Ryan Gander

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:00:00. > :00:00.who famously created a giant sun in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

:00:07. > :00:09.Everyone has the capacity to be creative.

:00:10. > :00:12.We all do things in our lives that are artistic, whether we realise

:00:13. > :00:20.Art isn't a stronghold of the elite, it's everywhere, it surrounds us.

:00:21. > :00:23.This Artsnight is about the art of the everyday and people

:00:24. > :00:41.My greatest hero, my father, dispensed two important pieces

:00:42. > :00:47.The first is that you should never let the truth get in the way

:00:48. > :00:51.The second, more applicable to this programme, is that if you choose

:00:52. > :00:54.a job that you love, you never have to work

:00:55. > :00:59.I can see a clear distinction between people who want to be

:01:00. > :01:03.artists, maybe for the lifestyle, or potential wealth,

:01:04. > :01:06.and fame, and people who aren't really bothered

:01:07. > :01:09.about what they are labelled, but they can't help but be creative.

:01:10. > :01:13.If I was into Formula 1 racing, I would be hanging out

:01:14. > :01:15.with mechanics and engineers and racing car drivers.

:01:16. > :01:22.I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by some amazingly created people,

:01:23. > :01:26.I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by some amazingly creative people,

:01:27. > :01:29.friends who fill me with some weird sort of positive jealousy that

:01:30. > :01:31.makes me want to go back to the studio and try

:01:32. > :01:40.Maki Suzuki is one of the most creative people that I know.

:01:41. > :01:45.Maki's outputs are so diverse and saturated in such mental agility

:01:46. > :01:50.that it's impossible to pigeonhole him in any way.

:01:51. > :01:53.I've seen him initiate a publishing company,

:01:54. > :01:58.a fashion house, a record label, make art works, and write and teach.

:01:59. > :02:05.Maki is part of the design collective, Abake.

:02:06. > :02:13.I think this has a consequence to the way that we work, even if it

:02:14. > :02:21.For example, the first thing we did maybe with two French entrepreneurs

:02:22. > :02:25.would be to start a record label which became a fashion label.

:02:26. > :02:30.Almost in order to make the record sleeves.

:02:31. > :02:33.It's very reactive to create that thing in order to do the graphic

:02:34. > :02:47.By providing the music, what was missing is maybe a nice

:02:48. > :02:51.Each record had a recipe and therefore the ingredients

:02:52. > :03:02.It is the lazy principle of one idea for ever.

:03:03. > :03:08.We would draw the faces of friends or family,

:03:09. > :03:12.acquaintances, musicians, manager, printers, whoever we would meet

:03:13. > :03:24.They might get smaller if we like them less but at some

:03:25. > :03:29.point we had more than 2,500 people on the record sleeves.

:03:30. > :03:33.We get asked the question, what do you do, very often.

:03:34. > :03:41.It's a very strange question because anybody gets asked this

:03:42. > :03:44.question but it can become stressful because you think that the one

:03:45. > :03:46.answer is going to define the rest of the conversation.

:03:47. > :03:50.I say that I'm a graphic designer and then the conversation ends

:03:51. > :03:53.because that's the idea, "OK, he makes logos."

:03:54. > :03:57.But I think there's a difference between what we are,

:03:58. > :03:59.defining ourselves as what kind of job we do,

:04:00. > :04:09.2016, and there are a few events that we are working on.

:04:10. > :04:13.The first one is trying to get Carcetti elected.

:04:14. > :04:17.First of all, I'm surprised to see so much media here.

:04:18. > :04:19.A press event held earlier here to announce the revitalisation

:04:20. > :04:23.of yet another part of our city was not so well attended.

:04:24. > :04:28.Carcetti is a character from the Wire who becomes the mayor

:04:29. > :04:34.in the TV series and then towards the end he becomes the governor.

:04:35. > :04:38.This project is typical of Maki's view of the world.

:04:39. > :04:42.To make a conceptual piece of art about a fictitious

:04:43. > :04:48.It would appear that media attention is always focusing on the negatives

:04:49. > :04:51.when it Comes to Baltimore but you guys aren't around

:04:52. > :04:59.We have posters and garden signs and sweatshirts, to help.

:05:00. > :05:04.The project comes back every four years.

:05:05. > :05:11.It's dormant and then it comes back when it's relevant.

:05:12. > :05:17.Normally it is my daughter showing it to any visitor.

