Kate Macfarlane transcript
SH: Hello. My name is Susannah Herbert and I'm interviewing in the cinema of Riverside Studios on the 22nd of November 2024. My interviewee is going to introduce herself and talk about her relationship to Riverside Studios.
KM: So, I'm Kate Macfarlane, and I worked at Riverside Studios from about 1983 until 1990 in a number of different capacities, which I guess we'll cover during the course of the conversation.
So, I left university with a degree in art history and education. And I'd been working in some schools, and I decided I wanted to work in a gallery/museum context. And basically, I walked the streets of London with my CV with no previous work experience, you know, applicable work experience, and went to the commercial galleries, went to all the galleries at the time with my CV and I'd been doing this for a while before I came here. And Greg Hilty came downstairs and took my CV and talked to me, which was the first time somebody had done that pretty much. And we just got chatting, and he just, at that time, all of the invigilation in the gallery was done by volunteers, so obviously the first thing was, well, come and volunteer, you know, be an invigilator in the gallery. Which, of course, I was really, really happy to do. And I think the exhibition happening at the time was This Pagan Echoes exhibition which was happening at that time.
And so, I just started. I had a few shifts a week. Obviously, it was voluntary, so at that time I was supporting myself in a number of ways; working in a sandwich bar, I worked for Amnesty International in their packing department, I worked for Tate bookshop, all sorts of different jobs, part-time jobs so that I could support my voluntary work. And I also volunteered at the Whitechapel Gallery with Jenni Lomax, who was running the learning education programme. So, I worked with her, and I guess that’s really where, obviously having done art history and education, I sort of saw that there was a kind of an opportunity to bring some of those ideas to Riverside Studios.
At that time, the gallery boss didn't have a particular relationship with local schools and community groups. So, after I'd been here for a short while, Milena [Kalinowska] just said, you know, why don't you just contact some local schools and community groups and see if you can get groups coming to the exhibitions?
And I did that, and I remember talking about the Constructivism in Poland exhibition. I felt, even though I didn't know about constructivism in Poland that well, I'd studied constructivism at university, so I felt quite confident to talk about it. And I just rang schools and just said, “Come along and, you know, come and see the exhibition, I can give you a talk.Sometimes the artist gave a talk about the show, and I was, as I say, working at Whitechapel, so obviously Jenni was, her programme at Whitechapel was really pioneering, so I was obviously learning a lot from that as well.
And it was all done voluntarily. And then I was invited to run some workshops, and I had just invited the artist we were kind of working with at the time. I mean, you know, people like Peter Doig did workshops for me. He was in an exhibition in 1985, he did workshops. Antony, I ran a residency programme at local schools, Antony Gormley was one of the artists I took along to the school. He wasn't actually selected by the school, but he was one of the artists I offered - [like] Tony Bevan and Glenys Johnson. It was just, you know, my father's an artist, and he taught down in Somerset, which is where I was brought up, Somerset College of Arts and Technology is where my father taught and he'd invited people like John Hilliard and Rose Finn-Kelcey and Ian Breakwell to lecture, to be sort of visiting lecturers.
And I guess I felt confidence around artists/ I didn't feel nervous about asking artists to do things, I just did it, you know? And when you're young, you don't even think about it. You just do it [laughs]. But it was also the spirit of the place. I mean, obviously, it was just, both Greg and Milena were just very open and very encouraging and just up for anything really. It was a very experimental time.
So yeah, I was sort of sparked off, you know? The general kind of atmosphere that was in the building at the time, everything that was happening in the theatre, it was, you know... because you'd see Samuel Beckett or you'd see Dario Fo [laughs]. Everything was just incredible for me. I mean, I’d just left university. It was just astounding, and then Michael Clark was hanging out because he was dancer in residence here.And, with Ellen [Van Schuylenburch, dancer/choreographer] they'd just be, you know, in the foyer and, using the different spaces for rehearsals. And then Gaby Agis, the other dancer, was here because Dance Umbrella’s offices were here. So, all that dance was incredible, and it was just a sort of absolutely electric atmosphere and so just sort of burgeoning. And everybody was just talking to each other and there was so much sharing of ideas and everything. So, it was just, you know, you just felt like you could do anything really.
