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Panacea
Neil Bromwich, Zoë Walker, Michael Pinsky
26 July-10 September 2005
Panacea: (n) A solution or remedy for all difficulties
or diseases. – origin Greek panakeia.
Can artists provoke change in society? Can art objects become
tools to improve our lives? Panacea: the art of wellbeing is
an evolving, expandable and travelling artwork, designed to
function as a universal formula to cure social, economic and
political problems.
At the core of this experiment is the Panacea Model, a maquette
of an idealised health paradise, constructed by all three artists
and made from medical packaging and refuse. Representing a ‘global
panacea’, the Panacea Model offers both generic and specific
solutions to health and lifestyle problems.
Numerous other artworks, evolved from this maquette, populate
the gallery, extending the curing powers of the Panacea. These
include Friendly Frontier, by Zoë
Walker and Neil Bromwich,
an 11-metre long, hand-sewn, inflatable mountain range, with
emergency slides to bridge international borderlines. The work
acts as a buoyancy aid for countries in conflict, an open border
for all peoples of the world to slide with ease between nation
states.
Life Pulse, by Michael
Pinsky, is a pole-like sculpture that
registers and illuminates visitors’ heartbeats, creating
ever-changing rhythms and patterns of light. The work mimics
the relationship between patient and institution, allowing
visitors to compare their health and wellbeing on arrival
and departure, before and after experiencing Panacea.
Striking a fine balance between naive optimism and irony,
the artists have created a thought-provoking, yet humorous,
comment on society’s increasing demands upon the artist
as ‘social reformer, economic revitaliser and catalyst
for all things good’.
The artwork has been trialled at the Centre de Création
Contemporain, Tours, France, and will travel to Le
Parvis,
Ibos, France at the beginning of 2006, before pausing at Cornerhouse,
Manchester.
More information about the artists can be found on their websites:
www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk
www.michaelpinsky.com
Funding
The artists would like to thank the following organisations
for their invaluable support in developing Panacea:
Arts Council England, Arts Council England/South West, Arts
Council England/South East, Arts Council England/London, Arts
Council England/North East, Commissions East, Action Acton,
ACAVA, Bristol City Council, The Art of Wellbeing, Bristol
South and West Primary Care Trust, National Health Service,
Knowle West Media Centre, Watershed Media Centre, Ville d’Orléans,
Archilab, FRAC Centre Orléans, University of East London,
Edinburgh College of Art, Centre de Création Contemporaine,
Brent Measurement Technology Ltd, Queens Hall, Kielder Partnership,
Northumbria Water, Forestry Commission, English Heritage, Berwick
Gymnasium Residency, Essex County Council, Commissions East,
Firstsite, Future Physical and Claude Lefebvre Street Lighting.
For further press information and images please email Nicky
Balfour, Press Officer: njb@soton.ac.uk
For information on exhibition talks, go to http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/events/talks.html
artist interview
You can watch a 30 minute video interview
with artists Neil Bromwich, Zoë Walker and Michael
Pinsky using Windows
Media Player here
Instructions on viewing the video can be found
here
ZW: Zoe Walker
NB: Neil Bromwich
MP: Michael Pinsky
BB: Dr Bernadette Buckley, John Hansard Gallery
BB Hello and I would like to welcome our three exhibiting
artists to the John Hansard Gallery today - Michael Pinsky,
Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich. Thank you very much for agreeing
to do this interview for the John Hansard Gallery, for which
we will share copyright.
I’d like to start by just asking you three to tell me
something about how this project came to be. How did it start?
