Kerr he was a character and a half. I respected him more than a lot of them because he was just a painter, he really was. I didn't really like his work and he didn't like mine. Probably Liz and Jackie who were probably the proper painters of all of us. Others were working, we used to work late into the evening, but Kerr only really had a eye for a painter. in the first week he took us all into his room, one by one, and sort of depressed us all because he's got quite a depressive personality. He said to me of course no one else wants you, because there were a lot of tutors at the interview, no one else wanted you but I voted for you. He never liked my work so I thought this is really bad. 

 

Actually, I brought you just for a laugh a reference he wrote for me which is very polite but doesn't really say a lot. I expected everyone to think I was rubbish. And I did think I was rubbish I think, so that wasn't terribly helpful for me. We applied there being told that this was a laissez-faire college and if you had a kind of line or direction of thought already then this was for you. We all arrived thinking this is great you know, this is just what we want. The allocation of time were going to be (reads from prospectus). Drawing seven hours a week, Sculpture five hours, Graphics five hours.  Well we definitely did photography which I enjoyed. We had that, and we were left for hours in the third year, totally ignored.

 

This is my theory, because we came with the understanding that this is what we had come for, they couldn't really change that for us, we were a dead loss, and they probably sent out a totally different prospectus for the following year. and got all these kids in and they were locked in seminar rooms. They were not allowed to paint, they were told if we catch you painting you're out. So we all worked through the evening right until nine or whenever it closed. And they used to come and try and hide you know, "can we paint?". I did a foundation course at Manchester in the old days when it was at Openshaw, and it was a very big Foundation and it was a good time, I probably should have stayed in Manchester.

 

I went first of all to boarding school and then day school in London.I got a place at Hornsey but I turned it down thinking I had done everything there was to do in London. So I got a place in Manchester and it was good and I enjoyed it. I thought I didn't know what I was doing but at the time I had some drawing ideas so I thought, I hate authority so let's go here where, you know it's laissez-faire.  I didn't know that the Men in Black Suits were coming. Ashley and Coutts, I don't know about Dyer, they wore black suits and strode about, and they never spoke to us but I think Ashley did once come and grill me in the studio probably in my second year I think. And asked lots and lots of questions and somehow I told him more than I wanted to, and all the Catholic education and so on came out. He finished up saying you should have probably been a nun, and strode off. Honestly I was far from being a nun. I just thought you know, idiot, what have you been doing this last year, you haven't been helping me. 

 

(Did you have any contact with Gibson?) No. Actually what's really sad and if you find out more about the year, there was a part-time tutor who came in the final year from the  US, who worked with Rauschenberg and then came over as part-time. He was a really good person to connect to and I thought for the first time I'm I was going to have some tutoring and mentoring that was going to be of use.

 

He'd been out there in New York with Rauschenberg. Abbott was a good person for me because she was kind of sensitive wasn't she. I had one female lecturer, and we did have part timers. Well there were some gorgeous girls there, and there was a very nice girl in the year above us. He did work with some of the guys, I think Joe. What's his name the guy from Norfolk and did quite well, Dave, they got a lot from Gibson. Basically my view of them was always jaded because I've always been quite cynical but I thought they like you (a) if you're attractive or (b) if your work is anything like theirs or could be. If you drew Disney characters you were going to be in with Gibson,  If you did conceptual art you were going to be in with that lot. And if you didn't paint you weren't going to be in with Kerr. But I think it made us a tight year group, and in spite of all that it was the most brilliant time. Like all guys they all seemed, apart from maybe Giles who didn't seem all that confident, they were quite a confident bunch.  I was just struggling to deal with people at all because I was sent to weekly boarding at four, so that kind of delivers its own, that you know it made me need to paint which is great for me.

 

I've got over that now, and recovered from Midville, it took me years to get over that. What they did. I think I was a rigorous student. I did read a lot and I worked to, I worked till nine at night and made stuff. it was my problem that I couldn't relate and if you can't relate you're not going to get a grade. I think my show had a huge amount of work in it, but I believe I nearly failed, because we all had very low marks, it's not like everyone gets two ones, these days.

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Dave got a first. Pam I don't know if she got a first or 2:1. A lot of us just got a pass, and I got a pass, I've had nightmares for years that I've been back to try and do it better. And couldn't paint and couldn't do anything sort of thing. it was quite traumatic at the time, because I think I felt I was kind of worth a bit more but was probably wrong, I don't know. I made this garden path to lead you up the garden path, with high walls on both sides into the area where I was going to have my show. Later when Gibson learnt that I had built the walls as well as the garden path, he said oh this is quite good. That's of course after. He didn't come and talk, he didn't know.

 

We had this show in the second year, I was pretty pleased with my work, I worked for hours on these fibre glass blocks with Muybridge pictures sealed inside.  Sealed inside forever as a fabulous sort of monument for him. But still in their sequence and all together.  Incidentally nobody told me I should be wearing a mask while I was sanding these things. But Kerr saw the show and he said he thought it was very…, I think he said he thought it was shallow, but he also said the smaller pieces are the most pretentious. Mine was the smallest. Another vote down.