And, obviously, with very little means, I was still, I eventually did get paid to run the workshops and then I went to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and they funded me, funded my salary. So, I actually got my own salary from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. And then I got funding from the Sir John Cass’s Foundation and things like that to run the different programmes around learning and everything.
Yeah.So, do you have another question?
[6.42] Yes. I wanted you to tell me what it was like to walk into this place for the first time and subsequent times.
Well, when I walked in... I'd never been to Riverside before when I turned up with my CV, because I'd come from Cambridge, so I'd never been. I didn't know London very well. I’d only moved to London a few months before, so although I was born in London, I'd been brought up in other parts of the country. So yeah, I didn't know it. So, I didn't know the programme at all. It was just on the list. Time Out was my guide at that time. So yeah, I just thought Ok, Riverside Studios, that looks interesting, I'll go along there. And so, I was just, like, thrown in. And immediately, I could see what there was with the two theatres going on. It was before the cinema - and the gallery.
And I just immediately... just the fact that I was given this opportunity... Because everywhere else I'd been, it was like a kind of barrier, and it was really unfriendly. And it felt like, you know, she doesn't obviously know anything. Which I didn't really! I didn't know that much about contemporary art at the time, and, you know, I was a bit of a punk. So, I was dressed in my secondhand clothing, quite extreme appearance maybe.So yeah, I didn't get the [same] reception from them.
But Milena and Greg just thought yeah, great, this is somebody who could maybe bring something. Because I guess my background was a combination of education and art history. I suppose they thought I could probably add something. Yeah, it was just very experimental and warm and friendly.
[8.38]The physical impression it made on you... You must have been struck by how the area looked or what you found inside?
Yeah. Obviously, most of the other venues I'd been to were more in the centre of town.So, I was trekking through on the walk here and thinking this is interesting. There was a kind of scruffiness about it. But it's just... I guess I felt at home, because it just felt really genuine. And it wasn't trying to be something it wasn't. I mean, it had occupied the disused building. So, the use of the gallery and the different spaces just kind of developed organically really with obviously minimal means. Obviously, when I first came, there was still GLC funding, so there was some support. It was already in financial difficulties, but it just felt very authentic for me. I immediately recognised this as somewhere I felt really comfortable, and it felt really authentic where you could just be yourself. You could pursue things that you were interested in and see how they related to others. But also, I mean, immediately you walked in, it was this parochial local venue, but with this incredible international programme. And that was that combination again.It was incredibly rare in London at that time.
[10.11] So when you came in, you saw paintings or sculpture or...?
Yes, it was the painting exhibition, the Pagan Echoes exhibition that I think Waldemar Januszczak curated. And I was just open to looking at anything at that time.
I mean we always had exhibitions. And there was always something in the foyer, which was incredible - given the vulnerability of the work. Now, in my other capacity, I don't know why we did it or how we did it, but we did it. And it was incredible that we could do that.
And then we had that lovely kind of informal restaurant. Cafe, not restaurant. And when I first arrived, it was sort of quite, as I remember, the food was quite basic. But again, quite authentic. It was like it was cooked there and it was real food, you know? Of course, it lost money. It didn't work from a commercial point of view. There were many different changes when I was here with the catering. It was always an issue, but it was, again, it was just something that made it really, really special. Just to have somewhere that people could hang out and have something to eat, whether it be a coffee or a stew or something.
And then there was the art. And we even used a tiny little space at the end, a little alcove. So, we used every space we could for visual art. But yeah, there was a little alcove at the end. There was always a little display in [there]. And then there was the foyer and there was the gallery.
So, I just gradually, I just learned more as I came back - did my invigilating. Invigilating, I was a bit stuck in the gallery. But then I got to go to all the shows for nothing, which was amazing.
Well, you've covered quite a lot of this, but I wanted to know a little bit more about what is distinctive about Riverside Studios. If you could dig a little bit deeper into that. You've mentioned some reasons; art without barriers and authenticity. But is there something else that made it stand out?
I think it was the international programme, that was, for me, a revelation and a surprise - especially for a gallery. You know, for the modesty of the setting and budget that we... the programme, I mean, in the theatre and in the gallery was just, right from the start, it was incredibly international. And obviously that that was partly because of Milena, who is Czech and bringing the Eastern European artists into the programme.