NB Panacea came to be through the fact that the three of us
met while working on an urban regeneration project in Bristol – at
a Health Park there called Knowle West. We were coming up,
individually, with ideas for improving environment through
our own art practice I suppose. We kind of felt that this in
many ways, is a politically-led initiative – through
funding and the way that funding threads are being led through
the arts council and one thing and another. But genuinely,
we set out as artists, to do things which do make a difference
to society. I think we were kind of – ironically in some
ways, but naively optimistic in other ways – wanting
to improve what we were delivering as artists, what we were
doing as artists and to improve a situation. So we kind of
tried to create this idea of ‘panacea’, this sort
of cure-all for society’s ills, through the artist. This
I suppose is a very old idea – the idea of an artist/shaman
which links into say, the ideas of an artist like Joseph Beuys.
We wanted to see whether or not artists can make a different
through their practices, to society. So the three of us got
together and decided to link a number of our projects together
in one piece of work which was a model of an idealised Health
Park – a place where health and well-being would be…well ‘king’ I
suppose…would reign…and art would be the channel
for this regeneration, growth and well-being. So we brought
together a number of our projects onto this model, this maquette
of a Panacea Health Park. Some of the project had been realised,
but the majority of it hadn’t and we set out to raise
funds to actually realise all of these projects and develop
new projects through a series of exhibitions. So it’s
kind of an on-going developing strategy for constructing a
critical platform for making new work – for feeding back
and constructing work as artists.
BB Would you like to perhaps tell me something about the individual
elements in this exhibition as it currently is in the John
Hansard Gallery? Perhaps we could just go through them one
by one first. Zoe, would you like to start?
ZW Yes. I suppose I should start with the Panacea model – which
is a crated model that the three of us worked on together.
It’s made out of medical waste or product, refuse. So
there are for example these pipettes (it’s actually here
behind us as I speak) – pipettes cut up into trees, test-tube
tops etc. It’s a Health Park because as Neil said, we
were working in this Health Park, but on the park are the actual
artworks that we were either making there or on other locations.
So there are miniature versions of the artworks in the exhibition,
on the model here. So that’s a kind of anchor-point in
a way, for the rest of the exhibition. The idea of the crate
is that it could land in any location and act as a sort of
blueprint in a way, for how to solve your social problems – to
kind of think about changing situations through these solutions.
So beyond this are the larger artworks – that again are
like prototypes in a way – a lot of these larger artworks
can operate either within the gallery or outside. And one of
them is a piece of work that Neil and I made collaboratively,
which is called Friendly Frontier. It’s an idea for a
friendly border crossing. It’s a symbolic border-crossing
solution in a way. It’s a playful way of travelling from
one country into another. So it’s a mountain range with
slides that run down both sides, so you could slide with ease
into another country…([laughs]
BB An emergency chute?
ZW An emergency chute, exactly. So at the moment, it’s
in the gallery space. You can’t actually slide over it,
but it’s a kind of symbol for thinking about open borders.
It’s just opening up questions really – thinking
about political situations in quite a naïve way. So I
guess, in the way you might tell a joke or something, it opens
up possibilities – or allows people to relax and think
about a situation, in a way. Moving on here…
BB Can I just ask you a question about that before you move
on? It is literally lightweight isn’t it? It’s
a lightweight solution. It can be deflated, packed up and,
as you say, flown into any crisis situation. Now there’s
a lot of humour in this, but its transformative potential is
still signalled. So can you say something about this interaction
that you manage to hit on – between a very gentle irony
and a sort of idealism at the same time.
ZW Well you’re right – that’s implicit in
the work, in the aesthetic of the work. It has a sort of optimism…it’s
childlike. And I think, for me, this is what enables people
to engage with the work on quite an emotional level perhaps – and
then beyond that, to start to think about what those ideas
mean in a larger scale – for example, how they have a
political impact. So they are kind of disarmed by the playfulness
of the object and then beyond that, they can start to think
about what the ideas actually mean. I don’t know if that
answers the question!
BB Absolutely it does. What’s interesting is that it
has this ethical – it’s a very light ethical – drive.
