Episode 4 The Arts Show

Yes, it is good to be back.

You're very welcome to the first in a brand-new series of The Arts Show.

So, let's hit the ground running.

Here's what's coming up.

Things Left Unsaid In American TV News Studios.

Paul Seawright's eloquent photographic response

to the war in Iraq.

The photographer's shadow is cast into the image metaphorically.

Hidden in plain sight, you may not know artist Chris Wilson,

but you will almost certainly know his art.

And following the passing of literary giant Brian Friel,

actor-director Adrian Dunbar reflects on his genius.

I think it's going to be a long time before we realise

the extent of his contribution to the culture.

And when we do start to realise, we'll see what a towering figure he actually is.

And we start the new series in the Lyric, the Belfast theatre

where so many of Brian Friel's plays have been performed.

More on that later.

But first, in between holding down the day job

as Professor of Photography at the Ulster University,

Paul Seawright is an internationally celebrated photographer.

And, like his friend and fellow artist Colin Davidson,

who's iconic portraits hang here in the Lyric foyer,

Paul has a new exhibition at the Ulster Museum.

'Attacks have grown significantly during the first weeks

'of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.'

The photographer's shadow is cast into the image metaphorically.

'Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network.'

My work's always about what's excluded, and what's not shown.

'We're making a lot of progress in Iraq, and we're making it every day.

'My heart breaks. I pray, you know... Several a month.'

The series title is called Things Left Unsaid

and, of course, this image sums it up very well.

That void represents the things that are not spoken about,

the things that are not shown on television.

I mean, this project on the surface seems to be about news.

But, of course, it's not really about news at all.

It's about war and that void, that blackness, that unknown

and the darkness that it represents in relation to war

is really key in the understanding of this work.

As the title suggests in the series, the things left unsaid,

the unspeakable things about conflict.

The things that news cannot show us or cannot really get us close to,

even though there's the artifice that it can, it can't.

And the series is trying to grapple with that kind of duality.

Of the reality of the news studio,

but this kind of hyper reality of war itself.

So, this thing that none of us really can quite understand

that's beyond our comprehension.

An artwork gives up its meaning slowly.

And therefore you're making work that is layered, it's not obvious.

And requires the viewer to bring something to the image.

I'm using language as well as something visual in the work.

The titles of the photographs themselves are very sparse,

but also very leading.

There's an image called Clusters, which is a cluster of lights.

But, of course, that references cluster bombs.

All of that is a kind of subtle way to open up the layered

narratives in the work.

This is a remote device, as in a remote camera, but of course,

in contemporary warfare, a lot of the warfare is remote.

So you'll get a couple of soldiers sitting

in a Portakabin in Las Vegas, and they're flying drones

or unmanned planes over Syria or Iraq.

It's trying to play with that idea that there is this

coming together of technology, the technology of war,

the technology of reporting on war, the technology of the news studio.

You know, the lexicon is the same.

One of the challenges in making work when you're dealing with

quite complex content - for me, the content is everything -

is that it still has to work as a piece of art.

This is beautiful to look at, the colours,

the abstract nature of the objects,

but for me it's also important that it means something,

it contributes something to the meaning of the larger body of work.

It's about that green screen idea, night-vision goggles,

these umbilical cords,

the same kind of cords that run to remote robots for defusing IEDs.

All of those ideas are there, but of course, on the surface,

you still have to seduce your audience visually.

It's true to say that all of the work I have made,

whether it be in Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa, North America,

that essentially I am really making work about Belfast.

It is about my experience of growing up in this place

and the contested nature of landscape and place,

and in this case, the reporting of conflict.

I have been criticised, I suppose, for avoiding taking

a position on a lot of the subjects I have talked about.

I'm talking about difficult things,

so I use art practice as a way to navigate that.

There is a lot left unsaid by me as an artist,

because the idea is that the viewer will come in

and bring all of their own latent prejudice to this work,

they'll bring all of their own preconceptions

about conflict and how it is represented.

People here in Northern Ireland particularly might do that,

and reflect on the way that the media has or has not

represented the conflict in Northern Ireland.