:05:18. > :05:24.That's why it's the bottom drawer and it contains all the bones

:05:25. > :05:26.of fish, rabbit, chicken, anything that we have eaten

:05:27. > :05:37.They are ready to be used to make dinosaurs.

:05:38. > :05:40.My daughter, she makes a dinosaur, based on a visit

:05:41. > :05:43.to the Natural History Museum, or the Internet and I help her

:05:44. > :05:54.I got my first tattoo I think three years ago.

:05:55. > :05:58.It is easy because it's when my daughter was born.

:05:59. > :06:06.And I was in Toronto to participate in a seminar.

:06:07. > :06:09.It was quite boring for her, so I left my arms with her

:06:10. > :06:14.and she started making those marks with a sharpie, black marker.

:06:15. > :06:21.And I thought they were very beautiful and also a nice reminder,

:06:22. > :06:25.so we went to the tattoo parlour and they just traced

:06:26. > :06:37.Then when she was three, I asked her to make a tattoo

:06:38. > :06:47.and this time she reacted to her previous tattoo.

:06:48. > :06:50.Even though this is just the pen ripping, she thought she had written

:06:51. > :06:52.L, the initial of her first name.

:06:53. > :06:55.That's why she made another L as a reminder of that.

:06:56. > :07:05.And then she told me the whole story of the face but it is also a fish

:07:06. > :07:08.going from one side of the water to the other, and that's that.

:07:09. > :07:11.I do have this responsibility as a father but the real agenda

:07:12. > :07:29.Very recently I was in a gallery giving a talk about someone's work

:07:30. > :07:33.and then this woman came and incredibly she said this cliche

:07:34. > :07:41.of, "Why do you think this is good, because a child can do better."

:07:42. > :07:45.I really had to say of course children are the best,

:07:46. > :08:02.it's just we have to struggle as we grow up to stay that way.

:08:03. > :08:06.I've come to Berlin to meet Olafur Eliasson, an artist

:08:07. > :08:09.who is probably best known in the UK for his colossal sun installation

:08:10. > :08:20.Olafur is an artist who I have held a strange kind of closeted jealousy

:08:21. > :08:29.He has a massive studio in the east of the city.

:08:30. > :08:35.The lowest point does not even have to be in the line.

:08:36. > :08:36.Here, Olafur oversees numerous design, architecture

:08:37. > :08:58.As part of the studio day, all of his staff gather together

:08:59. > :09:01.Today we are cooking Persian aubergine stew, with tomatoes,

:09:02. > :09:13.The studio has now published a cookbook based on these lunches.

:09:14. > :09:16.The individual recipes coming from the designers,

:09:17. > :09:27.Do you feel like it's become an important ritual of the studio?

:09:28. > :09:32.In a way, the kitchen, everybody, they are sort of equal.

:09:33. > :09:37.It introduces the idea of talking without any hierarchies and so on.

:09:38. > :09:47.It has a great influence on the rest of the house.

:09:48. > :09:52.So the cookery book is very much a celebration of the

:09:53. > :09:58.There's a lot of funny stuff, such as eating with long cutlery.

:09:59. > :10:01.I'm curious about the motoric skills needed to get a fork in your mouth,

:10:02. > :10:04.and to have a very long fork isn't so easy.

:10:05. > :10:08.I love it when you have a potato and you hit your nose!

:10:09. > :10:12.I'm going to try it as soon as I get home!

:10:13. > :10:25.I gave it to you, you can do that, Ryan.

:10:26. > :10:27.I think a long cutlery Ryan edition.

:10:28. > :10:41.Olafur came to prominence in the UK with his Weather Project

:10:42. > :10:55.But now it is a little sun that is giving him global fame.

:10:56. > :10:58.I bought my daughters the little sun and I love it as a project.

:10:59. > :11:00.I like the way it has this kind of consequence,

:11:01. > :11:06.I feel very humble and excited about the fact that I've been able

:11:07. > :11:10.to have a lot of exposure in the art world and I've met a lot

:11:11. > :11:15.And sometimes the artwork tends to close itself into a bubble.

:11:16. > :11:22.I've been very focused on the types of projects that allow me to take

:11:23. > :11:27.the creativity that I've learned and use it in other ways,

:11:28. > :11:31.outside of the conventional art world.

:11:32. > :11:34.And I think there is more to it than just breaking these boundaries,

:11:35. > :11:37.it's also about showing that creativity can be everywhere,

:11:38. > :11:42.you don't need an art world to be creative.