But, while I was here, there were celebrations of Asian theatre. You know, Indian music. So, crossing into music as well and very political as well. You know, we did things like The Biko Inquest, which was staged here for the first time. And I think it was filmed here for Channel 4. And I mean, that was absolutely, as you know, that made such a huge impression on me and it had only literally been written from the transcripts that weren't even available, they'd been smuggled, I think, by the journalists. I can't remember the name of the guy who wrote it, I should do. But anyway, those sorts of things were just... I mean, it was bringing all of these world politics to Hammersmith basically.
And then Kathy Acker coming from New York and Blood and Guts in High School and Samuel Beckett would be lurking around and Billy Whitelaw performing... So, it was just incredibly, incredibly international and with a political dimension. I would say a very political dimension.
[14.28] And speaking of your own development, what did Riverside offer to you that maybe set you on a new path? What impact?
Oh, incredible really. Absolutely. I mean, I suppose a lot of it being just thinking that if you have an idea and you want to do something, you can do it. But also just having conversations with artists. Just meeting with the artists, going to their studio, having conversations with them. Just being open rather than just sort of thinking about it for too long or studying it for too long. To start those conversations off. And just bringing different disciplines. I mean, we did this great thing with Gaby Agis and Kate Black, the sculptor and dancer in the gallery.
Obviously, because it's an arts centre, we always had this cross disciplinarity. And then later on with cinema as well. But yeah, bringing in the different theatre and the dance and the music... So, I guess it’s really been an incredible foundation for me. But also just, you know, Milena was so ambitious. I mean, she was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1984 or 85. And Joan Bakewell interviewed us both. So, I spoke about the learning programme then as well, because that was considered to be an important part of who we were, our identity. So I guess yeah, just being encouraged and endorsed in what I thought was important was also kind of very significant and just believe in what you think is right to do.
[16.28]And can you tell me more about the learning programme? I noticed you didn't call it education.
Yeah, I think we did call it education. In fact, I think I was probably called the Education Officer. So that's a very different way of, you know, phrasing things.
Tell me more about what you developed in the field of learning and education. You talk about opportunities you had but are there certain moments, programmes or set up situations that stand out? I'm talking specifically around education.
Well, I mean, I can’t remember if it was 1984 or 1985 I did the first sort of summer workshops. Essentially, I just invited artists who were in the programme. So as I mentioned, Peter Doig was in an exhibition that we, Greg and I curated called Things as They Are and yeah, I asked him to do workshops and they were for different age groups and they took place in, I mean, we just did them in whatever space was available. So, we did them in the studio if there was a studio available. Bruce McLean was artist in residence for a while and so sometimes we did it in his studio, but it was expansive, it was like, the children weren't coming along and just making a little drawing on a piece of sugar paper, they would just get to use the materials that the artists themselves would use.
So, I think it was a real revelation and I basically just made contact with all the local, I mean, then it was really analogue, you had to do everything by picking up the phone, there was no email, there was no mobile phones. You picked up the phone, you tried to get through to a member of staff. You walked to the school, you met with them, you sort of brought them along physically, you know, brought the group with you and it was sort of done by word of mouth and I think they were either free or really, really cheap anyway for people to attend and we just had some sort of basic information about what would be involved.
So I think it was a bit different. I mean, I think Whitechapel were doing similar things. I guess I thought, well, I can do this here as well and I felt like we did make a real impact on some of those students. I mean, I guess the one that is the example that one can use is with Steve McQueen actually participating in the workshop with Tim Rollins and the Kids ofSurvival. So that was a project that I really led on. And I went to the to the Bronx and met Tim Rollins and met the Kids of Survival who took part in his after-school art and knowledge workshops. And all of his teaching was about literature, like Kafka's America and The Trial and other key works of literature –- the Scarlet Letter - but also on art history. So he was kind of teaching them but they were also making the work on the pages of the book that they were reading and all of the young people were, they all had a hand in these artworks, which were, I mean, they've been acquired by Museum of Modern Art and major collections.
We just thought there was nothing like this, there was no artist really working in that way in the UK at that time. I guess if there had been, we would have gone to them because obviously it was more complicated and expensive to work with him in the US. But he was just incredibly open and we managed to get funding for Tim to come over.