And Things Left Unsaid is at the Ulster Museum now.

Paul Seawright will be my guest later in the show to discuss how

a single frame can change the world.

Now, if any of this has got you thinking creatively, the BBC has got

a great resource online at the moment,

the BBC Get Creative campaign.

Whether it be photography, dance, theatre or music,

all you have to do is upload your performance

to #getcreative, #loveto,

and you might even find your work featured on BBC Television,

radio or online.

We pass so much public art every day,

but how much do we know about the artists who actually make it?

Probably not that much.

We decided to put that right by entering the imaginative world

of artist Chris Wilson in his studio on the north coast.

When I was developing the Threads of Time sculpture,

I remembered how, as a child,

I would use the rug in front

of the fire and mould it into a landscape.

That idea became part of the development of the sculpture.

The headquarters there, Newtownabbey Borough Council,

it's an old mill, so the linen idea was very important.

The sides of the table, the cloth has damask patterns,

and on the surface, it's transformed into the idea of a landscape,

with the Cavehill and the road network.

So in a way,

that childhood memory played quite an important part in that idea.

The amount of burnishing we're doing here now,

is that just too strong, or is that picking out those details?

I think that's fine.

The latest piece of public art that I've been

working on is for Southampton.

I love the almost playfulness

and surrealism of putting boats upside down.

For me, the idea was to create a sense of movement.

Yeah, it really does.

The piece echoes the idea of a globe or a sphere,

but with most of it cut away.

This piece represents about eight months' work

to get it to this stage.

I was thinking about Southampton as being a gateway for this trade,

that is on a world basis.

Transforming ideas, transforming materials

I feel is a very important part of art, or making art.

There is something very interesting about bronze casting,

it's almost like a magical act and it becomes something very permanent.

The longer that they are out in the public domain,

the more the natural patina and the verdigris colour will build on it.

Global Journeys in Newcastle was actually the first piece

where I used bronze.

The idea was that this

mirror-polished stainless steel sphere

would reflect the sea, the sky, the mountains.

Basically become like a world in itself.

The bronze design around the base echoes the idea of

the salmon returning along the Shimna River every year.

The sense of place I feel is important within my art.

I go walking along the coast,

I'm looking at the landscape in a particular way,

I'm looking at the strata,

I'm thinking of the geological history that informs

this landscape and I'm also looking at how that thin layer

of human activity exists on the top of it.

And it's those connections that I'm interested in exploring.

All you can hope for as an artist is that some of the things that

you do connect with other people in the world.

As an artist, you work every day. And some days, you make art.

He's been hailed "the Irish Chekhov"

and the equal of Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller.

Brian Friel may be gone from us, but his legacy is huge.

Much has been written about our giant of world theatre.

I'm here with Adrian Dunbar, who has directed several of Brian's plays.

Do you think he was a genius?

Yeah. Yes, I do, of course I think he was a genius.

You can't write that many plays, do that many translations,

have so much success in what must be one of the most difficult

art forms to achieve success in, so yes, Brian is a genius,

and now that he has left us, of course,

we recognise even more what a genius he was.

What was he like?

He was a very warm person towards me and towards anybody, I think,

who was working on his work,

and who was sincere about working on his work.

But he was very thorough and very rigorous,

and didn't stand any frivolity or...

He was a very thorough person,

and you had to be on top of your game to work with him.

And of course, like all great people, all the standards

rose around him when you started to engage with him and his work.

What was he then like whenever you first directed?

And you went with his biggie, didn't you? Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Yes, I directed Philadelphia, Here I Come!

up in Derry, and I was lucky that I was directing it in Derry

because it meant that Brian was able to come

and be very hands-on with us.

And actually come and see a little bit of rehearsals

and stuff like that, make sure we were on the right road,

which was great, because it's fabulous,

the relationship between the writer and the actor, of course,

he was very encouraging towards the actors,

which really helped me as a director.

Was he encouraging to you as well, though?

Yes, he was always encouraging to me.

I think he has always been encouraging to people

he believes sincerely understand and try and get inside his work.

And was there a frisson, a change in atmosphere when

you knew that Friel was in the house

and he was watching all the rehearsals?

