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M.V. Oh yes, the Churchill fellowship was in 1972.
C.A. ‘72, you’ve got a good memory
M.V. So that was a good opportunity to get somewhere.
C.A.That
was wonderful because, I mean it was nice because I went to the October
celebrations in Cuba and headed straight after that to LA. I was
there a month, then I went straight to LA for the Nixon/McGovern election.
Which I fell right in the middle of, and just seeing a contrast between
the two societies was wonderful. I mean I had reservations about Cuba
and I had reservations about America but, you know, there were certain
good things I learnt in Cuba because the Vietnam war was on then and to
actually bring home the Vietnam war, they’d brought into the museums there
crashed American aeroplanes, those sandals that the people made out of
rubber tyres, bicycles showing how the Vietcong carried stuff. They were
trying to give you some notion of the reality of the thing and that was
quite impressive. Although it never really got through to the painters
in Cuba you know, because they were frozen in 1958 basically and they
still thought that Abstract Expressionism was going on.
I’m quite surprised. I’d imagined the Churchill fellowship to be quite,
you know, right wing. I’m surprised that they thought, that they let somebody
at that point go to Cuba.
C.A. They were wonderful. They were just, “Why are you interested Conrad?”
and I said, “Well, this, this, this and this” and they said, ”Oh, that’s
really interesting yeah, okay”. I mean they were pre-Thatcherite conservative
if you like, in that they had this curiosity and sense of duty. They were
mostly, kind of moving at a very high level of British society and they
were the best of that thing, of that historic thing. So they were great,
yeah.
M.V. So did you actually make work after you, in Cuba, I mean.
How long were you there for?
C.A. I was there for about a month I think, a month and a half and yeah,
I made works in Cuba. I made drawings and things, but mostly I was
talking to people and I was trying to work out. I mean, in the meantime
we were trying to form the Artists’ Union in England so I was getting mail
about all of that and, “How do we do workshops etc.” and then I was talking
to people in America and I was beginning to get known a little bit and
people from. I mean, one of the interesting things about ‘Strike’ which
I’d thought, “They’re never gonna let me back in the art world, ever",
one of the interesting things about ‘Strike’ was I got letters. I’d never
had letters from people for painting shows. So one of the good things was
these letters and I got a letter from people in Australia saying “We’ve
read about your exhibition and we’ve heard it from people, and would you
mind if we worked a bit like this. If we went to strikes and things”. Of
course I wrote back and said “No, no, I wouldn't mind at all.” So all of
this was just a good period for me -a mad period as well.
M.V. So, how did you exist at that point then? I mean, how were you
being funded?
C.A. Well, you’ve got to remember, that this whole notion os single
issue shows was very new. I mean, before that in order to get any grants
or funding, you had to have an exhibition scheduled with a gallery, usually
a private gallery and I had actually never had any problems selling work
because it just kind of, grew from the Academy, drawings would be sold.
I mean, we weren’t rich but that was still trickling on a little bit. |