Libby Purves sometimes has some interesting guests on the Midweek slot on Radio Four. It’s not like the television chat shows that are full of Z list celebrities who have nothing to offer other The merely use the media of television to showcase their next piece of junk that is going to earn them a hefty and sometimes undeserved fortune.
Libby and, I assume, her producers, manage to choose a good mixture of people and the minutes of transmission usually glide along with ease as each of the guests carefully link in with one another, sometimes on a tenuous link and other times quite obviously.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a couple of people on the programme who had lost their son to a brutal murder in Surrey.
Christopher Donovan was walking home, singing an Oasis song. He was eighteen years old and was set upon by a gang who attacked him harshly and “took penalty kicks” with his head. Left for dead at the side of a street, he was hit by a passing car and dragged along the road. His parents were contacted and forthwith went to the hospital where they learned that he had severe brain damage. An hour later, he was dead.
Like Jimmy Mizzen’s parents, the Donovan’s are Christians. Vi explained how she felt when her husband, on leaving the hospital that night, said that they must forgive the perpetrators of the murder. She said that she screamed at him in disbelief that he could even utter such preposterous words let alone act on them. But she changed her mind. She explained how she was “hanging onto pain” that “took me to depths of hell.”
It did nothing to ease anything, she said. I was destroying me, she continued.
“Forgiveness has to be a choice”.
Like Jimmy Mizzen’s parents, Ray and Vi Donovan could not rest on doing nothing. They decided that it was all very well saying that they wanted forgiveness but they also needed to physically do something about it. They therefore embarked on a programme of visits to prisons, working with some troubled souls on a project called the Sycamore Tree.
I assume it was due to their involvement in this that they were asked to participate in the judging of the annual Koestler Awards.
http://www.koestlertrust.org.uk/
ART BY OFFENDERS
Curated for the first time by victims of crime Art
by Offenders, Secure Patients and Detainees is the Koestler Trust's 49th annual UK exhibition and the third of a flourishing artistic partnership with the Southbank Centre.
The exhibition is given a powerful new perspective this year through a ground-breaking group curating project. The seven curators are people from the London area whose lives have been changed by serious offences against them or their families. With training from both the Southbank Centre and Turner Prize-winning artist, and Southbank Centre Artist-in-Residence, Jeremy Deller, the volunteers have gained curating skills, selected the exhibits from thousands and designed the look of the exhibition. They have also created contextual texts and will give talks and tours to the public, sharing their experiences of working on this project.
They duly met with five other victims of crime to sort through the 5000 entries and wheedle it down to 150. These winning pieces were then to be exhibited at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
The Koestler Awards has been running for 49 years. According to the brochure picked up at the Festival Hall, it states that,
“Every exhibit has been created by a prisoner, an offender of a community sentence, a patient in a secure psychiatric hospital, an immigration detainee or a UK citizen in custody oversees. The works here are all submitted to the 2010 Koestler Awards – a charitable scheme which has been rewarding artistic achievement across the penal and secure sector for 48 years.
This annual exhibition represents the third year of an artistic collaboration between the Koestler Trust and Southbank Centre. Each year the selection of exhibits from the Koestler Awards entries is made through a unique group curating process. This year for the first time victims of crime have been invited to curate the exhibition which represents the creativity of offenders from the perspective of people deeply affected by crime”.
“Coming to the exhibition is one day out of 365 when I feel proud of my son” comments one parent of an exhibited artist.
Tragic.
So the seven victims of crime met together to sort out which of the 5000 pieces were going to be exhibited. Ray said he wanted none of this weird art stuff and then went on to choose items that were exceptionally contemporary.
He explained his reaction to some of the pieces.
There was one painting of a prisoner’s first night in the cells, an incredible piece of art, where the artist has captured the fear of the newcomer as he walks along the long corridors with faceless or rather eyeless people staring at him as he is marched through. There is an air of intense ugliness and discomfort. You cannot see the face of the newcomer because you become him as he walks along. You become him as you look along the corridor to these anonymous people with blackened out eyes.