:11:43. > :11:47.So the little sun for me was an attempt, this is the little

:11:48. > :11:57.sun, to see if I can take the creativity that I work

:11:58. > :11:59.with and make it work in a different context,

:12:00. > :12:02.This is a solar panel, so when the sun shines,

:12:03. > :12:05.I can charge it like this and to a certain extent

:12:06. > :12:14.It is about having energy in your hand and you can also say

:12:15. > :12:19.It is an empowering thing, where you feel you are connected

:12:20. > :12:21.to the sun but also a source of energy.

:12:22. > :12:27.I guess it means that people can read after the sun goes down

:12:28. > :12:35.We sell it at a higher price, for instance online and in museums

:12:36. > :12:38.and design shops and we take the profit from that and we deliver

:12:39. > :12:41.them in areas where there is no access to power,

:12:42. > :12:47.like sub-Saharan Africa, where we are in 12 countries now.

:12:48. > :12:59.And there, we don't give it away as an aid, we use it to build small

:13:00. > :13:00.businesses sometimes sold with a small loss,

:13:01. > :13:04.to places where we can seek potential economic growth.

:13:05. > :13:06.We try and integrate it into society.

:13:07. > :13:18.As I speak we are hitting the 500,000 lamps sold.

:13:19. > :13:24.Creativity is very much about that sort of ability to somehow sense,

:13:25. > :13:35."I'm a part of something", it's about interdependence,

:13:36. > :13:41.I see myself in the other, I see myself out there.

:13:42. > :13:46.This means the surroundings, to some extent, carry me.

:13:47. > :13:49.How would you encourage a creative life for people where the creativity

:13:50. > :13:59.Creativity isn't in the object, the creative potential is somehow

:14:00. > :14:02.in how it arrived there in the first place, where did it come

:14:03. > :14:08.You can say that creativity is in the consequences.

:14:09. > :14:14.When we cook, the question I ask, and the cookbook is to some extent

:14:15. > :14:15.about that, is the creative potential actually

:14:16. > :14:25.Do you succeed at cooking with some sensitivity towards the climate,

:14:26. > :14:28.for instance, or the people who have been driving the food

:14:29. > :14:31.throughout Europe, carrying it, harvesting?

:14:32. > :14:37.How did that particular salad come to you in the middle of the winter?

:14:38. > :14:41.So creative is not the kind of funny, somehow weird,

:14:42. > :14:43.great looking, disconnected stuff, it's about how

:14:44. > :14:50.Thanks so much for having me over, it's really great to meet you.

:14:51. > :15:02.Max Lamb and Gemma Holt are the creative

:15:03. > :15:18.They live in north London, where they recently

:15:19. > :15:21.designed and renovated the shell of an old warehouse

:15:22. > :15:27.We don't really think about whether or not our lives

:15:28. > :15:30.are creative, I think we naturally, inherently live creative

:15:31. > :15:34.Gardening or even just tidying can be a creative act.

:15:35. > :15:42.That you can learn something from, I guess.

:15:43. > :15:50.Prior to that an industrial building used for many

:15:51. > :16:00.I mean, the house is incredibly personal to us, because every

:16:01. > :16:04.visible part of the house that you can see was created by us

:16:05. > :16:07.This is the living part of the home, if you like.

:16:08. > :16:09.It's a dining room, living room, kitchen.

:16:10. > :16:11.We've been slightly indecisive about the doorknobs and handles,

:16:12. > :16:17.so we ended up with a bit of a medley.

:16:18. > :16:20.Something I've made myself, bent out of brass rod.

:16:21. > :16:27.Just a little bit of an experiment, I suppose.

:16:28. > :16:29.So, we live upstairs and our studio and

:16:30. > :16:35.Most of the space is taken over by storage of tools.

:16:36. > :16:38.Walking through here, this is the bathroom.

:16:39. > :16:41.Designed in a way that sort of divides the living space

:16:42. > :17:01.The tiles, which you might see as being rather wacky,

:17:02. > :17:04.They are aggregate materials, they are the waste product

:17:05. > :17:08.This is a product I designed and is now available.

:17:09. > :17:09.These are some pieces based on children's

:17:10. > :17:12.snap bangles, that you wrap around your wrist.

:17:13. > :17:15.These are steel and they have been gold-plated.

