Nicholas Serota Artsnight

to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

We live in a moment of global crisis, great uncertainty and at

such a moment you ask yourself, does contemporary art really matter? Of

course it matters to me, not just because I am director of the Tait

for 27 years but because in a way my life has been shaped by contact with

artist, by contact with the work they have made. I understand the

world as much richer place than I think I would have done if I had not

been engaged in contemporary art. I can also understand why people ask

the question and I can also understand what it feels like not to

know. I can remember coming into this

space in 1993 and in the centre were great turbine, water was dripping

in, the place had been empty and unused for 15 years.

In fact, there was an application in for it to be demolished.

But to me, it just had incredible potential.

In the last 15 year, we have seen some really memorable installations

in this space. Works of art that enormously excited

the public imagination. And yet we stand here, on the point

of opening the new Tate modern, the extended Tate modern with many

people still doubts that contemporary art really does matter.

And I want to explore with some artist, I want to visit one or two

places, where it seems to me contemporary art is thriving and

really playing a valuable role in the community.

We are passing through Huntingdon and getting close to Lincolnshire

and it's rolling countryside. The trees are just budding into blossom.

And it's a brilliant spring day. As we travel north.

I am escaping London, heading to the town of Middlesbrough.

We have had seven or eight years of constraint in central Government

funding, and the cuts in Local Authority funding are really

beginning to bite. What does it mean to have a contemporary art facility

in the centre of a town that faces really serious social and economic

challenge, what part can that museum play? What contribution can it make

to life in Middlesbrough? In its heyday, Middlesbrough was a

thriving steel and chemicals town with a bustling port. Today the loss

of industry has led to high levels of unemployment. It has the highest

levels of asylum seeking residents in the country. Art should work in

every day life. I shouldn't be a special thing, it should permeate

everything we do. Alistair Hudson spent ten years as a

director at griez dale arts in Cumbria, pioneering efforts to make

art that would be of value to the rural community. You shouldn't try

and create Utopia, we shouldn't try and expect that we can remake the

world anew, you should work with what you have got.

How are you? Good to see you too. Mima, or the Middlesbrough institute

of modern art opened in 2007. So Alistair, you have been here for

about 18 month, so why come to Middlesbrough? In a way, most of the

world is like Middlesbrough. Not many places are like London, New

York or Paris, most of the world is like this. So in a way if we are

going to find way for art to work in society, surely you should try it in

ordinary places rather than extraordinary places.

Mima has a collection of hundreds of works dating from 1900 to the

present. Both fine art, and ceramics. The tradition of a gallery

in its Victorian sense as you put the great art in the building, and

you sort of encourage people to come and somehow they are better for it.

You pay homage The collections become a tool in part of this bigger

programme of social change. With a place like Mima, rather than

try and follow what everyone is doing, really have this opportunity

to experiment, and put Mima and Middlesbrough and Teesside on the

map for doing something new. Unlike most sculptures these are a

means to another end. They are made by a cocoa plantation

workers in Africa. . The sculptures are made in the Congo on the

plantation, from Congo river mud, and they are 3-D scanned and

exported to Amsterdam, they are printed and then they are cast in

solid chocolate, chocolate from the plantation, sponsored by one of the

largest chocolate manufacturers in the world and these sculptures are

sold through the art market, through museums like this, and we are trying

to acquire this sculpture for our collection and the money from the

sales goes back to the community. To bring in a sustainable income,

for the community but also to fund sustainable agricultural projects

and community projects in the village. The art really is more than

an exhibition, the art is using the exhibition the museum as a vehicle,

but the real project is the process, in a way this exhibition is the

beginning of a relationship with Martin's, the initiating artist

where we can begin to development projects here in Middlesbrough or

relate some of the issues we have here, with the decline of

manufacturing, with issues Roundhousing, migration, and we can

start to make that part of a wider conversation through other projects.

Middlesbrough does not have Congolese mud to make sculpture, but

it is rich in clay, which was once the basis of a thriving local

ceramics industry. We are looking to restart this

industry and we are working with Emily and James. We are in

Middlesbrough. You looking for Middlesbrough clay.

This is a workable clay body and one that we make ceramics with.

They set up a workshop teaching people how to make ceramic, to

create a social enterprise that creates an economy, and also creates

a sense of community through the things we make.

Museums are one of the few places in society where the public now

congregate, where they can meet each other, where they can have shared

experiences and I wonder how you are thinking of a dancing the building

and developing the potential of this building? So what I wanted to do, is

not to do away with the art or the collections but to change the

emphasis or rebalance the institution, so that in effect our

main programme is the education, the community work, the cafe, the public

programmes, and the collections and the Galleries service that agenda.

