Yinka Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle Will Take Its Place on Trafalgar
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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. Produced by Durrants under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner. 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, Continued on page 11 Produced by Durrants under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner. 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). Produced by Durrants under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner. 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 Continued from page 8 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.