Deller and Kane - Folk Devils The Culture Show

We?re artists, we love Folk Art and we?re going to look in this

And folk art I suppose might be described

as art or things that look like art that's made by people that wouldn?t

A bit like myself and a bit like I would describe you.

This is how the art world sees itself

the folk art made in the world and within that, there's a very

Which is actually a very, very small percentage of what is actually made.

We're going to places where folk art thrives.

To see the most beautiful, naughty and bizarre pieces of art.

And to chat to some of the people who make them.

But first we're here in London where one small corner of the art world

Somewhere round here is Tate Britain and they've got an exhibition

British folk art and we're going to have a look at it.

This is a very spectacular way to start a show.

It's like you're setting your stall out.

Almost literally cos they're all trade signs, aren't they?

But this looks like a sculpture exhibition and they are sculptures

but they have a purpose is their only difference between what you'd

see in a gallery normally, they?ve got some function and the function

is to help people that can't read find out where they left

Kind of more fun as a signmaker in those days.

You get to make some different shaped things.

Yeah, and also anything that's bigger or smaller than it should be

It's just amusing for some reason, scale.

Again there's a purpose for that scale of

which I'm sure you're aware, so you could see it from a long way off.

But I'm just thinking about if there's competitiveness

I mean you get an idea there probably was.

That lock and that lock, they?re quite different, aren't they?

This would have been a very common experience 150 years ago.

To us it's really spectacular but actually every street in every city

would have had very many of these things hanging up above your head.

And everybody would have gone about their business completely

ignoring them but add a couple of hundred years and suddenly they

I think that people assume that folk art has died out or these things

don't exist anymore but things like this do exist

I don't think human nature changes but maybe the form

They're still advertising and over sized objects and brightly

lit objects that try to get your attention and graphics that are

trying to get your attention as well that we see every day and we don't

really take them in as much but there are still things

We're off to Blackpool, perhaps the spiritual home

We're just going to wonder about looking

for things that we like the look of, that make us laugh basically.

Lots of towns and villages have got, obviously, days in which

the rules are relaxed, people can misbehave and the brilliant thing

about Blackpool, as you know, is that actually every day is May Day.

It's not just what people create that we're interested in

but what they do - rituals, festivals and performances are

Treasure - fake cigarettes and a wobbly pencil.

He's working class, he won't use a brolly, you?re

so tough, you should take your jacket off and go topless, Alan.

They're basically like Warhols, aren't they?

But I think for me that's what artists do.

They take something from popular culture

It's no different from what's going on here.

Basically it's a straight forward connection to

So when people lament that there's no

more things made like in that show, well it's just not the case, is it?

Signs like this would make me want to eat a hot dog.

It's polished, who says you can't polish a turd?

What's implied by this is bad behaviour as well.

The potential for mischief and mucking around.

Even just seeing the word bum outside, I thought that was quite

funny, bums and willies and boobs, I know it's pretty pathetic really

You see the masks and the moustaches and you instantly imagine people

It's sort of performative, it's about performance and making

an idiot of yourself which a lot of folk art has within it.

Actually, it's not true because some terrorists you can't negotiate with.

It's government policy not to negotiate with terrorists.

Whereas I think the government would try and negotiate with my wife.

I suppose that thing about political incorrectness comes

And it's appealing, isn't it, in this day and age to have stuff

It's quite unexpected as a theme to have.

Obviously it's supposed to be worn by an oversize guy that t-shirt.

That's the kind of thing that if you did it in a contemporary art

context, in a gallery or something you'd be lucky to get away with it

It's like public art, t-shirt becomes almost a public art work.

For us as artists, it's really interesting to see stuff

that we recognize as having played with culture but not being made by

people who are not self consciously attempting to manipulate culture.

It's a challenge, it's a visual challenge to

an artist to make something that's as arresting and as attractive

as what you might see here and also shocking like that t-shirt.

