| M.V. Right!
C.A. And what happened was, a year later it was shown in the Serpentine
Gallery and the Arts’ Council took it out of the show and there was a huge
row about censorship. There was questions in the House of Commons, questions
in the House of Lords. There was campaigns and so on and so forth and I
sued the Arts’ Council and won, and it changed the Arts’ Council, and then
of course, being England, they invited me onto the Arts’ Council three
years later.
M.V. So, at what point did you feel that you kind
of, so that was the point where you began to be almost into the establishment
in a sort of way?
C.A. In a way, except that Northern Ireland
fucked that up again, and what happened with Northern Ireland was that
the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1979 showed the Northern Ireland stuff
in ‘Un Certain Art Anglais’. I think it was, and the British ambassador,
Nicholas Henderson walked in and he went absolutely spare when he saw
what I’d done in this room. He wrote a letter to the Foreign Office, and
the Foreign Office wrote a letter to the Treasury, and the Treasury wrote
a letter to the British Council saying, “If you support this artist again
we’ll withdraw all your funds” , and somebody leaked all the correspondence.
So Sandy Nairn and Caroline Tisdale printed it, and there was all hell
on. So I was blacklisted for ten years and I think when I came off the
blacklist was 1989 when I was invited to Buckingham Palace.
M.V. So what had changed....?
C.A. Nobody knows! I phoned round everybody I knew in the Art world
and said, “Look you know, am I being invited for the GLC, Greater London
Arts?“ I was on the Labour party Cultural Committee. I was on the TUC committee.
I was on every committee you can think of.
M.V. Yes, so you were doing a great deal of public work.
C.A. Yeah, but the other people on those committees, you know, weren’t
invited, you know, and there were no other artists. So we just couldn’t
figure out why, you know.
M.V.Can I kind of leap on to how you actually work?
C.A. I’m sorry, I’m taking up too much time.. . I.
M.V. How you actually work nowadays or I mean, when did you start
to work with other people doing a lot of the actual work?
C.K. Oh always, always.
M.V. Always, right from the time you were doing video?
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