:17:16. > :17:20.They are made out of old tape measures.

:17:21. > :17:22.Much to Gemma's annoyance, our home gets

:17:23. > :17:29.This is my grandfather's tree, which was

:17:30. > :17:36.It was an 186-year-old ash tree on my

:17:37. > :17:47.Which was dying and needed to be felled and divided into 131 logs.

:17:48. > :17:51.Yes, it is just a log, but it is also a table.

:17:52. > :18:00.This is actually part of the main trunk and

:18:01. > :18:03.every time the tree splits, turns into a B or a C.

:18:04. > :18:07.And then on the underside, a signature plate.

:18:08. > :18:13.You can't really turn on and off creativity.

:18:14. > :18:22.So I don't think a creative career really

:18:23. > :18:28.You have to be very fluid about it and

:18:29. > :18:36.I think the arrangement of living and working in some ways is really,

:18:37. > :18:39.really good, but there is never switch off point.

:18:40. > :18:45.The living and working just becomes one whole

:18:46. > :18:51.I'm making some infinity rings, rings that fit over two

:18:52. > :19:11.I think you'd be surprised that behind every single front door

:19:12. > :19:13.huge amounts of creativity is happening in every home,

:19:14. > :19:14.regardless of background, occupation, size of

:19:15. > :19:44.I mean, humans are inherently creative.

:19:45. > :19:47.I've come to the Lake District to meet Adam Sutherland,

:19:48. > :19:54.Adam's evangelical about his idea all art should have a purpose.

:19:55. > :20:01.He's like a modern-day William Morris.

:20:02. > :20:04.Ruskin lived down the track and allegedly came up to this farm

:20:05. > :20:08.It's the perfect place to explore a creative life.

:20:09. > :20:20.Adam runs residential courses here, mainly for arts graduates.

:20:21. > :20:23.Core to these is an ethos to implement a more valuable

:20:24. > :20:37.Their website says, Grizedale Art has become a model for a new sort

:20:38. > :20:40.One that works beyond the established structures

:20:41. > :20:41.of the classic contemporary art model.

:20:42. > :20:43.It sounds a bit like a Swiss finishing school.

:20:44. > :20:48.Well, I do try and teach people to make cheese souffle

:20:49. > :20:53.From working with Turner prizewinners...

:20:54. > :21:00.I'm not ready, I didn't expect it at all!

:21:01. > :21:02.To projects in their own local community.

:21:03. > :21:12.And regular international collaborations.

:21:13. > :21:16.In 2013, Grizedale arts created Anchorhold a movable

:21:17. > :21:21.structure in collaboration with high art in Finland .

:21:22. > :21:23.Anchorhold was designed to offer a multitude of functions,

:21:24. > :21:26.ranging from being a fishing hole, dining room for one

:21:27. > :21:36.Just perfect for some primal scream therapy.

:21:37. > :21:41.Mostly, I would say, they are people who've

:21:42. > :21:44.been a couple of years out of college.

:21:45. > :21:47.We don't advertise it, so the idea really is that they have

:21:48. > :21:49.to be quite motivated to have found it

:21:50. > :22:02.We used to run call-outs for artists and that is such a bad system.

:22:03. > :22:04.You end up pissing off 150 people every year.

:22:05. > :22:07.You quite quickly get through the whole art world.

:22:08. > :22:09.Would you say living a creative life is important

:22:10. > :22:11.to you and the people that come here?

:22:12. > :22:17.Maybe longer, you are giving away my age.

:22:18. > :22:21.When it was kind of Bedlam and lots of drunk artists and so on.

:22:22. > :22:27.I've been trying to stop it being like that.

:22:28. > :22:30.Over the years I've got more and more specific

:22:31. > :22:41.about the discipline of working here and how that functions.

:22:42. > :22:44.The two most important currencies for a young artist

:22:45. > :22:51.The predicament of having a full-time job in order to pay

:22:52. > :22:55.the rent or a studio that you never have the time to work

:22:56. > :22:59.The main purpose of Grizedale is to break

:23:00. > :23:04.Inviting artists to live and work alongside each other in a melting

:23:05. > :23:07.pot type of environment away from the distractions of their daily

:23:08. > :23:16.There is something about the room openers and serenity

:23:17. > :23:19.of the landscape here that makes it very

:23:20. > :23:27.And fills you with the sort of confidence to try out

:23:28. > :23:39.When you talk about craft, I think of function.