 

And I think the thing was girls were then much more then now socialised to have less confidence, and to try to please, and I think I was very much in that category. I was easily wiped out. I felt a bit left out because I think the main guys were the main guys who did it. and then when the book came out I thought, ooh I’m not in it. 

 

The only person I kept up with was Liz when we were students; we were very close, we got a house together  we girls - five of us, for the second two years. and I think we were close. Because they had the idea that girls should be in lodgings for the first year. we couldn't look after ourselves. The boys could. So we were up in arms particularly Pam who was a wonderful mouthpiece. She had all the confidence; 

 

Pam, Jackie, Liz, Helen who was a graphics student, me, and then Helen moved out and Giles moved in much later, to the shock of our landlord who wanted all girls, but he was he soon saw that he was harmless. 

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I knew where the naughty kids were coming from because I hate authority. Midville, it has influenced me because I was in my own way quite conceptual but just not words at all. It was visual. There were concepts behind it. At the time Rauschenberg was talking about the gap between art and life and I did see that but now it's just my life. I'm a member of two amateur art groups which I really enjoy. I've painted a lot of flowers as well because flowers were a complete no-no at Midville, you wouldn't even say the word. And I'm also doing some prize-winning hens with their rosettes and things because I'm sure that they wouldn't have like that. I'm still kicking against them.

 

Dave was doing his chickens. That was superb. but I think they quite liked it because the wooden things were beautiful as well made. Yes the whole thing was really good in the first place we were given a really stupid project which some of us opted out of - I did and Dave did.  I never saw what went on in there. I was drawing from some kids’ windmills sort of shapes. And Dave had the chickens in the studio. These people were drawing balloons. And over the week the balloons collapsed, so you couldn't do it anyway. I was glad I didn't do the project because what a waste of time was that.

 

(The balloon project) Maybe when it shrivelled. but these were the things we were given.  A rose as a piece of engineering. Before we got there we were sent some work to do. A rose as a piece of engineering. A landscape as a man-made instead of God. I thought I can't do this and I didn't do anything which was a bad start. 

 

I think there were 19 students then in our year. I really loved Chris and Bert I just loved them they were gorgeous. Bert had a girlfriend from London I can't remember what college she was at, and Chris was just a mess basically but a lovely mess. He went to Eton and he had a very posh accent which I loved immediately but I could only ever talk to him when I was drunk. But he was the honorable Chris and he never did any work but his mother was the marchioness of somewhere. She was brought in to discuss his future because he wasn't going anywhere. She persuaded them to keep him.

 

Harold was a character-  he might still be around Birmingham. He hid in a diver’s suit while they assessed his show and nearly died because he couldn't breathe in there. A lovely guy. I think he wanted to hear what they were saying but of course he couldn't hear. I made a coffin which I was going to lay in  but I didn't in the end.

 

I had one church section with candles and holy pictures and so on and that was a huge no no obviously. I was courting disaster to do something like that. I think it went badly because I had an external examiner and I was in the pub drinking whiskeys. So I was very drunk and when I got there I said I'd like to lead you from the beginning up the garden path, And he said oh I've looked around it and then that floored me I didn't know what to say then. 

 

Joe was a laugh and a half, I had an affair for about a year with him. A great lovely generous guy. but in all sorts of trouble. Grew up on the other side of the river from Liverpool. He's seen the world. I've got a cutting somewhere of art students, sort of drug problems in Midville. It was the 70s we all smoked. I think the boys did it more but we all did. Liz did dolls, and Yvonne and Pam she did strange birds and things. 

 

The only people I knew who housed themselves down in the Sculpture Studios were Joe and Dave. Fawley helped me, but she was part-time and the only woman. I liked her. I liked the history of art department, they set fabulous essays. random stuff like the history of education. And then this part-time guy in the third year, but none of the others helped me. We were all told to choose a tutor, and we were told if you didn't want one of those there was someone coming who you could pick, so I said oh well I'll have that one. but it turned out to be someone who took the job seriously and came once a week to have a decent chat. and constructive and I felt progress I really did. and I think that's another reason I felt so upset that the final judgement was so poor because I had got somewhere. And then you have doubts  so well maybe I haven't you know. 

 

 I think I learnt a lot which I have used when I was a teacher because I always try to be positive and never ever worked on their work but always tried to bring out you know what's in you sort of thing the complete reverse of what anyone did for me. We never did any drawing at Midville that was organised, except for once we had the Quienquennial  review Gibson took us for the day to clear the whole Studio and he set up a massive, stage and and placed, it might have been a model, dressed as Britannia with everything perfect as Britannia on the Penny in those days, and easels all the way around, and we would draw the model, but when the music and I think it was Rule Britannia, when it stopped you had to draw on the drawing in front of us and you had to take it very seriously. And the Quinquennial reviewers thought it was fabulous. Obviously when they left the room we all creased up laughing.