Another regular users of the building is Street Wise Opera they

use people that, this is their space, they come every Friday, they,

where they rehearse, this is a charity that is really working with

people who have experienced homelessness or dealing with issues

round it. Joanne that lives in Middlesbrough

and performs with Street Wise Opera. The public can't get access to the

likes of this, so it's a privilege to get into somewhere like this. Her

encounter with Mima led to a job at the museum and privileged access to

its diverse permanent collection. Though its collection is less

central to Mima's new service, it still contains works which can

inspire. When I first came in here, I had a

look round, I wasn't too interested in most of the pictures, but there

was one actually that I actually did like and it is this one, the Lowry

painting. What drew you to it? It makes me feel like everything's

happened there, is happening again now. I mean the woman here, she

looks like she is looking for somewhere to live. These are really

strange dogs here They look like they need something to eat. That

looks to me like a homeless man, doesn't know where he is. Likely. A

lot of the paintings in here, I think that is what they do. They

capture the artist's emotions and rather than them hold them in, they

let them out on canvas. And I think that is why that one

more so than any drew me in. I think I is amazing you see things this

this painting I would not have seen, Jo. Partly because of your

experience but I think you see it as very contemporary image as well as

being from 70 years ago. That is one of the great things about art, isn't

it. We all experience it in different ways, according to our own

history and our own... That's it. Experience of life. You probably see

something more, or different to what I see in the picture. Probably, I

will think of this painting as being part of your private collection and

you have kindly lent it to Mima. An enterprising community group

called IPC, investing In People and Culture has has tapped into the

agricultural skills of migrants and asylum-seekers, they have prepared a

special lunch for me, it was formed by a man who works in partnership

with Mima. They supply the museum with locally grown food for special

events. The food today that we can supply to Mima, and some of the

ingredients in particular, the garlic is harvested that we made

last year. I came from Eritrea, back in early 2001. As a refugee, as an

asylum seeker, I was a political prisoner for just over three months,

before fleeing the country, as a political prisoner, for simply

expressing my point of view in politics, and it put me in great

danger. We have in Middlesbrough a thousand asylum-seeker, good

proportion of those are because they have expressed their political view.

Why do you want to be associated with something which is perhaps by

other people seen as a testimoniable of the arts We thought... Joining us

is the former mayor and ex policeman Ray Mallon.

