Art Came in the Night
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kevin Harman is an Edinburgh artist best known for creating 'situations', such as borrowing all his neighbours’ doormats to create an installation, smashing the window of an art gallery and transforming rubbish in skips into sculptures. In this programme he explores what happens when public art and people clash and gets a sense of what it's like when 'art comes in the night'. Whilst working on his own installation in Govan, he ponders what success and failure really mean in the sometimes controversial world of public art. Some public art is loved, some even defended from packs of roving art dealers, some is brushed off with indifference, or grumbling about wasted tax money. But when art comes out of the galleries and is splashed on the wall of someone's house or stuck outside on a shared stretch of grass the community can't help but be changed by its presence, and the art is at the mercy of those surrounding it. Kevin meets architect Lee Ivett who, in 2017, embarked on a new project in Govan, a huge sculptural installation constructed from ropes taken from the former shipyards. Within 48 hours it had been burned to ashes by local teens. Although always intended as a temporary installation, community anger at large pots of money being given to artists erupted, stoked by articles in the press. But was this destruction simply vandalism or a sign that some important local needs weren't being met? Artist Nicola Atkinson has created public art all over the world, including recently in Dunfermline. She talks to Kevin about different ways she's found to engage with communities and cautions against the scandalisation of public art which can disempower artists and undermine the idea that art should be for everybody.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hi there, you're listening to Seriously from BBC Radio 4, and I'm your host Vanessa |
| 0:46.0 | Kiseulae. |
| 0:47.0 | Each week this podcast brings you two of the best documentaries that audio world has to offer. Next up, something captivating in documentaries the The sound of the last ever kawai Oowburb singing a meeting called to a female that will never come. |
| 1:11.0 | Poignant and thought-provoking, and maybe not something you'd expect to stumble across in a car park outside |
| 1:17.8 | an industrial warehouse in Glasgow's Govan. |
| 1:21.3 | It's the audio element of an artwork, Love Song, by Jonathan Fremantle, which is part of an installation we're working on, an arch trail that we're calling the safari of sorts. |
| 1:31.0 | I'm Kevin Harmon and for me public art is all about |
| 1:35.2 | creating those moments of surprise those inspiring stories. It's also about |
| 1:41.6 | taking risks because when you move outside the studio you never quite know what's going to happen. |
| 1:47.0 | In this program I'll be speaking to other artists who've stuck their heads above the parapet and exploring what success and failure really means in the sometimes controversial world of public art. |
| 1:59.0 | My route to this warehouse in Govan started with an ad placed by this man. |
| 2:07.0 | Ross David Gilbrith and I'm the operations manager for Glasgow Cairing City Charity. |
... |
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