the Walsall sky line and will provide a record of what has happened for generations to come. Which can be used in any format, whether its in a school context, or a web site, or in publications and films and so on and so on, whatever it might be. Other artists are involved in more major commissions and we were very interested from the beginning, with this project, in using it, in a way, as a vehicle to enable people to move on in their professional practice. Caruso St John have never designed a gallery before. It was quite adventurous, I think, for the team of people on the selection panel to go for such a practice, rather than one that had lots of experience in designing public buildings, specifically galleries. And I don’t for one moment regret having been part of the decision to take that step, which some people have said is quite risky. And equally, some of the artists involved in the project are doing things that put them at risk. With their own agreement. Richard Wentworth is designing a public space. He's never done that before, but its fantastic that he is. He's finding it a very interesting journey, having had all sorts of conversations he never imagined he'd have, to design this Gallery square that surrounds the Gallery building. Equally Catherine Yass, for many years been interested in moving from stills photography into the moving image, and specifically digital film, and again, the project has enabled her to do that. Not just for a short time, but over a long period, to create what I believe will be a major body of work - and is really quite luscious as well, its fantastic work.
Other artists will become involved with working with community groups and schools in the period up to the launch of the gallery and in residencies in community situations, or in the retail areas of the town. And for that matter, afterwards - and those are currently in development. Other artists will be making work that can potentially help to market the Gallery - and I am not embarrassed to say that - in imaginative ways. Ming de Nasty’s work, with the building workers, is wonderful work and like so much of the project it comes from some kind of democratic root. And you can discuss that for hours, what that means, but there is a deep sense of democracy in the project. By putting people in the frame who are not conventionally there its an obvious, but really important, statement. And what we would very much like to do is to take those images of people who are very little celebrated, and I don’t want to make it seem sentimental because it would be ridiculous - they are by no means sentimental themselves - but put them into the streets. We will also employ artists to deal with functional things that we have to deal with, like sign posting in the town centre, which currently is Victorian style finger posting, in cast iron, in black and gold. I think that at the end of the Twentieth Century there must be better ways of doing it. And we can involve artists in that, whether its a sound piece, or a visual piece, or whatever. So artists are involved in many ways, they are not all working to the same agenda, or indeed in the same style.
We did have early discussions about public art. In this country, we know, in the last decade particularly, there has been an explosion of public art and we, in a sense, didn't want any public art for the project. In the sense of sculptures on the plaza, kind of approach, you know, you plonk it down and there it is and admire or hate it, or deface it or paint it, or whatever. Equally, we had long conversations with Caruso St John about art in the building - and aside from the turd on the plaza approach and other approaches for artists’ physical interventions in spaces, and particularly new buildings, the stained glass window for example would be a classic. Yes, building things into the gallery fabric. And again we rejected that and looking at the building now I think it is easy to understand why. The architecture is so finally tuned. Furniture is something different, I think, and that can be accommodated, but its actually doing these more permanent pieces within the fabric.
Because there are fingers wagging here about, you must do public art. And very closely defined ideas of what that is. And I think we collectively believe in a much more expansive approach and to artists working in many, many spaces. They are even teaching public art in this country now, as if, you know, I am a public artist and not an artist. I think what should happen is that artists should have the freedom to move through into many, many contexts and not just get labelled as one kind of artist or another, its ridiculous. As you go through your life, as we all go through our lives, you have different things that you are interested in at different times. So I am very worried about that public art stuff that’s going on and there will be people who say, “Well, where is the public art here? Where is it in the building?”, and so on. And I would answer, you have to work with what's appropriate, you don’t replace one kind of orthodoxy with another. You should be looking at an opening up, not a closing down.
AP Speaking of unorthodoxy. Richard Wentworth is designing the public square.
PJ With a landscape architect, yes.
AP It is quite an unusual situation, I think, for a fine artist to be actually working with a space which would normally have been seen as the architects’ preserve. How has it worked?
PJ I think there is a very strong shared sense of values amongst the architects, Richard Wentworth and ourselves. If you look at most pedestrianised British high streets today, they are generally, but not always, a combination of red and grey brick in strange patterns. There'll be planters with very unimaginative plantings in them. There'll be the same kind of litter bins, the same kind of street furniture, because it all comes out of a catalogue. And instead of a distinctiveness about place, everywhere is looking the same. Because of what has happened in retail, all the same shops are there. You can go down most British streets and say, "Well there’s W.H.Smiths and there’s Marks & Spencers and there’s Boots and so on and so on and so on. Where is the sense of distinctiveness here? We are also losing many of our streets and at six o’clock the security shutters come down and the security cameras start twitching. The streets that we have used for centuries are being lost - our sense of place is being lost. And Caruso St.John, Richard Wentworth and ourselves really believe that that is not the way forward and the square is trying to create a totally civic space that is available 24 hours a day. To anybody, to do whatever they like in. And that is a place for potential celebration, for meetings, a focus for the town essentially and is a democratic space therefore. Because I think big cities and towns need these gathering spaces and hopefully there will be other gathering spaces in the town. The new civic square at the other end of the town is the answer or echo to it, and if you look at the way that street has been used in the archives over the last century you'll see it has always been used for processions, whether they have been military or school, Sunday school or whatever - and you can see photographs of elephants and giraffes parading up there. Extraordinary scenes, all the way down and balloons and banners and so on, in terms of people using the streets and Richard would say that the pavement is the last democratic space that we have, a genuinely democratic space, and I agree very strongly with him, strange though it sounds. And so there is a sense of that in the way that the scheme has developed. I remember the early conversations with the developers who wanted railings put up and gates so that we shut the square off at night and we, as is obvious, have gone for something completely different.
