Episode 8 The Arts Show

Hello and welcome to the The Arts Show. Your monthly guide to the best

arts and culture in Northern Ireland. It doesn't get much bigger

than this - the Turner Prize. Out of England for the very first time and

here in Derry, Londonderry, UK City of Culture, 2013.

Now the Turner coming to town and being housed here in a former army

barracks has been one of the most anticipated parts of the programme.

Now it is open, we'll have reaction to it and more. As Hull is announced

as UK City of Culture 2017, Ruth and Daniel review the jewel in London,

Derry's line-up - the Turner Prize. Take one... I meet twice-Oscar

nominated Seamus McGravey from Armagh, at his villa in Tuscany. 25

years after his death, the legacy of one of Ireland's great greatest 20th

century playwrights. Giving this year's lectures for Radio 4 perry

Grayson said most of it is rubbish. He did not mention any names. I met

him before he gave his election chur to a full -- lecture to a full hall.

The fact it is in an army barracks on a hillside is an interesting

thing. They should take advantage of that. What are the implications for

Derry holding the Turner Prize? What is the pay-back? I was talking to

people up in Newcastle and they had a huge number of visitors that came

because the Turner Prize is a rallying point for people who are

interested in the arts. I should think it would have a huge impact in

terms of the number of visitors. And the Turner Prize and art in general

- what influence does that have to the wider public this? Public --

public? As I started address a contemporary art yis it was a nearby

business. You felt you were up a back water that occasionally a boat

would come up. 5.5 million people go to see every year. Contemporary art

is more on the radar than it was. I am not saying it is a main-steam

cultural activity N a way that might be weird if it was. We like to

retain some edge, even though we are kidding ourselves. It's no less

relevant than if an opera company, in festival is happening. I think

the art world itself has become tired of that press coverage. The

art world has become a beast of, oh, yes, out there are the haters and in

here we are the contemporary art world. I would like to see more

spats within the art world. You want to generate a few more? It is all

different kind of tribes. Can it be a game changer for Derry, how it is

perceived? Contemporary art can be used as picksy dust to sprinkle on

places wanting regeneration. I am coming around to the belief that

when a cultural landmark lands on a place it does have an effect, even

to people who are not necessarily interested in culture. I don't like

football, but to a certain extent you are pleased there is a football

team the place where I live. And how someone who doesn't go to opera is

pleased there is an opera house in their city. It is a focal point for

civic energy. As a former winner, what did it do for you personally

and professionalally? The turner -- and professionally? The Turner Prize

has a very nice exhibition attached. I perhaps, at the time I was more

cynical and I kind of thought, oh, this is fun and it will be a nice

time to play with the media. Actually, it has a very good

reputation in the wider art world. It is in the premier art prize in

the world. It has a very good track record of good winners. Some great

artists have won it. The Turner Prize - that is quite a calling card

to have, I think. Did you believe it was a game changer for you as an

Initially, I thought, no. Curiously, it is ten years on now, it has been

a huge, it's had a huge effect I is a calling card. It is a -- effect.

It is a calling card. It is a step I cannot go back down. Therefore, it

is respected, it is on my CV. I have taken advantage of it. There are

Turner Prize winners who have not taken advantage of it. I embraced

the press, I embraced the media. I was interested in the media. I've

had a media career since then. Perhaps, for me, it was a gift.

And you can hear the Reflectors on the BBC iPlayer. The Turner Prize

and controversy go hand-in-hand we commission commissioned our take.

The Turner Prize is an insult to the memory of a great painter.

It is traditionally awarded to whatever artistic shot jock has

caught the fancy of an intellectually corrupt art

establishment. Artists have always run out of ways to shock, so they

are now majoring on audience participation.

Really this reminds me of, and I like these amusing cartoons, but it

is like an indulgent parent filling up his enormous fridge with

children's drawings. The turner always includes a wide

range of styles, from painting, to video, to performance. It is usually

a snapshot of art at a particular moment.

