I remember my interview. I had done art foundation at Harrow School of Art. loved it. worked extremely hard and came laden with just about everything I produced. I think there were about four or five people in the room. I think they were just deliberately trying to rile me. They said oh you've done one year, I said yes I've done one year. They said oh no you must have done two years. You've got so much stuff it must be two years. I said no no. They talked about one or two things and then they just said well quite frankly we don't like anything that you’ve brought in. And I said  it if I knew how to do it I wouldn't be applying here. And I thought that's it I've blown it. I remember at the end of the interview I got up and walked out and they said goodbye then thank you very much for coming. And then one of them I remember Watson immediately jumped up and started picking up work and helping me out of the room with it and being really nice. 

 

I was really looking forward to going to college after the experience at Harrow, and I thought oh great I'm going to be doing lots of painting, I was looking forward to it it yeah, and we'd been given a summer project, and it was a bizarre summer project. And one of the questions, it always stuck in my mind, was a rose is a rose is a rose. What on earth will you supposed to do with that? I don't really remember what I did, but I know the first day that we arrived, we were told that we'd all been chosen because we were particular individuals and it was a particularly important year. That was why they wanted a wide range of people there. And then we had to put our work up for a crit. That was difficult because well I didn't know what they were expecting. it was all very different what people had taken. there were a number of tutors going around too, and I remember it was really really hostile. Work was ripped off the wall, and there was what the hell do you f-ing think that is? it was just totally totally full on aggressive. and I think the only one they liked was Brian because he came with blind them with science type electronics. And I thought my god what's that all about. it was really unsettling.

 

This was the first week, first few days. I know now from teaching that you try and break down people’s preconceptions but this was like everything you brought is rubbish, don't think you can get away with producing that sort of rubbish here. And it knocked me sideways, you just sort of shrunk from it.

 

They did rip a couple of things off, not mine, and they did use the f-word quite a lot. I think I shrunk. any sort of enthusiasm I had for going there became very measured, who did you trust and what did you believe, and what was going to happen, I was quite wary I think.

 

 I think we could either develop that work and there was no way I was going to develop it after that, Watson gave us a list of words and said choose a word. I chose the word slimy. that's summed up how I felt about the time I think. and then you develop start in your own way basically. I brought offal and things into the studio, I was thinking about things that would be particularly disgusting. to start doing drawing from. I remember that after it had hung around a few days it was starting to get a bit high, I decided to turn it into an installation with some plastic bits, which was taken away and buried.

 

(Quotes from the book about Watsons' comments on Liz). Obviously didn't know that that's what's what he was thinking but it was very interesting considering some of the things that were going on in the group. There were people who were into Mathematics and Philosophy, so that to say that I'm turning into an English teacher was a little bit it strange actually. We hadn't been given any clear instructions about why the model was going around, and measuring her footprints and all that, and I actually loved life drawing, and we were being prevented from doing any drawing. I got to know the model quite well, because I felt a sympathy for her, because she was walking round and round, it was absolutely driving her mad. That was the thing that was interesting to me, the fact that you've got this human being that is being forced to walk on a grid, and responding to it. That's what I was doing, and it reminded me of behavioral psychologists and all of that, and she spoke to me  about how she was feeling while she was doing it.

 

I think it was all of my group that was in there doing that yeah. Like a project for the whole year. All the first year girls had to live in this hostel with sort of minders. Which was awful. Really awful. I mean if we were living in the house and there hadn't been these warden type people we would have been alright, that because they had such strict rules you know about when we had to come in, and they locked the door and all the rest of it. It was difficult. and I shared a room, a tiny room with somebody, which I didn't like. I was sharing a room with Pam she's in the book, although I can't remember what her work was, she was from Oldham. She was very single-minded, she got on very well with the Tutors. 

