ArtPrize Blog

An Interview with Peter Murray

Guest Speaker, Peter Murray, Executive Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, interviewed by Nicole Caruth. An excerpt:

Peter Murray preparing to photograph the moving balloon sculpture by Jimmy Kuehnle. ArtPrize, 2009. Photo: N. Caruth

Nicole Caruth: What were your initial thoughts when you first learned about ArtPrize?

Peter Murray: Well, I don’t think I fully grasped the concept. My first reaction was, “Well, this is very exciting that someone is actually organizing such a big project and such a wealthy prize.” I agreed to participate in the way that I am participating. It was only gradually that I began to understand the complexity and scale of it.

My initial reaction was “great,” because I know a big problem for artists is trying to find support and people trying to buy their work, so this was going to be extremely helpful. But then I got a bit confused, because I was [not] conscious of the fact that there was no curator here. Apparently there was nobody actually making the selection, so I got a little worried about that. Also, it’s new territory. It’s not the sort of territory that I’m used to or most galleries, museums and biennale’s are used to. So a little trepidation and a little bit worried in terms of how the various venues and artist and curators and the public were going to come together.

NC: With regard to voting, it’s not so different from a jurying process [where] you have a predetermined set of experts that select a work of art from a group of many. But, here, this process has been opened up to the public. What do you think are the pros and cons of that?

PM: I agree with you there, that to a certain extent, one is always voting, because you vote whether to have a particular artist. You’ve just seen my talk — we’ve decided with that [jury] form of vote to have Ursala von Rydingsvard as opposed to some British artist. So, it was like internal voting.

I think the difference here is that people are voting without the knowledge one would normally assume one has when making an aesthetic decision about whether a piece of sculpture is going to be shown in the middle of Grand Rapids or Leeds in Yorkshire. So in that sense, it’s much more open, and more exciting. But at the same time, it raises a number of issues and problems.

For example, if there had been a vote taken on whether the Yorkshire sculpture should start or not start, it would never have started, because I’m sure people would have voted against the idea of having contemporary art in an 18th century landscape. But we’ve moved on a long way from that, and people’s attitude towards art is very different.

Just moving around the town, you’ve probably noticed it yourself, there’s a huge buzz out there, a lot of excitement. So, they’re onto something. Now, what the consequences are of that will be really interesting…I think it does bring up interesting issues in terms of what is art and what isn’t art and how you define quality and not. And these are things you take for granted. You have a curatorial team meeting, you have an editorial meeting, you just take certain things for granted…

NC: I think this is always been the danger of an open call, or call for entries —  when anyone and everyone can call themselves an artist you have to be ready for what comes.

PM: And I’m not so sure that I was totally ready for it. The other thing, and maybe it’s because there wasn’t sufficient time, but [ArtPrize] doesn’t seem to have gone really national or international, and maybe that’s just because people didn’t know about it, that the advertising didn’t get out there. It might have had something to do with that.

It also might have had something to do with the fact that a lot of artists just wouldn’t apply. Some artists go in for every competition, but I know a lot of artists that wouldn’t have applied for this, and you know a lot of artists as well. Simply because they would want to be invited. They would want more control over the situation.

So, the upside is the enthusiasm and the buzz on the street. But the downside is how you actually move to that next stage where you are actually judging quality, and how you get that over to people.

NC: Has there been a particular object, installation or setting that has stood out to you or that you found particularly interesting?

PM: …In general terms, what is obvious to me is [that when] you get a sort of curatorial management of the installations, it works much better. And so the work in the federal building and the work in the [UICA] just has a head start over everything else. And this is really what I was referring to [but] not terribly emphatically in my talk. The context and the space and the respect you give to a work is very important.

…The open air, it’s a tricky one, because to make sculpture for the open air that’s going to have a real presence is not easy, and to get the right space and the right backing for it is not easy either. But I liked the table and chairs on the bridge, actually.

NC: I haven’t seen that yet.

PM: I just think it’s something, which has transformed a space, because that is what art is capable of doing. You either see it in that curatorial presentation as in the Old Federal Building, or like the guy walking down the road just now in the balloon — he’s changing — he’s transforming that environment. You don’t see that every day of the week, and I think that’s great. That, to me, is one of the exciting things about [this event].

