I was born in Suffolk but I grew up in Norfolk. Perfectly good blokes live either side of the river Waveney, but they don't get on with each other. I used to do a lot of drawing. Rustic stuff you know, I mean I grew up in the country. What I drew was what was around me really. Tractors, you know what I mean.  I suppose the kind of things I started to make when I was a kid were chicken runs, and bale huts for chickens, and rabbit hutches and stuff. So it was a general, it was that kind of stuff rather than cars or space ships or something. I went to the village school to start with you know, and then I went to the grammar school in Norwich, called the city of Norwich School. When I was a kid it was a kind of wish fulfillment thing, I used to make kind of little chicken cities out of corrugated iron and slatted structures, straw and stuff. Before we even had any chickens. I had no idea that they could possibly be called anything other than self-indulgence. It does look like in my memory that I was making a kind of installationy kind of thing you know. I went to foundation course in Great Yarmouth, Great Yarmouth school of art and design. my parents didn't want me to go to art school they wanted me to go to university to get a degree in a proper subject you know what I mean. And so I left grammar school after a year in sixth form, and got a job an office job, and I was under the impression that if I worked three years that would make me independent. But after three years of working in this office job I was trying to find a place in Art School and I was told your parents will have to contribute to it.

 

Luckily by then my father, he was prepared to stump up the proportion of the grant money that was delegated for the parents to pay. I was told try Great Yarmouth they'll accept any old bod, and that was probably the best thing I did really. It was quite a workmanlike kind of course that course, and of course I got into Midville from it. I was doing a bit of everything really, although there was a certain amount of chicken creeping into it. I was doing drawings and at weekends I was looking for subject matter to draw. Well you can't get your brother or sister to pose for you. I was drawing the chickens and ducks and stuff. Two turkeys, that kind of thing. They noticed that the drawings of the chickens were a lot better than the life drawing. so maybe that was the way into the stuff at Midville. if you're in a spot turn to your chickens man. My parents weren't farmers they were both teachers. my mother was the daughter of a farmer, and indeed as kids we would be seconded to the farm, for harvest work and all that stuff you see. It was from quite a young age right through to when I was at college.

 

I vaguely remember the interview. There was a very extrovert fellow, head of fine art called Stone. By the way I went to Maidstone first, first choice and they rejected me. I'd been there to see a football match, Midvilley City vs Norwich City. it was so  different from Norwich, which has quite a preserved feel. Stone was a graphics bloke apparently, I mean he was just very extrovert, he was mercilessly lampooning his staff and stuff. I remember him, for some reason he been told to lay off the booze or something, he'd always be having a laugh at somebody's expense I did remember him walking along the corridor in the basement, in the sculpture department, I think Coutts was with him. At the interview, Kerr was there, I think there was probably another bloke there. He was a painter who worked at Midville for years. I remember Kerr was pointing out the drawings of chickens that I had in my drawing books. And asking about those, so he was on the ball. Kerr always gave off a kind of hunted feel. I suppose he did seem to look for similarly hunted students. He was always bolstering up creaking confidences. 

 

I did get the feeling that it was going well. I must have been doing something right with these drawings of chickens I think. Stone seemed quite on board with the strangeness of the body of the submission I’d made

 

(The first chicken run constructions). Yes I’ve still got the set of transparencies I made with that thing because I was going to project them back on the floor and see the difference. Really it should have been filmed but by doing it this way  you've got a kind of key in terms of what had moved in relation to what.  The identity of each fowl was in the colour. And the size of the squares in the transparency matched the distance that it travel so you know you could see if you could see the hierarchy mapped out of the chickens because the chickens always have a kind of her strange hierarchy of you know, dominant chicken and then a less dominant chicken and you find the less dominant usually fight each other more.  And the dominant has to. You see what I mean.  it wouldn't be just a moving picture it would be full of information.

 

(When asked about art) I can see why I might say that because the  follow-up question would then be in what way? To cut a long story short I might go for the obvious rebuttal. I found that maybe from my experience of the workplace, that if you convince people you are not on their side then they would let you alone. do you know what I mean. so that if you could actually convince the expressionist wing of the course that you weren't really with them, they’d leave you for the other team to deal with. and if you convinced the conceptualists or the art linguists that you weren't really with them, then they wouldn't really bother you that much. 

 

Because the people who had gone over to the linguist side, they had a hell of a reading list. and a lot of long words to master. And employ with confidence you know. Similarly I didn't really see the chickens as a vehicle for expressionism in any way. It could be in an illustrative way I suppose. Chickens fighting. I didn't really know what I was doing but I was quite convinced it wasn't either of those two. The crucial point was when we got given a vaguely three-dimensional project. That would be the game project that we were given. supervised by a bloke I got to know very very well, who was an excellent decent bloke. And  because it was something connected with an art school project which was to go to the ICA in London.Brian had a piece in it, but I think it didn't work properly. 

 

I know that they were all sorts of very miserable times at Midville. Probably for most people. but it worked out alright in the end if you know what I mean. if you get those crits where everyone's hammering down on you, you just got to get over it. Ashley  could be quite, well so could Coutts, they could be quite brutal. I suppose  when I was eventually teaching in art schools I tried to be quite the opposite really. You were trying to find out what the thing was about, rather than complaining what it was not about. You know what I mean. Maybe it was the 60s, part of the old style Art School, that you'd come on as a group quite confrontational with the students. I mean even with the maze race, (the game project) I was quite flabbergasted at another project being parachuted in at that stage I must admit. I think that could have been the second year. I mean these projects were kind of designed to annoy, in a way. I can't remember why I ended up measuring an egg, but I did, I remember it, I've still got the drawings somewhere I think. measuring the profile of an egg if it's rotated. Through a course of movements. and then plotting it all on the graph paper.