It's definitely something I hadn't thought about before,

Also, in the context of a t-shirt, on a body.

It's actually quite sophisticated in its crudeness.

For three months each year the town is transformed by

the Blackpool Illuminations, a vast light display along the seafront.

They're not on just now but this is where they're kept off-season.

So, Richard, this where the illuminations are designed,

manufactured, stored, tested everything.

finish, from a blank piece of paper to what you see now, starts here.

I think one of the beauties of the illuminations is you can get away

with anything cause there's six miles of it, plenty of scope so we

try and keep some traditional old illuminations and we have some that

are 25, 30-years-old still going in the lights.

Something new and then something odd or bizarre.

It's probably a bit like Blackpool itself, old, new, traditional but

actually very ? seaside towns are basically traditional, then there's

always the bizarre, we've seen quite a lot of bizarre stuff today.

What is the oddest idea that's been really successful?

We've had gigantic cans of soda pop with arms and legs.

We had pies that had smiley faces, one was riding

This year we're doing, based on the slinky idea, gigantic

cows backsides and cow's heads and horses backsides and horses heads

and I can't image seeing that in any other town other than Blackpool

Hotelier will looks out, "There's a cow's backside 30 feet

in the air 12 feet across outside my hotel", yeah, so what?

Next year it?ll be something different.

I think we do that sort of thing and we get away with murder here,

Yeah, I think that's a real mark of Blackpool, isn't it?

One of the things about Blackpool that constantly appeals to me is

that they accommodate things that you wouldn't expect.

And an environment like that is really necessary for interesting

things to happen because when things are controlled it's harder

for things that are interesting, out of the normal to be pulled off.

And also, Britain is still a slightly repressed country.

We're so still living in the Victorian age.

In a way this is a kick back against Victorian mores, a kick back

against all that repression and that's got to be good.

There's actually a lot of stuff telling you what you can't do.

All of these works have text in or are texts themselves

but a lot are paintings with text on them and it's as if what's being

I quite like these ones where a story is being told.

It's like the thing that they'd have at the end of

the news every night of some funny things that happens with an animal

We still have that hunger for those sorts of stories.

And these funny pigs, they look like sausages already.

What I really like is the guy underneath is credited with

both breeding and feeding, bred and fed by George Moreland.

But I think it's a lot to do with pride in who these

I suspect people think in 20 years time, 50, 100 years time no-one's

going to know who owned those pigs and it's important to know who owned

those pigs and they won this prize and so it's to keep the story alive

probably thinking ahead not just for present times but for the future.

Normally there wouldn't be text on a picture so there's

a difference between folk art and more traditionally considered art.

My artwork is largely inspired by the crazy zeal of folk artists.

The great thing about what it is, I suppose, is that it's

a very direct communication with the public, isn't it?

All those artists, they actually don't need galleries and curators

and all that stuff, it is very attractive, the absolute, direct

assertion the folk artist has, or the signwriter has, writing Boots on

a shop that sells boots, has with the world outside.

it's indebted to this kind of work, would you say?

It comes from my fascination with railway signage, actually, big kid,

and trains, and the Great Western Railway and things like that.

So this directness that you're talking about employing with your

work, the directness that language and signs can bring you has allowed

you to make direct statements, noticeably about politics, often?

There's an aspect of folk art that I really do respond to, which is

propaganda. The crazy, mad campaigning of the folk artist. The

folk artist is trying to tell you about the Bible or try and sell you

stuff or try and convince you of his or her political ideals. They create

all these crazy, mad artefacts and that is tapping into some sort of

larger narrative about human beings that we all want to tell each other

the stories of how we live our lives and sometimes we need some

amazingly, brightly-coloured objects to help us do that.

From Great Yarmouth. Took them a year to do. I can't quite believe

that looking at this. This is incredible. They obviously didn't

have jobs. It's like Google images, but stitched. You could spend

quarter of an hour looking at this. There's so much to look at. They

were just about to get married. They put their energies into doing this.