 

I thought she was interesting rather than mediocre but that might have just been my interpretation. At the time we didn't know that we were interesting or mediocre, we thought we were all in the same boat. There was a feeling that  particularly as the  course progressed, that the people who were getting a lot of attention from people like Coutts were doing better. and they were thinking in similar ways. I mean my position was, well they can see what's going to be looked on as good  and they're getting on the bandwagon. But then we didn't know we were mediocre. But then I was rather pleased that you had identified who said that, and I laughed when I knew it was Gibson. He was just so over the top, I remember when we did life drawing with him, and as I say I loved life drawing and I had great respect for Gibson as well, because he was as you know a visual artist.  He was always so, you're at a holiday camp,you don't know how to work, and his favourite  word was torpor. You're all suffering from torpor. So I could just imagine him saying mediocre, you know. I read through my bit in the book again and my first reaction was so they didn't like what I was doing. But when I read through it again they actually saw that I had progressed. not progressed enough to give me a decent assessment grade which I was annoyed about, but in myself I had progressed. 

 

When I read the book I was a bit taken aback, it was quite nasty. It was a bit depressing, but then I'm quite an optimistic sort of person so I just thought well I've done alright. You know they've got it wrong. 

 

In the second year five of us, got a house, a lovely house in Midville. We all sort of had a room in it and share the kitchen. that was good, it was a good two years. The others, were Jackie, Emma, and Rose and Helen who was the graphics student. I remember that we all thought Diana had done really well to get out of the hostel, and why hadn't we thought of doing that. She produced a doctor's letter so that she could leave the hostel before the end of the year and we all thought we should have done that. .

 

Oh well there was a definite split, you were either in one camp or the other. The conceptualist one was obviously you know, looked on favourably. People who wanted to paint or make things, were in a way fighting a battle of remaining to do that, rather than fighting to get the work as good as it could possibly be. It was a them or us situation I think. There was an audacity about conceptualism, because they weren't producing visual work they were all about thinking. It was sort of the implication that if you were producing visual work you weren't thinking. That something would have a concept and could have much meaning and research behind it, because it was being translated into visual form, it was worthless, not by everybody, but there was that sort of feeling.

 

(Visual artists on the staff?) Yes Watson, he called himself a sort of factory, he produced stuff, and he wanted us to work in that way. Kerr it was of course much more into expressing personal feelings. There was a part-time tutor called who was really good to work with. and later became head of illustration at Kingston. There was a female tutor called Fawley who did holograms. She was good to talk to.

 

Watson was very much the person in the first year with other people drifting in and out, and I guess Gibson in the second year. I seemed to have something to do more with Kerr in the third year. I didn't see people that often. I came from a foundation course where the timetable was really full to this huge blank of studio time. People just used to sort of drop in. 

 

I worked in this space quite close to Jackie who was drawing and making things so that was quite interesting. So I suppose we spoke about our work. I really did like what she was doing, it was very proficient. I spoke to people like Dave I suppose occasionally, I was quite interested in the way he was trying to pull the wool over everybody's eyes His work was quite brilliant I think really he was so about what he was really about, he wasn't making it up he really was into chickens and bits of wood and stuff. Yeah he was just very easy to talk to. He went out with Jackie for a bit then he went out with Helen for a bit, so we used to see quite a bit of him really I suppose

 

The Fine Art Group, you were made up of lots of, sometimes eccentric individuals, it was all terribly important what you were doing and your work was terribly important, but when I was thrown into the mix with the graphic design students, because they was set a project which was actually nothing to do with them in the same way and it was very flippant and fun and very easy and very strong group dynamics. it was totally different. They socialised with each other- there was great camaraderie, more than there ever was in the Fine Art Group. 

 

It was a toughening up process I think. I think the final year was quite difficult, I won't say traumatic, challenging was possibly a different word to describe it. I did keep a diary. I did find slides of some of the drawings which Kerr particularly liked and it reminded me why he liked them. I learnt about his history with the kindertransport and so on, I remember seeing images of childhood in his drawings of people and things. It was to do with childhood and Alice in Wonderland which I still think is the most terrible book

 

I wasn't very happy with my degree show and I think if there had been a bit of nurturing and direct encouragement early on that the form of that exhibition would have been totally different. I made this grotesque Alice in Wonderland doll which I put in a picture frame. 

 

I had to fight to get to Art School my parents were very reticent about it, they wanted me to go to university to do English or something, couldn't see what an earth I would do at art school. That would be a terribly bad influence on me. I had to really fight to get there and so having got there it seemed like a fight all the way through. 