Ray said he liked this piece because of the emotions that it conveyed. “There was no future in their eyes; powerful”, he said.
But of course, he believes that there can be “future in their eyes” which is why he has a fundamental belief in the need for creativity as part of a character reformation. He explained how one person in prison was so violent, disruptive, aggressive – all the scariest forms of humanity in one man. Then he was given a paintbrush and some paper and he miraculously transformed overnight. It happens.
Vi reiterates this when she states “I never realised before how important art is to prisoners’ self-esteem and maybe their future”.
And of course the joy for these curators is that they too learn to appreciate art more as well. One of their fellow curators said that having done this curatoring, “Everywhere I look, I see art”.
The other joy for me is that the artistry was not restricted to just paintings. Vi mentioned that there was a piece of writing from one person who had never been able to write prior to the support that he had in prison. In trying to demonstrate what the Koestler Trust opportunity had given him he stated that it had given him dignity, self-worth and he wanted others to know that art could do this, had done this for him.
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It was a pleasant day weather-wise yesterday; not exactly a perfect Autumn day but there seemed to be a glimmer of hope that the sunshine would finally overcome its cover.
I got off the bus at the Old GLC building, now transformed into some conglomerate hotel with no personality and no identity other than the booming sound of the quarter strikes from St. Stephen’s Tower. I assume that once in there you could be anywhere in the world.
For me, it will always be associated with London’s former glory as far as self-management is concerned. The one and only time I have ever entered into the building was when I went for my interview with the glorious and frequently misrepresented and misunderstood ILEA.
Great long corridors of solid oak; a testament to something great that no longer exists. I trust that the Marriott group did not rip these out in hasty modernisation.
The London Eye was full of tourists. No surprise there really and I am not going to complain about it either. Not here anyway because the stationing of this big wheel has breathed a new life into this area that was sadly lacking for many a decade.
It has never ceased to amaze me how few people use the river in the same was as Parisian’s use the Seine. The fact that there is mile upon mile of free walkways across the length of the Southbank seems to have escaped the notice of most Londoners and even now, it is foreign accents and languages that you here. One suspects that there are very few who actually live in London who frequent this place on a regular basis.
On days like this it is important to look, to look properly, sometimes for the first time, sometimes with new eyes, eyes that are not blackened out, eyes that are blackened but need an awakening.
For others, it was probably just a walk but I was armed with camera in the hope of finding something new, something worthwhile that would lead me in different direction.
Cameras are great like that; they are like a walking Wikipedia. You hold them in your hand and you don’t know where they are going to take you. You snap away and when you get the images home, they lead you into places you had no idea that you were going to explore.
Well, they do for me anyway.
Take the “London Pride” statue by Frank Dobson – wiki has a link of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frank_Dobson_London_Pride_Southbank.jpg
Dobson died in 1963 and Gay Pride was borne out of the 1969 Stonewall riots, so I wondered why this piece was called “London Pride”? Was it just a coincidence or was it named in 1987 when it was brought to the Southbank by his widow? Or am I just assuming the use of the word “pride” because the sculpture is of two women, naked on a plinth? Am I assuming their sexuality?
Of course, if you are wiki-searching with a name like Frank Dobson your first port of call appears to be the Labour MP who stood for Mayor of London against Ken Livingstone; not quite what I was looking for but it brought back a few memories!
As I said, it’s always good to go for a wander in your mind and not just rest with looking.
Next along route there were the books.
There is a wonderful shop just near Notre Dame in Paris, called “Shakespeare and Company”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/07/shakespeare-and-company-bookshop-paris
It was set up probably with all the philanthropic reasons in the world but has to some extents been taken over by the world of tourism. Anyhow, when I am in Paris, I still muse away a few minutes wandering around the stalls of books that are placed out on the pathway of that particular area of the Left Bank.