But at the same time, it is done in what seems to me, to be
a very delicate, light-handed way. So these two play off against
each other all the time. It’s not fatuousness. For me,
it’s a very interesting balance or tension that you’ve
between these two different tones. And this is something that
is carried through into Life Pulse also I would say Michael.
MP Yes, I think humour is a really dominant strategy in this
work. Because actually it’s quite a kind of serious body
of work, in terms of our ideas. But we attract people into
this show through humour. And in a sense, these are all kind
of games – games as well as artworks, as well as tools.
So they’re working on a number of different levels simultaneously.
I think we all share the idea that this is what makes a successful
piece of work: that is, you can come in and enjoy it at quite
a superficial level, but then it has some resonances that go
really quite deep into the fabric of different ways of thinking
about changing society. And in a way, the physical make-up
of the show is similar to that – in the way that the
maquette is a microcosm which allows us to play with ideas.
Especially since we all work on quite major projects that can
be quite cumbersome to realise and so this allows us to work
together and discuss ideas and push ideas very fluidly and
turn ideas down. Things can not work out and certainly when
we were building this model, there were a few buildings which
appeared, which then got shouted out of this model. But that’s
great, because that failure was contained within the model
and that became part of our dialogue. And then likewise, the
idea of the gallery being less of a gallery and more of a showroom – it’s
a showroom for these prototypes. People come in and they look
at them and they say ‘Yeah we’ll have one Friendly
Frontier, one Life Pulse and we’ll install them permanently
somewhere else. That’s the kind of second layer of the
overall project. And then the third layer is the realised pieces
in the public realm. There are certain pieces – Celestial
Radio for example – that have materialised in the real
world. And Life Pulse will materialise in the real world.
So there’s a kind of expansiveness about the project
that’s not limited to the gallery walls. It’s really
a nomadic set of ideas that move around attracting attention – and
with the potential of leaving these seeds that then grow everywhere
where we’ve left a project. I suppose with Life Pulse,
and in this particular case, it is actually outside the gallery
- I think it’s quite amusing that it was too big to get
into the gallery. And also Friendly Frontier – the big
version – can’t get into the gallery either. And
it’s almost like this show is so expansive that it’s
really struggling to fit into a building. It’s just pressing
at the walls and desperate to get out there. It’s desperate
to get out there and talk to people. Even if we’re trying
to keep it in a gallery, we just can’t actually physically
manage it.
But in terms of Life Pulse - and in this particular show,
the fact that it is actually placed as you come in is particularly
pertinent – because the idea of the work is that, as
you’re coming into the show, you measure your pulse rate.
And this is very similar to the moment that you see a doctor
and you offer up your arm to their authority and they read
your pulse and often don’t tell you what the pulse is.
They often just go “Mmm aha” and from then on,
you just sit around like a lump of flesh, waiting for them
to tell you what’s wrong with you. And you move from
a very active state (where you’re walking along the street)
to a very passive state (where I’m just going to lie
here; I’m no longer a human being; I’m just a body
that’s getting looked at.
So with this, you illuminate the area with your pulse. So
in fact it’s has a very ‘monumental’ effect
on the area – something that’s very very subtle
in terms of people’s perception. And then you go around
the show and then you can measure it when you leave because
it memorises your pulse – you can check it against another
column. And if your pulse is lowered, then possibly this panacea’s
been effective.
So it’s a way of checking you in and out of the show.
And this is something we want to push later on. We’re
involving doctors with the show and they’re going to
be making tests as you come in and go out and we’re going
to be evaluating those tests – so we’re going to
have a very empirical, rational way of assessing the quality
of the work. And this also goes back to this New Labour, new
Arts Council idea of ‘yes, we can make art change the
world, and yes we can evaluate how successful that’s
going to be’. Well possibly that’s true, and we’ve
taken a not black and white position about this, that as Neil
says, is slightly ironic, but also a slightly naively optimistic
position – that yes it’d be nice but we don’t
necessarily believe it. And I think that this is really quite
a ‘postmodernist’ way of thinking. That is we’re
taking certain ideas of Modernism, certain ideas of social
thought – like Joseph Beuys’ ‘capital equals
kunst’ idea that art really can change the world – but
we’re also aware enough to know that it’s doomed
to failure to a large extent and that our work can only do
so much without everything else to support it.