The show always attracts some sensationalist coverage which does

not help people understand or appreciate the art. That is just

what helps sell newspapers. The work in the Turn ser not usually shocking

or even -- turner is not usually shocking or even controversial. It

is by artists who consider their work carefully. Ignore the media

coverage, that is just a distraction. Look instead at the

art. There are plenty of good

contemporary artists. We hear little of them. The art establishment

decided the talent and skill were old fashioned virtues and they

elevated conacceptual art which requires neither. Hence the rise to

fame and fortune of self-pub cysts and producers of rubbish.

The idea that you declare yourself an artist and say what you say is

art is art, is nonsense. It has routined generations of students who

went to art college to learn to draw or paint or skull p and were left

untaught and told only ideas mattered and that skill paralysed

creativity. So many thoughtful, clever artists

show us how to think of the world in a different way. My outlook has been

changed on more occasions than I remember.

Of course some art yitss are lazy, and -- artists are lazy and art can

be a fade. The whims of the art market or a handful of influential

writeders. Would we stop -- writers. Would we stopwatching films because

there are some film makers we don't like? The Turner experience is

always a con, wherever it is. I hope Derry can break free of this

destruction of dealers and galleries and directors and curators,

dominated by Sir Nicholas, the emperor in charge of what he calls

Brand Tate. A gallery should be run by independent-minded people, who

challenge fashion and embrace and develop young talent.

Tino Sehgal's return to talk about market economics in return for a

pound feels gimmicky. We are not allowed to film it in Gallery 4.

David Shrigley's life drawing studio gets viewers to engage with art

making, immediately they walk into the show. A lot of the work here is

about art, or image-making. That seems appropriate. Hopefully the

Turner can raise the profile of visionary arts in Derry long after

this show is finished. Now, with Oscar and BAFTA

nominations, Seamus McGravey is regarded as one of the film world's

most gifted cinematographers. He is about to start to film on 50 Shades

of Grey, with another Irish man. I caught up with Seamus during a rare

break from work at his home in Tuscany.

I love the light here. It's a total polar opposite to what I grew up

with. It is a long way from Armagh. It is

what What is the difference between a cinematographer and a cameraman?

We see those titles in the end credits all the time? I would say

about $10,000 a week. One is a very fancy title. I call

myself a cameraman. Anybody who asks me, I say I am a cameraman. Nobody

knows what a cinematographer. If I am in the States, I have an

operator. So, I am not allowed to actually operate the camera, which

is a terrible thing. You are physically not allowed to touch it?

You are allowed to touch it, but the operator makes the moves. If you are

working with an operator you can trust, like for instance, I work a

great one, Peter Robinson, who did the famous steady hand-shot in

Atonement. Once the shot was planned, all I did was run after him

like a little puppy and he did the shot I was all the available light,

planned. I did some zooming and a bit of exposure changes during the

shot, but he did that shot. And that actually, that shot basically I

think got me an Oscar nomination. It was all his doing. I thanked him in

the speech. But he was not getting the award. You should be grateful

you are not wounded. They leave the wounded behind.

Never trust a sailor on dry land. You are best off out of it.

When you are on set with great Hollywood star stars, as you were in

the Hours, do they look at you first? They know you have looked at

them through the camera, or do they look to the director? What is the

relationship there? Because you are right there by the camera it is you.

The director is further back, by the monitor. It is that initial gaze to

the camera. It seems a very intimate, privileged position? It is

a privileged position. It 's difficult in many ways because

certain actresses want to look great. Sometimes a role doesn't

demand it. And that's a very difficult position

to be in, as a DP, because you want to be in service of the story, but

you don't want to be fired. You know, merry streep's is playing a --

Merly Streep is playing a middle-aged woman in New York. I am

not glamorising that. It is ad hoc photography.