 

I was really determined that I was going to get a qualification at the end of it and nothing was going to stop me and that was a positive coming out of the negative. I never sort of sat in the corner and cried or anything like that, I think some people did. people did sort of get upset. There was one lad in the first year who didn't talk to anybody he just sat under a table and made this invented language. I think he was called Giles or something. He was very bizarre he was just he hid under a table. and spoke this strange language and kept away from people. It was all a bit of a performance I think.  Whether that was a response to the situation or whether he was, I don't know, I don't know what it was about. But that was odd he was certainly there for two years. can't remember he stayed the whole course. 

 

I think there was a difference between the boys and the girls, I think the boys felt they were it, and that was that. Feminism wasn't really around at that time so that you did feel sort of second-rate citizens. I picked up from the book that one of them said they wanted the second year exhibition to be just for the boys. But we were allowed in. maybe that's to do with the fact they shoved us in a hostel for the first year. There was no contact except in the studio and then in the studio everybody had this big angst, that I'm doing my work. 

 

The wardens. They had to look after us, they had to get us up in the morning and put breakfast on the table. unlock the door at night and make sure that nobody came in to see us. She had been a life model for Victor Pasmore she proudly told. told us. that's probably why she got the job.

 

Some of the comments that were made about the girls, about me in particular, you would never ever make a comment about a student like that now. It was incredibly sexist. Stolid puddingy, needs a complete change of lifestyle, what are they basing those sorts of comments on. The girl in who did the butterflies being demure in a blouse and a skirt. 

 

I think some of the boys got together and thought it would be a good idea to have a second year show. and then the girls did as well. I'll tell you one thing about that Rolf Harris was actually performing in the theatre in Midville, well somebody decided that it would be very good publicity if we got Rolf Harris to come along and open the exhibition, because he was a public figure and all the rest of it. Apparently it came back that he wanted £200 to open the thing, and we just thought get stuffed. I think we all helped with organising it in some way. I remember the doll's house painting. I didn't have any great expectations of it. 

 

I couldn't remember the balloon drawing project. I probably didn't do it though. I did learn about working with fiberglass and resin when I did the pram with the distorted doll in it, so that I learnt a process. I did enjoy being down in the sculpture area, it was nice down there. It was a visiting tutor who was making resin type things, so he was very supportive.

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I like to being challenged if it is positive criticism. Coutts walked into my area, and he looked around, and he said I can't relate to any of this. So I'm not going to come and talk to you anymore. It's just handicraft. and then he walked out and I never saw him again. At the time I felt shock, and I also felt some anger, and I also felt relief. 

 

I remember David Hockney coming to talk to us and now remember talking to him. It was the very first lecture that Hockney had given on his work. We had a trip to London to see all his splash paintings, and looking back we were incredibly privileged weren't we. Carl Andre I remember, I remember the line of bricks that people had made that spelt Carl Andre is giving a lecture and it led the way to the lecture theatre.

 

We revolted, we had a sort of strike about the lack of teaching. It was only a token to support Hornsey rather than anything. 

 

In my third year in the middle of doing my dissertation I was rushing back to the house. I got knocked down by a car quite badly and carried along and ended up under the wheels of a bus coming the other way and I got taken to hospital. I was badly shaken up and I was black and blue down all one side. I remember Dave and the girls had heard and they rushed to A&E. The deadline for the dissertation was Monday morning and I said could I have an extension to finish the dissertation and they said no. I couldn't it had to be in or that was it. 

 

I think Midville was a huge toughening up process something that you survived. I think it was something that was very difficult. I don't think it should have been as difficult as it was. I often think if I had gone to somewhere like Chelsea I'd be painting, I'll be very happy now. I’ve spoken to people who been to Chelsea and they said no it wasn't like that either. it was a grounding, I won't say it was a brilliant grounding it was quite a negative grounding  in a way. But there was something inside me that made me want to make it (the foundation course where I taught) a better experience than I had. Rose went on to do an art education PhD so she really looked into it. The questioning remained; 

 

Conceptualism - it was the fact that it took over and some of those were quite distrustful about it. It was a bit gobbledegook at times. I think that if Kerrr liked my work and he did say that he liked my work, there could have been more input from people like him at times. I think that you get to a point where you're so distrustful that you close on yourself in a way because if the first thing you do is start ripping people's work off the walls as soon as you get through the doors, you know, so how are you going to get past that?