He pushed for ten years to get Mima built. To be fair to the Government

they have so many conflicting priorities can I forgive them for

for getting about the art, if you went to the Government what is your

biggest priorities they would be saying public borrowing, the

themselves building one million houses, terrorism and so on and so

forth. And art might be number 20, 25. Mima was a key ingredient in his

plan for the economic regeneration of the town. Out of the many

organisations that art supposedly to be public service, Mima opens its

doors and welcomes people to use it, for everyone to hold their meetings,

to see films, just to be able to get in, makes you as a newcomer, that

you are part of the town. This is in the Civic Centre of Middlesbrough,

of Teesside. In a way this is a shared resource for everybody to

use. And I think that is particularly unique about buildings

like this. Middlesbrough raises a host

of questions about the role of government and the relationship

between public money Who better to ask than the man

who holds the UK purse strings? You said in the Autumn Statement

that we are brilliant at culture in this country and that investment

in the arts is one of the best And I think I from an early age

was lucky enough to appreciate all that Britain has to offer

the world in terms of its theatre, its painting and sculpture,

its film production. There is something

about the British. We are a bit irreverent

of authority. And that has led to some brilliant

art over many, many centuries. I've been in Middlesbrough recently

and obviously you go to a place like Middlesbrough, which is facing

really serious economic pressures and you meet people who are having

to make choices between spending money on social services or spending

any money on the arts. Every area has to make its own

choices, but what I have tried to do is provide government support

to local areas that have got When you are meeting local

politicians who are having to make these choices, what can

you do to encourage them? You are not suddenly going to find

additional central Some areas have been very smart

about using a big contemporary art space or a new museum as the sort

of centrepoint of the redevelopment If you let local areas keep

the taxes they generate locally as we are increasingly

doing in this country, they can see that direct benefit

for their communities. But Mima, some of the

projects they are doing are seen as in some way filling

the gaps, gaps that have been left Do you think the arts should have

to justify itself in those terms? Well, I think it is a mistake

to assume the state What often art can do is fill

in the spaces, the gaps, It's the mixture of the artist,

the art institute, as well as the school and social

services or whatever that creates You think that contemporary art can

do more than simply bring As Chancellor of the Exchequer I

quite often get people like you coming into my office

and saying, this is a good economic And yes, of course,

there is a strong economic But there is also art

for art's sake and I, as someone who has grown up in this

country and appreciated the arts in this country,

thinks that's the most I'm no good at drawing or playing

a musical instrument. But the experience of at least

having tried to do those things In a New York City lobby,

near Rockefeller Center, is a two-panel installation created

by Mark Bradford, His epic scale paintings,

which hover at the edge of abstraction, are often built up

from dense layers of paper fragments taken from street

ads and billboards. The LA neighbourhood where Bradford

grew up and currently has his studio was partially burned

down by protest in 1992, when white police officers

were acquitted of beating a black Some of the goals that Mima

is attempting to accomplish as an institution, Mark Bradford

is pursuing as an individual. In LA in 1992, so many buildings

were burnt out and they put up There was so much paper, I think

that is why I started using it. You could just go and pull down

blocks and blocks and It was like a free department

store of materials. He has recently been chosen

to represent America at the 2017 The social fabric in South Central

in the early '90s was obviously enormously influenced

by what happened in '92 So how did those dramatic eruptions

manifest themselves in your work? And the memory of that,

how they manifest in my So that the crisis would not

overtake me as an artist. I would look for a detail that was

loaded enough that I could point, but not so loaded I could not also

talk about abstract painting. The painting scorched earth from 2006

reflects a city torn apart by racial violence. When we say South Central

now it has a -- an area that was constructive around hip-hop. This

film depicts the dominant stereotype of life in South Central LA in the

1980s and 90s. I realised there was so much language and rhetoric and

narrative and stereotypes around the idea of south-central that how was I

going to navigate this space? I was not interested in a work that was a

spokesman for any so I thought I would keep it as abstract artist who

looks out. Many of the paintings made in the 2000s have a sense of

almost an aerial view of the city, a sense of you being there, but also

being slightly detached. Is that how you see your relationship with

south-central? It is not how I see my relationship with south-central,

but how I see my relationship with almost everything. Artists tend to

be detached, standing on the fringe and observe things. Move close and

moved back stock I have always been that way. I do not mind going into

the middle of the burning house and standing in the street and looking

at the burning house. No fire extinguisher? No. You always want

the house to burn! Bradford spent much of his time as a child in a

beauty salon owned by his mother in South LA and also worked there as a

hairdresser before and after attending art school in Los Angeles.

I was trying to look for a conceptual framework that I could

join the kind of social, the urban, with abstract painting. I thought,

what if I use map is that have to do with civilisation? It is loaded. A

map can be a loaded document. And start to break it apart, so that it

becomes an abstract painting, yet the social fabric still clings to

the edges. That was me starting from material that was social and pushing

it into abstraction. When you make these paintings that start in this

disadvantaged area of LA, they are almost heroic scale, and they are

bought by people for increasingly large sums of money, how do you feel

about those paintings coming out of that part of LA and hanging in a

great Manhattan apartment? That part you have less control over and it is

no use obsessing over it. You can have conversations about

theoretically, aesthetically and politically what is important to you

but I control what I can control, which is in the studio. I am

happiest in the studio because that I can control. What has come out of

the studio has made me actually successful monetarily. Works by Mark

Bradford are in great demand in the art market. Recently one of his

paintings sold at auction for close to $4 million. On the back of his

art world success, Bradford has established a foundation called art

and practice. Its 20,000 square feet of space in south-central is used in

part as an exhibition space for contemporary Art in the community.

The local community actually has access to contemporary art and ideas

in their community on the way to the store, the cleaners, on their way to

church, they can stop in and see contemporary art. It becomes the

everyday? Not something unusual? Not something unusual and something they

have to go out of the community and they have to whisper when they are

in the museum. Bradford is also allowing an entire building to be

used rent-free by the Right way foundation, a nonprofit group that

provides councillor and support for youths in the south-central area.

These are disenfranchised people with no families. So I want them to

feel they are as special as possible because the crisis is so strong.

Their lives are so delicate. That they can fall between the cracks and

turn around and they are gone. Why did anyone think art could play a

part in that process of healing, regeneration? Because I believe the

contemporary ideas is what contemporary art, at the foundation

of what we do. If you look at it through that lens, artists always

talk about the times they live in and always question, provoke,

pushing forward. It is a living animal, organism, to me,

contemporary art. I think there are so many different kinds of

contemporary art. What I think is so incredible about creativity is that

it feeds into all our beings in ways that people perhaps overlook. In her

Kent studio, Rose has been painting in relative obscurity for decades. I

love this room. I really like it. I think the light is good. Now in her

80s, her work is gaining international recognition. You just

keep at it. And let it mount up. This in fact can be quite

satisfactory because no one is criticising it, there are no

demands. You get on exactly in the way you want to. I think that is

probably a good way to do it rather than getting a lot of attention

early on. After studying painting in the 50s, Rose took time out to raise

a family but returned to painting in 1979. Her works may appear

whimsical, bold, cartoonish, capturing the unaffected innocence

of a child and speak to us directly. I like to present to the world the

kind of painting that is considered not totally acceptable painting. Her

sources of inspiration are varied. From art history to animals. From

sport, to popular culture. A serious film buff, Rose Wylie has been

inspired by the films of Quentin Tarantino. This is a wide shot. And

a close-up from a film by George Clooney. They have an agenda, a

contemporary agenda that could be political in order to have

significance, because that is what is going on. I am not sure whether

it is necessary to have that. People can have a straight emotional

response to the work, that is what I would like, because I think that is

what the painting is about. I do like to work with film stars and

footballers, because I think there is a shared interest. It is

democratising the whole thing. It is work we can engage with. One of the

things that art does is to unify everybody. Rather than being sort of

parochial pockets of interest, or cultural pockets of interest. It

crosses the boundaries of nation. Certainly it is good for the

development of the person. It can give you a reason, a purposeful

life. -- purpose for life. Contemporary art has so much to say

to us in many different forms. And with these large audiences and

contested views and new ways of thinking about the world,

contemporary art has never mattered more. I always have this dream when

I leave the Tate I will work in a small institution, miles from

London, caring for a fine collection, working very closely

with artists, realising exhibitions, and, of course, dealing with a