Well, we worked with the Orchard Gallery in Dublin, we work with Icon Gallery, I think, in Birmingham. So, we were really good at partnering as well. We had loads of institutional partners for the projects we did so we could pool resources. So, we managed to get Tim and two of the Kids of Survival over and then I recruited children, young people, teenagers to work and to actually make a piece of work at Riverside, on the sheets of America. So basically, Tim and the two members of the Kids of Survival worked with the young people to make this work and it was the first thing in the gallery, it was the first work shown. So, people walked in and there was this new work made by the Kids of Survival in collaboration with local young people. And one of those local young people was Steve McQueen, who was 15 at the time, the filmmaker Steve McQueen.
He's talked about the incredible impact that had on him, being involved in that.So, yeah, as I mentioned before, I did the residencies in schools and that meant an artist was in a school and for, you know, quite a few months actually and they had a studio in the school. And that was actually really, really important as well because, over time, young people, children would see..., it was secondary schools I did it, at secondary schools at five or six different secondary schools so they really got to see, you know, an artist and how work developed over time and how an artist kind of goes about making their work and things.
[22.23] Which artists had studios in which schools and for how long?
So, there was Houria Niati, was at London Oratory maybe, something like that, there was Robert Mabb did an artist in residence at Henry Compton I think, this is really testing my brain. Glenys Johnson did one, I can't remember which school it was. Those are the ones I remember. Maybe Tony Bevan, yeah, those sorts of artists.
And would you just leave them there?
Yeah.I would take, I pulled together a group of artists who were interested in doing it and, as I said, one of them was Antony Gormley. Only recently, I met one of the teachers I’d worked with and he reminded me about that because I'd actually forgotten that Antony was one of the artists. So, I walked with them to the school. I think it was usually maybe four artists or something and then the school and some of the children would, you know, each artist would give a presentation about their work and then it was up to the school to decide which artist they wanted and some of the pupils as well, so that's how it happened because obviously, I'd selected four artists, and I thought that would be great to do.
And would that be for two weeks?
Oh no, longer, more like, a couple of months. So, they weren't there every single day, but they would sort of be spending significant, I can't remember what the exact agreement was, but there would have been a minimum amount of time that they would go and be in the school and using one of the classrooms as a studio.
And they would, there was always an exhibition at the end of the work that the children had made. They sort of ran sessions with the children as part of it and then there would be an exhibition at the school of the work that the children had made with the artists.
So, and did anything arise in terms of challenges in those things? Did you have calls in the middle of the day saying ...?
No [laughs]. Not that I remember, maybe I blotted out all the bad things.
[24.50] It sounds almost inconceivable to do something so simple but also potentially hemmed in with regulation these days.
I have done some of the things where I am now, but anyway...
But at the time, this was very new. You have mentioned Milena, but you haven't given us her full name or what influence she had on you. Can you talk about your most memorable colleagues here, obviously Milena and Greg.
Milena and Greg. Yeah, just I mean, we had a lot of fun. I mean, Milena was so excitable and enthusiastic about everything and just anything was possible, and she would just go for it, you know. But she also really, she travelled a lot, she was always on the telephone, always talking to people all the time. I mean, you know, you didn't email, you just picked up the phone and she was just on the phone and she travelled a lot. She travelled internationally, so obviously her horizons were incredibly broad and Greg, you know, was much more steadying, kind of keeping everything going really.But he also travelled. I mean, we travelled where we could. I went to Cuba, to Havana to curate a show around Cuban art.
And so we found ways, you know, we got grants to travel and things. So, they were just, I just learned so much from them, I mean, I would dream, honestly, I'd have so many dreams about Milena. She had so much influence on me, just in her approach really and just incredibly charismatic. And Greg and I just worked in a.... because Milena left in 1986, I think and that's when Greg took over her position and I took over Greg's position, and we worked together for quite a long time, we worked really well together.
We co-curated a lot of exhibitions. He was really, really a great person to work with and I still see, I know Greg professionally, whereas I've lost contact with Milena, so I've just maintained a professional relationship with Greg, which has been really important all the way through.
[27.24] So what did your job become?
