April 2017 The Arts Show

This programme contains some strong language.

This is The Arts Show, and over the next 30 minutes

we cover culture, no matter what its shape or size.

This is our mission, we hope you choose to accept it.

Why Gulliver's Travels is more Saturday Night Live than we think.

The mighty Julian Barratt on the art that first blew his mind.

Is this the most censored artist in the past 50 years in Britain

and Ireland? Poet Leontia Flynn counts the peace dividend.

And new music from teenage Derry-Londonderry girl Roe.

We're on Twitter now, @bbcartsshow.

Public art is a bit like Marmite, you either like it or you loathe it.

Some are given affectionate nicknames,

while others win prizes for the worst ever.

Joe Lindsay makes his views very public for The Arts Show.

I believe public art is of great importance.

Not only is it sculpture outside of the often restrictive confines of

a gallery, but it is, apparently, anyway, art made for the public.

Here in Belfast we have a dramatic backstory,

ample amount of sites and a much-needed purpose for public art.

So why, in my opinion, anyway, are we so bad at it?

There are many questions to ask.

Is it because of our recent history

and our responsibility to reflect that?

Is it the fault of the political parties who all have to sign off

on it? Is it the Commissioner's fault? How is it commissioned?

Are the public consulted? Should the public be consulted?

Let's look at some evidence.

The Statue of Harmony or, as we've now called it,

Lula with the Hula. Now, it's in a perfect spot.

Right by the river, overlooking the east of the city.

I know it's supposed to represent the harmony after the peace

process and all that, but I think that's part of the problem.

I think there is this responsibility put on artists to reflect that,

to make art for our wee country.

And it doesn't work.

It just looks like a woman holding a Hula Hoop.

Now, if public art does have a role or responsibility in

reflecting its environment or the city it's in, I think this is

a very successful piece and one I happen to like very much.

It represents the working women of Belfast.

Belfast is a very matriarchal city in a very matriarchal country.

But if you look at some of the details on the figures,

you have children's dummies, scrubbing brushes.

And to me, that just says Belfast.

And if you look at the position, which I think is particularly the

bit I love about it, they're right at the top of the steps, you have to

kind of walk around them, you can't, you know, they're right in your way.

And they're looking at you, saying, "We're not moving for anybody,

"so we're not." And there's nothing more Belfast than that.

Now, a very interesting and mildly controversial aspect of this

piece is, it's on private land. And there is a reason for that.

Oh, excuse me, ladies.

The title is Monument To The Unknown Woman Worker

because of the unknown soldier, really.

I think the thing for me was about that kind of, how do you

celebrate a bunch of people who have never been celebrated,

who are everywhere and are yet invisible?

The site that we got was behind the Crown bar.

And it really defined the area in terms of prostitution.

I won the commission, and when my work was being discussed,

a local Unionist politician went on...

out in public and said this

was a monument to prostitution and there was some Southern young one

-doing it and it was a disgrace.

-Then the project took another turn.

Because now it's on private land, outside the Europa bus station.

Belfast City Council, they said, "If it goes up,

"we won't maintain it." So that became a kind of political cause.

But then I was kind of privately commissioned and it was

technically private ground,

so the upkeep is associated with that building and that site.

And it's actually across the road from the Crown in

a much more public space and it has become iconic.

Should the public be consulted about it? My jury's out on that.

I think it's like, what I worry about is

the Daily Mail version of sculpture.

You know, and I don't think that you shouldn't be consulted,

I think you should be engaged.

I think that there should be a kind of, if not a democracy,

a sense of understanding,

and I think work needs to be put out there and discussed.

I mean, I don't want to be disrespectful to the artists, you know, taste is subjective,

but when a piece of art is in the public domain, when you've no choice

but to walk past it every day as you go around the city, it's yours

to appreciate or to reject, you have some kind of ownership over it.

This piece, I don't really know what it's about.

I'm assuming it's about, you know,

communication and tolerance and love and lack thereof.