And suddenly I'm in a room with her saying, I cannot look like this! It

is very scary sometimes when you are working with Hollywood actors and

producers, and the actress is not happy and you don't want to be

fired. At the same time you want to do your best work. I think I am only

staying alive to satisfy you. Well, so, that is what we do! That

is what people do. They stay alive for each other. I ended up

compromising by putting a defusion filter and lighting her softer,

which I actually think is wrong for the film and for all her close-ups

look too glamorous for my tastes. Built a special light for her. It

was called the street light. Every time we came out it was like

# Street light # You have to do that sometimes!

Just back home here in Italy after filming Godzilla on location in

Hawaii, do you have to pinch yourself at the way things have

turned out? Yes. I have been really lucky. I have been so lucky with the

way things have turned out in my career. A couple of really lucky

breaks from the earliest low-budget films that just kind of became

culty, like Butterfly Kiss or being in a bar in Edinburgh and meeting

Stephen Friars and him saying, my cameraman pulled out of High

Fidelity... Do you ever get nervous? It is when I drive in the morning

before shooting has begun. Where we shot the Aven gers, you are in the

middle of the desert. You drive over this dusty hill in the middle of

nowhere. Suddenly there is truck after truck, after truck. Through

the circles of hell I was like Dante's inferno. You go through

lawyers of trucks. You think -- layers of trucks. You think the

money which has been spent and the responsibility you have and mess it

up today, this costs so much money. Then you get to the inner sank up

the. It is like the -- sanctum. Nothing changes - it is you, the

actor, a couple of lights and the silence. As soon as this happens...

And action! It is total silence and you are there. That is my home. That

is when you can actually start looking and thinking and making

pictures. Let's talk about two Oscar

dominations for Atonement and working with Joe Wright, a chemistry

there. Were you gutted not to get the golden trophy? No. Not at all!

I was not. I was so shocked that I actually got

nominated for both of those films. It was a great experience. I went

along and had a laugh. It was, I wasn't nervous. I sort of didn't

expect to walk up there. Will you ever come back and make a

film in Northern Ireland? I would love to. Nobody ever asks me.

Hopefully if they watch this they will realise. Seamus McGravey, thank

you so much. Cheers! Thank you! Seamus McGravey. Now it is 25 years

since the death of Belfast born skaf Stuart Parker, a playwright and

music critic, he wrote extensively for radio, stage and screen. Cut

down by cancer at 47, Parker left an extraordinary body of work which

established him as the most innovative playwright to emerge from

Belfast and arguably one of Ireland's greatest 20th century

playwrights. Stuart pointed us towards the light. Standing in the

heart of tragedy, versed in the tradition of great theatre, utterly

certain of the probity of his vision and...

He was my uncle. My chief memory of him of course was he was the most

stimulating, interesting, funny person I had ever met. He was born

on Larkfield Road, lived his early childhood in a solidly,

working-class part of East Belfast. I was a fairly sickly child and read

a lot and lived in a world of dreams. What else could I do but

write? From his first hit, to northern star, to his final play -

set during the UWC strike of 1974, Stuart Parker wrote about live in a

divided society, by putting our shared human dramas centre-stage.

Catch Penny Twist told the story of three young people in the music

business. It was the first full-length TV drama made here. It

was rather exciting to have a big play for today production being made

right here, you know, with mostly local people. The carriages are all

running away from something. Roy and Martin are variously running away

from their past. Mona is trying to run away from herself. It is medium

rare! It is still bleeding! It is the

control of that that he's good at. You know you can get food poisoning?

Shut your face! He believed you could be very funny

and be very serious at the same time. I'm not eating that!

Take the chicken - you can only set it to music!

That's a good example of the humour being right next to something much

darker. Get the bird!

Oven-ready chicken. Parker's plays also use music to tell a story. I

think music the ultimate art form. I spend a lot of time listening to it.

It has always been central to my writing. The reviews treated rock

music as a serious art form. The 70s were the days of Eurovision. He

served on a British panel to pick the entry from Britain. As he said

the song with the most intense degree with cheerful...

# Save all your kisses for me # Goodbye...

There was a parody of a Eurovision-type song contest.