So then, after Greg left, I became Exhibitions Organiser. So, I guess Milena was Exhibitions Director and I was Exhibitions Organiser.
So, you stopped doing education?
Yeah, so what happened with that? I carried on, I mean, I maintained it as much as I could is my memory, yeah, I carried on doing both really because there was nobody else to do the learning work so we carried on the relationship with schools but it probably did tail off a little bit because I just didn't have the energy. But the thing is, by then I had established relationships with schools and what happens is if you have a really good relationship with the teacher, they just keep bringing the..., you know, it's sort of self-fulfilling, it just goes on.So, I kept the ones, the relationships I'd established. I maintained and children still came to the gallery, and we still did the residencies and we still did the workshops and things like that. We always had a workshop programme. So yeah, it did, it did continue but I didn't have as much time to develop, forge new relationships I would say.
[28:52] Well, I'm very interested in the way in which your work connected the studio studios with the local community. Did you feel that you were the only person doing that or the key person doing that for the whole studios?
Well, I think I have to say yeah and you asked about other people who were here. So David Gothard was obviously Artistic Director overall, Artistic Director, I think that was his title. He was quite antagonistic to me and my [laughs], even though I have a very good relationship with him now. I think he probably thought I was being I was a bit, you know, maybe worthy or something, but there was always a lot of competition between the gallery and the theatre. It was basically because of insufficient funds. So wherever there's insufficient funds, you have fallings out and fighting [laughs].
So, yes, though I think there definitely were some initiatives with the theatre, but I don't think so much at that stage. And yeah, I didn't really work in, there was nobody for me to work in tandem with.I mean, it was basically David and Julia, his assistant, Julia Carruthers, were sort of working on the theatre side of things. And then there was, I mean, from my memory, it was just them. And then there was Renee doing sort of comms, PR stuff and there was not really anybody else to do that work to make those connections, I don't think.
[30:49] And did you find that there was any resistance from the local community towards what was happening at Riverside?
I didn't encounter it. I just found people were keen to come along, I didn't encounter any antagonism or difficulties.
Because the council later, I think, did say, you know, this is very elite work, but presumably that was not applying to what you were doing?
Yeah I mean, it's always the way that, if you if you explain something to somebody, invite them and are warm and, you know, interested in them and then they like what you do with them, I mean, in my experience, if a group is invited in and given a talk and you'd spend time with them, then they get something out of it.You know, there's not gonna be antagonism, so yeah, I didn't really, I didn't experience that sort of antagonism.
So, the people who came in, they were mainly young people. But did their parents come and families?
Yeah, when we did the, I remember doing the workshops we did, I think it was in summer 85 or something. Bruce McLean and Silvia Ziranek and Ron Haselden or a few other people, the work that they made during the workshops was displayed in the foyer as, like, one of the exhibitions and I remember the parents coming to that and similarly, the young people involved in the Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival, they all came to the opening but I guess probably, and obviously the parents bought their children when they were younger because we did do them for younger age groups as well but not younger than seven I don't think, but yeah. So, the parents would come so there was some involvement with the families.
Could you estimate how many children or, if you like, outsiders, people who were reached through the learning programme?
It's hard to estimate because I mean that Henry Compton school was a big secondary school and I mean the arts teacher there, Martin Kennedy, was an absolutely brilliant teacher and really engaged people in art. So, anybody who, I mean, I worked with him over about maybe four years or something. So, all of his children, all of his pupils, you know, I don't know how many, I don't know how to put numbers on it really.
But I think with the workshops, I guess, there were probably not more than 15 participants or something per workshop and it would be different ones on different days, but I think the residencies in the schools probably would have affected quite a lot of pupils.
Can you describe for the uninitiated what happens in a workshop?
