Yinka Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle Will Take Its Place on Trafalgar

Source: Observer, The {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Sunday 16, May 2010 Page: 8,9,11 Area: 3155 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 331488 Weekly BRAD info: page rate £13,933.00, scc rate £58.00 Phone: 020 7278 2332 Keyword: Yinka Shinibare

‘Just because I’m a black artist I do not want to stand on a soap box all the time. I admire the Queen and I love the Royal Family. This is a huge honour’ Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle will take its place on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth later this month, completing a dramatic journey for the artist. Born in London to Nigerian parents he had to overcome serious illness as a young man. Here he speaks of his love of London’s cultural diversity and how his work has pulled him into the heart of the British establishment that so fascinates him Shonibare knew in his gut what he wanted BY RACHEL COOKE to stick on London’s highest-profi le site for PORTRAIT BY ANDY HALL sculpture. “It’s a huge honour to do something for Trafalgar Square,” he says. “And it seemed obvious to do a work that was connected to the square inka Shonibare isn’t nervous in some way. I’m surprised no one has done that about how the critics will before. I wanted to do a serious thing for a serious respond to his commission for space, but I also wanted it to be exciting, magical, Trafalgar Square’s famously and playful.” His big idea was Nelson’s Ship in a empty fourth plinth. What Bottle, a large-scale model of Horatio Nelson’s would be the point? The ship ship, HMS Victory, from which he commanded is in the bottle: there’s no the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The twist in the going back now. And how, exactly, did it get into tail, however, is that this ship’s sails would be Ythe bottle? He grins, gleefully. “I’m not saying.” made of Dutch wax, the brightly coloured African Was it perhaps a hinged, fold-up vessel, one he fabric that is Shonibare’s trademark. “Nelson’s could unfurl inside the bottle inside using those victory freed up the seas for the British, and that mechanical arms that park keepers use to pick led, in turn, to the building of the British Empire. up autumn leaves? He shakes his head. Or maybe But in a way, his victory also created the London the bottle’s neck is suffi ciently wide that he was we know today: an exciting, diverse, multicultural able to slither in and out at will? “I’ve told you: I city.” So his work is intended to be celebratory can’t say. It’s a secret.” All he will reveal is that the rather than critical? “Both. I want to make people bottle itself is not made entirely of glass (it’s some think. I love London. I don’t know any city kind of polymer blend); that it was manufactured, like it. It has a unique vibe. Maybe this is just a not in Britain, but elsewhere in Europe; and that monument to live, and let live.” a wax seal on its side will read: “YSMBE” (his Shonibare, an unexpectedly willowy man in a initials, followed by the honour he received from spiffi ng powder-blue jacket, is used to attention. the Queen in 2005). Oh, yes, and there will be a His work has been shown in every major gallery row of Union fl ags along its prow . in London (not to mention the Louvre in Paris, From the moment the Fourth Plinth and the Museum of Modern Art in New York), Commissioning Group wrote to him three years and in 2004 , he was shortlisted for the Turner ago, asking him please to submit a proposal, prize. But still, the plinth commission is diff erent.

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A15823-53 Article Page 1 of 6 154030563 - MELTOU - 35567166 Source: Observer, The {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Sunday 16, May 2010 Page: 8,9,11 Area: 3155 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 331488 Weekly BRAD info: page rate £13,933.00, scc rate £58.00 Phone: 020 7278 2332 Keyword: Yinka Shinibare

“The Turner was quite full-on. I’m a winner, not a loser, and I hated not winning. It irritated me, it annoyed me. But you move on. I was already collected, I was already making money; the Turner didn’t change anything. But then came the plinth, and that was a huge compensation, and it already feels bigger than anything else. The work will be there for 18 months. So many people will see it.” Where is it now? We are in Shonibare’s studio in London Fields, Hackney, the smaller of two premises in which he works, and all I can see is the maquette he made when he submitted his original proposal. “It’s somewhere else,” he says. His face is a picture of innocence, lightly tinged with mischief. Although he works in diff erent media – painting, sculpture, fi lm and photography – Shonibare’s work has followed an unusually clear trajectory since he left Goldsmith s in 1991 . As a student, he had been busy making work about perestroika until, one day, a tutor asked him why he didn’t think about African art instead. Intrigued by the idea that he should, as a person with a Nigerian background, be expected to make only “African art”, Shonibare began considering stereotypes and the issue of “authenticity”. His research took him fi rst to the Museum of Mankind and then to Brixton market. He discovered that the exuberant batik that goes by the name of Dutch wax was not, in fact, African; originally, it was Indonesian. Dutch colonialists, hoping to make a profi t by selling it, had set out to manufacture the cloth commercially in the Netherlands. When their venture failed, they palmed off the surplus on west African markets,

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A15823-53 Article Page 2 of 6 154030563 - MELTOU - 35567166 Source: Observer, The {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Sunday 16, May 2010 Page: 8,9,11 Area: 3155 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 331488 Weekly BRAD info: page rate £13,933.00, scc rate £58.00 Phone: 020 7278 2332 Keyword: Yinka Shinibare

Yinka Shonibare photographed for the Observer in his London studio with a scaled- down model of Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle – the work to be installed on the fourth plinth – and, behind him, Girl On Flying Machine (2008).