 

(Watson tells him not to do anything chickeny). Yes well that was a touch of up yours. I was being an annoying brat wasn’t I. I think my country upbringing, it does make you very different from somebody who's brought up in the hurly-burly of a town or you know in cities. You’re more aware of wildlife and its reactions. You're more tempted to emulate them, rather than go down the street and make a lot of noise in your disco clothes. 

 

I think that's what I was getting at with the observer-bird,  bird-observer cages, that these things could be just as much looking at you as you looking at them. I built a full-size one but I never put chickens in it, because I'd had enough of bringing chickens to Midville. It's that thing that, if you're in the countryside and you are looking at a bird are you in control of it, or is it in control with you? 

 

(Talk on vagueness) It's very difficult to research vagueness, for an art student, but there is a philosophical concept about the vague. In fact it's a rather mystical state of mind-; sometimes. We were always invited to be so specific about everything, you know, so matter of fact and verbally sound on every move we made, so I by bringing in vagueness, was saying well what about if you prefer to be vague? What about if the verbal specifics are not what you're after, but not very well done. I didn't have, I didn't do  the research to do justice to the idea. There was a lot of reading lists going on all the time, and I didn't take any notice. People like Bert and Arthur, they were those two mainly were incredibly well read. and Chris too. Books on Wittgenstein were appearing all over the place in people's cubby holes and work  spaces.

 

I think sometime in the first year I was sharing a place in Midville with I think Arthur, and Brian. We had a room each and it was two floors of this house near a church, St Mary's Road. The thing about Arthur was that he had the most amazing record collection. He was a bit of a serious collector of records, so when he went back home to wherever it was, Winchesterish, I think he lived around Winchester. He’d come back with new LPs you know. introduce me to all sorts of things. Frank Zappa, and The Mothers. they were quite a discovery at the time for me. Just the sort of thing that a 25-year old art student should listen to.  And Captain Beefheart and all that. 

 

It seemed to me that there was a lot of inertia too. There was a lot of people who were always stuck. They were just lost, you know. didn't know what to do or how to do it or both. That's kind of a bit dismissive, it sounds like it's your fault, torpor. and Gibson was a bit like that. It's a snap out of it or something like that. I think the fact that you were invited to explain your explanations, and explain everything was a bit of a dampener on people's activity I think. I went down to the sculpture studio which was in the basement, and the painting and all that stuff took place on the on the top floor. When I got in the basement it was like sort of whole different atmosphere. people doing things including yourself.  Not mindless or anything but people seem to be more purposeful. There was a sort of art fellow there working with prefabricated sheets of plastic. She was always there working, she was a jolly good presence in the room you know. There was Fawley. Some women tutors but they were mainly in the painting department and I never really had much to do with them

 

The second year exhibition. I remember it was downstairs in the actual art school building, it was an exhibition area on the ground floor. Yeah Gibson has always liked my work I don't know why,  they were not as attention-grabbing as some other bigger things, there might have been in that show. I mean Joe was making quite big cubic sculptures, at that time. Big cubic blocks of cardboard and stuff, painted over. 

 

The Happening. Yes I think that was in the kind of cinema, the hall where they showed films and where they had a stage and lectern and all that. And there was some fellow from a London museum or something, giving a lecture on Schwitters. I don't think I was instigating it, I was in front of this galosh full of water. Bert was attempting to swing it onto the stage and empty its contents over the speaker. Outrageous. I think I was in front of it so it could have hit me but in fact it hit a graphic student called Gill on the back of the head and soaked her. so that was a bit of a dampener.  He must have put a string he on to the roof structure in order to get the swing on it. because he was quite near the back of the hall I remember. It had many a sort of what was called a happening that didn't quite come off. 

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Abbott. She got all sorts of American minimalists  to Coventry. Carl Andre. He was up there I think Sol LeWitt I think Seth Siegelaub. They didn't go to any London Art schools they just came straight up to Midville. From showing at the Lisson or wherever.  I think she was in with Nicholas Logsdail at the Lisson. She was a very persuasive lady she was very good I thought. 

 

If I look at myself now I do a lot of work on my own. If I connect with people it's often by phone. I don't really mingle that mutch with loads of people. Although I'm in touch with people from all over the world from the work basically. 

 

There weren't many sort of inter group relationships I think, the blokes used to usually inhabit one big house. Bert, Arthur, Chris. Plus various other people from other years. would be in some noisy house. and the women seemed to stick together in another house in another part of town. Emma was doing some quite good stuff as I remember. although when she left she went into fabric. But then there was a lot of painting going on, that would be Jackie and Liz and various other people. 

 

(The introductory criteria). That sounds like a Midville tutorial. They didn't spare the rod. 

 

(The balloon project). I seem to remember that they let me off that if I carried on with the egg. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the balloon and streamers thing came from the egg, in  that they saw me get my hands on the egg,  and they said alright you've got to measure this without touching it. Maybe that's just what I would think. Maybe they saw what I was doing was excruciating and made something up even more excruciating. 

 

Coutts, he didn't like to get too close. I  think I convinced him that I was not on his wavelength, I was not on his rota of students. It was not aggressive always, he was quite, he just wanted to find out what I was doing. Then suggest a few words that I could look up. And then move on.  ‘Report to me later when you've read the book’.