Well, essentially, I mean with Bruce McLean he, you know, his work is very big and gestural and, hovering between figuration and abstraction. I guess he just encouraged people, he just laid out massive sheets of paper and, you know, the young people got the opportunity to use his big, you know, he worked with big brushes and pots of paint and so I guess there was a sort of freedom in, and I remember him like, a lot of the people would say this will be, you know, they’d plan out their workshops. This is what the workshop is gonna be and it'd be really specific and Bruce said they'll just come along and do something they've never done before or it'll be different or something like that, so it wasn't clear what they were going to do but, yeah, it was about learning, it was, you know, they would learn what materials artists would use and you know how they would approach image making or, you know, I think the Liz Rideal did something around Polaroids and I think it was a piece with everybody photographing their hands. So she was bringing in, you know, her cameras and so the young people would get a chance to use the same kind of equipment and materials that the artists themselves used and understood their, you know, approaches, their techniques, their methodologies so, yeah, a lot of it was quite conceptual work but it was made accessible because obviously, you were sort of sharing how it was done and kind of the ideas behind it and that it was participatory and that you could use, you know, the everyday as your material and it wasn't some, you know, art wasn't some kind of grandiose thing that, so that young people could relate to, it enabled them to relate to contemporary art because they could see where the ideas were coming from. It was informed by everyday life and not by something....
You've been very scrupulous in saying this was done elsewhere as well, in Whitechapel. But can you say that some of the things that you did here - could you see it? Can you imagine the effect? Could you see an effect on the people who participated?
In what sense?
Do you think some of the ideas that you exposed people to, participants to, had their own impact further down the line, it's a difficult thing to know.
Yes, I mean, exactly, which is why I suppose I gave you the example of Steve McQueen because he's the one, because you can't track these young people through their lives, if you could, it would be really, it would be great to know more about the exact influence or how important it was to all of these young people.
But, I think, yeah, I mean, hopefully it did have some impact on their lives and I mean, it wasn't necessarily about saying, oh, you should become an artist.It's basically just, you know, you can do this if you want to and it's just about exploring your own individuality, but also how you can, because most of it was done, a lot of it was about working collaboratively. So it's also about how you can make a contribution to society and how you work together. So it's yeah, it's sort of life examples, isn't it? It's things that you apply to your life going forward, whatever route or path it might take.
[38:14) Was that happening elsewhere in London, apart from here and at Whitechapel?
Serpentine Gallery. So, Vivian Ashley at the Serpentine Gallery, I worked with a lot and still have good connection with her. Yeah I think at that time, you know, the National Gallery and all of those would do this sort of, you know, there were loads of schoolchildren coming in, but I guess it was working with living, breathing artists basically, you know and obviously they had to be London based because it had to be affordable and practical. So yeah, that was I suppose really the main thing about it.
Well, you say that but you mentioned the man you brought from the Bronx. Can you tell me more about the Kids from Survival Project?
Because, yeah, I mean Tim Rollins, who very sadly passed away a few years ago was a truly remarkable man. I mean, he was an artist and he just really, really believed in art as a way to empower people, you know, to give them knowledge. I mean, he did call them the Art and Knowledge Workshops. So he was teaching them about literature, he was teaching them about art and so he set upthe studio in the Bronx and anybody was invited to come in, you didn't have to pay or anything and it was disciplined, he was quite disciplined. But they could say what they felt and they could be themselves and they could bring themselves to what he was introducing them to. So it was a real combination of him learning from them and their lives and experience and him, you know, teaching them about things that he thought would empower them, but also creating these pieces collaboratively was also really, really important. So their individuality was really valued, but also their contribution to these communal artworks was, you know, very crucial.
[40:37]So would you say that that has that vision still lives on, either in the work that you are currently doing or elsewhere in Hammersmith?
To be frank, I don't really know about Hammersmith to be really honest because I live in northwest London and I work in southeast London and I actually don't come this way very often at all. I get to the Serpentine Gallery, I don't even go there as often as I should. But I mean, obviously I've applied it in what I do now at Drawing Room, which I set up, established Drawing Room with two other curators. We started talking about the idea in 2000. So with Katharine Stout and Mary Doyle and we just grew this idea of providing a platform for international contemporary drawing, which would have, always have a kind of learning dimension to it and then we opened up a space.Originally it was just going to be a curatorial project because I'd had, here there was always that problem with funding and the complexity of just keeping a space going, I was a bit nervous about getting into that game. So it started off as a curatorial project, just curating exhibitions that went to different venues throughout the UK and then we became part of a studio organisation called Tannery Arts and we were offered the opportunities to use the studio as a gallery and that was in 2002. It was Rachel Whiteread's old studio and we, again, I was working voluntarily [laughs].We got, you know, it's applying for grants, so it's from scratch with no backing or anything and now, finally, 24 years later, we've got our permanent building and we've got a community studio, a library and the gallery and we're still part of the studio provider, Tannery Arts, which actually has a 90 studios in different buildings across London and just 14 in the building that I'm in. And Sonia Boyce is one of our studio artists, Sonia Boyce was in our programme at Riverside in 1985 I think and I am still working with some of the same artists so, you know, Richard Deacon curated a show for us but I was here when Richard Deacon had a solo show here. I've invited him to curate a show for me, for us, called Abstract Drawing, he chose to be it to be around abstract drawing so a lot of the contacts that I made here I've maintained and I've worked with some of the artists going forward as well.