A15823-53 Article Page 3 of 6 154030563 - MELTOU - 35567166 Source: Observer, The {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Sunday 16, May 2010 Page: 8,9,11 Area: 3155 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 331488 Weekly BRAD info: page rate £13,933.00, scc rate £58.00 Phone: 020 7278 2332 Keyword: Yinka Shinibare

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where it somehow became, over time, a kind honibare was born in London in 1962 , but of national costume for millions of Africans: a moved with his family back to Lagos when statement, in the 20th century, of their post- he was three. He comes from a wealthy, colonial independence. middle-class background: his father was Ever since, Shonibare has used the fabric in aS successful lawyer ; his brothers are a surgeon his art, with dizzying results. Initially, he began and a banker, his sister is a dentist. It would be mocking up entire Victorian rooms, except their something of an understatement to say that his chaises longues were covered, not in velvet and parents were appalled when he started talking silk chintz, but in Dutch wax. Emboldened by the about wanting to be an artist. “I was a freak! success of these experiments, he then began using Success is so important in Nigeria. When you’re the cloth in his responses to iconic 18th-century some young, tramp artist, you’re considered a paintings, such as Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr drop-out. During the early part of my career, I and Mrs Andrews, and Henry Raeburn ’s Reverend was always phoning home for money. My father Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch . In would say: ‘When are you going to grow up?’ I Shonibare’s Mr and Mrs Andrews Without Their was on something like £5,000 a year. I wanted a Heads (1998 ), and in Rever end on Ice (2005 ), deposit so I could buy a house. I got the deposit, headless life-sized mannequins recreate the poses but, oh my goodness, the lecture!” These days, of the subjects of the original paintings, only their his family’s attitude is rather diff erent. “Too bad clothes are fashioned from Dutch wax. These my father didn’t live to see me get the MBE. He installations and sculptures are provocative, of would have loved that – though it’s ironic that I course, but they are funny, too. “Yes, Reverend got it by being subversive, by being the opposite on Ice is funny,” says Shonibare. “I wouldn’t of what he wanted me to be. But [before he died] have made it otherwise. It’s a parody: it’s two I was invited to Windsor Castle for a party, and he fi ngers to the establishment. I do think Raeburn’s was so excited. I heard him on the phone saying: painting is beautiful, but perhaps in a way that ‘Yeah, I encouraged him to go to Goldsmiths.’” other people don’t. I see a dark history behind its After school in Lagos, there followed a stint at opulence. I think: who had to be enslaved in order a British boarding school (“a Nigerian middle- for you to be able to aff ord a portrait painter? So class thing; I hated it – it was cold, and all the food it’s gallows humour, too.” was boiled, no spices”) after which he enrolled at His work, he believes, refl ects his ambivalent the Wimbledon School of Art . Two weeks later, attitude towards the establishment, acknowledging however, he fell ill; a virus in his spine left him the perversity that, sometimes, a person can fi nd completely paralysed. “It took me three years to something both abhorrent and deeply attractive. In recover. I had to learn to walk again. At fi rst, my a series of photographs called Diary of a Victorian mum looked after me. Then I moved to a rehab Dandy (199 8), he presents himself as the frock- centre. It was extremely isolating. But as soon as coat-wearing hero, playing billiards, lying abed I was back at art school [he went to Byam Shaw attended by half a dozen servants, or posturing and then, for his MA, Goldsmiths, where his before m ustachioed types in his library. “When contemporaries included the Wilson twins and I think of that era, I think about domination and Matthew Collings ] I started winning awards. That repression. But I also admire things about it. I encouraged me. I thought: OK, I have a disability, enjoyed dressing up in those clothes. I don’t deny but people can judge me by my work. It’s about that. It’s the same with my MBE: I love it.” Is he joking? “Honestly! For one thing, there what I can do. In that sense, art has been like a life is no British Empire. It’s fi nished.” There’s still support system for me.” Today, he walks with a Gibraltar, I say. He laughs. “Also, I have a whole stick, and his body is slightly curved. But he suff ers list of contradictions. Just because I’m a black no pain. “I make sure I keep mobile, I don’t let artist, I don’t want to have to stand on a soap myself get too stiff . You’re only noticing because box all the time. I admire the Queen; I love the you’re meeting me for the fi rst time.” royal family. A lot of people will think I don’t After Goldsmith’s, with its notoriously critical really mean that. But I do. The establishment is tutors – “it’s that military thing; they destroy you fascinating – the idea that, thanks to an accident completely and then they rebuild you” – Shonibare of birth, your whole life is laid out for you. The found himself frozen for about two years, “unable to produce anything”. In 1997, however, his work only thing is that I don’t know my place. I’m not at was included in Charles Saatchi’s infamous all a good subject in that sense.” Sensation show at the Royal Academy . After this,