All the sexual Yeah, there's frustration. A lot of frustration in

this work. That's a rather beautiful thing. Yes, bone cockrell, made of

wood, metal and bone. By ate French POW. Obviously passing his time

making bone feathers. If you're a Prisoner of War, you have no idea

how long you're going to be in prison for, do you? It depends how

long the war's going on for. If you have all this time on your hands,

you end up making something very intricate. I suppose, a lot of folk

art is about the passing of time, hence of hyperdetail, trying to take

control of something by doing something in great detail, almost

recreating it. We're at the Koestler Trust. It's an

organisation that does exhibitions and events about art made in

prisons. They have an annual prize. We're lucky to be asked to judge one

of the categories. Today we're judging portraits. Wow, look at

that. That's amazing. That could be in the National Portrait Gallery. I

always like these ones. Memories of the Commonwealth institute,

Kensington High Street London. I was told off for putting on one of the

display masks. Prison officer. He's an angry man, that one. The title is

very good, Buy your Doors. That's really what he looks like. It's a

wooden picture. People might find it surprising that prison art is full

of humour and wit. And a lot TV is funny. There's the other end of the

spell trum as well. Some of the drawings are incredibly sad.

Inevitably a lot of the work is about prison life. And the day to

day, but also fancy versions of prison life. The act of drawing is a

form of escape. If you're drawing something like this... Or something

laborious and intensement You get into it and forget where you are,

and probably forget about time. I think the other thing that's

striking is there's a lot of people in prison that can really draw.

Yeah. There's too much to look This year at. We have the most entries

ever. We have over 8,000 pieces of work. Some are poems. Some are

pieces of music. But most are paints or drawings or models. What's the

motivation for making art in prison, as opposed to making art outside

prison? They are literally sitting there with nothing else to do in the

evenings. In the afternoon, you can pick up a pencil to write a poem or

draw. That is something you get something out of. Also, it's

obviously a difficult time in your life. Your family relationships are

going to become strained. You're trying to think about how you got

there. A lot of people use the arts to explore who they are, what's

happened to themselves. Some of the work is about freedom, lions,

tigers, you see some pieces which are self-exploratory. That's

amazing, look at that. I know. That's like a ship in a bottle. He's

managed to do a sculpture inside. This is the room of match stick When

you models. Think about art made while incarcerated, the match stick

is a ubiquitous material. A demonstration model of valve gear as

fitted to railway steam locomotives. As with many things that might be

called folk art, they take a lot of time to make. They can be incredibly

intricate. The match stick sculptures are things that emphasise

the process of producing these things and the amount of time that

process takes. That specific one was done in my cell. I was doing stuff

like that. These are very different. Almost caricatures. I often think,

when I do this kind of stuff, I'm creating like a personality or

something. Because I used to have them on my cell wall. They were

quite comforting to a group of people in there that I knew. What

happens when you're in prisons, prison officers want to see you

doing something, you know, with loads of art work, everybody see

that's you're doing something. They can see that you're not just sitting

in your cell. Watching telly. Basically, yeah. Though I did a lot

of that. I'm glad to hear it! You are banged up and you're stuck in

there. That's it. You can't do nothing. But whilst being in there

and having that time, it enabled me to focus. I had a lot of time on my

hands. That's impressive, isn't it? That's beautiful. That colour is a

really nice colour. Yeah. There's something irresistible about rooms

full of human forms. There's something very attractive about

polychrome sculpture. You have to remember that most sculpture was

painted like this, even higher art in churches. And Roman marble. Greek

statues. It's the beautiful. Classic ones, half woman or half man. Rchl

it's the clag -- It's the person, half of it. And maybe with one or

two breasts. Preferably two! I went to see the Cutty Sark for the first

time when I was five or six. They had a row of these topless women

basically, lovingly painted. Figure heads. I thought it was pretty cool.