But the reason why I don't really quite know is because

I've never really thought about it, because the only emotion,

if you will, that it inspires in me is utter indifference.

And art's not supposed to do that.

See, it's not all bad. I love this piece.

You'll recognise it, it's kind of like an Airfix kit of the Titanic.

I wasn't taught it at school, but all of a sudden,

after James Cameron's film, Belfast became Titanic town.

What I love about this piece is,

it almost puts the ship in, like, a pop cultural context.

It's become this kind of object that's instantly recognisable,

it's an analogy of the worst-case scenario.

And just over there is where the ship was built.

These men built what was supposed to be the indestructible.

And by some kind of inexplicable bad luck, the rest is history.

I just think it's lovely.

Y'know, at the start of this,

I couldn't quite put my finger on what my problem was with public

art in Northern Ireland, but after looking at the work and particularly

speaking to Louise, I think I've got a better handle on it now.

I think I've got it.

It's too cautious.

It's trying to please everybody, and that just doesn't work.

And do feel free to tweet us at #bbcartsshow for your thoughts

on the best - and worst - public art.

Well, one of the highlights of last month's Belfast Film Festival

was the premiere of Mindhorn, a comedy homage to '70s cop shows

with a soundtrack from local producer David Holmes.

It stars Julian Barratt of the cult heroes The Mighty Boosh.

But what art makes him tick?

Alien was probably one of the most powerful experiences I had.

And I watched it on a TV, because I was way too young to see it.

I couldn't have gone to the cinema.

So, that film has stayed with me now.

Every day I think about stuff from that film and Giger's designs

and the direction and the strange,

compelling sort of horror of that film.

It's still really one of my favourite sort of films.

ALIEN SCREECHES

I was very affected by concept albums in the '70s,

when I was growing up, chief among them being War Of The Worlds.

No-one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th century...

I love the music, I love the narration,

Richard Burton's sumptuous tones.

..human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.

# The chances of anything coming from Mars

# Are a million to one, he said... #

The music is great, I think still.

# The chances of anything coming from Mars... #

Before I did comedy, I would go to Edinburgh quite a lot to see

comedians, and I was sort of obsessed with certain people.

Steven Wright, the American comedian,

I loved his one-liners and his view of life.

I went fishing with Salvador Dali.

He was using a dotted line.

He caught every other fish.

His timing was phenomenal,

I couldn't really understand it and couldn't get enough of it.

I was Caesarean born. You can't really tell.

Although whenever I leave the house, I go out through the window.

Steven Wright was pretty incredible, yeah.

I was really amazed by his jokes.

My dad took me to see lots of odd jazz-rock gigs

in the '70s and '80s.

I remember seeing a bass player, Jaco Pastorius,

when I was very young.

MUSIC: Birdland by Weather Report

Very cool - he had a headband and used to have his...

Never wore a top, you know? And he was playing the bass.

And so I was really into Weather Report and Jaco,

and when I took my sort of excitement to school,

I was met with just stony silence and confusion as to why I wanted

to listen to this strange music.

So that's a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Now, while size does matter for some works of art,

other smaller works still carry an epic punch.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift is a classic 300 years on,

but if Jonathan Swift were alive today,

I reckon he would be a scriptwriter on TV satirical shows like

Saturday Night Live or Tracey Ullman,

as writer and actor Ciaran McMenamin discovered.

You are my prisoner and shall be presented to

Our Royal Highness King Theodore.

On the surface, Gulliver's Travels

is a fantasy adventure for children.

But if you look just behind the shipwreck and the little people

of Lilliput, you'll find a satirical commentary

on 18th-century society, politics and science...

with a Northern Irish connection thrown in, as well.

Swift was born in Dublin in 1667.

After graduating from Trinity College, he moved to England,

where his writing skills caught the attention of

the Tory Prime Minister,

who made him his "polemicist", or chief literary spin doctor.

Swift had also been ordained in the Church of Ireland.

Religion and politics would shape his future.

Following the collapse of the Tory government in 1714, Swift returned

home to Ireland and became dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.