Having said that, I think there is also a sense of responsiveness to Walsall in what has emerged. Because it would be quite easy to rub people’s noses in it by creating something totally luxurious up at that end of the town when people are still living in great poverty right the way across the Borough, and there would be the sense of the gold taps kind of mentality. You know, we've got this wonderful lottery funded building and this lovely square and then the rest of it looks terrible. And the choice of tarmac or asphalt to make the ground of the square is quite deliberate, therefore, because it is an every day material that is somehow used in a slightly different way, somehow finely tuned to make it something completely different. So its not going to seem really expensive, although, its not going to be cheap to do, but its not going to be really expensive. It is an every day material that we are used to outside our front doors generally, and that’s what's interesting. And that is what is interesting for me about the way that Caruso St John work as well - is this real interest in materials and in materials which aren't necessarily expensive. But by putting them together in different ways, by this fine tuning, you make something that's totally beautiful out of the everyday materials. We have, steel, concrete, wood and the wood we are using is not expensive wood, in comparison with what woods can be, its a soft wood and not a hard wood and so on. Its fantastic. It is still going to cost a lot - £21,000,000 for an art gallery.
AP I accept the fact that a very special team came together here. What I don’t accept is that there hasn't been any tension at all, because its too good for that, and the people involved are too good for that.
PJ Absolutely.
AP Were there no moments where it just wasn’t that easy for people who came from such different directions. I know that you have talked about a kind of shared moral background and ethical background.
PJ Well in terms of values, yes.
AP But when you look at Richard’s work. Richard who talks about loving the corner that people walk across rather than go around the footpath.
PJ Well these are the photographs of the grass with the muddy path across them, yes.
AP And then we see the reaching for perfection with Caruso St John, you think there must have been moments when there was a frisson of tension?
PJ Well, of course. I would say everyone is passionate about this project, it really matters to people, its not just something that they're doing. And clearly, for Caruso St John, it is their first major project and its so important to them. Equally, to us in Walsall, we want to make sure that we get the very best as well and we want to be convinced that its what we want. There is a lot of trust flowing in both directions. The first answer to your question is that, clearly, there is a major issue about communication when there's a collision between the arts and architecture, and there are different languages that are used. Different vocabularies. I knew very little about architecture before I started on this journey towards the New Art Gallery, even in the sense of an everyday understanding of architecture. I found it very difficult, and still do on some occasions, to read architectural plans. I think I'm better at it, but its a very obscure language, the world of architectural drawing, unless you've got some of the tools to start to understand what's going on. And equally, it has its own vocabulary. When people say in architecture, 'programme', I would say, timetable - so people are talking completely across each other’s heads at times. You know, museums and galleries have their own professional languages, that are quite exclusive, or, mean completely different things to other people. So there was that sense of catching up to do and learning to be able to talk to each other, which I would say I am still, and the rest of the team are still, learning to do. Because there are huge expertises here, when you break down the project into structural engineering, lighting engineering. All these things. This is a very sophisticated kind of situation of many, many different kinds of people coming together. And, of course, there have been disagreements at times. There have been very tense periods, when everyone's been very on edge.
AP I am not so much thinking of how people are getting on together, but of an aesthetic tension, if you like, which always is necessary for something interesting to happen. Because you, in a sense, being the Client are in the centre of this vast group of people who are creating this, you have a particular perspective on it. Maybe it was the easiest ride in the world. But it seems that a fine artist has been brought into territory that would normally belong to, say, a landscape architect.
PJ I know. I mean it has been done before. Daniel Burren did a fantastic square in the middle of Paris, which is extraordinary. And in Lyon they've done a whole car parks programme using visual artists, which again has brought the most amazing results. But it is something which Richard himself was interested in. He was quite confident about doing it. I think the result will be very interesting. There are people, I'm sure, who will dislike it a lot, what he does. But its like painting on a very large canvas, not that he does much painting in his normal gallery practice, but isn’t it amazing how people called artists just come up with these ideas. As is also amazing, where do the ideas of architecture come from? But Richard has thought about it for over a year now. Its been a long, long process of trying to work out what he might do - and the eventual result is simplicity in itself, this 'striped lawn' as he calls it, of asphalt. This oversized pedestrian crossing. It has come about through an amazingly complex process of thought and discussion and visiting Walsall. And, as he would say, 'sniffing around like a dog', and going behind walls and fences you're not supposed to go behind and collecting things and trying to really be in a position where finally he could come up with an idea to share on a broader stage. Which must be the most scary moment for anybody, to then suddenly reveal the idea... and then people go, 'I hate it, I hate it'. Its incredible what artists do because we, you know, as people who work in galleries, talk to artists and then say, 'Well, would you be interested in doing something?, and then they would go away and they come back and say, 'I'd be interested in doing this'. And you think well where does that come from? You know, its amazing, amazing. Its an obvious point, but I never fail to find it amazing.
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