Anthony d’Offay in conversation (transcript)

Participants
AD: = Anthony d’Offay
KH: = Keith Hartley

Recording starts

AD: Keith and I are old sparring partners, we’ve worked together on a lot of shows. Artists Rooms itself wouldn’t exist without Keith Hartley and Richard Calvocoressi because it was working with them…… We closed our gallery very suddenly in 2001 and immediately started to work with the Scottish National Gallery for Modern Art to try and help to bring some great contemporary shows, some international contemporary shows. The dilemma for museums often is that you buy something wonderful and then you show it for three months/six months, even a year and then what happens to it very often is it goes into storage, and it may go into storage for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven years. If, however, it could travel and be seen in other places, that would be of enormous advantage for culture in this country, and that’s really where Artist Rooms comes from.

I was born in Sheffield and brought up in Leicester and what was in the local museum was crucial to my experience as a child and as a teenager and is the only reason that I’m here this evening. Several times in my life that I was very critical of works of art by a certain artist, and then when I saw a proper show I changed my mind. What would you say about it?

KH: That’s why you decided to go for art experience.

AD: This is just some other things that have come to the collection or which will be coming. A room of Sol LeWitt which we bought just before he died – I walked into a gallery in San Francisco and thought it was sublimely beautiful and would be enormous popular and that it’s a work that everybody who saw it would love and remember.

KH: So every time it’s shown it has to be recreated, and it was shown last year at Tate Liverpool.

AD: We try to choose challenging photography, that is to say both Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe, their images are disturbing and challenging, just as in this extraordinary image of Patty Smith, who Robert Mapplethorpe was in love with. We felt that to be able to have great collections of these artists would be very interesting and challenging.

Diane Arbus, this is the photograph that she sent to her husband, then on active service overseas, to say, guess what? We’ve got a baby coming. But what an amazing image. I spoke about courage and art – that’s a courageous photograph to my mind and a great one. And it’s one of those images that you see it once, you see it for 30 seconds and it’s with you for the rest of your life.

Martin Creed, who is a Turner Prize winner and a great and brilliant young artist, I thought it would be nice because we’re friends, to walk round the rooms in Tate with him. And when we got to the third room he said to me in his nice Glasgow accent, ‘Anthony, I want to be part of this!’ And then he gave us two great rooms of his work, which he’s just finishing now with this beautiful light piece, and this four part video work. And that famous work of his – do you remember the room with a light that goes on and off? – he’s also giving to us. So, what, if you had bought it from his gallery would cost perhaps £600,000, he gives to Artist Rooms and asks us to pay for the fabrication, which maybe is £40,000 or something. So it’s a great, great gift to the country. And also for him it’s a way that his work can be seen across the United Kingdom.

KH: This was probably the work that made Ron famous first of all, and it was Dead Dad, one of his earliest sculptures shown in the Sensation Exhibition.

AD: About half life size, wasn’t it?

KH: Yes. I think the interesting thing about the Wild Man, the Wild Man is supposed to be someone that actually frightens us. As you can see it’s very, very large work and the work’s upstairs as well, another cast of it.

AD: It’s very ambivalent, isn’t it? I mean it’s not there to promote faith, it’s the opposite, it’s there to promote questions about who we are.

KH: The collection came to us in Tate, March I think it was, of 2008. And it was quite, I think amazing actually, the collection was prepared for touring and everything arranged within 12 months.

AD: And according to the art funders, has been seen by eight million people in 2009. And there we are in 2010.

KH: One of the great things about Artist Rooms, and I know that from personal experience working with Anthony’s collection before it became part of the Artist Rooms collection, is how it can lead to much bigger shows in Britain. And I think that’s also something that I will look forward to seeing expand.

AD: So I don’t think there are any rules, except what really works for the art and really works for the museum. And I don’t think that you have to be the grandest museum in the United Kingdom. Those institutions that very much want to show something that they couldn’t otherwise show, that’s the first concern and then to make it authentic as the artist would like it or the artist’s legacy, the artist’s estate, and to try and make it real and alive and living.

Recording ends