His time in the hot seat of power in politics was finished,

but his experience would certainly

influence his most enduring literary work.

When Gulliver's Travels was first published in 1726,

it sold out within days.

People loved the depictions of Lilliput, squabbling nations,

savage Yahoos, or humans,

and of course societies governed by civilised horses.

But they also loved Swift's lampooning of the monarchy

and high society after the events of 1720.

George I was on the throne, and the country was in financial

crisis after what was essentially the first stock market crash.

In order to get to the bottom of things, King George put his

good friend Robert Walpole in charge of an investigation.

But as far as the people were concerned, all Mr Walpole

was interested in was looking after

the interests of his wealthy friends.

Hogarth's famous cartoon of Walpole's bottom made it very

clear whose ass you had to kiss to stay in favour.

Let those who present themselves as c...candidates for the most

high office of Principal Secretary of Private Affairs to

Their Imperial Majesties...

Swift was outraged by the behaviour of the great and good,

and he used Gulliver's travels in fictional lands to satirise

various aspects of English society.

The route in, maybe, to satire in the book is through the first

voyage, to Lilliput,

and Gulliver gives us really detailed descriptions of their life,

so we have all the political machinations at court.

So, in order to win political office, high office, you might find

yourself dancing on ropes or leaping or creeping over sticks,

and the person who can leap the highest is the person who

gets the highest office.

So you can see that Swift is obviously poking fun of

the kind of political machinery of his day.

And the Lilliputians are a really good example of satire,

because one thing we might say about satire is that it seeks to

diminish its targets by laughing at them.

Was Mr Swift a sort of trailblazer

for what we think of as satire today?

Satire has been around since classical literature,

but satire's greatest age is the 18th century,

so Swift wasn't alone, but he was certainly the best.

And I think lots of contemporary political satire today -

it might be Have I Got News For You, Tracey Ullman, I don't know whether

they've read Swift, but certainly we would say their work is Swiftian.

# Referendum-dum

# For a Scottish kingdom-dom

# Nearly won the last one-one

# We were robbed, we were done-done-done-done

# Referendum! #

You see lots of kind of parallels today.

Are you sure Russia was behind hacking?

I mean, maybe.

But are you really, REALLY sure?

It was China.

Er, I mean Canada.

It was Meryl Streep. OK, this press conference is over.

Chris Riddell, for example, a very famous political cartoonist,

he was involved in a version of Gulliver's Travels that came

out in 2004, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

The most famous illustration in that book is an illustration where

we see Tony Blair as one of the politicians.

Armagh Robinson Library holds a very special copy of Gulliver's Travels.

In fact, it's the only known one of its kind in the world.

-We know without doubt that this is Jonathan Swift's own copy.

-Wow.

So it's one of the first editions.

What makes it so, so special is it's the one in which

he made changes in his own handwriting.

But he didn't do it out of choice.

He did it because he was very angry with his publisher.

Benjamin Motte made changes without Swift's knowledge.

You've got a great passage here

about receiving silken threads from the Emperor.

In fact, interpreted, that means

receiving honours from the monarch of the day.

So you've got the awarding of honours such as the Order of

the Bath, Order of the Garter, Order of the Thistle,

and each one of those has its own particular colour.

Benjamin Motte knew straight away those are the people who have

received those orders who are being attacked, so he changed it to

colours which had no links with any Orders, any awards.

Benjamin Motte's argument was he feared they'd both end up in court.

Could you tell me anything about

Swift's personal connections to Armagh?

Yes. He certainly had friends in the Armagh area,

and in particular the Acheson family of Markethill.

They were great acquaintances, they were politically in favour,

and he often went to stay with them for lengthy periods.

Swift also satirised himself in verse. In his poem Lady Acheson,

Weary Of The Dean, he acknowledges his own shortcomings as a guest.

"The house accounts are daily rising

"So much his stay doth swell the bills

"My dearest life, it is surprising

"How much he eats, how much he swills."

Swift is really known for his connections with Dublin,

and I don't think his connections with what he called

"the northern part" of the island are nearly as well known.