:23:40. > :23:47.It often comes up, people go, well, the whole point of art is that it's

:23:48. > :23:49.useless and has no function and no reason.

:23:50. > :23:55.It's been very interesting working here, it's a northern village,

:23:56. > :23:58.Coniston, and I think generally there is a deep

:23:59. > :24:01.suspicion of, certainly contemporary art.

:24:02. > :24:05.Probably not confined to the north of England, suspicion.

:24:06. > :24:14.A lot of local people have come to see

:24:15. > :24:17.this idea of creative as something that is really vital to them

:24:18. > :24:19.and useful in terms of how they develop

:24:20. > :24:35.It's disappeared, everybody is so specialised they are forgetting

:24:36. > :24:43.When you talk about us losing our way, you sound

:24:44. > :24:53.I feel that really strongly, that artists

:24:54. > :24:56.But I also feel that now is this amazing opportunity

:24:57. > :24:59.This is a society that needs that input.

:25:00. > :25:03.Said the context for this programme is, it's about the way people live

:25:04. > :25:11.Well, of course, I think it's very important,

:25:12. > :25:13.but I think it's also very difficult.

:25:14. > :25:16.And I think I struggle with it, I think

:25:17. > :25:23.everyone struggles with a balance in life.

:25:24. > :25:25.You have to manage a lot of other things other

:25:26. > :25:28.I get up painfully early as I get older.

:25:29. > :25:38.The idea is that 9am there is a gear change in the day and it gets

:25:39. > :25:48.I'm always looking for solid examples of how you can explain

:25:49. > :25:52.So if I was to explain to someone like

:25:53. > :26:05.my mum, for example, who never went to art school,

:26:06. > :26:08.what the use of an artist in day-to-day society would be,

:26:09. > :26:12.I think, what I think art is, I suppose, is this live,

:26:13. > :26:15.This building for example, I imagine it's an inspiring

:26:16. > :26:17.collection of material and everything in it has been

:26:18. > :26:27.considered, it's here for a reason and it does something.

:26:28. > :26:29.If people in enquire of it, I can pretty much tell

:26:30. > :26:32.you quite a long, arguably boring, story about more or less anything

:26:33. > :26:36.How many people's homes in the rest of Britain do you think

:26:37. > :26:39.Everybody's home is like that, they just maybe

:26:40. > :26:45.If you put a plastic bag on your dining table,

:26:46. > :26:51.A lot of what happens here is about teaching

:26:52. > :26:57.people to make things, even if that's just how

:26:58. > :27:01.I think I taught you how to make gnocchi.

:27:02. > :27:04.Handmade gnocchi on the back of a fork.

:27:05. > :27:07.Thanks very much, Adam, nice to see you.

:27:08. > :27:23.Picasso famously said most artists make eight moulds

:27:24. > :27:25.Picasso famously said most artists make cake moulds

:27:26. > :27:27.and then they make cake, and plenty of them.

:27:28. > :27:30.And they become very pleased with themselves.

:27:31. > :27:33.He also said an artist should never do what's expected of them.

:27:34. > :27:38.That an artist's worst enemy is style.

:27:39. > :27:40.Being an artist or aspiring to be creative is not

:27:41. > :27:42.really a job or vocation, it's a way of living.

:27:43. > :27:45.It's having the ability to find possibilities in everything.

:27:46. > :27:51.And wondering around the world with our eyes and minds open.

:27:52. > :27:54.At the start of this programme I asked, are we all artists?

:27:55. > :27:57.But now I'm not sure whether that question is important

:27:58. > :28:03.Perhaps a better question would be to ask whether we all take

:28:04. > :28:05.advantage of the opportunities in our day-to-day lives where we get

:28:06. > :28:11.to exercise our own creative potential.

:28:12. > :28:26.As an art student in Manchester, a tutor told me one way to prove

:28:27. > :28:29.creativity is instinctive and not learn is to ask a number of people

:28:30. > :28:31.from different backgrounds to brush the floor.

:28:32. > :28:33.He insisted all the people invited would brush the floor

:28:34. > :28:36.So to end this Artsnight, let's see if it's

:28:37. > :29:13.Hallo, the weather for the weekend, a bit of a grey area, a lot of cloud

:29:14. > :29:18.and not much rain. Some breaks in the cloud, northern Scotland, but

:29:19. > :29:19.elsewhere it's going to brighten up. Some early