Some bright spark has obviously decided to emulate this on our very own Southbank now that it has finally come to life. There’s a wide collection of books and I looked on with a casual enthusiasm to see if my eyes or my fingers would magically displace the book of my dreams.
It didn’t happen but there is always a hope that it could do so in the future.
The books were somewhat overpriced and will probably fetch the asking price because then you can go home and announce that you bought the book on the riverbank, all boho and beautiful.
There’s a price in everything.
The skateboarders and bikers were out in excessive presence too with their area of particular interest, all tagged with an incredible collection of graffiti to accompany these street-kids as they whizzed their bikes up and down the concrete pathways and slopes. Again, being somewhat cynical, I wondered whether these kids actually did live in the estates around the Southbank or whether they had been shipped in from Surrey and dressed up to look like natives for the tourists.
Poor street-performing statues! Since watching “Gavin and Stacey” when Nessa went and did her silver statue bollocks in the centre of Barry (ironic because Barry has no centre), I will never be able to take them seriously, not that I paid them that much attention beforehand. But I do admire their ability to be still and silent in a world that is sheer madness in front of them.
One couple were dressed in silver sprayed 16th century costume. The man was moving around a little, every now and again. Clearly the codpiece is not something that likes to be in one position all the time, but the woman was totally still with her eyes closed, pretending to be reading a book.
I wonder where she really was.
A Blue Man was playing the Blues. Covered from head to toe in a glaringly bright blue, including his guitar, he strummed away and let people delve into their pockets for the small splashes of coinage with which they were willing to part with.
He nodded his head with acknowledgement and continued to play, lost in his music, looking unconcerned as to whether anyone was actually bothering to listen.
Good for him!
(I lost the photo of the Blue Man whilst trying to download this - don't quite know how to get it back. Need help!)
The Haywood Gallery offered an exhibition from a Canadian artist called Ron Terada
It was named “Who I think I am”.
I looked around and really searched but probably not hard enough because today I didn’t really want to think of who I think I am.
Bit too painful.
Though I still thought about it all day and as I sat in the quietened room with nothing but an image of a record player and three black bean bags, I realised that I couldn’t sit there for much longer.
Another day perhaps.
And so to the main reason why I was here, looking at that art that was mentioned on the Midweek programme a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00v1qlt/Midweek_06_10_2010 14 minutes 54 seconds, if anyone wants to listen.
I am astounded that people are so in awe of such exhibitions. Not astounded that they like the art – some of it is exceptionally good but I am astounded that people are somehow shocked that art can be this transformational presence in the lives of people who are allegedly beyond change.
Just as forgiveness is choice, said Ray and Vi Donovan, then so too is making that choice to change. It is nobody else’s hands. I know.
So why are people so shocked by the incredible power of the creative?
Why are people surprised that by producing something of value, even if it is only to the person who is actually doing the painting or writing the story, can be so uplifting?
Remember what that person said about being able to write? It gave them self-worth.
I haven’t been locked in a literal prison at any point in my life but I have shut the door and encased myself in a self-imposed cell on various occasions. For years, I have been there without writing. Now, I can open up the door occasionally and get some value and some self-worth in what I produce.
I deliberately searched for this writing, and am now kicking myself for not buying the book. I shall return this week and buy it.
The man was dyslexic; properly dyslexic not the version when a middle class child hasn’t learned to read by the time they are two and a half.
He described the affliction brilliantly; how he could see all the forms of the letters and how the pictures sometimes helped to give meaning but as soon as he put the letters together into what you and I would see as a full word, they just jumped around the page, drifting below the line of writing, or twisting themselves in a direction that gave them no meaning.
He was twenty nine before he learned to read and write. Now he has a voice for the first time in his life.
What an incredible difference the world outside is going to be once the opportunity arises for him to take advantage of this new self-worth of his. Let’s hope there is a welfare system to support him by the time he leaves prison.