Say goodbye to zigzag song. Come along, let it ring.

The play was about the pernicious effect of commercialism on art.

Don't be a cry baby # If you want to be my baby

His writing is complicated. It is not easy. It is the collar ritty of

the vision. -- clarity of the vision. That income pusses the value

garty of show business as well as the poetry, which is high art.

# It is something money can't buy Now, the Turner Prize coming to

Derry, Londonderry was built as the highlight of this year's City of

Culture. With me is a panel of experts from the art world. Peter,

what has been your reaction to the Turner Prize this year? This is the

first year that the Turner Prize can be accused of being meaningful, of

having depth, of having something for ordinary people who wouldn't see

themselves dead inside an art gallery normally. Some of the work

was complex. Some was ambiguous. At all times you felt involved in it.

And, I have not felt that before at a Turner Prize exhibition. And, did

you feel the same? I did. I think that is really true, that you move

from one artist's work to the next. You are challenged all the time to

move in and out of different ideas and spaces. For you? I have enjoyed

it. I enjoyed the exhibition. It is challenging. I think that's very

much within the spirit of other Turner Prizes. You think back to

Martin Creed's work, with the lights going off and on. It is in a similar

vein. You have a straightforward exhibition of paintings as well. The

work that is on show is not what the four art yitss are being judged on

-- artists are being judged on. There are two things here. There is

the hinterland of all the exhibitions they have previously

done and the work you are actually seeing here. So, for the audiences,

in a way, you can't help judging what you see. You know, the

excitement of each of the individual artists here. For me, Laure

Prouvost's work is astonishingly powerful and works on so many

levels, so quick in all the resonances and the flashes of ideas

that come. It is so... You are almost breathless at the end. Let's

talk about David Shrigley. He was the bookie's favourite. For me, it

was joy! And joyous. Is that not what... I agree. It is very funny.

It is humorous and I don't find it offensive at all. It is perhaps a

reflection on who we are as a people that we find some of the objective

in that. He's better known for the humorous small sculptures, the works

that are kind of easier to kind of accommodate and also kind of

one-liners. He's chosen not to do that, but for a bigger statement. It

is a brave move. Do you ever get tired though of the mock eerie that

comes of the -- mockery that comes of the Turner Prize? Perhaps the

Tate endull ening a bit in this themselves -- endull indulge a bit

in this themselves. To be this contem chous of it is a luxury that

we cannot really afford. What people are, I think, put off by is panels

like this, people like us sitting talking about it. Once you actually

get into the exhibition it is pretty good. It is interesting, you can

engage with it. There's a whiff about the Turner Prize and in fact,

as people coming in through the doors of Ebrington, it is not going

to bite you. As a curator, you walk into these buildings which are of

Tate standard now, to think they are going to go back into, I mean they

are not just offices, it is a creative, digital media sector, but

effectively they are returning to offices.

I think it is worse than that. It is complete tragedy because the gallery

spaces that you have now are of a quality that you could show

anything. There's no limit to what can be brought to the city, or what

can be kept in the city as a collection. To have this here, for

the future is essential. All the work has been done for that.

It is really... The really financial hit has happened. Now it is there.

It is a good, solid building, great fasy tis. It is a maintenance

operation. That is - it means this belongs to this place and it will

continue working as an art space. If it does not happen, the signal is we

don't deserve it, we are not good enough for it and that Derry can't

maintain a relationship with the international art world. There's a

really dynamic visual arts culture in this city at the moment. Perhaps

some of the larger, more established art exhibition spaces open to the

public in Northern Ireland could redirect some of their fundings

towards the north-west. Thank you very much for your thoughts tonight.

Thank you all. APPLAUSE

And that's it from The Arts Show, from the UK's City of Culture. You

can join me on Twitter with your thoughts on Turner straight after

the show. Keep up-to-date on BBC Radio Ulster, week night nights.

We are back on the 12th December, with our last show of 2013. Until

then, good night.