NC: It seems to me that something like painting can be so easily missed as you’re moving from one place to the next, and that somebody like the guy we just passed on the street yelling is going to be the one that grabs more attention and therefore, maybe, gets more votes. Do you think there’s an appropriate art form for a setting like this, be it performance, work that’s out of doors, etc?

PM: I think that’s a really good question and a very good observation, because the whole voting system brings up all sorts of issues, doesn’t it? That maybe the best work might be missed because, first of all, you’ve got, I don’t know, 1, 800 works or 1, 200 works to see, and I would have thought that to get out on the street is a really good thing because, in terms of what ArtPrize is all about to gel with the public and to change the environment and so on and so forth. So maybe there’s too much emphasis on painting, and that’s something that perhaps they need to think about next time…I mean that in the nicest possible way, because paintings you go along and you go around and then [at the Old Federal Building, for example] you come into a room, and you can hear [people] talking about this table of architecture. You can’t miss that. I thought that was a terrific piece. I really enjoyed that.

NC: So did I.

PM: I can’t remember his name, but I thought that was lovely, and a really interesting take on the whole business of multi-part sculpture. It brings in all sorts of issues which are pertinent today in the art world, and pertinent in terms of the social aspects of the environment, and behind it were some very discrete paper works, which I thought were beautiful…

NC: They were cutouts. They were gorgeous.

PM: They were absolutely gorgeous. But you wouldn’t have noticed those if it hadn’t been for the table. So I thought it was good sighting, very good sighting.

NC: Are you seeing this type of voting [around visual art] in the U.K?

PM: Well, I think it’s quite interesting the way they do it. I was involved in the Ebbsfleet Sculpture Project, which is a big sculpture project in Britain…and people were given a vote, which didn’t necessarily influence the final decision. But it was interesting because in that particular instance, the piece that people voted for was what the judges agreed on anyway. And they quite often do this where the public will vote and then you match to see if it’s the same as what the judges actually vote for, but generally speaking, it isn’t taken into consideration. I think in galleries and museums, we don’t have that. But, of course, people vote with their feet. Some shows they go to and some shows they don’t go to.

NC: What role do you think the cash prize might play in what you’re seeing here?

PM: I think the cash prize…well, first of all, I’ve got nothing against cash prizes.

NC: [laughter] Yeah, neither do I.

PM: Nothing against them at all. I think in this particular instance, there didn’t seem to me to be a correlation between the quality and significance of the works and the size of the cash prize and that worries me. That is, for me, an issue.

NC: So that if an amateur artist who’s work wouldn’t normally be defined as “fine art” wins the $250,000 cash prize, that’s the concern?

PM: It’s not that, really. It’s just that as I’m walking around, I’m looking and I’m thinking, “Would I pay a quarter of a million pounds for that?” And whether it’s an amateur artist or a professional artist or so on, and I just think that it’s something that…I’m sort of torn about it, really, because I don’t want to knock the generosity of people, and the fact that it’s very rare that you get such a valuable financial contribution for an artist, but you’ve got to also look at that in terms of the quality of the work and whether there is a correlation between that and the scale of it. That point, for me, is pertinent, whether it’s someone in ArtPrize who’s had a lot of experience as a so-called professional artist, or someone who’s not had a lot of experience. So I think that’s where credibility of the scheme of the project might actually lie.

NC: Can you see something like this ever taking place in Yorkshire and the UK, this public art competition with the big cash pot at the end of the rainbow?

PM: I don’t think so. Partly because things are structured differently, but I think if we had some sort of competition, some sort of art prose, it would lead to the making of the piece, so the money would be [used] to help the artist create a piece.

I am fascinated by this whole scheme, and there are certain things that I can carry away from it which could influence the way one actually structures projects. There are things I’ve learned from here which are fantastic in terms of how to generate enthusiasm, how to get the public on your side, things like that. But there are also the other sides, which I have some reservations rather than misgivings about, which I would need more time to reflect on.