Swift begins his career as a clergyman in Kilroot.

There's a good case to be made that the three major prose works that

Swift published - Tale Of The Tub, Gulliver's Travels,

A Modest Proposal - all have links with the North.

I have it on good authority that there's

a 1791 map of Belfast with somewhere on it called Lilliput.

Can we lay claim to that being the influence for the Lilliputians?

Well, it's VERY interesting.

You know, 1791, a bit of time after Gulliver's Travels is published,

but town lines and place names

tend to have been around for a very long time.

So I don't think it's beyond possibility

that Lilliput existed in Belfast before 1791.

-I think we should claim it.

-Yeah.

-I think we should just claim it!

So, Swift's time here in the North certainly helped to inspire

his masterpiece and nearly 300 years after it was first published,

Gulliver's Travels has never been out of print.

It's a genuine classic enjoyed to this day

by children and adults alike.

Newry native Sean Hillen has been dubbed

the most controversial artist in Britain and Ireland

over the past 50 years and despite an international reputation,

he's only just had his first-ever solo show in Northern Ireland.

So, what is it about his trippy, anarchic mash-ups

that have divided the critics?

MUSIC: God! Show Me Magic by Super Furry Animals

Well, I'm a collagist and I work with postcards a lot

and I make new worlds out of them.

I want to stop you in your tracks.

I want to make something you've never seen before.

I want to grab your attention.

Sean Hillen, it all began in Newry.

I grew up... Born in '61 so I grew up

in actually a very optimistic phase of human history, I think,

you know, and then of course the Troubles happen

and I remember the morning of internment

and the big armoured cars, looking through the Venetian blinds

at the neighbours being dragged away.

I think I was, you know, a little bit weird and very sensitive

and both traumatised and excited and energised.

The work that you have become known for,

this photo collage montage, when did that start?

I was taking the photos and in the '80s in Britain,

the papers had been full of it, and once Gilles Peress

and Don McCullin have done it,

there's not really a lot you can add to that

and so nobody really wanted to see the photos.

So I started making my own,

which turned out to be these fantasy worlds,

so I would take highly-coloured London tourist material

and collide it with my gritty black and white photos of the Troubles.

And it is sort of saying, "How would you like it up your street?"

but it is also doing it in a very accessible way with humour.

And I did that for about 13 years and got a lot of attention for it.

For instance, "Who Is My Enemy?", which is where I took a photo

that I took of an observation post outside Long Kesh, the Maze,

and put it in Piccadilly Circus in the place of Eros

and into a touristy late '50s,

probably early '60s dreamlike Piccadilly Circus.

And I've sucked the North back into it, you know,

so it's a simple power inversion,

but it is actually quite powerful, and the visual punchline

is that I've taken a kind of James Bond figure

from a pulp comic who's leaping towards the camera

with his gun in his tuxedo

and the comic book was called "Who Is My Enemy?",

and so that's the punchline.

So, say the one of... It's The Goddess, isn't it, Appears...?

Yeah, The Goddess Appears In Newry, Easter '93.

I was, like, the golden boy, to some extent, of the family.

I was obviously weirdly, you know, sort of...

I was technically a genius,

but a genius who didn't know what fucking day it is,

literally didn't know what day it is, and my mummy said to me once,

"Seanie, could you not make pictures of lovely flowers?"

So for her, I did that picture which is the whin bushes bursting through.

-Cos the colours are so strong.

-The colours are really beautiful.

I can nearly smell the whin when I talk about it.

And a little soldier that I photographed,

a young soldier with a little moustache

that I found hiding, basically, under a staircase

in a block of flats in Newry around 1990,

and I saw him and I had to have the photograph

and I just said to him, "May I take a photograph?"

and he said, "Oh, you want a picture, sir?"

and posed for me, which was wonderful.

Irelantis was a huge success for you.

Talk to me about that particular series.

In Irelantis, I was trying to show the world what it could be,

letting the imagination go flying.

So, the conflation of Ireland and Atlantis...