BB One gets the impression here, in hearing you speak, that
what is under surveillance here, is not just society, but also
the way in which we measure society, the way in which we measure
art (and by measure I mean evaluate ), these ways are built
into social, cultural political systems, and ensure that the
effect of any project will always be immanent – you know
that there will always be an outcome and that that outcome
will be measurable and that it will quantifiable. And in the
way that you’re working with scientists and in the way
that you’re reflecting also on how art works within society,
it seems to me that you’re also interrogating these systems
of empirical assessment, if empirical they are. Is that fair
to say?
NB Yes. That’s the aim on a very real level. By involving
the kind of rigour of something like medical drugs testing
(which we’re actually wanting to involve in the assessment
of these artworks) and the feedback that we get from that,
we are hoping to get some kind of real results as to what effect
this has had on the viewers, the audience within the context
of seeing the work and within the time that people are within
the gallery space. And that should feed back into the way that
we develop our own work.
BB So it’s a very kind of self-reflexive process, this
whole thing. You’re measuring systems of measurement
and you’re also doing this through an artwork, which
you say can’t be contained, which is bursting to get
out of its containers, which is evolving and can’t be
held in a single position. You’re attempting to do the
undoable really aren’t you?
NB Well yeah absolutely, and hopefully everything will come
undone at the same time. [All laugh.] Once you start applying
a medical rigour to an artwork, you realise that perhaps it
is immeasurable but also it then opens up and questions the
act of medical rigour: how much of a performance that is within
itself; how much of an artwork it is to be a doctor doing a
medical test and how much that effects the actual audience
/ patient who’s sitting there having their pulse rate
tested and trying to find some measure of well-being. And how
that in itself is a subjective thing rather than an objective
thing. So hopefully we’re going to create some chaos
along the way.
BB I think what’s very interesting also here, is the
use of the home-made. We use this term derogatively, most of
the time – for example, ‘homespun philosophy’, ‘homemade
blah’ whatever. You’re employing the homemade almost
directly as a strategy with which to interrogate these great,
very powerful systems of science and of sponsorship. Can you
tell me how that works?
ZW I think the thing about the homemade has always been important
particularly in our work [signals to Neil] and obviously in
yours too [to Michael]. But there’s a sense of empowerment – you
know, that you can do something yourself – and particularly
with Friendly Frontier. For example we have these patterns,
and so people can actually make their own frontier and so it’s
a kind of dissolving power or handing over power and saying ‘you
can do this yourself – you can have an effect’.
So I guess that’s how that works within the show and
within the project on a larger scale. And working with scientists
and feeding the information back into the project in a way
will have the same effect.
BB Just tell me a little bit about how you view, this terrible
phrase ‘the public realm’, the public sphere. You’re
all employed in some respects to carry out commissions in specific
places for specific projects – sometimes sponsored by
Arts Council, sometimes with NHS money. You’re working
in a ‘postmodern’ public sphere – one that
we no longer idealise. Tell me something about this relationship
that you have to the space in which you work – both intellectually
and physically.
MP Well it’s interesting that we all met together on
a project in Bristol where we were all producing work in the
public realm. In fact this whole project came out of the dissatisfaction
with our relationship between our work and the public realm.
There’s a set of aspirations around making work and around
our previous work. In terms of the commissioners – they
like the work that we’ve done and then they say, ‘well
let’s bring it to this new context’ and obviously
we do respond to the contexts we working in but at the same
time, these are often very hostile environments, extremely
antagonistic towards any form of art or any form of improvement
to the area.
