Autumn 2011 Issue - University of Central Lancashire

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8 Feature Articles like the quality of what you are making and invited us to be part of their programmes. So that it is how it came about. The exhibitions that you curated in the 1980s were about women artists – was that an area that was being ignored at the time, whereas perhaps male artists were being recognised more? No not really. Artists have a hard time any way getting shown anywhere. What was happening was that there was a very energetic movement led by Eddie Chambers and Keith Piper in the Midlands and latterly in London which was incredibly aggressive. It was visually overwhelming, textually challenging and by its very nature, alienated its audience. I felt that there were women artists that encouraged dialogue. Along with most white women artists, at the time they were finding it hard to get into ‘the gallery’, and finding it hard to set up a communication. I have learned in the last 30 years just how challenging being an artist is, whoever you are, however privileged you are. We live in an age where the press is still ambivalent towards art and academia. Artists don’t do themselves any favours either. To be taken seriously is challenging and to get that balance between creativity and politics also has been challenging. Do you think it has changed in the 30 years; is it easier now and do you think that the political message has evolved or is it still the same? I think that it has evolved incredibly. If you think of artists like Chris Ofili and Steve McQueen, both of whom have represented Britain in Venice Biennale, both of whom have won the Turner prize. There are now a few hundred works in the Tate collection by artists of the Black and Indian diaspora that were not there in the 1980s. That steady ‘drip, drip’ that myself and colleagues have been doing has worked. Yinka Shonibare, myself and Sonia Boyce have MBE’s. Yinka Shonibare has shown his sculpture as one of the fourth plinths in Trafalgar Square. I think things have changed massively and I like to think that I was part of that. But it took a lot of work in all sorts of ways. It need that aggressive in your face work. It needed some serious writing. It needed academics like Griselda Pollock or, indeed Alan Rice from here, to write about the work within different contexts. It needed historians, and writers to be including that work in their discussions and it needed the most influential curators to allow certain of these things to happen. A whole lot of activity had to go on at the same time and we acknowledge and recognise it all. Do you think that perhaps we are at a stage where the art coming from the black diaspora has been absorbed and has influenced British art and European art and that perhaps now black artists are broadening their view of the messages that they want to make through their work? I think that is absolutely right and, that is what has happened, I think it’s the right thing to have happened. That is the point. We did not want to be separate, we wanted to belong – we do belong, politically, paying of taxes, growth of the country we belong. It was very much about belonging. I think it is to be applauded; all of those artists have influenced contemporary art in Europe and America. However it is still not that easy for artists coming through. In the 1980s you could say we are not represented anywhere. Now there is recognition and young black artists are on a level playing field but how do they gain recognition? So I still feel that it is important to recognise the cultural contribution that black artists are making. But being a contemporary artist is still about breaking rules, about failing, and about taking risks. Can I turn now to the exhibition at the Tate – when does that open? It opened at the end August and runs until the middle of February 2012, in one of the larger spaces in Tate Britain. It will be a series I am not a historian, but I try to make hidden lives real by imaging them and by making art works that can >accompany historical accounts. of cases with archive material, some moving image work on monitors, some of the work that originally appeared in the shows, quite a lot of text, some of the things that were said or the artists said at the time. We are trying to make it interesting to the scholars of that period and also engage a younger audience in terms of the art as well as being history. We are also trying to give an idea of how much influence some of those women artists have had on the British art scheme, and on creative practice at an audience and community level Will it look at some of those women artists who exhibited back in 1980s will it look at the evolution of their work and how far it has come since that time? Yes for those people that are still making work now, some of it is in the collection at Tate, some will be shown on monitors and in reproductions. For me it is the about the spread of that influence. For the artists themselves, I would predict that it is much more about ‘I am still making art, yes I have come this far, my work has developed in this way, it isn’t like it was then’. For the Tate I suspect their emphasis with this exhibition is very much archive and research. I think there will be enough of the living moving strands to not make it look something that happen in the 1980s and then just died and we all went away. What you must be doing now is the curating, gathering together the material and thinking about how it is exhibited? Yes that is incredibly demanding, whether to show the work as mini exhibitions of each artist or to show it as how artists interconnect. I am much more interested in the latter. The curation at the moment is centred on how to make interesting and obvious this interconnectivity without making the most enormous show. What is after the Tate? It is hard to know really because every day different things happen. In the process of doing this work with Tate, I have also wanted to make contact with every collection in the country that has this type of work. Also I have again made contact with curators I have worked with before and I am still working quite a lot with Liverpool and talking to art historians.
Feature Articles 9 Nursing Children at Home An Interview with Bernie Carter School of Health Professor Mike Holmes, Head of the Graduate Research School, and Alison Naylor went to meet with Professor Bernie Carter, following the recent publication of Department of Health Report ‘NHS at Home: Community Children’s Nursing Services’. Mike joined Bernie in her office in Brook Building, and began with a key question – What is your research about? Broadly my research is to do with children and their experiences of being ill and in pain. This involves me researching with (not on) them, their siblings and their families. Children’s nursing is family orientated so that means we always think of the child in the context of their family. In the last couple of years, most of my work has been with children who have complex healthcare needs such as cancer, congenital disorders and / or disabilities. All of my work is trying to find out about their experiences of sickness, disability, treatment and interventions. I’m also interested in how healthcare professionals treat them, the changes that illness brings to their family and friends them, and the ways in which they can become either marginalised by or integrated into society. My research with children is mainly qualitative and I use an arts/activities and story based approach which is quite innovative. I use the stories the children tell me to gain insights into their worlds. I want to understand their perceptions of healthcare professionals. I want to improve services and the way we communicate with the children about their illness and how we can support them. A lot of the children that children’s nurses care for in 2011 would never have previously survived beyond the neonatal period or early childhood. Although many more children survive, many have high levels of morbidity. Survival is now possible due to new medications and new technology which also improves the quality of survival. For example, back in the late 1970s when I trained as a nurse, a life support machine (ventilator) used to be the equivalent size of a couple of filing cabinets (and sound like a twin tub washing
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Page 35 and 36: 35 Editorial team Professor Mike Ho

Autumn 2011 Issue - University of Central Lancashire

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