It's just so evocative, isn't it?

And it is humorous in itself.

It's just a wonderful licence for me.

-I knew immediately what I was going to do.

-Which was what?

Well, I was starting a series called Ancient Monuments In Ireland,

but the joke was I was stealing them from elsewhere.

Two years ago, you found out, you discovered that you had...

-Yep, got diagnosed, really, by accident.

-Autism.

-By accident.

It is autism.

Somebody said to me that you might have Asperger's

and I went and looked and I said no,

and then I went and looked and I went, "Oh!"

And then I read about it and I am a textbook Asperger person.

-In what way?

-Well, it is a bag of tricks.

Look at this - this is probably quite Aspergery.

The hoarding could be one thing.

High anxiety could be one of the things.

I went to New York for the first time in 2006

and I got off the bus and threw up on the pavement.

HE LAUGHS

It's the opposite of what the Pope does!

THEY LAUGH

What makes you do it?

I'm no good at anything else.

Really probably no good for anything else

and I don't see the point in life, actually, frankly,

if I wasn't making art.

Somebody once wrote in a visitors' book,

"Fair play to you if you can get away with it."

And I have got away with it to some extent, you know?

What else is new, then?

Belfast, long the blight and blot on lives has now brought to an end,

or several ends, its grim, traumatic fight.

The pay-off packet and the dividend amid the double-dealings,

halts and heists.

A building boom and shopping malls thrown up like flotsam

by our new security.

Here are our palaces of snow and ice and so, folks,

with esprit de corps, we'll shop ourselves to civilised maturity.

Belfast aspires to be, then,

every place where shopping is done less for recreation -

this might apply to all the Western race -

than from a kind of civic obligation.

The upshot - on the whole we're better dressed, as Auden wrote,

though maybe on the whole we find we suffer no less from neuroses.

Despite our retail therapy, "we are depressed, tired or infertile,"

finds some book or poll.

Each week, I hear of a fresh diagnosis

among old friends, at least.

It's not, I think, merely the fallout

of a far-off war fought in our names,

not so remote its stink can't reach us in our hiding places,

nor fears for the planet that make us feel sad.

The waste, the global warming, melting ice,

our ravenous consumption of resources,

though few would gainsay that this news is bad.

I plugged my laptop in to read it twice,

such are the depths of my profound remorses.

Now, what is it about the North West Regional College

in Derry-Londonderry that seems to produce musicians

practically fully formed,

from PORTS to SOAK to Our Krypton Son?

Now, it's Roe.

18-year-old Roisin Donald is getting serious traction

in the music industry in Ireland.

Here she is in her first-ever BBC TV appearance.

# Tiptoe over people in their numbers

# Watch the world go by

# Bite your tongue and turn the other cheek, boy

# Push away, push it all aside

# I'm waiting on the last train home

# Saving up my words

# And I've been waiting on a time to come

# But you're gone away

# You're gone and I will run from you

# Run from you

# Honestly and I won't come back

# I'll run from you

# Run from you

# Honestly and I won't come back

# Come back to you

# Cutting corners, walk the other way from

# Everything you held so dear

# Rarely do they walk from the surface

# Sly hands with nothing in between

# I'm waiting on the last train home

# Saving up my words

# And I've been waiting on a time to come

# But you're gone away

# You're gone

# And I will run from you

# Run from you

# Honestly and I won't come back

# I'll run from you

# Run from you

# Honestly and I won't come back

# Come back to you

# I'll be all right

# I'll be all right

# When I'm lost out here, I'll be all right

# I'll be all right

# When I'm lost out here, I'll be all right

# I'll be all right

# When I'm lost out here, I'll be all right

# I'll be all right

# When I'm lost, I'll run from you

# Run from you

# Honestly and I won't come back

# I'll run from you

# Run from you

# Honestly and I won't come back

# Come back

# Come back to you. #

And that's it for this month.

We are back on the wireless

and online, where we have a feast of digital content.

In fact, we have you spoiled. Goodbye.