A15823-53 Article Page 4 of 6 154030563 - MELTOU - 35567166 Source: Observer, The {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Sunday 16, May 2010 Page: 8,9,11 Area: 3155 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 331488 Weekly BRAD info: page rate £13,933.00, scc rate £58.00 Phone: 020 7278 2332 Keyword: Yinka Shinibare

there was no stopping him. “I’ve been lucky. Audience response has always been good, and every time I’ve done a show, it has led to invitations to do three more.” What role, if any, does he think his colour has played in his career? “I’d be lying if I said I had suff ered discrimination, though I’m not naive enough to think it doesn’t exist. But in any case, I love a challenge, so if you don’t think much of me, I will do things to make you consider me more highly.” What about positive discrimination? “People do that only once. They invite you, and if you produce crap they won’t invite you again, full stop.” On a blackboard, his schedule for the next 12 months is already chalked up. It includes shows in Monaco and Israel, in Spain and in Australia. He could not, he says, be busier if he tried. I wonder if he fi nds conversations about multiculturalism tiresome, for all that his work invites them. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. Shonibare shrugs. “Culture has a role to play. In a diverse society people have to fi nd a way of being together, and that can only come from understanding other cultures. Otherwise, you’re just fi ghting for space. But I’m from London, now. I’ve been here for 30 years. In Lagos, I would feel like a foreigner. The city has had such an impact on my work. If I’d lived somewhere else, I’m certain that my career would have evolved very diff erently. And I love it. I love what you could call ‘vindaloo Britishness’. It’s a mixed-up thing. You hear it in British music, and you taste it in British food. This purity notion is nonsense, and I cherish that.” His trademark Dutch wax is, he says, a metaphor for interdependence and thus, perhaps, a metaphor for city life as well. We all pinch from one another. We take what we like, and in doing so, we are, whether we like it or not, joined together in one great and vibrant web.

Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle will be unveiled in Trafalgar Square on 24 May ‘Audience response is good. In any case, I love a challenge, so if you don’t think much of me, I will do things to make you consider me more highly’

A15823-53 Article Page 5 of 6 154030563 - MELTOU - 35567166 Source: Observer, The {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Sunday 16, May 2010 Page: 8,9,11 Area: 3155 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 331488 Weekly BRAD info: page rate £13,933.00, scc rate £58.00 Phone: 020 7278 2332 Keyword: Yinka Shinibare

FOURTH PLINTH A work in progress

1841 Nelson’s Column is built in Trafalgar Square 2005 Responsibility for Trafalgar Square transfers in central London, to commemorate the Battle of to the mayor of London and the Greater London Trafalgar. Until 1999, the fourth plinth in the north- Authority. Marc Quinn is granted the ﬁ rst west corner of the square remains empty. commission under the new auspices – with A l i s o n Lapper Pregnant, a 13-tonne marble bust of the 1998 ! e Royal Society of Arts (RSA) conceives the artist born without arms. fourth plinth programme, with support from the Cass Sculpture Foundation. ! is will see the plinth occupied 2007 ! omas Schütte unveils Model for a Hotel, an by a succession of commissioned works. architectural model in glass of a 21-storey building.

1999 Mark Wallinger is the ﬁ rst to be commissioned 2009 Antony Gormley’s project One & Other takes a n d p ro d u c e s Ecce Homo, a sculpture of Christ. place over 100 days, with 2,400 members of the public invited on to the plinth to do anything they 2000 Bill Woodrow unveils Regardless of History, a wished, with any props they could carry unaided. sculpture of a book, a tree and a severed head. 24 May 2010 Yinka Shonibare, the ﬁ rst black artist to 2001 Rachel Whiteread’s Monument is a cast of the be commissioned for the plinth, will unveil Nelson’s plinth itself in transparent resin placed upside down. Ship in a Bottle. Octavia Morris

Yinka Shonibare’s alternative history, above left to right: Reverend on Ice (2005), his riﬀ on Raeburn’s classic painting, with the addition of Dutch wax fabrics; an image from his 1998 photographic series, Diary of a Victorian Dandy, starring himself; and a detail of the painted installation, Black Gold, shown at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in 2006. Photographs courtesy of the artist/Stephen Friedman Gallery, Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

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