So there's continuity.
Yeah, there's definite continuity.
[43:46]I'd like to ask you a little bit more about the pushback against community work that you encountered within the building.You mentioned that David Gothard wasn't immediately keen on it and yet you have a good relationship with him. How did you overcome the pushback?
I think I just got on with it, I mean, it wasn't really, it wasn't very... I mean, in a sense, we had a lot of freedom, you know, there was independence to do what we wanted in the gallery. So, I mean, that was another thing. It was kind of, it felt very free and that you could just try out different things and it didn't have to be approved by a board because it was all, it was so hand to mouth, you know, there was so little money going around and we all just had to raise money all the time to do anything. So I think it was like, you know, whatever you want to do and just get on with it sort of thing.
If you can raise the money, you can do it.
Yes, exactly.
So, what differences did you see during the time you were involved? You were here for about seven years. You arrived very green. You left more or less running the contemporary arts.
Yeah, the last little while. I mean, I did see a lot of changes so obviously, David, you know, there was the whole thing about the money, GLC being disbanded, the money, losing the funding, always scrambling around for money, a lot of competition for that. The gallery was always the first thing to be cut. Always also threats for the building, to re figure the building so that the entrance could come through the gallery, which, of course, happened eventually. So we were always fighting our corner a little bit and that just became, that just increased and all the time I was here, it was just the pressure to actually maintain the gallery in the programme and its integrity, just increased year-on-year-on-year.
So obviously John Baraldi came in after David Gothard and that was quite a troubled, difficult period. And then Jonathan Lamede was here as well after that. But one of the really good new developments was the cinema so that happened when I was here as well. Ed Lewis ran that. He ran a great film programme so that was a really good new initiative but I think it just lost a bit of its edge, the theatre lost a little bit of its edge maybe towards the end but there was some really good, was it Vi Robertson[GU1] who came in, have I got her name right - was one of the new theatre theatre directors who had some really good initiatives. It did feel as if there was a sort of certain loss of something towards the end but I think the gallery, I think we maintained and as I was leaving, I mean, Zoe [Shearman], who took over from me, was amazing and she initiated the Louise Bourgeois exhibition, which was phenomenal and the Yoko Ono one. So you know, I did have meetings with Yoko Ono before I left and travelled in her limo, which was very special. But I did notice on the highlights of Riverside when I was looking at the website that the only exhibition mentioned is the Yoko Ono one, which I thought was interesting. And I thought that was a bit strange, because, I mean, obviously she's a celebrity but, you know, I just think there have been some other very significant exhibitions that have happened and I just think it's strange to just pick out on that is because they're a celebrity.
Because I think there were some, obviously, during Milena's time and subsequently there've been very significant exhibitions.
[48.20] Which would you name?
Well, I would say, the Louise Bourgeois that Zoe curated was obviously very important.I would say that Tim Rollins Kids from Survival was very important.
And, you know, the Contemporary Art from Havana exhibition I curated, I think was interesting and important at the time. It was reviewed in the Guardian by Tim Hilton and then in I mean, in Milena's time, you know her ambition in terms of like transhistoric shows like the Constructivism in Poland and like the Miro exhibition she did, but then there was all the ones like working with Judith Barry, the Antidotes to Madness exhibition that Maureen Paley curated, which included Nam June Paikand Ree Morton and then there was the Bill Viola exhibition, which was really significant.
And artists from Eastern Europe, like Magdalena Jetelova was really a crucial exhibition. We did an amazing exhibition of Nancy Spero, the American artist, in the foyer and of Ida Applebroog, another American artist. And then Stephen Campbell's exhibition, Scottish painter Stephen Campbell, who sadly died prematurely.