These women on the front were basically, they became

personifications of the boat. It's like customising your vehicle. They

looked to me like lucky charms. I don't know - They're a superstitious

bunch. It's like a St Christopher, or the equivalent, but painly women.

Even now, people have little St Christophers in their cars or on

motorbikes. We keep this tradition. We're going to see Stuart Hughes.

Who is a painter and lives on this street. He paints lots of things for

bikers. He modifies, what do you call it? Customises. Customises

motorbike s. We're big fans of his work. We've known him for years now.

It's amazing what he can get up to in that little room. It's a lot

about fantasy. It's fantastical scenes and so on. Stuart, this is

where the magic happens. If you say so. I do. We love your work. We awe

years ago. -- We saw it years ago. We saw an image somewhere of this

and we thought - we need to find out who made this and there it is. Yeah,

that's it. Can you get it down? Yeah. Still as good. It is amazing.

Put it on. No, you put it on. It fits. Makes you look better. I'm a

bit thin, aren't I? It does suit you. Why is that? The eyes. I'll

head-butt you. This was painted for a guy called Al. He works in a

hospital, running the neurosurgical unit, the chief technician there.

When he came around he said the helmet had to be anatomically

correct because he would be taking it into work and the surgeons would

see it and they'd be looking at it and go "Oh, you have too many

teeth", or whatever. He took it in apparently. They loved it.

What do you think about the work you make? Is it folk art or popular art?

It's just paintings. The customer gets in touch and says, "Can you

paint this? I paint it. That makes it slightly different from a regular

gallery art work, doesn't it? The fact that it's slightly

collaborative. Yeah, that's the important thing to me. If somebody

wants to call it art, that's fine. I don't see it as art. I see it as

just a - me having fun painting an the customer getting what they

wanted. I see it similar to the figure heads on the front of boats,

often with the imagery of women or monsters and fantasy. I think when

people decorate their bikes they're within that tradition.

I've always had a bike. I can escape on it. You have the drudgery of work

and home and all the rest of it. The bike is freedom. You get on it and

you're gone. It's a great feeling to ride a decent-looking bicycle that's

different to everybody else's. I guess everybody likes to stand out

in the crowd. People say, "Oh, I really like your bike." That makes

you feel good. What does it mean to have paintings

on your bike? As opposed to a normal bike? Every one of these bikes is

special to the individual for various different reasons. The

stories behind the bike and iconography and imagery means a lot.

In 2010 my wife passed away. I bought the bike shortly afterwards.

I wanted to make sure that she always road with me. I've had her

image painted on the bike. So it's more than just decoration. Far more.

Every time I'm out on that bike, I look down and I see her looking back

at me and I know she's always with me protecting me on the road. In the

biker communities, you'll rarely find any two bikes that are even

similar, even as soon as you get it out of the shop you're changing it

on the way home. We've gone to extremes with art work and bikes

completely built from the ground up. Every biker I know, in some way,

customises his ride, or her ride even. Do you see these bikes as art

works? Where is the art in the bike, for you? Bikes can be like art work.

I would happily go to a gallery and look at bikes. At rallies, we go to

the motorcycle park and look at bikes and steal ideas from each

other and things develop and move on. It's almost a way of life,

really. All human life is here, more or less. Life, death an everything

in between. I think what's important for me is you definitely think about

the context in which it was made, who the people were, why they were

doing it, how they did it, which is a very important part of it. It's

quite a traditional take, but even a traditional take on folk art is

incredible, bizarre and surprising. There's nothing wrong with that.

I think it would be sad if people come to this exhibition and think

that where the exhibition stops, folk art stopped. Because really,

this energy, this creative energy has been going on every day since

the last piece of work was made and will go on forever. It's just about

people making stuff that's interesting, visually interesting.

It's very positive about what it is to be human and make things and to

be alive and to be interested in the world around you and to be creative.