Well, of course, of course, because way before everybody else understood

what a genius Brian Friel was, the actors already knew,

because they were speaking his words, they were inhabiting

his characters, they could see the depth

and the scope of what he was doing, I think.

They were responding to it in a very immediate way,

so yeah, the game is always upped when a genius is around,

he just lifts the whole, you know, all our consciousness, if you like.

You busy yourself?

Oh, the usual, housework, looking after his lordship.

'Anybody, especially with an Ulster sensibility,

'is completely inside his work.'

..sell sewing machines.

'That civil quality, non-frivolous quality, that suddenly,'

sometimes bursts into... Like a dance, in Dancing at Lughnasa.

TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC PLAYS

THEY HOWL

What do you feel will be his legacy?

We have to, you know, rethink, redraw our whole map of

not just Irish theatre, but certainly European theatre...

You can go online and you can find Basque students doing translations,

you can find people doing his work all over the place.

Rather like Beckett, he is very accessible,

especially to those people who are dealing

with the post-colonial mind-set,

which he wonderfully danced us through.

Took us, led us out of the parish and into the wide world really.

So, you know, I think it is going to be a long time

before we realise the extent of his contribution to the culture.

-And when we do start to realise...

-HE CHUCKLES

..we'll see what a towering figure he actually is.

And we'll have a special programme

taking an in-depth look

at Brian Friel's life and work

on The Arts Show in December.

Every year, literally tens of thousands of people stream

through the doors of the Ulster Museum to see one art exhibition.

Such is the popularity of the Royal Ulster Academy show,

we couldn't resist going behind the scenes.

The Royal Ulster Academy has been

running for about 134 years.

This is the largest exhibition of painting,

every year, in Northern Ireland.

We're made up of members, both academicians and associates.

John Luke, Colin Middleton, Basil Blackshaw, TP Flanagan,

they've all been academicians.

It's a hard job to get in. Only 12% of submitted paintings get through.

And the wonderful thing about it is, it's such a range of works.

You have 300-odd pictures. There are a lot of paintings

that tell a story,

there are other pictures that are abstract and the colours vibrate.

I have to say, you can't miss the Red Crane of Brendan Jamison's.

Brendan makes this from wool, and he loves using materials that

should be knitted or the direct opposite that you would expect.

A crane is masculine, it's tough, it's metallic.

It's dominant, it's wonderful, and it's going to give us

the colour theme for this gallery, which has to be red.

Other years you might have

still-life sections or print sections,

but I think colour is dominating, from the reds to the vivid blues.

So colour, definitely, is back,

AND there is also a tremendous emphasis now on

good figure drawing, which I like to see,

that that academic rigour is still there.

I also love the Paper Boat that Mary McCaffrey has painted,

her son made the paper boat

and she's got the feeling of the water and the boat floating in it.

I like the Jennifer Trouton - very, very skilled academic work.

And it's virtuoso in its hyperrealism.

She's set up a still life and this is actually oil on canvas,

it's not collage.

This is accurately painted, and the satin material just shines.

You can almost feel the flowers embroidered on that.

Anyone can submit their art for selection in the exhibition,

but judges also have the opportunity to promote an artist

whose work wasn't initially selected.

My personal choice was Stephen Johnston.

He has a combination of feeling, atmosphere, good painting,

and, you know, the ivy coming in to the old house.

Youth and age and decay and living, I think it's all in that picture.

Young man of 28, he is open submission,

which is tremendous, because he's not a member yet.

This is how the young blood is being brought in.

In 1985, with not a lot to laugh about in Northern Ireland,

Mike Moloney co-founded the Belfast Community Circus School.

Mike passed away in 2013, and in his memory

the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

set up the annual Mike Moloney award for young people.

The first artist to receive it is Christopher McAuley.

The spark to get me where I am happened very young.

I think it would have been the first time I was up on a trapeze,

and I could feel her sore it was and how painful

and how much it took to get up there, but it was like,

"I'm sitting on it now, there's so much more I can do."

Being up there, it's a very powerful feeling.

It's hard work, but even the hard work is fun.