And this project is, in a way, us trying to manoeuvre things
back more on our own terms. We have time and finances to think
more speculatively and to make work that has an appeal beyond
the specific locale of these ‘urban regeneration’ areas.
And so it’s reaching a big audience beyond Britain at
quite an international level and that’s important to
us. I think the problem that we’ve had before, is that
we make pieces of work that go into locations where a lot of
the people who are around it don’t want that sort of
work. And other people don’t ever see it. So I think
they are major, major problems with this sort of commissioning.
And it’s not just in terms of our work. It’s actually
in terms of lots of things like urban improvements, home zones
and streets where people don’t actually want traffic
calming and trees put in.
So we don’t know the answers to these things, but we’re
certainly raising a lot of questions and still thinking about
it ourselves. Certainly when you look internationally, and
Neil and Zoe have just done a project in France, the reception
of work that is happening in the public realm is much more
integrated than it is in Britain. Art is commissioned in areas
that are already ‘healthy’. So they add to the
health of the area. They can form the health of the area. In
Britain often, we’re working in places that are very
ill. They’re ill socially, they’re ill in terms
of actual physical health and, whether we can turn that situation
around with a small artwork is something I think we’re
all questioning. We’d like to, but I’m not sure
if we can.
BB It’s interesting because in this country, we almost
are in the situation of having a separate entity called ‘Public
Art’ – which doesn’t really exist in the
artworld.
How do you see your work existing in relation to this aberration
called ‘public art’?
NB I don’t know actually. I don’t think I’ve
ever thought of myself as a public artist. And certainly, the
work that I’ve done, and that Zoe and I have done as
a collaborative team together, have not had any permanence.
But they have gone out into the public realm – this thing
that we’re talking about. Celestial Radio, a boat project
that we did last year is a case in point. We broadcasted a
radio station from a small yacht which was moored off the Essex
coast and which was covered in 50,000 mirror tiles. It reflected
the sun’s light in a kind of ‘morse code’ way,
as well as reflecting voices of scientists and local people
being interviewed about the area and all this was mixed in
with music. I wouldn’t consider this to be typical of
a ‘public art’ project. It was something that was
very temporary and ephemeral that happened for 28 days and
then disappeared in the same way that it came – back
into the sea, kind of thing. So I think they’re something
that lives on more as a memory, or an event that happened.
I think the traditional idea of ‘public art’ in
that sense, doesn’t hold true. My thoughts, when you
say ‘public art’ are of these monumental sculptures
or shapes, fixed in the middle of roundabouts. They’re
there for eternity to celebrate the greatness and the goodness
of some ideological thought. That’s not what we’re
about at all.
ZW I think it’s just that there’s a different
set of challenges – working in the public realm, to working
in a white cube gallery space. I think that in the way that
the three of us work, we can slip easily between those things
and it’s just taking on board what the environment is
and making what’s appropriate to that environment. I
suppose I think that we’re all quite responsive in a
way to the location that we’re in and to the environment
that we’re in. And so in some ways, or for me anyway,
if that’s a public space or a gallery space, it’s
not so different in some ways. It’s just responding to
what your audience is going to be and how the work is going
to affect them within that location. I think there’s
a lot of really interesting work that really is made in the
public realm because you’re responding to a very different
set of criteria.
BB So you don’t view it as a two-tier system at all?
ZW No, it definitely is a two-tier system. In Britain, the
two processes are seen as very different and the two spaces
are completely separated within the artworld. There’s
not an easy interface between them and I think that in some
ways, that’s what we’re doing here. We’re
kind of crossing over that space between the two.
BB I was just going to say in closing then – the panacea – have
you cracked it?
ZW Have we cracked it?
MP We’ve not even started. It’s a long journey.
ZW Hopefully we will. [Laughs]
BB Thank you very much. Thank you to Michael Pinsky, to Zoe
Walker and to Neil Bromwich working in collaboration. Thank
you for taking part in the Hansard Interview.