I'm sure there are, those are the kind of ones that I, oh, Mary Kelly as well, Mary Kelly was key and the one that was also really important for me was Ilya Kabakov's exhibition The 10 Characters which happened in 1989 I think and I worked with Ilya Kabakov on that and that was really, significantly important to me.
Helen Chadwick as well was another really important one. Peter Doig was in our group show, as I mentioned before, so yeah, there was some incredible, you know, obviously and all the sculptors, Veronica Ryan, Antony Gormley, Richard Wentworth, Richard Deacon.
[50.42] Given there was no money, why did they come?
Oh, well, because I think of the approach, you know, Milena, I think just asked people and they just, they liked the whole set up of Riverside Studios. I mean, the gallery was very special, even though it was a sort of raw, kind of, almost like a factory space, you know, a raw space, industrial space, it was actually really nice to have those little alcoves in it.It was great for sculpture actually, really good for sculpture and so people came because it was different. There wasn't really, I mean, Chisenhale Gallery was sort of running a similar programme at the time and then there was South London Gallery, which obviously is in a kind of purpose built space but it was quite unusual at the time as a venue and the fact that it, I mean, also artists did like the fact that there were all these interesting things happening in the theatre as well. So they liked the kind of setting and the context I think.
Did that help get people like Yoko Ono?
Probably. Yes, yeah, probably.
And Louise Bourgeois?
Yeah, I mean, I think Louise Bourgeois maybe wouldn't.... because she was obviously in New York, so she wouldn't have known but didn't really know so much about the Studios but I think that was a case of my colleague Zoe Shearman literally just kind of rang her up and asked her to do it. She showed new work, I mean, and that's before she had all of the real international, she'd had an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York but she hadn't had anything in the UK.
So, you know, you just I guess, using the example of what had gone before at Riverside and you know what Milena had done, what Greg did and that I did. You just think well, if you want to work with somebody, just ask them, they can always say no and what's the harm in asking. And I think artists like to work in unusual settings, you know, and it's because it's just you get that one-to-one with the curator. And although we weren't even called curators in those days, but you know, you have that one to one relationship with somebody and you don't have a big bureaucracy and you don't have the rules and regulations you can, you know, you can be more free in how you operate and you can try something out, you can be experimental.
So, this is one extra question. Do you think it would be possible for Riverside to recapture that energy in the visual arts?
I haven't actually seen the gallery here.
It's the foyer.
The foyer?Yeah, I mean, I think you could, I mean, we didn't have so many constraints. I mean, things like the Nancy Spero drawings which we displayed which were not framed. I mean, we just would not do anything like that now. You know, you'd have to have everything behind Perspex or whatever. I mean, you could maybe do some wall drawings or have somebody do wall drawings or paintings or whatever.
I mean a foyer space offers exciting opportunities to do some things but it's also very limiting because it's always there's so much other stuff going on around.And obviously that's important for some forms, you know, posters, agitprop kind of work and other forms, you know, probably mainly photographic and wall paintings and wall drawings but yeah, obviously anything sculptural isn't going to work.
So, yeah, I mean, you could do certain things, but I think it would be a question of just agreeing and knowing what the parameters are I think. It would be hard to quite capture that really.... But I mean, it's hard to do that anywhere now, it's not just here. It's hard to be as free and as experimental as we were and we also just did, it was a massive turnover, we did so many exhibitions in a year, we did like 12 exhibitions in a year. You know, Serpentine are doing two a year, or each of their exhibitions now last for six months and ours used to last for four or five weeks and then we'd have a turnaround. So, it's like an incredible pace that we were working at as well.
It could be that you were filling a space that had many fewer competitors.
Yeah, the whole art world was completely different to it is now. You know, the only other commercial gallery was, you know, there was the Lisson Gallery obviously and there was Anthony d’Offay and then Maureen Paley, who started off as a sort of nonprofit, developed into a sort of commercial gallery. But it was a different time, different culture. There weren't the same number of places to exhibit work. So, there weren't the opportunities for international artists to show in London that there are now.
Thank you very much indeed, Kate.
Thank you.