People wrote lovely notes on post-it notes, using words and phrases like “thank you” “art brings hope” “oasis” “grateful” “inspiring” “beautiful” “fantastic” “truly incredible”.
One comment said that it was an “emotional experience seeing all this – art rarely does this for me!”
Another said “proof that art can heal”.
Another said “I went to see 10 million sunflower seeds but this was way more inspiring”.
Hope and inspiration featured strongly.
I am not belittling these comments and I take nothing away from the feeling and the spiritual intelligence that these voyeurs were experiencing. I think it is fantastic that people should be touched in this way. I am just a little saddened that they are still shocked by it, that they still feel it is an incredible surprise that finding your own form of creativity can do so much for a person.
If only more people could see this more quickly.
This exhibition and the art within it is part of a reform programme. Art, in whatever form, has been brought to these offenders of those in captivity, to heal, to make them feel better about themselves, to be used as some form of repatriation into the world of the feeling and the concerned.
If people can see its benefits as part of a restorative programme, why can they not see the value in its preventative prospects – working on creativity in our schools before these people become the downcast and the forgotten?
Just makes you think really.
As for the art, well, there were one or two interesting pieces. There were some brilliant pieces. There were some that astounded me, some that I was indifferent to, some that I would like to have explored further.
Art is such an individual thing. It opens all sorts of avenues of thought and feeling, some that you do not want to travel into, others that you want to be amongst forever.
The fact that this exhibition just happened to be by prisoners shouldn’t really vary in that respect. I cannot like all of the pieces in the exhibition just because I feel pleased that the artist has found his or her voice. I don’t expect my readers (?) to like everything that I write. There are times when it doesn’t work, for them, even if it works for me.
I was moved to tears sometimes, but that is also about what art does to generate your current state of being.
.......................................................What now?
Coming out of the exhibition I sat alone for a while in the vast space that is the Festival Hall.
Looking at people. Watching their lives for a short while, not meaning to intrude but just looking and sharing even if they didn’t know I was there.
I wandered across Hungerford Bridge and back on the safe territory of the Northern Bank.
I wonder why they don’t refer to the North side of the river as the North bank. Perhaps it is because the Embankment has its own name and its own importance – and of course, it is North of the River; a different experience altogether.
Back to the tourists. Whilst on the Southside, I embraced them, on the north, I loathed them.
I’ve decided that I don’t like crowds. They scare me. Well they did yesterday.
I was frightened by the masses, all chuntering away, getting in front of, behind and on my feet. Leicester Square seems to have lost its soul, if indeed it had one in the first instance.
The place is a zoo; a rowdy, tawdry zone where huge fairground attractions have sprung up demolishing any sense of the “Square” in which they have been allowed to plonk themselves. It is utterly disgusting and that is before you get to the boisterous revoltingness of the people within, let alone the excruciating experience of listening to "Careless Whisper" being murdered by a saxophonist. I mean, how can you murder an already fatally wounded song?
I’d gone there because I thought I might lose myself in the cinema. I’ve never been to the cinema at Leicester Square and thought perhaps I ought but the prices and the timings of the films put me off, let alone the content.
There were two films that I thought I would like to see but neither was available for me, so I turned instead to alcohol.
I found a bar and just sat enjoying a cocktail or two in the middle of Covent Garden, another place never to be visited other than off season and not on a weekend.
From there, I walked to Trafalgar Square, delightfully free of the flying rats, and walked down the Mall towards Victoria station where I met up with my son.
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I didn’t know when I got up that I would be walking in town today, and in some ways that is a pleasant experience.
I did the same this morning. I started my day in the same way. I went to the park and sat in the car.
And I waited for something to come my way.
It didn’t but that is okay. It will.
I didn’t know when I listened to the radio a couple of weeks ago, that I would find myself at the exhibition that I had heard about there. I didn’t know I would be searching Wikipedia in directions that I could not have imagined.
I wonder where Nick Clegg will take me as I explore his Desert Island Discs with him right now.
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