During my A-levels I had this continual battle of

"Should I go to university and study science or should I go

"and keep up the circus, should I do it full-time?"

Luckily, I fell into a course in Belfast at the time called

"The Circus Arts for Employment",

and it was nine months' intense course.

With circus, you never stop learning.

New teaching techniques and skills are developed

and invented every day.

This award means that I can go to Brazil and train for 12 weeks.

Brazil is renowned for its approach to circus,

it's the circus capital of the world.

I'll be training in two different schools.

Catsapa Arts School,

which combines circus, art, dance, theatre, music all together.

The National Circus of Brazil

is renowned for creating

some of the most elite performers.

Some of the likes would go towards Cirque du Soleil or Cirque Eloize,

other renowned circus universities throughout the world.

The 12 weeks in Brazil are going to be intense.

There is masterclasses in aerial silks, trapeze,

loads of things, I am going to come back a lot fitter

and a lot more equipped to provide better shows.

The feeling of performing up there,

I see it almost as taking a step back, just your muscle memory

and the fact that you have drilled it so much into your body.

Your body knows what move's coming next,

but I think the idea of you can just relax and let your body do it.

Your body does it, but you're just watching yourself do it.

It's a lovely feeling, just being like, "OK, this is how it works."

It's an amazing feeling.

Few of us were left unmoved by the image of Aylan Kurdi's body

washed up on a beach in Turkey.

The photograph of the three-year-old Syrian child

appalled the world into action,

and such was the power of that image, it seems to me,

Paul, that a little bit like your own work,

it did so much more than just straight photo journalism could.

Yes, I think there was

a casualness about the way that photograph was made,

as if it had been observed from a distance, but also

the very nature of it was something that we are not used to seeing.

It wasn't dramatic, it was a very quiet picture,

but heartbreaking, because it just

looked like a piece of rubbish

washed up on the sand,

and of course, it was a child.

I think also the closeness to the West,

we recognise the trainers,

the Velcro trainers,

the red T-shirt, blue shorts.

I think that is what created the empathy.

What other images throughout the 20th and 21st centuries

of popular culture have created such an impact?

It's not the first time we've seen

controversial images of children in war.

The very famous Nick Ut picture of a nine-year-old naked girl

running down a road in Vietnam fleeing a napalm attack,

that's a very famous image, in fact,

it is so iconic and so important

that it has come to represent

the Vietnam War.

It's actually transferred into another context,

on the Falls Road, there's even a mural that has that same girl

dressed in a hijab running down a Syrian road.

So anyone who looks at that will recognise the link between

Vietnam, and I guess what's being proposed in that mural is Syria.

When does, though, a single frame transcend just being

a photograph and become a work of art?

I think it is about the lack of text.

Normally we have images surrounded by contextualisation and by text.

What happened with that image, the way it was disseminated,

it was on social media, very little text, the image did everything,

and I think an image transcends all other photographs

when it does that, when it needs nothing else in order for it

to function, in order for us to understand what it is about.

And when does it transcend taste and decency? As a photographer,

as an artist, when is the right time to take that photograph

and when is the time to walk away?

Well, in my view, it's very rare that it would be the

right time to take that kind of photograph.

That's not something that should be done often.

It's a very unusual singular moment.

As an artist, I am always trying to find ways of

engaging people like that without showing the drama, that's what I do,

and about trying to get that line just right between moving people

and making people interested in things you want to talk about,

and actually being ethical

and decent in terms of respecting the people

you are making work about.

Paul Seawright, thank you.

It is the opera with perhaps the most famous aria of all time.

Nessun Dorma, by Puccini, from his opera Turandot.

A new production is coming to the Grand Opera House next month,

but be warned, the director has been dubbed

"the Tarantino of Opera",

so expect a little bit more Reservoir Dogs than Madame Butterfly.

OPERATIC SINGING

Definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Next month, we will be asking why do modern reinterpretations of opera

feel the need to shock?

but we leave with you tonight with that famous aria, Nessun Dorma.

In a bespoke performance for The Art Show,

here are members of the Ulster Youth Orchestra.

Good night.